Chart Watch
  • Les Miserables jumps to #1 in its third week on The Billboard 200. It’s the first soundtrack to a movie that was based on a stage musical to top the chart since Mamma Mia! scored in August 2008. Les Miz has grossed $103,503,000 in its first two weekends at the box-office. It dipped from #3 to #4 in the box-office rankings in its second weekend.

    Les Miz opened on Christmas Day. The movie version of Dreamgirls, which also spawned a #1 soundtrack, opened on Christmas Day in 2006. Les Miz is likely to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Picture tomorrow.

    The Les Miz Broadway cast album vaults from #171 to #104 (its highest ranking to date). It has sold 1,596,000 copies. The London cast album re-enters the chart at #160. It has sold 887K copies. Putting this together, Les Miz is #1 on Top Soundtracks for the third straight week and holds the top two spots on Top Cast Albums, a neat trick.

    Read More »from Week Ending Jan. 6, 2013. Albums: Les Miz Takes Broadway To The Top
  • Bruno Mars’ “Locked Out Of Heaven” tops the Hot 100 for the fourth straight week, while Taylor Swift’s “I Knew You Were Trouble.” jumps from #4 to #2. “Locked Out Of Heaven” is now tied with “Just The Way You Are” and “Grenade” as Mars’ longest-running #1 hit to date. “I Knew You Were Trouble.” surpasses its initial #3 peak and now ranks as one of Swift’s four highest-climbing hits to date.

    These songs are in the opposite order on Hot Digital Songs. “I Knew You Were Trouble.” is #1 with sales of 582K copies, which constitutes the fourth highest one-week sales tally in digital history. “Locked Out Of Heaven” is #2 with sales of 497K copies, which is the 10th highest tally in digital history. (Sales traditionally swell in the week after Christmas as fans redeem iTunes gift cards.)

    This is the second biggest one-week tally for both Mars and Swift. Mars’ “Grenade” sold more copies (559K) two years ago this week. Swift’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” sold more (623K) in its first week in August. Mars and Swift are the only artists with two of the all-time top 10 digital tallies.

    Read More »from Week Ending Dec. 30, 2012. Songs: Taylor Knew Bruno Was Trouble.
  • The Les Miserables soundtrack vaults from #33 to #2 in its second week on The Billboard 200. It’s already the highest-charting soundtrack to the movie version of a Broadway musical since Mamma Mia! hit #1 in August 2008. The movie, which stars Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe, was #3 at the box-office in its opening weekend.

    Les Miz first opened on Broadway on May 12, 1987, which means it took 25 years and eight months for the show to spawn a top 10 movie soundtrack. That’s the longest wait since Chicago took 27 years and eight months. Chicago opened on Broadway on June 3, 1975 and finally yielded a top 10 movie soundtrack in February 2003.

    Read More »from Week Ending Dec. 30, 2012. Albums: “Les Miz” Zooms To #2
  • Adele’s 21 is officially 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 sold 4,414,000 copies in 2012. 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 was in its second year of release, 21 sold more copies in 2012 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.

    Read More »from Chart Watch Extra: Top Albums of 2012
  • If you were anywhere near a radio last year, you don’t need me to tell you the titles of the top three hits of 2012: “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 sold more copies than any song had sold before in a calendar year in digital history.

    Read More »from Chart Watch Extra: Top Songs of 2012
  • Everybody knows that Elvis Presley was the top hit-maker of the 1950s, but who was the top female hit-maker of the decade? Move to the front of the class if you know that it was Patti Page, who died yesterday at age 85. Page had four #1 hits in that decade, including “The Tennessee Waltz,” which was one of the decade’s biggest hits. Page’s other chart-toppers were “All My Love (Bolero),” “I Went To Your Wedding” and the novelty tune “The Doggie In The Window,” which did little to enhance her artistic reputation, but remains one of her best-known songs.

    Just last month, Page was announced as one of this year’s recipients of a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Remarkably, she is the second recipient to have died since the announcements were made on Dec. 10. World music legend Ravi Shankar died the day after the announcements. (Both awards will be made posthumously next month.)

    Read More »from Chart Watch Extra: Patti Page, R.I.P.
  • Hundreds of male contestants have walked across the American Idol stage in the past 11 years (Yahoo!’s Idol guru Lyndsey Parker could probably rattle off an exact count), but only one has gone on to record a 3-million-seller. That’s Phillip Phillips, whose “Home” tops the 3 million mark in digital sales this week. Just three female Idol contestants (Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood and Jordin Sparks) have landed 3-million-sellers. They’ve each done it just once. Clarkson’s “Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You)” has sold 3,970,000 copies. Underwood’s “Before He Cheats” has sold 3,633,000. “No Air” by Sparks & Chris Brown has sold 3,491,000.

    The old sales record for a male Idol contestant was held by a different song, also titled “Home,” by Chris Daughtry’s band Daughtry, which has sold 2,325,000 copies. The old record by a male Idol contestant who remained a solo artist was held by David Archuleta’s “Crush,” which is up to 2,087,000.

    “Home” is the 17th song to top the 3 million mark in digital sales in 2012. That extends this year’s record pace—and there’s still one chart week to go in 2012. (The previous record for most 3-million-sellers in a calendar year was set in 2011, when there were 14.)

    Read More »from Week Ending Dec. 23, 2012. Songs: Phillips Makes Idol History
  • Taylor Swift this week becomes the first artist since the Beatles to log six or more weeks at #1 with three consecutive studio albums. She achieves the feat with Red, which tops The Billboard 200 for the sixth week. It follows Fearless (11 weeks) and Speak Now (six weeks). The Beatles achieved the feat with seven studio albums in a row from Beatles ’65 in January 1965 to Abbey Road November 1969.

    Only two other acts have had such lengthy stays at #1 with three consecutive studio albums. The Kingston Trio spent six or more weeks on top with four straight studio albums in 1959 and 1960. Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass did it with three straight studio albums in 1965 and 1966.

    Thus, Swift is the first female artist to achieve this feat.

    Read More »from Week Ending Dec. 23, 2012. Albums: Swift Is First Since The Beatles
  • 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.

    Read More »from Chart Watch Extra: Led Zep’s Road To The Kennedy Center Honors
  • 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.

    Read More »from Week Ending Dec. 17, 2012. Songs: Wrong Title At Wrong Time

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