Kelly Clarkson's "My Life Would Suck Without You" vaults from #97 to #1 on Billboard's Hot 100 this week. That sets a new record for the biggest leap into the top spot in the chart's 50-year history. The old record was held by Britney Spears' "Womanizer," which shot from #96 to #1 in October. Clarkson's song also enters the Hot Digital Songs chart at #1, after selling 280,000 downloads in its first week.

"My Life Would Suck Without You," the lead single from Clarkson's upcoming fourth album All I Ever Wanted, is her second #1 on the Hot 100. "A Moment Like This," her American Idol victory song, shot from #52 to #1 in October 2002. (At the time, that was the biggest leap into the top spot in Hot 100 history.) "Suck" is Clarkson's first #1 on Hot Digital Songs. Her 2004 smash "Since U Been Gone" just missed the top spot, though it has sold more than 2 million cumulative downloads.

(Incidentally, Clarkson's use of the word "suck" in the title is cheeky, but not unprecedented. The Rolling

Taylor Swift's Fearless holds at #1 on The Billboard 200 for the fifth week. That's the longest that any album has topped the chart since Josh Groban's Noel had five straight weeks on top in late 2007. It's the longest run by a non-holiday album (let's face it, Noel was a phenomenon) since 50 Cent's The Massacre had six straight weeks on top in the spring of 2005. It's the longest run by a country crossover album since Shania Twain's Up! had five straight weeks on top in late 2002.

Fearless holds the #1 spot with sales of just 90,000 copies. It's the first time that sales of the #1 album have dipped below 100,000 copies since it happened for four straight weeks last January and February. The winter doldrums are a seasonal occurrence in the music business: It's cold out, people are tapped out after Christmas and release schedules tend to be sparse.

Fearless has sold 2,202,000 copies in its first eight weeks. That total includes 244,000 paid downloads, more than any other country album

All that female artists wanted for Christmas, it seems, was near-total chart domination. For the first time in more than 11 years, female solo artists hold down four of the top five spots on The Billboard 200. Taylor Swift's Fearless logs it third week at #1, Keyshia Cole's A Different Me debuts at #2 and former #1 albums by Britney Spears and Beyonce dip to #4 and #5, respectively. Jamie Foxx is the only male artist who could compete with these red-hot "Single Ladies." His Intuition debuts at #3.

Fearless is in a five-way tie for the longest run at #1 so far in 2008. If it holds the top spot next week, it will break the tie and become the only album to top the chart four times in this calendar year. Fearless has sold 1,850,000 copies in just six weeks, which is nearly half of the total (3,780,000) that Swift's smash debut album, Taylor Swift, has sold in 113 weeks.

Fearless is the #4 best-seller for the year-to-date-with one week to go before Nielsen/SoundScan closes the book on

If someone asked you to name the #1 album of the year in Billboard's just-published year-end issue, you might say Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III. That is, indeed, the best-selling album so far in 2008 (with two weeks to go). Or you might remember back to last year's surprise blockbuster, Josh Groban's Noel, and, figuring that Billboard's chart year might not conform exactly to the calendar year, guess that. Noel was the best-selling album of 2007 and, as we approach the holidays, is back in the top five on the weekly "comprehensive" chart (which includes both current and "catalog" product). Both would be good guesses, but both would be wrong. Instead, Alicia Keys' As I Am is Billboard's #1 album of the year. As I Am was #4 on Nielsen/SoundScan's year-end chart for 2007 and is #18 on the firm's year-to-date chart for 2008. Since the Billboard weekly and year-end charts are based on Nielsen SoundScan sales data, you may well wonder how this can be. (I wondered that myself.)

It's a question