Blog Posts by Paul Grein

Taylor Swift's Fearless holds at #1 on The Billboard 200 for the fifth week. That's the longest that any album has topped the chart since Josh Groban's Noel had five straight weeks on top in late 2007. It's the longest run by a non-holiday album (let's face it, Noel was a phenomenon) since 50 Cent's The Massacre had six straight weeks on top in the spring of 2005. It's the longest run by a country crossover album since Shania Twain's Up! had five straight weeks on top in late 2002.

Fearless holds the #1 spot with sales of just 90,000 copies. It's the first time that sales of the #1 album have dipped below 100,000 copies since it happened for four straight weeks last January and February. The winter doldrums are a seasonal occurrence in the music business: It's cold out, people are tapped out after Christmas and release schedules tend to be sparse.

Fearless has sold 2,202,000 copies in its first eight weeks. That total includes 244,000 paid downloads, more than any other country album

The last week of the year holds a few traditions-heading to the mall for after-Christmas sales, taking down holiday decorations and downloading vast numbers of songs. The latter practice reflects the fact that millions of fans received download gift cards and/or MP3 players as gifts.

This year, 47.7 million digital tracks were sold in the last week of the year, a new record. All but two of the 200 titles on the Hot Digital Songs chart sold more downloads than they did the week before, and those two were holiday recordings which are now receding. "Just Dance" by Lady GaGa featuring Colby O'Donis sold 419,000 downloads in the last week of 2008. Only one other song has ever sold that many downloads in a one-week period. "Low" by Flo Rida featuring T-Pain sold 467,000 copies one year ago this week.

Ten songs sold 250,000 or more downloads each last week. In the process, several other records were broken. Beyonce's "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)" sold 382,000 downloads, a new one-week

In 2008, for the first time, more fans paid to download the year's #1 song than bought the year's #1 album (as either a CD or a download). In fact, the year's top five songs each rang up more paid downloads than the year's #1 album, Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III, achieved in total sales.

That was the big story in music sales in 2008-the rise of individual song downloads and the continued decline of the album market. Until 2008, no song had ever topped the 3 million mark in paid downloads in a calendar year. In 2008, two songs hit the mark-Leona Lewis' "Bleeding Love" and "Lollipop" by Lil Wayne featuring Static Major. Nineteen songs topped the 2 million mark in paid downloads, a huge jump from just four in 2007. A total of 71 songs topped the 1 million mark, nearly double the 2007 tally of 36.

Tha Carter III sold 2,874,000 copies during 2008. This represents the first time since Nielsen/SoundScan took over tracking of album sales for Billboard in 1991 that no albums topped the 3 million

All that female artists wanted for Christmas, it seems, was near-total chart domination. For the first time in more than 11 years, female solo artists hold down four of the top five spots on The Billboard 200. Taylor Swift's Fearless logs it third week at #1, Keyshia Cole's A Different Me debuts at #2 and former #1 albums by Britney Spears and Beyonce dip to #4 and #5, respectively. Jamie Foxx is the only male artist who could compete with these red-hot "Single Ladies." His Intuition debuts at #3.

Fearless is in a five-way tie for the longest run at #1 so far in 2008. If it holds the top spot next week, it will break the tie and become the only album to top the chart four times in this calendar year. Fearless has sold 1,850,000 copies in just six weeks, which is nearly half of the total (3,780,000) that Swift's smash debut album, Taylor Swift, has sold in 113 weeks.

Fearless is the #4 best-seller for the year-to-date-with one week to go before Nielsen/SoundScan closes the book on

If someone asked you to name the #1 album of the year in Billboard's just-published year-end issue, you might say Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III. That is, indeed, the best-selling album so far in 2008 (with two weeks to go). Or you might remember back to last year's surprise blockbuster, Josh Groban's Noel, and, figuring that Billboard's chart year might not conform exactly to the calendar year, guess that. Noel was the best-selling album of 2007 and, as we approach the holidays, is back in the top five on the weekly "comprehensive" chart (which includes both current and "catalog" product). Both would be good guesses, but both would be wrong. Instead, Alicia Keys' As I Am is Billboard's #1 album of the year. As I Am was #4 on Nielsen/SoundScan's year-end chart for 2007 and is #18 on the firm's year-to-date chart for 2008. Since the Billboard weekly and year-end charts are based on Nielsen SoundScan sales data, you may well wonder how this can be. (I wondered that myself.)

It's a question

A couple of years ago, Britney Spears' career was on the slide. Her life itself was careering out of control. This week, she's back at #1 with Circus, which sold 505,000 copies. It's Spears' biggest sales week in more than five years, since her fourth album, In The Zone, opened with sales of 609,000 in November 2003. This week's tally marks a substantial improvement over Spears' last album, Blackout, which opened at #2 in November 2007 with first-week sales of 290,000.

Spears' revival echoes Mariah Carey's comeback from a similar meltdown. After the failure of her movie Glitter and some erratic public moments in 2001, Carey's days as a superstar seemed numbered. But she came back in 2005 with The Emancipation Of Mimi, which wound up as that year's #1 album.

In both cases, the public embarrassments humanized the stars; made them seem more real and relatable. Far from imperiling the artists' careers, the struggles seem to have strengthened the artists' bonds with their fans.

Circus is

This is the 32nd holiday season since Elvis Presley went to trim that big Christmas tree in the sky, but he still has the most popular holiday album of all time. Elvis' Christmas Album, originally released in 1957, has sold more than 12 million copies, allowing it to beat out Kenny G's 1994 smash Miracles-A Holiday Album. (So in addition to being the eternal king of rock'n'roll, Presley kept the mellow, but much-maligned, saxophonist from claiming the top spot.)

Presley's album logged three weeks at #1 in December 1957, before surrendering the top spot to Bing Crosby's holiday perennial Merry Christmas. But Elvis returned to #1 the following week, in what seemed very much like a passing of the torch-or in this case, a Christmas candle. The Bing-to-Elvis hand-off represented a move from old to young, from Tin Pan Alley to rock'n'roll, from "White Christmas" to "Blue Christmas."

Christmas albums have been an integral part of the holidays for more than 60 years.  Yet there was no

A concise, one-hour Grammy show, heavy on performances and with no acceptance speeches. Many of you doubtless wish that this were the format for the regular Grammy telecast in February. Dream on. But it was the winning formula for a special in which the Grammy nominations were announced, for the first time, in prime time.

The Wednesday night show on CBS, co-hosted by LL Cool J and Taylor Swift, was smartly produced. The best decision was to have the performers pay tribute to other artist's songs. Christina Aguilera stepped out of her comfort zone on a tender, jazz-shaded reading of "I Loves You, Porgy," a hit for Nina Simone. Celine Dion toned down her chest-thumping power on a surprisingly effective version of Janis Ian's poignant "At Seventeen." Taylor Swift was unimpressive on Brenda Lee's "I'm Sorry," but sounded more sure on her own current hit, "White Horse." The red-hot Swift was the only performer to get to perform two songs. (Her co-host didn't perform at all.)

There were, as