Blog Posts by Paul Grein

Adele’s 21 is officially the first album to wind up as the year’s best-seller twice since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking sales for Billboard in 1991. The album sold 4,414,000 copies in 2012. It sold 5,824,000 copies in 2011. It’s one of only four albums in the Nielsen SoundScan era to sell 4 million or more copies in each of two calendar years. It follows Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill (1995-1996), Shania Twain’s Come On Over (1998-1999) and Santana’s Supernatural (1999-2000).

Even though it was in its second year of release, 21 sold more copies in 2012 than the best-selling albums of 2006 through 2010 did in those years. The album spawned three #1 hits, “Rolling In The Deep,” “Someone Like You” and “Set Fire To The Rain.” It won six Grammys in February, including Album of the Year.

If you were anywhere near a radio last year, you don’t need me to tell you the titles of the top three hits of 2012: “Somebody That I Used To Know” by Gotye featuring Kimbra, Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” and “We Are Young” by fun. featuring Janelle Monae.

There are three main things you should know about them. First, none of the five artists involved had ever cracked Billboard’s Hot 100 before. Second, all three hits are nominated for Grammys as Record and/or Song of the Year, which shows an unusual degree of fan and industry agreement. Third, each of the three songs sold more copies than any song had sold before in a calendar year in digital history.

Everybody knows that Elvis Presley was the top hit-maker of the 1950s, but who was the top female hit-maker of the decade? Move to the front of the class if you know that it was Patti Page, who died yesterday at age 85. Page had four #1 hits in that decade, including “The Tennessee Waltz,” which was one of the decade’s biggest hits. Page’s other chart-toppers were “All My Love (Bolero),” “I Went To Your Wedding” and the novelty tune “The Doggie In The Window,” which did little to enhance her artistic reputation, but remains one of her best-known songs.

Just last month, Page was announced as one of this year’s recipients of a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Remarkably, she is the second recipient to have died since the announcements were made on Dec. 10. World music legend Ravi Shankar died the day after the announcements. (Both awards will be made posthumously next month.)

Hundreds of male contestants have walked across the American Idol stage in the past 11 years (Yahoo!’s Idol guru Lyndsey Parker could probably rattle off an exact count), but only one has gone on to record a 3-million-seller. That’s Phillip Phillips, whose “Home” tops the 3 million mark in digital sales this week. Just three female Idol contestants (Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood and Jordin Sparks) have landed 3-million-sellers. They’ve each done it just once. Clarkson’s “Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You)” has sold 3,970,000 copies. Underwood’s “Before He Cheats” has sold 3,633,000. “No Air” by Sparks & Chris Brown has sold 3,491,000.

The old sales record for a male Idol contestant was held by a different song, also titled “Home,” by Chris Daughtry’s band Daughtry, which has sold 2,325,000 copies. The old record by a male Idol contestant who remained a solo artist was held by David Archuleta’s “Crush,” which is up to 2,087,000.

“Home” is the 17th song to top the 3 million mark in digital sales in 2012. That extends this year’s record pace—and there’s still one chart week to go in 2012. (The previous record for most 3-million-sellers in a calendar year was set in 2011, when there were 14.)

Taylor Swift this week becomes the first artist since the Beatles to log six or more weeks at #1 with three consecutive studio albums. She achieves the feat with Red, which tops The Billboard 200 for the sixth week. It follows Fearless (11 weeks) and Speak Now (six weeks). The Beatles achieved the feat with seven studio albums in a row from Beatles ’65 in January 1965 to Abbey Road November 1969.

Only two other acts have had such lengthy stays at #1 with three consecutive studio albums. The Kingston Trio spent six or more weeks on top with four straight studio albums in 1959 and 1960. Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass did it with three straight studio albums in 1965 and 1966.

Thus, Swift is the first female artist to achieve this feat.

Led Zeppelin was the premier hard rock band in the world in 1978 when the Kennedy Center Honors were first presented. But if someone had told you then that Led Zep would someday be selected to receive the honor, you’d have thought he was out of his mind. That first crop of honorees included such old-guard legends as Fred Astaire, composer Richard Rodgers and conductor Arthur Rubinstein. It took the Kennedy Center’s Board of Trustees nearly 20 years to acknowledge rock, in the person of Bob Dylan. At that rate, it seemed likely that they would never get around to hard rock, metal, rap and other edgier forms of music.

Never say never. On Wednesday (Dec. 26), we’ll see Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, the three surviving founding members of Led Zeppelin, become the first hard rock musicians to receive a Kennedy Center Honor. This year’s other honorees are David Letterman, Dustin Hoffman, blues great Buddy Guy and ballerina Natalia Makarova.

Kennedy Center Honors recipients are “recognized for their lifetime contributions to American culture through the performing arts—whether in music, dance, theater, opera, motion pictures, or television,” according to a statement on the site.

Ke$ha’s “Die Young” dips from #3 to #4 on the Hot 100, in part because some radio stations dropped the song or pulled it out of heavy rotation following Friday’s horrific elementary school shootings in Newtown, Conn. Billboard’s Gary Trust reports that airplay on the song dropped by 19% this week, the greatest percentage decline of any song in the top 40 on the Hot 100 Airplay chart.

The song peaked at #2 on the Hot 100 three weeks ago, and was starting to recede, but this accelerated the process. The exuberant record has nothing to do with young people dying, but seeks to motivate people to live life to the fullest. Key lyric: “Let’s make the most of the night like we’re gonna die young.” It’s just the wrong words and the wrong tone for right now.

If you were anywhere near a radio last year, you don’t need me to tell you the titles of the top three hits of 2012: “Somebody That I Used To Know” by Gotye featuring Kimbra, Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” and “We Are Young” by fun. featuring Janelle Monae.

There are three main things you should know about them. First, none of the five artists involved had ever cracked Billboard’s Hot 100 before. Second, all three hits are nominated for Grammys as Record and/or Song of the Year, which shows an unusual degree of fan and industry agreement. Third, each of the three songs sold more copies than any song had sold before in a calendar year in digital history.