Blog Posts by Paul Grein

The soundtrack to Mamma Mia! jumps to #1 in its fifth week on The Billboard 200. This is the second time in less than 20 months that a movie musical based on a Broadway show has spawned a chart-topping soundtrack. The soundtrack to Dreamgirls was #1 for two weeks in January 2007. Before that, there was a decades-long gap in Broadway-to-Hollywood transfers that yielded #1 soundtracks-stretching all the way back to Grease in 1978.

In the 52-year history of Billboard's weekly album chart, only four other chart-topping movie soundtracks were from musicals that originated on the stage. These are The Sound Of Music (1965), West Side Story (1962), South Pacific (1958), and The King And I (1956). (A shout-out to Rodgers & Hammerstein, who wrote three of these four shows.)

The comeback of the movie musical is one of the brightest (and most surprising) stories in entertainment in this decade. The trend kicked off in 2001 with the success of Baz Luhrmann's original musical, Moulin Rouge. It

What were the biggest hits of the '70s, '80s and '90s? If you go strictly by weeks at #1 on Billboard's Hot 100, the answers are Debby Boone's "You Light Up My Life" for the '70s, Olivia Newton-John's "Physical" for the '80s and the Mariah Carey-Boyz II Men collaboration "One Sweet Day" for the '90s.

But you could argue that the real biggest hits of bygone decades are those songs that fans are paying to download to this day. None of the monster hits cited above are included on Nielsen/SoundScan's running list of the 200 songs with the most paid downloads.

The vast majority of the songs on that list were hits within the last few years. That's no surprise: These are the songs that have been on the radio most frequently in the period in which has downloading has really taken off. The list of the top 200 songs with the most paid downloads includes just 10 songs from the '70s, '80s, and '90s. And they're not necessarily the songs you might expect. But these are the "blasts from the past"

Rihanna's "Disturbia" jumps to #1 on Hot Digital Songs, ending a six-week run in the top spot by Katy Perry's cheeky "I Kissed A Girl." This is Rihanna's fifth #1 on the digital chart, which is more than any other artist has amassed since the chart was introduced in October 2004 (which is when downloading took off). Rihanna, 20, first topped the chart in 2005 with "Pon De Replay" and has returned to the top spot with "SOS," "Umbrella" (featuring Jay-Z), "Take A Bow" and now this hit.

Rihanna is also the only artist with eight songs on Nielsen/SoundScan's running, all-time list of the top 200 songs with the most paid downloads. Fergie, Nickelback and Chris Brown are tied for second place with five each.

Rihanna is listed on that chart with "Umbrella," "Don't Stop The Music," "SOS," "Take A Bow," "Pon De Replay," "Shut Up And Drive," "Unfaithful," and "Hate That I Love You" (featuring Ne-Yo). These eight hits have sold a combined total of 13,155,000 downloads. Fergie's five hits, all

Miley Cyrus this week becomes the second-youngest artist ever to amass two #1 albums on the Billboard chart. The 15-year old star tops the chart with Breakout, her first album released strictly under her own name. Cyrus also rang the bell last year with the two-CD set, Hannah Montana 2/Meet Miley Cyrus. (I'm not counting the first Hannah Montana soundtrack toward her total, because Cyrus didn't yet have star billing.)

Cyrus is only the fifth performer to land two #1 albums as a teenager. She follows LeAnn Rimes, who was also 15 when she landed her second #1 album; Hilary Duff and Joey McIntyre from New Kids on the Block, who were both 17; and Britney Spears, who was 18. (To break the tie between Rimes and Cyrus, we have to count months. Rimes was just 15 and one month when she landed her second #1 album in 1997. Cyrus is 15 and eight months.)

Ricky Nelson was the first teenager to have a #1 album. He was 17 when his album Ricky topped the chart in 1958. Stevie Wonder is still the

An untitled album by Nas debuts at #1 on The Billboard 200 chart. Nas originally planned to use the N-word as the album title, but ultimately decided not to go there.

Richard Pryor used the word in the titles of two mid-1970s comedy albums, That Nigger's Crazy and Bicentennial Nigger. Both albums reached the top 30 on the Billboard album chart. That Nigger's Crazy also spent four weeks at #1 on the R&B album chart and even won a Grammy for Best Comedy Recording.

Pryor was among the first African American artists to reclaim and repurpose that incendiary word. I'm repeating the word exactly as it appeared on his album covers, rather than attempt to rewrite history by using asterisks or dashes. The other titles in this discussion are also exactly as they appeared at the time.

N.W.A. debuted in 1988, its name an abbreviation for a phrase (Niggaz With Attitude) that is built around the N-Word. In 1991, the group's third full-length album was titled NIGGAZ4LIFE, though the title was shown as

Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III logs its third week at #1 on the Billboard album chart. It's the first rap album to top the chart for as many as three weeks since 50 Cent's The Massacre in 2005, which had six weeks in the lead. Tha Carter III is only the third album to log three weeks on top in 2008, following Alicia Keys' As I Am (which had one additional week at #1 when it debuted in November 2007) and Jack Johnson's Sleep Through The Static.

The week's other big story is that the soundtrack to Mamma Mia! debuts at #7. This is the first time that an album of ABBA music has made the top 10 (though the songs on the soundtrack aren't performed by the famed quartet but by the stars of the film, which opens this Friday). ABBA's highest-charting album was The Album, which peaked at #14 in 1978.

ABBA was among the biggest acts in the world in the 1970s, but it never seemed to hit the top tier of stardom in the U.S. It amassed four top 20 albums and four top 10 singles--not bad, but far from

What does a hit song mean to an album these days? Just ask Kid Rock, whose latest album, Rock And Roll Jesus, has rebounded from a low of #82 in March to #7 this week on the strength of the multi-format hit "All Summer Long." This is the album's highest ranking since October, when it was in its third week on the chart.

I'll have more on Kid Rock in a minute, but I'd be remiss if I didn't first let you know that Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III jumps back to #1 after logging two weeks at #2. Tha Carter III is the first album to regain the top spot after losing it since Alicia Keys' As I Am in February. And it's the first rap album to achieve this trick since The Game's The Documentary in February 2005. Tha Carter III is the #1 album so far in 2008 and the best-selling album of Lil Wayne's career.

Late-blooming hits have become something of a tradition with Kid Rock. His 1999 breakthrough album, Devil Without A Cause, rode the chart for more than a year before "Only God Knows Why" took off as

Coldplay holds at #1 on Billboard's album chart for the second week with Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends. But the big news is that, in just two weeks, Viva La Vida has sold more downloads than any album in digital history. The old record was held by John Mayer's Continuum. Viva La Vida sold 66,000 downloads this week, bringing its two-week total to 354,000. Continuum has sold 353,000 downloads since its release in September 2006. The rest of the all-time top five albums with the most paid digital downloads consists of Amy Winehouse's Back To Black (329,000), Daughtry's Daughtry (323,000) and Justin Timberlake's FutureSex/LoveSounds (301,000).

In other download news, "Low" by Flo Rida featuring T-Pain this week becomes the first song to top the 4 million mark in paid downloads.

The paid digital download medium scarcely existed five years ago and now it's the biggest growth area in the music business. (It may be the only growth area in the music business.) Billboard reports