Chart Watch

  • Flo Rida's "Whistle" jumps to #1 on the Hot 100, displacing Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe," which was #1 for nine weeks. Female solo artists and male/female collabos have had a near-lock on the #1 spot this year. "Whistle" is only the second #1 hit so far this year on which a woman wasn't at least featured. The only other all-male #1 of 2012 is LMFAO's "Sexy And I Know It," which hit #1 in January.

    The last time a male solo artist who was strictly solo hit #1 was in February 2011, when Wiz Khalifa's "Black And Yellow" grabbed the top spot for one week.

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  • Frank Sinatra's Nothing But The Best re-enters The Billboard 200 at #3. The 2008 hits compilation is the latest beneficiary of a 99-cent sale at AmazonMP3.  This extends Sinatra's all-time record as the artist with the longest span of top five albums. Sinatra first cracked the top five the week of March 23, 1946 with The Voice Of Frank Sinatra. (The chart was a just a top-five ranking at that point.)

    Nothing But The Best debuted and peaked at #2 in May 2008. It was released to mark the 10th anniversary of Sinatra's death. The album has sold 1,111,000 copies.

    Nothing But The Best vaults from #161 to #1 on Top Catalog Albums. It's Sinatra's first album to top the catalog chart in the Nielsen SoundScan era. It's also #1 on Top Digital Albums. All but 1K of the album's 40K sales this week were digital. The album has sold 278K digital copies to date, which is a little more than one-quarter of its total. (The digital percentage is a little higher than I would have expected, but Sinatra has broad appeal to fans of all ages.)

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  • Phillip Phillips' "Home" rebounds from #84 to #9 in its sixth week on the Hot 100. This represents a new peak for the song, which debuted at #10 in May. The song received a big boost from NBC's Olympics coverage. It was used as the backdrop to women's gymnastics, which always draws high ratings.

    "Home" leaps from #47 to #1 on Hot Digital Songs (which measures only sales, whereas the Hot 100 also factors in radio airplay and on-demand streaming activity.) This marks the first time than an American Idol champ has had the best-selling song in the U.S. in the year of his or her coronation since David Cook's "The Time Of My Life" debuted at #1 in May 2008, right after his victory.

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  • Bee Gees' 2004 compilation Number Ones re-enters The Billboard 200 at #5, just two weeks after Phil Collins' …Hits re-entered the chart at #6. The boost, in both cases, was due to Amazon MP3's aggressive 99-cent pricing for the digital version of the album. This is the brother trio's first appearance in the top 10 since September 1983, when it scored with the soundtrack to John Travolta's Staying Alive (an ill-advised sequel to Saturday Night Fever).

    There's a poignant aspect to this week's surge: Robin Gibb died on May 20. He would have no doubt loved seeing Bees Gees back in the top 10 alongside such contemporary acts as Rick Ross (who debuts at #1).

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  • "Somebody That I Used To Know" by Gotye featuring Kimbra reaches the 6 million sales mark in just its 30th week. That lopped four months off the previous speed record for a digital hit, which was held by "Party Rock Anthem" by LMFAO featuring Lauren Bennett & GoonRock. That exuberant 2011 smash reached the 6 million mark in 48 weeks. Want to know the two songs that are next in line? Adele's "Rolling In The Deep" is in third place. It took 54 weeks. The Black Eyed Peas' "I Gotta Feeling" is in fourth place. It took 59 weeks.

    "Somebody That I Used To Know," which is the #1 song for the year-to-date, is still high on the chart. It dips from #5 to #6 on this week's Hot 100. The song is the front-runner to win the Grammy as Record of the Year in February.

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  • There's a saying in the music business that the worst places to peak on the Hot 100 are #2, #11 and #41. The reason, of course, is that an artist came so close to #1, or the top 10 or the top 40, and just missed. The artist won't get the headlines, congratulatory messages and (most important) credit for the greater hit in posterity. Maroon 5 knows what I'm talking about. "Payphone" (which features Wiz Khalifa) spent six weeks at #2, but wasn't able to overtake Carly Rae Jepsen's smash "Call Me Maybe" and become the group's third #1. This week, "Payphone" slips to #3. Barring a miracle, it won't follow the group's "Makes Me Wonder" or "Moves Like Jagger" (featuring Christina Aguilera) to #1.

    This got me thinking: What records spent the most weeks at these and other "unlucky" positions without moving up that last crucial notch? Here are the records since 1955 that came the closest to #1, the top five, the top 10, the top 20, the top 40 and the Hot 100 without getting there.

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  • Zac Brown Band's Uncaged returns to #1 in its third week on The Billboard 200, displacing Nas' Life Is Good, which debuted on top last week. Uncaged sold just 48K copies, the fourth lowest total in Nielsen SoundScan history for an album at #1. And it's the lowest total outside of winter when it's cold and people don't want to go out (a reason that had more validity before the Internet came along and allowed fans to download or have a CD shipped to their door.)

    The only albums to rank #1 with slimmer sales tallies were Amos Lee's Mission Bell, which debuted at #1 in January 2011 with 40K, Cake's Showroom Of Compassion, which debuted at #1 that same month with 44K, and Nicki Minaj's Pink Friday, which climbed to #1 in February 2011 with 45K.

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  • Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" tops the Hot 100 for the seventh straight week. That's the longest run by a female solo artist since Adele's "Rolling In The Deep" had seven weeks on top from May to July 2011. It's the longest run at #1 by a Canadian artist since Snow's reggae-shaded "Informer" had seven weeks on top in 1993.

    Since 1955, just two other songs by Canadian artists have logged seven or more weeks at #1. Percy Faith's shimmering instrumental "The Theme From 'A Summer Place'" topped the chart for nine weeks in 1960. Bryan Adams' rock-shaded ballad "(Everything I Do) I Do It For You" had seven weeks on top in 1991. Both of these songs originated in movies. A Summer Place was a Troy Donahue/Sandra Dee flick. "Everything I Do" was from the Kevin Costner movie Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves.

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  • Phil Collins' tersely titled compilation album, …Hits, re-enters The Billboard 200 at #6. This is a new peak for the album, which originally peaked at #18 the week it entered the chart in November 1998. The album had two things going for it. It's studded with 12 top 10 hits. And it was on sale for just 99 cents at Amazon's MP3 store. (That comes out to about eight cents per top 10 hit. A sweet deal.)

    That 99 cent deal lifted the album's weekly sales from less than 1K last week to 40K this week. Even though the album hadn't cracked the top 10 until this week, it has sold very well over the past 13 plus years. It has sold 3,429,000 copies.

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  • P!nk's "Blow Me (One Last Kiss)" vaults from #58 to #9 in its second week on the Hot 100. It's P!nk's third top 10 hit with an edgy title, following "U + Ur Hand" (#9 in 2007) and "F**kin' Perfect" (#2 in 2011). Paula Abdul had a #6 hit in 1991 titled "Blowing Kisses In The Wind." P!nk took that traditional romantic notion and turned it on its head. But while the "can-you-say-that?" title helped attract attention, the record's solid pop-rock craftsmanship is bringing it home.

    The song is P!nk's 12th top 10 hit. She first cracked the top 10 in April 2000 with "There You Go." Billboard's Gary Trust notes that P!nk is in third place among female artists for most top 10 hits since January 2000. She trails only Rihanna (with 22) and Beyonce (with 14.) This week's move puts her ahead of Lady Gaga and Katy Perry, who have each had 11 top 10 hits.

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Pagination

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News for You

  • NYers furious over photos taken through windows

    NEW YORK (AP) — In one photo, a woman is on all fours, presumably picking something up, her posterior pressed against a glass window. Another photo shows a couple in bathrobes, their feet touching beneath a table. And there is one of a man, in jeans and a T-shirt, lying on his side as he takes a nap.

  • 'Iron Man 3' races past $1 billion dollar mark on monster foreign take

    By Todd Cunningham LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - "Iron Man 3" was soaring past $1 billion at the worldwide box office Thursday, in a display of world domination that would make one of Marvel's super villains proud. The box-office bounty - roughly $700 million from abroad and $300 million domestically - is a major triumph for Disney, which bet big on comic book superheroes when it bought Marvel Studios for $4 billion in 2009. And its decision to bring aboard a Chinese partner for "Iron Man 3" and focus the Disney marketing machine on the booming foreign market looks pretty good right now, too. ...

  • Denmark favorite to win Eurovision Song Contest

    MALMO, Sweden (AP) — An ethno-inspired flute and drum tune from Denmark is the bookmakers' favorite to win this year's Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday, which also features a bizarre opera pop number from Romania and an Armenian rock song written by the guitarist of Black Sabbath.

  • NYC artist's secret photos raise privacy issues

    NEW YORK (AP) — In one photo, a woman is on all fours, presumably picking something up, her posterior pressed against a glass window. Another photo shows a couple in bathrobes, their feet touching beneath a table. And there is one of a man, in jeans and a T-shirt, lying on his side as he takes a nap.

  • 'American Idol' finale draws record low ratings

    NEW YORK (AP) — Ratings for the "American Idol" finale plunged to a record low for the 12-year-old show.

  • NBC's 'The Voice' confirms Christina Aguilera, Cee Lo Green, Adam Levine and Blake Shelton returning

    By Jethro Nededog LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - The gang's back together! NBC announced on Friday that pop diva Christina Aguilera and funk singer Cee Lo Green will be reuniting with pop star Adam Levine and country singer Blake Shelton for Season 5, as TheWrap was the first to report. The network also said that Shakira and Usher are set to return on Season 6, which will air in midseason 2014. ...

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