Chart Watch

  • Led Zeppelin was the premier hard rock band in the world in 1978 when the Kennedy Center Honors were first presented. But if someone had told you then that Led Zep would someday be selected to receive the honor, you’d have thought he was out of his mind. That first crop of honorees included such old-guard legends as Fred Astaire, composer Richard Rodgers and conductor Arthur Rubinstein. It took the Kennedy Center’s Board of Trustees nearly 20 years to acknowledge rock, in the person of Bob Dylan. At that rate, it seemed likely that they would never get around to hard rock, metal, rap and other edgier forms of music.

    Never say never. On Wednesday (Dec. 26), we’ll see Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, the three surviving founding members of Led Zeppelin, become the first hard rock musicians to receive a Kennedy Center Honor. This year’s other honorees are David Letterman, Dustin Hoffman, blues great Buddy Guy and ballerina Natalia Makarova.

    Kennedy Center Honors recipients are “recognized for their lifetime contributions to American culture through the performing arts—whether in music, dance, theater, opera, motion pictures, or television,” according to a statement on the site.

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  • Ke$ha’s “Die Young” dips from #3 to #4 on the Hot 100, in part because some radio stations dropped the song or pulled it out of heavy rotation following Friday’s horrific elementary school shootings in Newtown, Conn. Billboard’s Gary Trust reports that airplay on the song dropped by 19% this week, the greatest percentage decline of any song in the top 40 on the Hot 100 Airplay chart.

    The song peaked at #2 on the Hot 100 three weeks ago, and was starting to recede, but this accelerated the process. The exuberant record has nothing to do with young people dying, but seeks to motivate people to live life to the fullest. Key lyric: “Let’s make the most of the night like we’re gonna die young.” It’s just the wrong words and the wrong tone for right now.

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  • If you’ve been anywhere near a radio in the past year, you don’t need me to tell you the titles of the year’s top three hits: “Somebody That I Used To Know” by Gotye featuring Kimbra, Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” and “We Are Young” by fun. featuring Janelle Monae.

    There are three main things you should know about them. First, none of the five artists involved had ever cracked Billboard’s Hot 100 before. Second, all three hits are nominated for Grammys as Record and/or Song of the Year, which shows an unusual degree of fan and industry agreement. Third, each of the three songs has sold more copies so far this year than any song had sold before in a calendar year in digital history.

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  • One Direction’s Take Me Home tops the 1 million mark in U.S. sales this week. It’s the boy band’s second album to sell 1 million copies this year. Up All Night is up to 1,505,000. One Direction is the first act to sell 1 million copies of two different albums in a calendar year since 2009, when Michael Jackson (who died that year) did it with four albums and Miley Cyrus (then at the peak of her career) did it with two. One Direction is the first group or duo to achieve this feat since Rascal Flatts in 2007.

    Take Me Home reached the 1M threshold in just five weeks, compared to 19 weeks for Up All Night. Just nine albums that have sold 1 million copies so far in 2012, which makes One Direction’s achievement all the more impressive. Take Me Home holds at #4 for the third week on The Billboard 200.

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  • Michael Buble is sure to have a merry Christmas. His 2011 album, Christmas, will top the 3 million mark in U.S. sales within the next two weeks. (Current sales tally: 2,749,000.) It will be the first Christmas album to go over the 3 million mark since Josh Groban's 2007 smash Noel. Buble's album is expected to rebound to #3 on this week's Billboard 200, pulling ahead of this year's top holiday album, Rod Stewart's Merry Christmas, Baby.

    Buble's album is being boosted by an hour-long TV special which NBC has already aired twice this month and plans to air again on Dec. 21.

    Even in an era of digital song downloads, Christmas music remains an album-oriented genre. Twenty-three holiday albums have sold 2 million or more copies in the Nielsen SoundScan era. By contrast, just one holiday song, Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You," has sold 2 million digital copies.

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  • If you like charts, Billboard's year-end issue is Thanksgiving and Christmas rolled into one. The issue contains almost 300 year-end charts. More than 100 are available now to the general public at Billboard.com. More than 440 (!) are listed at billboard.biz/charts. (That might be too much even for me.)

    And what do we learn from this blizzard of information? A lot, though some of it confirms the obvious. You will not be shocked to learn that Adele's 21 was the year's best-selling album or that "Somebody That I Used To Know" by Gotye featuring Kimbra was the year's top single. But did you know that that they were also #1 for the year in Canada? Or that "Somebody…" was also the year's #1 Alternative Song? Details like that give the issue its texture.

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  • Justin Bieber got no love last week from Grammy voters, but he continues to have the support of his fans. "Beauty And A Beat," his propulsive collabo with Nicki Minaj, jumps from #14 to #9 on the Hot 100. It's the third top 10 hit from Believe. That's Bieber's first album to spawn even two top 10 hits, much less three.

    The first two top 10 hits from Believe were "Boyfriend," which reached #2 in April, and "As Long As You Love Me," a Grammy nom-worthy collabo with Big Sean, which reached #6 in September. That song tops the 2 million mark in digital sales this week.

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  • Adele's 21 is set to become the first album to wind up as the year's best-seller twice since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking sales for Billboard in 1991. The album has sold 4,255,000 copies so far this year. It sold 5,824,000 copies in 2011. It's one of only four albums in the Nielsen SoundScan era to sell 4 million or more copies in each of two calendar years. It follows Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill (1995-1996), Shania Twain's Come On Over (1998-1999) and Santana's Supernatural (1999-2000).

    Even though it's in its second year of release, 21 has sold more copies this year than the best-selling albums of 2006 through 2010 did in those years. The album spawned three #1 hits, "Rolling In The Deep," "Someone Like You" and "Set Fire To The Rain." It won six Grammys in February, including Album of the Year.

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  • Taylor Swift's fans have given her the perfect birthday present: They sent her album Red back to #1 on The Billboard 200. (Swift turns 23 on Thursday.) The album has sold 2,383,000 copies in just seven weeks. That's more than any other album has sold in such a short time span since Susan Boyle's I Dreamed A Dream sold 3,196,000 copies in its first seven weeks in 2009 and early 2010.

    Red has sold at least 137K copies in each of its first seven weeks. You might not think that would be that would be so hard, but these days it is. Rihanna's Unapologetic and Alicia Keys' Girl On Fire have each had just one week with sales above 100K. Ke$ha's Warrior debuts this week with sales of just 86K. And those are three of the hottest female artists in the business.

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  • "Scream & Shout" by will.i.am featuring Britney Spears is the top new entry on this week's Hot 100 at #12. It's vying to become will.i.am's 14th top 10 hit (but his first as a solo artist in the top-billed position); Spears' 12th (but her first as a featured artist). will.i.am has amassed 10 top 10 hits as a member of the Black Eyed Peas. He has also hit the top 10 as a featured artist on three hits: Fergie's "Fergalicious," Flo Rida's "In The Ayer" and Usher's "OMG."

    "Scream & Shout" is from will.i.am's upcoming fourth solo studio album, #willpower, which is due Feb. 4. The song's music video premiered on The X Factor on Nov. 28.

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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.

  • Dior presents cruise fashions amid stars in Monaco

    MONACO (AP) — The glittering star power of Cannes migrated up the coast to Monaco for front-row seats at Dior's colorful, sexy cruise fashion show.

  • Germans blame euro zone crisis for Eurovision debacle

    BERLIN (Reuters) - Germans lamented their unexpectedly poor showing at the Eurovision Song Contest, blaming Chancellor Angela Merkel's tough stance in the euro zone crisis for their failure to win any points from 34 of the 39 countries voting. Denmark's Emmelie de Forest won the event, watched by around 125 million people across Europe, with 281 points while German act Cascada was 21st out of 26 countries, getting just 18 points from Austria, Israel, Spain, Albania and Switzerland. ...

  • Denmark's de Forest wins Eurovision song contest

    MALMO, Sweden (AP) — Denmark's Emmelie de Forest has won this year's Eurovision Song Contest with her ethno-inspired flute and drum tune "Only Teardrops," despite tough competition from spectacular stage shows by performers from Azerbaijan and Ukraine.

  • Native American actress proud to walk Cannes red carpet

    By Belinda Goldsmith CANNES (Reuters) - Native American actress Misty Upham never dreamt she would be walking the red carpet at Cannes to showcase a film shot on her reservation. Upham features in "Jimmy P. Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian", focused on the relationship between World War Two veteran Jimmy Picard, a Native American Blackfoot, and Georges Devereux, his psychoanalyst. Upham said like Picard, played by Puerto Rican actor Benicio Del Toro, she is Blackfeet, the largest tribe in Montana state. ...

  • 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.

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