Blog Posts by Paul Grein

If you like charts, Billboard's year-end issue is Thanksgiving and Christmas rolled into one. The issue contains almost 300 year-end charts. More than 100 are available now to the general public at Billboard.com. More than 440 (!) are listed at billboard.biz/charts. (That might be too much even for me.)

And what do we learn from this blizzard of information? A lot, though some of it confirms the obvious. You will not be shocked to learn that Adele's 21 was the year's best-selling album or that "Somebody That I Used To Know" by Gotye featuring Kimbra was the year's top single. But did you know that that they were also #1 for the year in Canada? Or that "Somebody…" was also the year's #1 Alternative Song? Details like that give the issue its texture.

Justin Bieber got no love last week from Grammy voters, but he continues to have the support of his fans. "Beauty And A Beat," his propulsive collabo with Nicki Minaj, jumps from #14 to #9 on the Hot 100. It's the third top 10 hit from Believe. That's Bieber's first album to spawn even two top 10 hits, much less three.

The first two top 10 hits from Believe were "Boyfriend," which reached #2 in April, and "As Long As You Love Me," a Grammy nom-worthy collabo with Big Sean, which reached #6 in September. That song tops the 2 million mark in digital sales this week.

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.

Taylor Swift's fans have given her the perfect birthday present: They sent her album Red back to #1 on The Billboard 200. (Swift turns 23 on Thursday.) The album has sold 2,383,000 copies in just seven weeks. That's more than any other album has sold in such a short time span since Susan Boyle's I Dreamed A Dream sold 3,196,000 copies in its first seven weeks in 2009 and early 2010.

Red has sold at least 137K copies in each of its first seven weeks. You might not think that would be that would be so hard, but these days it is. Rihanna's Unapologetic and Alicia Keys' Girl On Fire have each had just one week with sales above 100K. Ke$ha's Warrior debuts this week with sales of just 86K. And those are three of the hottest female artists in the business.

Just one day after his death at age 92, Indian music legend Ravi Shankar has been named a recipient of a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Shankar learned of the honor last week, when he received a call from Neil Portnow, President and CEO of the Recording Academy. "He was deeply touched and so pleased that he extended a gracious and personal invitation to visit with him at his home," Portnow said in a statement.

Shankar won his first Grammy for 1967's West Meets East, a collaboration with Yehudi Menuhin, which was voted Best Chamber Music Performance. In March 1973, Shankar was among the winners for Album of the Year for George Harrison & Friends' The Concert For Bangla Desh. He shared the prize with Harrison, Bob Dylan, Leon Russell, Ringo Starr, Billy Preston, Eric Clapton and Klaus Voormann. Shankar won his most recent Grammy for 2001's Full Circle—Carnegie Hall 2000, which was voted Best World Music Album.

This year's other Lifetime Achievement Award winners are Carole King, The Temptations, Patti Page, classical pianist Glenn Gould, jazz bassist and composer Charlie Haden and blues singer/guitarist Lightnin' Hopkins.

Trustees Awards (given to non-performers) went to songwriters Alan and Marilyn Bergman, Chess Records founders Leonard and Phil Chess and Capitol Records executive Alan Livingston.

It's official: Justin Bieber was "snubbed" by the Grammy Awards. I think Bieber's shut-out has gotten more attention than the fact that fun. swept the nominations in the top four categories. There's a good reason for that. Everybody knows Justin Bieber; fun. is just now becoming known outside of the slice of the population that's plugged into pop music.

With all the talk about Bieber's snub, you would think that that every other working musician received a Grammy nomination. (With 81 categories on the Grammy ballot, it sometimes seems that way.) In fact, many other artists went unrecognized, including Nicki Minaj, Mary J. Blige, Train, the Beach Boys, Cee Lo Green, R. Kelly, Monica, Jason Aldean, Luke Bryan, The Band Perry and Lionel Richie.

Still other artists received one or more noms, but were skipped over for high-profile "genre album" awards. Among them: Rihanna, Trey Songz, Little Big Town and Bieber's early mentor, Usher.

The Grammy category Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album is rarely one of the most interesting races on the entire ballot. Tony Bennett almost always wins if he's nominated. But this year is different. Michael Buble, who has won three times in the category (second only to Bennett's 11 wins) is facing two pop music legends, Carole King and Paul McCartney.

It's an inter-generational battle: Buble, 37, vs. King and McCartney, who are both 70. It's a battle of a current chart-topping hotshot against pop music royalty.

fun. is just the ninth artist in the Grammy Awards' 55-year history (and the first group) to receive nominations for all four of the top awards in the same year. The New York pop trio is nominated for Record and Song of the Year for "We Are Young," Album of the Year for Some Nights and Best New Artist.

The trio, which consists of Jack Antonoff, Andrew Dost and Nate Ruess, co-wrote "We Are Young" with their producer, Jeff Bhasker. They performed it with Janelle Monae. The song has some of the pop grandeur of classic hits by Queen.

Here are the eight previous artists to receive nominations for Album, Record and Song of the Year and Best New Artist in one year. (At the end, I'll tell you about five more artists who just missed for one reason or another.)