Blog Posts by Paul Grein

Michael Jackson's Number Ones is the best-selling album in the U.S. for the fifth time in the past six weeks. This is the longest that an artist who had died has had the nation's top-seller since Double Fantasy, by John Lennon and his widow, Yoko Ono, topped The Billboard 200 for eight weeks from December 1980 to February 1981. In both cases, shock at the untimely passing of a pop legend spurred sales. Lennon was just 40 when he was shot to death outside his apartment building in Manhattan. Jackson was 50 when he died of cardiac arrest at a rented mansion in Los Angeles.

This is the longest that a greatest hits set has been the best-selling album in the U.S. since the Beatles' 1 held the top spot for eight weeks from November 2000 to January 2001. It's the longest that Jackson has had the top-seller since Bad held the top spot for six weeks in September and October 1987.

This is the sixth consecutive week that Jackson has had three of the five best-selling albums in the U.S. Number

Michael Jackson's Number Ones is the best-selling album in the U.S. for the fourth time in the past five weeks. This is the first time that an album by a deceased performer has been the best-seller this long since the Notorious B.I.G.'s Life After Death was #1 for four weeks in March and April 1997. It's the first time that a greatest hits album has ranked as the nation's best-seller for four or more weeks since the Beatles' 1 was on top for eight weeks in 2000-2001. It's the first time that a Jackson album has been out front this long since Dangerous was #1 for four weeks in December 1991-January 1992.

Only one other album--Taylor Swift's Fearless--has been the best-seller in the U.S. for four or more weeks so far this year. Fearless is #1 for the year-to-date. Number Ones is currently #4 on that tally.

Now, from reading all this you would probably conclude that Number Ones is #1 on The Billboard 200. Alas, no. Billboard doesn't include catalog albums on its flagship chart. The lucky

Daughtry's sophomore album, Leave This Town, enters The Billboard 200 at #1. This makes the band's leader, Chris Daughtry, the first American Idol alumnus to land back-to-back #1 albums. Daughtry rang the bell for two weeks in early 2007. Kelly Clarkson is the only other Idol alum to notch two #1 albums, and hers weren't consecutive. She topped the chart with her first and fourth albums. This obviously makes Chris Daughtry the first Idol alum who didn't win the competition to land two #1 albums. (Clay Aiken is the only other non-winner to land a #1 album, though Adam Lambert is likely to join this little club.)

Leave This Town is Daughtry's first album to debut in the top spot. Daughtry bowed at #2 in November 2006. It first hit #1 in its ninth week. Daughtry has sold 4,494,000 copies. Of the thousands of albums that have been released in the nearly three years since Daughtry, only one other (Josh Groban's Noel) has reached the 4 million mark in sales. (Taylor Swift, which has also

Linkin Park this week pulls ahead of Nelly as the top-selling album artist to emerge in the 2000s. The Los Angeles-based rock group has sold 21,223,000 albums. Nelly has sold 21,215,000. The two acts first hit The Billboard 200 within four months of each other in 2000.

To mark the occasion, here's a list of the top new acts of the decade. Of the thousands of acts that have made their first appearances on The Billboard 200 since Jan. 1, 2000, these are the 20 that have sold the most albums. The list includes six pop stars, five rock groups, four rappers, three country acts and two R&B divas. It features four acts that won Grammys as Best New Artist, two who won American Idol and one (Carrie Underwood) who managed to win both.

Artists who emerged early in the decade stood a much better chance of making the list than artists who broke through later. Sales peaked around 2000, and have been dropping since about 2004. So it's hard for even the hottest acts of recent years to compete with

There was little reason to think that Bob Marley & the Wailers' compilation album Legend would become a blockbuster when it was released in the summer of 1984. Marley, who had died of cancer three years earlier, had not been a huge record seller in the U.S. Just two of his albums had reached the top 40. And he never had a top 40 single.

Sure enough, Legend got off to a tepid start. It entered The Billboard 200 at #168 in August 1984. It was the sixth-highest of seven new entries that week, coming in below the latest releases by '80s faves Spandau Ballet and INXS and the little-remembered Y&T. Legend peaked at a middling #54, but it remained on the chart for more than two years. And it has never stopped selling. Three weeks ago, it became only the 17thalbum to top the 10 million sales mark since Nielsen/SoundScan began tracking sales for Billboard in 1991.

Legend has sold more copies since 1991 than any other album from the '60s, '70s or '80s. It ranks ahead of such perennial hits as

Michael Jackson continues to shatter sales records that have stood for decades. He has six of the 10 best-selling albums in the U.S. this week. This breaks a record that has stood since April 1966, when Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass placed four albums in the top 10. Two weeks ago, Jackson had the three best-selling albums in the country. That toppled a mark set in May 1964 when the Beatles held three of the top four spots.

Jackson's catalog of solo albums sold 1.1 million copies this past week, up from nearly 800,000 last week. The increase is due to two factors: fans watching last week's memorial service and stores receiving fresh shipments of Jackson product. Jackson sold a staggering 2.3 million solo albums in 2-1/2 weeks.

Jackson's 2003 compilation Number Ones sold 349,000 copies this week and would have topped The Billboard 200 for the third week if catalog albums were eligible to compete on that chart. This marks the first time that a deceased performer has had the top-selling

The Rev. Al Sharpton made the most provocative comment at Michael Jackson's memorial service last Tuesday.

"It was Michael Jackson that brought blacks and whites and Asians and Latinos together," he said. "Because Michael Jackson kept on, he created a comfort level where people that felt they were separate, became inter-connected with his music...(Kids) got comfortable enough with each other to later it wasn't strange to us to watch Oprah on television. It wasn't strange to watch Tiger Woods golf. Those young kids grew up from being teenage comfortable fans of Michael to being 40 years old and being comfortable to vote for a person of color to be the president of the United States of America.

"Michael did that," Sharpton concluded. "Michael made us love each other."

You have to allow for a certain amount of hyperbole at memorial services. It's the one time a speaker can be forgiven for laying it on a little thick. People attending such events don't expect that comments will be kept in

Digital downloading was a little more than a futuristic fantasy in November 1969 when the Jackson 5 first hit the charts, but it's a reality today. This week, 47 songs that feature Michael Jackson crowd Nielsen/SoundScan's list of the top 200 songs with the most paid downloads. That's down just a hair from last week's eye-popping total of 50 MJ songs.

I have compiled a list of Jackson's top 40 songs in terms of total paid downloads (not just this week, but during their entire runs). Eight of the songs are from his 1982 classic, Thriller. (That's the entire album except for "Baby Be Mine.") Jackson's follow-up albums, Bad and Dangerous, each have six songs on the list. His 1979 classic Off The Wall has five.

For the most part, the list corresponds with a recap of Jackson's biggest hit singles. But there are some key differences, which tells us which songs have stood the test of time--and which haven't. "Say Say Say," Jackson's sleek 1983 duet with Paul McCartney, logged six weeks at #1,