Blog Posts by Paul Grein

Lady Antebellum is a lot bigger than you may think. The country trio's sophomore album, Need You Now, sold 481,000 copies in its first week, which is more than such titans as Dave Matthews Band, The Black Eyed Peas, Michael Jackson and Jay-Z sold in any one week in the past year. In all of 2009, only three albums sold more copies in one week: Susan Boyle's I Dreamed A Dream, Eminem's Relapse and (by just a hair) U2's No Line On The Horizon.

Lady Antebellum is only the fourth country group or duo ever to land a #1 album on The Billboard 200. It follows Dixie Chicks, Rascal Flatts and Sugarland. The trio performed the poignant title song from the new album on Sunday night's Grammy telecast.

The group's sales achievement this week is especially noteworthy because sales are traditionally slow in January and February, when people are still tapped out from Christmas shopping. Need You Now had the biggest sales total for any week in January or February since 2005, when The Game's The

Beyonce and Taylor Swift each made history at the 52nd annual Grammy Awards. Beyonce became the first female artist ever to win six Grammys in one night. And Swift became the youngest artist ever to win for Album of the Year.

Beyonce's key win was Song of the Year for "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)." This marks the first time in Grammy history that a frisky, danceable R&B song has been crowned Song of the Year. (The two R&B songs that had won in the past, Alicia Keys' "Fallin'" and Luther Vandross' "Dance With My Father," are both elegant ballads.)

This brings Beyonce's career Grammy total to 16. Only two other female artists have amassed that many Grammys. Alison Krauss has 26 Grammys in her collection. Aretha Franklin has 18.

Swift won Album of the Year for her sophomore release, Fearless, which has defied industry trends to sell nearly 5.5 million copies since its release in late 2008. Swift won four awards in all. Alanis Morissette had held the record as the youngest Album of

Hope For Haiti Now, an album of highlights from last week's all-star telethon, debuts at #1 on this week's Billboard 200 chart. It's the first album from a benefit concert or telethon to reach #1. The granddaddy of such albums, 1971's The Concert For Bangla Desh, logged six weeks at #2. Ex-Beatle George Harrison was the driving force behind that concert and the resulting album. Another take-charge George, actor George Clooney, teamed with MTV Networks to spearhead Hope For Haiti Now

Nearly 20 charity albums have reached the top 40 since Harrison's ground-breaking release. Several of these albums urged Americans to look beyond their borders and respond to crises in such far-flung areas as Bangla Desh, Kampuchea, Africa, Kosovo and now Haiti. Three were created in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Three more were designed to raise money to fight AIDS. Others were created to stop nuclear power and to fight apartheid.

There were also top 40 albums that benefited Amnesty

Hope For Haiti Now makes history this week on two fronts. It's the first album ever to reach #1 on The Billboard 200 solely through digital sales. And it's the first album from a charity concert or telethon ever to reach the top. (It surpasses The Concert For Bangla Desh, George Harrison's 1971 album which single-handedly created the charity album genre. It logged six weeks at #2.)

Until this week, the #1 album with the highest percentage of digital sales was Ke$ha's Animal, which debuted two weeks ago with digital sales accounting for 76% of its weekly total. That record didn't last long, a sign of just how fast the music industry is changing.

Hope For Haiti Now: A Global Telethon For Earthquake Relief sold 171,000 digital copies between Friday night, when the telethon aired, and Sunday night, the close of the tracking period. Only one album has ever sold more digital copies in one week. That was Coldplay's Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends, which sold 288,000 digital copies

Taylor Swift has a lot of experience at being "the youngest ever." In November, she became the youngest person ever voted Entertainer of the Year at the Country Music Assn. Awards. Now, she seems destined to become the youngest artist ever to win the Grammy for Album of the Year. The 20-year old country/pop sensation would take that distinction from Alanis Morissette, who was 21 when Jagged Little Pill won the award in 1996.

Kings of Leon and Beyonce are expected to be the other big winners when the 52nd annual Grammy Awards are presented at Staples Center in Los Angeles on Jan. 31. Kings of Leon's rock smash "Use Somebody" is likely to win four awards, including Record and Song of the Year. Grammy voters have demonstrated a comfort level with mainstream pop-rock: Coldplay's "Viva La Vida" won last year as Song of the Year. Santana, U2, Coldplay and Green Day have all won for Record of the Year since 1999.

Beyonce, who led all artists with 10 nominations, has a good chance of winning

"Just Dance," the lead single from Lady Gaga's The Fame, tops the 5 million mark in paid downloads this week. The collaboration with Colby O'Donis is only the second song to reach the 5 million threshold, following "Low" by Flo Rida featuring T-Pain.

"Just Dance," of course, was just the beginning for Lady Gaga, who has sold nearly 18.4 million digital songs. (Those weekly tallies can really add up.) "Poker Face" is her second biggest hit, with sales of 4,642,000. "Bad Romance" is third, with sales of 2,466,000. "Lovegame" and "Paparazzi" are virtually tied for fourth place, with sales of 1,981,000 and 1,977,000, respectively. Eighteen other Gaga songs have rung up combined sales of nearly 2.3 million copies.

Lady Gaga has also sold 2,517,000 copies of her debut album, The Fame, and 637,000 copies of The Fame Monster EP. Add all these numbers together and you have more than 21.5 million units sold just in the U.S. That's not bad for someone who was a virtual unknown 18 months ago.

This

Taylor Swift's Fearless logs its 52nd week in the top 10 on The Billboard 200. The country/pop blockbuster is one of only 18 albums to spend a full year in the top 10 since 1963, when Billboard combined its separate stereo and mono charts into one comprehensive listing.

The list of 18 albums is highly eclectic. It includes hard rock, R&B/pop, even a little hip-hop. It includes two movie soundtracks and an album of instrumental pop and a live album. In short, a little bit of everything.

There are some surprises on the list. If you asked people to name the group with the longest-running top 10 album, they'd probably guess the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Eagles or Fleetwood Mac before they'd come up with the right answer, Def Leppard. And if you asked people to name the all-female group with the longest-running top 10 album, they'd probably run through such more obvious choices as the Supremes, Go-Go's, Bangles, Dixie Chicks, TLC and Destiny's Child before they'd come up

The charts often make for strange bedfellows, but that seems especially true this week. Ke$ha's debut album, Animal, enters The Billboard 200 at #1, dethroning Susan Boyle's I Dreamed A Dream. The two women are polar opposites. Boyle, 48, is old enough to be Ke$ha's mother. Boyle's conservative image and traditional adult contemporary musical approach are also far removed from Ke$ha's edgy, bratty style. Here's a factoid that underscores the difference in their appeal: Animal sold more digital copies this week (115,000) than I Dreamed A Dream has in its entire seven-week run (89,000).

More than three-quarters (76%) of this week's total sales for Animal came from the digital realm. Billboard's Keith Caulfield reports that this is the highest digital share for any #1 album in chart history. The previous record was set just seven weeks ago. Digital sales accounted for 45% of the total sales for John Mayer's Battle Studies in the week it debuted in November.

This is the first time that a