Chart Watch

  • The good news this week is very good: Adele's 21 tops the 6 million mark in U.S. sales in its 48th week. It's the first album to reach 6 million that quickly since Usher's Confessions hit that plateau in its 29th week in October 2004. Five other albums that have been released since Confessions have sold 6 million or more copies, but they all took much longer to hit the 6 million mark. Taylor Swift's Fearless took 96 weeks to cross that threshold, Carrie Underwood's Some Hearts took 104 weeks, Nickelback's All The Right Reasons took 105 weeks, Kelly Clarkson's Breakaway took a little more than 3-1/2 years and Green Day's American Idiot took six years and four months.

    21 tops 100K in weekly sales for the 33rd time this week. What was the last album to top 100K in weekly sales 33 times? The aforementioned Confessions. (Hat tip: Keith Caulfield.)

    Alas, there is also bad news this week, and it's very bad: Three albums made the top 10 this week with lower sales totals than any top 10 album since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking sales for Billboard in 1991. Those albums, Coldplay's Mylo Xyloto, Nickelback's Here And Now and Now 40, sold 20K, 19K and 17K copies this week, respectively. The previous low for a top 10 album was Ke$ha's Animal, which sold 20K in June. (Nielsen SoundScan rounds off its tallies to the nearest thousand, but Ke$ha's tally that week was higher than Coldplay's is this week.)

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  • "We Found Love" by Rihanna featuring Calvin Harris returns to #1 on the Hot 100, after spending two weeks at #2. This is its ninth week on top. That's the longest run at #1 by any single since Ke$ha's "TiK ToK" had nine weeks on top in early 2010.

    "We Found Love" also tops the 3 million mark in digital sales this week. This brings Rihanna's total of 3-million-sellers to eight, which is more than any other artist in digital history. Lady Gaga and Katy Perry are in second place with six each. All three women have been in the lead position on six 3-million-sellers. Rihanna's count also includes featured roles on Eminem's "Love The Way You Lie" and T.I.'s "Live Your Life."

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  • Adele's 21 logs its 15th week at #1 on The Billboard 200, which equals the mark set in 1971 by Carole King's Tapestry. Since 1956, when the album chart became a weekly feature, only one other album by a female artist has logged 15 or more weeks at #1: Whitney Houston's 1992 soundtrack to The Bodyguard (which had 20 weeks on top).

    Next month, Adele is expected to tie King again. Adele is almost certain to win Grammys for Album, Record and Song of the Year. That would make her only the second female solo artist to win in all three categories. King swept the boards in March 1972 with Tapestry (Album), "It's Too Late" (Record) and "You've Got A Friend" (Song).

    Grammy officials are fervently hoping that Adele doesn't equal King in another respect. King was a new mother in March 1972 and opted not to fly from California to New York for the Grammys. Adele is recovering from throat surgery, but is expected to be able to perform at the show.

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  • Katy vs. MJ: Who’s Bad?

    By | Chart Watch – Tue, Jan 10, 2012 3:20 PM EST

    JB Lacroix/WireImage; Al Messerschmidt/Getty Images You probably know that Katy Perry is vying to break a record that she now shares with Michael Jackson for the most #1 singles from an album. But it's starting to look like it's not going to happen. "The One That Got Away," Perry's bid for a sixth #1 hit from Teenage Dream, drops from #3 to #6 this week.

    There has been some backlash to Perry tying Jackson's record. Most of it strikes me as unfair. After all, the Jackson album that held the record wasn't the ground-breaking Off The Wall or the earth-shaking Thriller, but Bad, an album that, for all its success, was widely faulted for playing it too safe; for putting commercial success ahead of artistic growth.

    But it got me thinking: Are Perry's singles from Teenage Dream in the same league as Jackson's singles from Bad? I pulled out my albums and played the singles, in order, Jackson first, then Perry. I scored each round. (I invite you to do the same.) Here's my report:

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  • Who spent the most weeks at #1 on the Hot Digital Songs chart in 2011? Adele, you say? Or maybe Katy Perry or Rihanna? Those are all very good guesses, but they're all wrong. Adele had the best-selling song in the U.S. for a total of 10 weeks in 2011. Perry was #1 for nine weeks. Rihanna had the top-seller for a total of six weeks. But topping them all were those cut-ups LMFAO, who were out front for 11 weeks. The party-minded duo's current hit, "Sexy And I Know It," logs its fifth week at #1. LMFAO's first smash, "Party Rock Anthem," spent six weeks as the nation's top-selling digital song. This total of 11 weeks at #1 in a calendar year is the greatest by any act since the Black Eyed Peas hogged the top spot for 20 weeks in 2009.

    "Sexy And I Know It" tops the 3 million mark in digital sales this week. It reached that milestone in just 19 weeks. That's the fastest pace by any song since "Moves Like Jagger" by Maroon 5 featuring Christina Aguilera did the same thing in October.

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  • Adele's 21 returns to #1 on The Billboard 200 for first time since October. This is the album's 14th week on top, which is the longest run at #1 for any album since the Titanic soundtrack spent 16 weeks at #1 in 1998. It's the longest run for an album by a female artist since Whitney Houston's The Bodyguard soundtrack logged 20 weeks on top in 1992-1993. It's the longest run for an album by a British artist since the Police's Synchronicity was #1 for 17 weeks in 1983.

    21 is in its 45th week on the chart. It's the first album to appear at #1 this deep into its chart run since Norah Jones' Come Away With Me was #1 in its 53rd week in March 2003. That album returned to #1 after it won the Grammy for Album of the Year. 21 is certain to win that award when this year's Grammys are presented on Feb. 12.

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  • This past year was the worst for movie and TV soundtrack albums since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking sales for Billboard in 1991. Not one soundtrack sold even 400,000 copies during the year, which is less than half of the previous low. The best-selling soundtrack of 2011 was from Lemonade Mouth (a Disney Channel movie), which sold 379,000 copies during the year. The best-selling soundtrack from a theatrically-released movie was The Twilight Series: Breaking Dawn—Part One, which sold 368K copies.

    This is the fourth time in the past six years that the year's top soundtrack was from a TV show rather than a theatrically-released movie. This is the second year in a row that a Twilight soundtrack has been the year's top-selling soundtrack to a theatrically-released movie. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse took that title in 2010.

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  • "Sexy and I Know It"LMFAO's "Sexy And I Know It" finally jumps to #1 on this week's Hot 100, following seven weeks at #2. It's the fourth song with the word "sexy" in its title to reach #1. You probably won't be surprised to learn that all four songs have been by male artists. Rod Stewart's "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy" (1979) was first up, followed by Right Said Fred's "I'm Too Sexy" (1992) and "SexyBack" by Justin Timberlake featuring Timbaland (2006).

    "I'm Too Sexy" and "Sexy And I Know It" are obviously playful spoofs of male vanity and sexual bravado. With "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy," the joke wasn't played as broadly. Some people missed the joke entirely and thought Stewart had taken the sex symbol hype to his head. It took him a few years to live it down.

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  • 'TM: 103 Hustlerz Ambition'Michael Buble and Adele continue to dominate The Billboard 200, which is about as surprising as the mall being jammed the day after Christmas. But some of you will be surprised to see Young Jeezy debuting at #3 with TM:103 Hustlerz Ambition, ranking ahead of such household names as Justin Bieber and Lady Antebellum. You really shouldn't be. This is Jeezy's fourth consecutive album to debut in the top three, a streak that began in 2005.

    This is the second time that Jeezy has released an album right before Christmas. His sophomore album The Inspiration debuted at #1 in the week ending Dec. 17, 2006. You know that line in "Theme From New York, New York," "If I can make it there/I'll make it anywhere"? If an artist can break through with an album right before the holidays, when the chart is studded with superstars, they've really got a following.

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  • BeyonceI have bad news for Beyonce fans. This is the first year in which B has failed to crack the top 10 since Destiny's Child exploded in 1998. This stat combines Destiny's Child and solo recordings, as well as featured credits on hits by Jay-Z and Lady Gaga. There are still two weeks left in Nielsen SoundScan's tracking year, but this week corresponds to the Dec. 31 issue of Billboard, so there is no way that Beyonce's name can appear on a top 10 hit in a 2011 issue of Billboard.

    Beyonce's best showing of 2011 came in August, when the stinging, kiss-off ballad "Best Thing I Never Had" peaked at #16. Her second best showing of the year came in September, when "Love On Top" debuted and peaked at #20.  Third best came in June when "Run The World (Girls)" peaked at #29. In retrospect, the disappointing showing of that feminist anthem foretold what would be an unexpectedly difficult year for Beyonce on the  Hot 100.

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News for You

  • The new consoles from Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony

    NEW YORK (AP) — Microsoft is the last of the three big video game console makers to unveil its latest gaming system. The unveiling comes nearly eight years after the Xbox 360 went on sale. It follows last fall's debut of Nintendo's Wii U and a preview in February of the upcoming PlayStation 4 from Sony.

  • Singer Kellie Pickler named new 'Dancing' champ

    LOS ANGELES (AP) — Kellie Pickler came into the final "Dancing With the Stars" episode in second place but finished in first.

  • Woman on Trump: 'Somebody had to stand up to him'

    CHICAGO (AP) — An 87-year-old woman who alleges Donald Trump cheated her in a skyscraper-condo sale told jurors Monday she had qualms about suing the real estate mogul and TV celebrity. But, she quickly added, "Somebody had to stand up to him."

  • Restaurant learns online reviews can make or break

    PHOENIX (AP) — It was the customer service disaster heard around the Internet.

  • Disney-owned ESPN cutting hundreds of jobs: source

    By Liana B. Baker (Reuters) - ESPN, the sports channel that is Walt Disney Co's most profitable unit, is cutting 300 to 400 jobs across the company and closing a small Denver office, a person with knowledge of the cuts said. The job cuts, comprising 4 to 6 percent of ESPN's staff of 7,000, include open positions that will not be filled, said the source, who asked not to be named because the information is not public. But ESPN will continue hiring for other open positions, the person said. The channel has recently won rights to exclusive coverage of the U.S. ...

  • First Look: New Xbox elegant, but much unknown

    REDMOND, Wash. (AP) — Will gamers want One?

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