Chart Watch
  • Nearly 38 years after Aerosmith first cracked the Hot 100 with "Dream On," lead singer Steven Tyler finally hits the chart in his own right with "(It) Feels So Good," which opens at #35. This marks Tyler's first Hot 100 appearance since Aerosmith's "Jaded" reached #7 in early 2001. Tyler is the second judge on American Idol to score a comeback hit this season. He follows Jennifer Lopez, whose "On The Floor" (featuring Pitbull) peaked at #3 last week. It's J.Lo's biggest hit since 2003.

    Of course, just being a judge on Idol doesn't guarantee a comeback. Paula Abdul & Randy Jackson teamed three years ago for "Dance Like There's No Tomorrow," which stalled at #62.

    Aerosmith landed its first top 10 hit in 1976 with a re-issued "Dream On." The band made the top five for the first time in 1988 with "Angel." The band landed its only #1 in 1998 with "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing." That was the band's only top 10 hit that Tyler didn't write or co-write. Diane Warren wrote the song, which was

    Read More »from Week Ending May 15, 2011. Songs: Idol Boosts Tyler
  • The Lonely Island's Turtleneck & Chain enters The Billboard 200 at #3, which is the highest ranking for a comedy album since an eponymous album by Flight Of The Conchords debuted and peaked at #3 in April 2008. This is the first top 10 album for the Lonely Island, which consists of Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone. The comedy trio's 2009 debut album Incredibad debuted and peaked at #13. It was the best-selling comedy album of both 2009 and 2010. Turtleneck & Chain is already the best-selling comedy album of 2011, surpassing Daniel Tosh's Happy Thoughts.

    Several of the tracks on Turtleneck & Chain have been featured as digital shorts on Saturday Night Live. These include "I Just Had Sex" (featuring Akon), "Motherlover" (featuring Justin Timberlake), "Shy Ronnie 2" (featuring Rihanna), "The Creep" (featuring Nicki Minaj and John Waters) and "Jack Sparrow" (featuring Michael Bolton, who is very funny in the video.)

    "Motherlover" and "Shy Ronnie" both received Emmy

    Read More »from Week Ending May 15, 2011. Albums: Incredigood
  • You probably know that Adele's 21 is the best-selling album so far this year. You may not know that if 21 maintains its status through the end of the year, Adele will become the first British solo artist to wind up with the year's #1 album in the Nielsen SoundScan era. Susan Boyle came close two years ago when her debut, I Dreamed A Dream, was the #2 best-seller of 2009.

    This year marks 20 years since Billboard began using Nielsen SoundScan data to power its charts. The change began with The Billboard 200 and expanded later in the year to include the Hot 100. For the first time, the music industry (and pop fans) could see actual sales numbers rather than just relative chart rankings. This brought an unprecedented degree of precision and transparency to the weekly charts.

    To mark the anniversary, I am posting a few Chart Watch Extras this month. This first one, which went up on Friday, tracked the best-selling songs of each of the past 20 years. If you missed it, here's a link. This

    Read More »from Chart Watch Extra: 20 Years Of Top Albums
  • Adele's "Rolling In The Deep" moves up to #1 in its 18th week on Billboard's Hot 100. The sleeper smash is the second song so far this year to take 18 weeks to reach the top. The first was Wiz Khalifa's "Black And Yellow."

    "Rolling In The Deep" also advances to #1 in its 18th week on the Hot Digital Songs chart. This constitutes the slowest climb to #1 on that chart since Train's "Hey, Soul Sister" finally cracked the top spot in its 31st week in March 2010. A live rendition of that smash went on to win a Grammy for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals. "Rolling In The Deep" is very likely to be the first winner of the combined male/female Grammy for Best Pop Solo Performance.

    Adele's album 21 holds at #1 on The Billboard 200 for the seventh week. This marks the first time that an artist has had the #1 album and the #1 song on the Hot 100 in the same week since Eminem scored in September with Recovery and "Love The Way You Lie" (featuring Rihanna). It's the first time

    Read More »from Week Ending May 8, 2011. Songs: Rolling In The Dough
  • Jennifer Lopez is seen by upwards of 24 million TV viewers two nights a week thanks to her gig as a judge on American Idol. Her current hit "On The Floor" has sold 1,753,000 digital copies and has been ranked in the top 10 on the Hot 100 for 10 weeks. She got an extra shot of publicity last month (as if she needed it) when People declared her the "World's Most Beautiful Woman!" For all that, her new album, Love?, sold just 83K copies in its first week.

    That's not bad: The album enters The Billboard 200 at #5, which is higher than Lopez's last couple of albums debuted. The Spanish-language Como Ama Una Mujer bowed at #10 in April 2007. The English-language Brave opened at #12 six months later.

    But Lopez's career was in something of a slump in 2007. The only Hot 100 hit from Brave was "Do It Well," which stalled at an inglorious #31. Now, J.Lo is back on top and seemingly everywhere. Yet 21 albums so far this year have sold more copies in their first weeks, including albums by acts that

    Read More »from Week Ending May 8, 2011. Albums: Judging J.Lo
  • It's still early, but Katy Perry may be on track to become the first artist in Nielsen SoundScan history to have the year's best-selling song two years running. Perry's current hit, "E.T." (featuring Kanye West), this week pulls ahead of Cee Lo Green's "F**k You (Forget You)" to become the best-selling song so far in 2011. Perry had the best-seller of 2010 with "California Gurls" (featuring Snoop Dogg).

    This year marks 20 years since Billboard began using Nielsen SoundScan data to power its charts. The change began with The Billboard 200 and expanded later in the year to include the Hot 100. For the first time, the music industry (and pop fans) could see actual sales numbers rather than just relative chart rankings. This brought an unprecedented degree of precision and transparency to the weekly charts.

    To mark the anniversary, I will post a few Chart Watch Extras this month. This first one tracks the best-selling songs of each of the past 20 years.

    When Nielsen SoundScan came along,

    Read More »from Chart Watch Extra: 20 Years Of Top Songs
  • Songs from upcoming albums by two red-hot divas (who happen to be one-time duet partners) are off to slower-than-expected starts. Lady Gaga's "Judas" drops from #12 to #20 in its third week. Beyonce's "Run The World (Girls)" drops from #33 to #48 in its second week. This is the second single from Gaga's second full-length album Born This Way (which is due May 23). It's the lead single from Beyonce's still-untitled fourth studio album (which is due in June).

    "Judas" is already ranked behind Gaga's previous hit, "Born This Way," which dips just one notch, from #15 to #16. "Run The World (Girls)" has fallen behind many hits, including one by Kelly Rowland, Beyonce's former colleague in Destiny's Child. (Rowland's "Motivation," featuring Lil Wayne, jumps from #54 to #43 in its third week.

    What's the problem? "Judas" may have been seen as over-the-line in terms of its religious content, especially since it was released during the Christian Holy Week. "Run The World (Girls)" may be seen as

    Read More »from Week Ending May 1, 2011. Songs: Even Divas Struggle
  • Adele is single-handedly keeping the lights on in the beleaguered music industry. The singer's sophomore album, 21, sold another 124,000 copies this week, bringing its total sales 1,399,000. The album has sold more copies in just 10 weeks than Mumford & Sons' sleeper hit Sigh No More has sold in 58 weeks (1,377,000) or Rihanna's out-of-the-box hit Loud has sold in 24 weeks (1,231,000).

    21 is the first album to sell more than 100K copies this many weeks after its release since Sigh No More sold 133K copies in its 48th week (right after the Grammys in February). It's the first album to spend its first 10 weeks in the top three since Eminem's Recovery spent its first 13 weeks in that elite territory.

    21 tops The Billboard 200 for the sixth week. It's the longest-running #1 album since Taylor Swift's Speak Now had six weeks on top from October into January. It's the longest-running #1 album by a British artist since Susan Boyle's I Dreamed A Dream had six weeks on top in late 2009.

    Adele

    Read More »from Week Ending May 1, 2011. Albums: Adele Saves Music Biz
  • There are three groups in the top five on this week's Billboard 200, but only one of them is real. That would be Foo Fighters, whose latest album, Wasting Light, dips to #3 after debuting at #1 last week. The two made-for-TV groups in the top five are the Warblers, from the hit Fox series Glee, and Lemonade Mouth, from the Disney Channel movie of the same name.

    Glee: The Music Presents The Warblers, which debuts at #2, features series regulars Chris Colfer and Darren Criss fronting the Tufts University Beelzebubs. The lead-off track is Criss' star-making rendition of Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream." The remake, which has sold 481K digital copies, was also featured on Glee: Volume 4.

    Lemonade Mouth, which jumps from #18 to #4 in its second week, features such Disney Channel stars as Bridgit Mendler, Naomi Scott, Hayley Kiyoko, and Blake Michael. The movie focuses on five high school students who meet in detention and decide to form a band. (I guess they didn't want to call it The Breakfast

    Read More »from Week Ending April 24, 2011. Albums: Real Or TV?
  • Lady Gaga's "Judas" drops from #10 to #12 its second week. The song's digital sales declined 4%. It sold more copies (162K) last week, in its first three days of availability, than it did this week (156K), when it was available for a full seven days. And digital song sales were up overall (so that's not the explanation). Only four songs in the top 40 on Hot Digital Songs dropped in sales compared to last week.

    This week's tracking period coincided with the Christian Holy Week. It ended on Easter Sunday.  It's possible that some people thought it was going a little far to release a song called "Judas" at such a time. Gaga may have thought it would seen as cheeky and irreverent, but it's possible that it was seen, by at least some fans, as blasphemous.

    Judas is not a popular song subject. One of the only other notable songs with "Judas" in its title is Metallica's "The Judas Kiss," which "bubbled under" the Hot 100 in 2008 at #112.

    That said, I wouldn't be surprised if "Judas" turned

    Read More »from Week Ending April 24, 2011. Songs: Did Gaga Go Too Far?

Pagination

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