Chart Watch
  • When Kelly Clarkson sold 255,000 copies of All I Ever Wanted in the week that ended Sunday night, she lengthened her lead as the American Idol alumnus who has sold the most albums. This brings her career total to 9,836,000 albums. Still, it's probably just a matter of time until Carrie Underwood overtakes her. Underwood, the Season 4 champ, has already sold 9,408,000 albums. These two women are the only Idol alums who rank among the top 200 album sellers of the Nielsen/SoundScan era (which began in 1991). Clarkson is #187 on the list. Underwood ranks #198. In all, eight Idol contestants have sold 1 million or more albums so far in their careers. Fifteen have sold 500,000 or more.

    The best-selling individual album by an Idol alum is Underwood's Some Hearts, which has sold 6,720,000 copies since its release in November 2005. It edges out Clarkson's Breakaway, which has sold 6,056,000 copies. (Oddly, neither album made #1 on The Billboard 200. Some Hearts peaked at #2. Breakaway reached

    Read More »from Chart Watch Extra: The American Idol Alumni Association
  • Kelly Clarkson's All I Ever Wanted enters The Billboard 200 at #1 with first-week sales of 255,000. It's her second #1 album, following her 2003 debut, Thankful. Clarkson is the first American Idol alumnus to notch two #1 albums. Clay Aiken, Ruben Studdard, Daughtry and Carrie Underwood have each had one. Six weeks ago, Clarkson became the first Idol alum to amass two #1 singles on the Hot 100. She topped the chart in 2002 with "A Moment Like This" and returned to the top spot with the fizzy "My Life Would Suck Without You." Aiken, Fantasia, Underwood and Taylor Hicks have each topped the Hot 100 once. If Clarkson were a candidate for office, you'd say that she has broad voter appeal. She has the support of pop radio and the record-buying public. Even music critics, who are often dismissive of mainstream pop artists, tend to be in Kelly's corner.

    Clarkson has sold 9,836,000 albums, as of this week, more than any other contestant in Idol history. She ranks #187 on Nielsen/SoundScan's

    Read More »from Week Ending March 15, 2009: The Idol With The Most
  • U2, it seemed, was everywhere last week hawking its new album, No Line On The Horizon. All that work pays off as the album enters the Billboard 200 at #1, with first-week sales of 484,000. This is the biggest weekly sales tally so far in 2009. It's more than twice that of the previous record-holder for the year, Bruce Springsteen's Working On A Dream, which opened with sales of 224,000 five weeks ago. In fact, U2 sold more copies in one week than Springsteen has sold in his entire six-week run (459,000). After just one week, No Line is #3 for the year-to-date, trailing a couple of 2008 holdovers, Taylor Swift's Fearless and Beyonce's I Am...Sasha Fierce. No Line registered the biggest weekly sales total in the first quarter, when sales are usually slow, since 2005, when 50 Cent's The Massacre sold 1,912,000 copies in its first two weeks. Here's my most amazing stat: The sales tally for No Line On The Horizon is greater than those of the next 17 albums on this week's chart, combined.

    U2

    Read More »from Week Ending March 8, 2009: U2′s Hustle Pays Off
  • Slumdog Millionaire this week joins a very exclusive club. It becomes only the 16th movie to both win an Academy Award for Best Picture and generate a top 10 soundtrack album. The Oscar, especially the coveted prize for Best Picture, is one of the most universally recognized marks of success in entertainment. So is the Billboard 200 album chart, especially the much-reprinted top 10. It's not easy to come out on top in either of these worlds. To triumph in both of them is so hard that it has happened just 16 times in the 64 years since Billboard introduced its album chart.

    The list of films that have won the Oscar for Best Picture and spawned a top 10 soundtrack includes both "little movies" such as Rocky and Chariots Of Fire and big, screen-filling epics such as Titanic and Lawrence Of Arabia. It includes six musicals (most recently, Chicago) and one movie filled with iconic oldies (Forrest Gump). Four of the soundtracks (Titanic, Chariots Of Fire, Rocky and Going My Way) spun off #1

    Read More »from Chart Watch Extra: Slumdog Joins Exclusive Club
  • Jonas Brothers have this week's #2 movie and #3 album. There are worse fates for an act that was largely unknown two years ago, but the brothers' management team and the Disney empire can't be thrilled about the numbers behind the numbers. Music From The 3D Concert Experience enters the Billboard 200 at #3. It sold 50,000 copies in its first week, less than one-tenth of what the brothers' last album, A Little Bit Longer, sold (525,000) when it debuted at #1 in August. It didn't even match what Jonas Brothers sold (69,000) in its first week in August 2007, when the brothers were just stepping up to stardom. The movie grossed $12.5 million, less than half of what Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana's Best Of Both Worlds Concert movie grossed ($31.1 million) in its opening weekend a year ago. And JoBros' movie was in far more theaters (1,271) than Cyrus' (683). The math whizzes at Boxofficemojo.com crunched the numbers and found that the per-theater average was $9,843 for JoBros' movie and $45,561

    Read More »from Week Ending March 1, 2009: They’re Not Exactly “Burnin’ Up”
  • Flo Rida's "Right Round" tops the 1 million mark in paid downloads in just its second week of release, which makes it the fastest million-selling download ever. This shaves three weeks off the old record, which was set in November by "Live Your Life" by T.I. featuring Rihanna. "Right Round" debuted last week with sales of 636,000 downloads, by far the biggest one-week total ever. This week, it sold 460,000 downloads, the third highest one-week total ever. In second place: Flo Rida's previous smash "Low" (featuring T-Pain), which sold 467,000 downloads during Christmas week 2007. Flo Rida doesn't get one-tenth of the mainstream media exposure of Kanye West or even Lil Wayne, but based on these numbers, I'd say he deserves to have a higher media profile.

    The record for fastest-selling download has been broken several times in the past year. "Love In This Club" by Usher featuring Young Jeezy set a record when it topped the 1 million mark in its seventh week in April. It was broken two

    Read More »from Week Ending Feb. 22, 2009: The Fastest Million-Selling Download Ever
  • We will soon learn the identity of the 75th winner of the Oscar for Best Original Song. It will either be from Slumdog Millionaire, which has two tunes in the running ("O Saya" and the joyous finale "Jai Ho"), or WALL-E, which has one ("Down To Earth," co-written by Peter Gabriel). If you haven't seen the movies, there's a good chance you haven't heard these songs. None of them has appeared on Billboard's Hot 100. But that's the way things have been going in this category in recent years. Six of the last eight Best Song winners failed to crack the chart. The only Best Song winners in the 2000s that have charted are Eminem's monster hit "Lose Yourself" from 8 Mile and "Falling Slowly" from Once, which reached a middling #61 last year. It wasn't always like this. Thirty-one of the first 54 Best Song winners reached #1. But in the past 20 years, only three winners have topped the chart: "A Whole New World (Aladdin's Theme)," "My Heart Will Go On (Love Theme From Titanic)" and "Lose

    Read More »from Chart Watch Extra: Oscar Best Song Highs & Lows
  • Three of the biggest winners from last week's Grammy Awards surge into the top 10 on The Billboard 200, but the #1 spot goes to an artist who wasn't even nominated this year. Taylor Swift, who performed on the telecast with fellow non-nominee Miley Cyrus, returns to #1 with Fearless. This is the second year in a row that Swift was passed over for a nomination for Best Female Country Vocal Performance, despite a long string of eligible hits over these two years including "Teardrops On My Guitar," "Our Song" and "Love Story." Last year, she was nominated for Best New Artist, but lost to Amy Winehouse. Though Swift hasn't gotten much Grammy love, she is receiving strong fan support. This is the ninth week on top for Fearless, which puts it in a tie with Santana's Supernatural and Usher's 2004 smash Confessions as the longest-running #1 album of the 2000s. (Supernatural had three additional weeks on top in 1999.)

    The Robert Plant/Alison Krauss collaboration Raising Sand vaults from #69 to

    Read More »from Week Ending Feb. 15, 2009: Taylor Swift Gets Last Laugh
  • Eminem is back in a big way. "Crack A Bottle," his new collaboration with Dr. Dre and 50 Cent, sold 418,000 downloads this week. That's the third fattest weekly tally ever, and the biggest total outside of Christmas week (when fans are feverishly redeeming gift cards). "Low" by Flo Rida featuring T Pain sold 467,000 downloads during Christmas week in 2007. "Just Dance" by Lady GaGa featuring Colby O'Donis sold 419,000 this past Christmas. "Crack A Bottle" enters Hot Digital Songs at #1 and surges from #78 to #1 on Billboard's Hot 100. It's Eminem's second #1 hit on the Hot 100, following the Oscar-winning "Lose Yourself," which logged 12 weeks on top in 2002-2003. It's also Dr. Dre's second #1, following  Blackstreet's 1996 hit "No Diggity," on which he was featured. It's 50 Cent's fourth, following "In Da Club," "21 Questions" (with Nate Dogg) and "Candy Shop (with Olivia). All three artists have upcoming albums. Eminem's album, Relapse, will be his first studio release since Encore

    Read More »from Week Ending Feb. 8, 2009: Shady’s Back (Tell A Friend)
  • Bruce Springsteen's Working On A Dream enters The Billboard 200 at #1. It's the New Jersey native's ninth #1 album, which puts him in the all-time top five on the list of artists with most #1 albums. The Beatles lead the pack with 19 chart-toppers, followed by Elvis Presley and Jay-Z, with 10 each, and the Rolling Stones and Springsteen, with nine each. Except for Jay-Z, Springsteen is the most recent arrival on this list. He released his first album, Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J., in January 1973.

    By landing his ninth #1 album, Springsteen surges ahead of Barbra Streisand and Garth Brooks, who have each amassed eight #1 albums.

    Working On A Dream, which opened with sales of 224,000 copies, is Springsteen's fifth album to debut at #1. Three of the other four started with fatter first-week totals. The Rising bowed with sales of 525,000; Magic with 335,000; and Greatest Hits with 251,000. Of these five albums, only Devils & Dust had a slower first week. It started with 222,000.

    Read More »from Week Ending Feb. 1, 2009: That’s Why They Call Him The Boss

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