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Pop Rock Nation

Author: Money Mike

  • Chart Chat Recap Part 1: Who Has The Keys To The Top?

    Yes, folks, it’s that time of the year again. Billboard recently released its’ year-end charts, and some of the results will surprise you. Chris Brown ranks as the year’s top artist, thanks to three huge hit singles and a double-platinum album. He’s also (obviously) the top male artist on the year-end survey, while to no one’s surprise, his girlfriend Rihanna ranks as the top female artist. In their breakout year, The Jonas Brothers rank as the top band/duo/group.

    This week, we turn our attention to the year’s top albums. Now, when doing their year end survey, Billboard does not use hard sales figures, nor do they use the strict calendar year. Their year end charts are based on a calculation of chart positions from week-to-week, while the time period they tally is from the first week of December 2007 to the last week of November 2008. Which should explain why the biggest-selling album of 2008 isn’t actually the Number One album of 2008. Let’s move on to the chart, shall we? Oh, and as always, all chart positions are courtesy of the good folks at Billboard communications.

    1) “As I Am” Alicia Keys

    Keys snared the #1 spot by spending all 52 weeks of the chart year on the Top 200. During that period, “As I Am” has sold 3.7 million copies. It’s the first time Keys has had a #1 album of the year. And here’s a sign at how flat record sales have become: “As I Am” is the worst selling studio album of Keys’ career.

    2) “Noel” Josh Groban

    “Noel” was actually the biggest selling album of the time period captured in the year-end chart, but as it was a holiday release, it’s time on the chart was limited. By the way, in terms of actual album sales, “Noel” wound up being 2007’s #1 album.

    3) “Tha Carter III” Lil Wayne

    2008’s #1-selling album by a healthy margin, Weezy joins Alicia Keys as the only artists in the Top 5 Artists, Albums and Singles of 2008. It’s also (obviously) the highest-ranking hip-hop title on the year end chart and the only one in the Top 20. The rest of the top 5, in order, T.I. (#23 on the overall chart), Rick Ross (#50), Jay-Z (#57) and Young Jeezy (#62)

    4. “Long Road Out of Eden” The Eagles

    5. “Fearless” Taylor Swift

    Swift had two hit albums this year (“Fearless” ranks at #66), and is the highest-ranking country artist on the chart, assuming we’re not counting The Eagles as a country band. Take that, Joe Jonas!

    6. “Rock ‘n Roll Jesus” Kid Rock

    Kid’s album, which came out in October ’07, is the oldest album in the year-end Top Ten. His hit single “All Summer Long” was a hit on both pop and country radio and gave him one of the biggest songs of his career. Who’d have thought that the hick rapper with the midget sidekick would still be on top of the charts ten years later?

    7. “Viva La Vida or Death & All His Friends” Coldplay

    Coldplay’s album, conversely, is the newest album to appear in the year-end Top 10, as well as the highest ranking album by a U.K. artist. Leona Lewis is the only other Brit import in the Top 25. The rest of the Top 5 as far as Brits go: Led Zeppelin (#31), Robert Plant (with Alison Krauss, #39) and Amy Winehouse (#43).

    8. “Now That’s What I Call Music Vol. 26” Various Artists

    This series has proven to be quite durable over the years, proving that some Americans are just too damn lazy to make their own mix tapes. “Now 28” is #37 and “Now 27” is #41.

    9. “Carnival Ride” Carrie Underwood

    Carrie’s one of four “American Idol” alumni in the year-end Top 100. The others? Daughtry (#33), Jordin Sparks (#35) and Jennifer Hudson (#93)

    10. “The Ultimate Hits” Garth Brooks

    11. “Hannah Montana Soundtrack 3/Meet Miley Cyrus” Miley Cyrus

    12. “Growing Pains” Mary J. Blige

    13. “Exclusive” Chris Brown

    Chris and Rihanna handily beat out R&B/hip-hop’s other power couple. Jay-Z, as previously mentioned, landed at #37 for the year with “American Gangster” and Beyonce’s “B-Day” ended the year at #170. “I Am…Sasha Fierce” came out too late to qualify, but it should figure mightily on next year’s chart.

    14. “Sleep Through the Static” Jack Johnson

    15. “Black Ice” AC/DC

    16. “Death Magnetic” Metallica

    AC/DC, Metallica, The Eagles and Garth Brooks (who sneaks in by virtue of debuting in 1989) are the only artists on the year-end Top 25 whose careers predate 1990. Mariah Carey and Kid Rock narrowly missed, as both issued their freshman efforts in 1990. So, basically, if you want a long career? Record metal or country.

    17. “Jonas Brothers” Jonas Brothers

    The Jonases are the only artists with two albums in the Top 25. Touche, Taylor Swift.

    18. “Coco” Colbie Caillat

    19. “Spirit” Leona Lewis

    Leona’s the only artist in the Top 25 to debut in 2008, although Colbie Caillat narrowly tops her with the highest-ranking debut album on the chart. As far as debut albums go, those two are followed by Daughtry, Jordin Sparks and Amy Winehouse (“Back to Black” counts because it was her U.S. debut).

    20. “High School Musical 2 Soundtrack” Various Artists

    21. “Good Girl Gone Bad” Rihanna

    If “Rehab” ascends just a few more positions in the next couple weeks, Rihanna will follow Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson and Bruce Springsteen as the only artists to pull seven Top 20 songs from one album. Not too shabby.

    22. “E=MC2” Mariah Carey

    23. “Paper Trail” T.I.

    T.I  not only found himself beat by Lil Wayne on the charts this year, I’m pretty sure Weezy got arrested more times in the past year as well. However, T.I.’s the one looking at a stretch upstate, so he wins something after all.

    24. “Mamma Mia Soundtrack” Various Artists

    25. “A Little Bit Longer” Jonas Brothers

    I would love to make another Jonas/Taylor Swift joke here…but I can’t think of one. Shit.

    Next week…the year’s Top 25 singles.

  • Infatueighties #61: Who Can it Be Now?

    It makes perfect sense to have a song by Men at Work follow one of The Police (although, if you really wanna get technical, it’s actually in FRONT of a song by The Police, but let’s not talk semantics now). Colin Hay and his band of merry Aussies were often accused of biting Sting, Stewart and Andy, but even if they were a carbon copy, at least they were a good carbon copy. “Who Can it Be Now?” is one of the best debut singles of the decade-from that signature sax part to it’s insistent drumbeat to Colin Hay’s deadpan vocal, which makes him sound even nuttier than if he’d screamed the song’s lyrics.

    Men at Work burned bright and fast. Their debut, Business as Usual (which contained “Who Can it Be Now?”), hung around at #1 for the latter part of ’82 and the first part of ’83, and the band won the Best New Artist Grammy Award before anyone knew that winning that was the beginning of the end. A follow-up, Cargo, sold well off the fumes from the previous album, and by the time the band’s third album, Two Hearts, was released in ’85, no one cared anymore. Lead singer Colin Hay has gone on to a mildly successful solo career and is a particular favorite of Zach Braff, who put him on the Platinum-selling Garden State soundtrack and has featured him in several episodes of “Scrubs”.

    I wonder if Rockwell was inspired to watch “Somebody’s Watching Me” after hearing this song.

  • Best of ’08 Vol. 1: Vampire Weekend

    Take four Ivy League-educated preppies. Dress ’em up in Izod polo shirts and khakis. Feed ’em a steady diet of King Sunny Ade & Fela Kuti, and run it through the average young person’s pop sensibility. Flourish it with a bit of a classical element, and you’ve got the debut album by New York foursome Vampire Weekend.
    These guys have made a pretty big splash on the music scene in a very short time. Within weeks of the release of their first record, they’ve already earned the prestigious musical guest spot on “Saturday Night Live” as well as the cover of “Spin” magazine. I personally found out about the band through a cubemate of mine who went to New York’s Columbia University with the guys and was raving about the album weeks before it came out. After a few scattered listens, I was convinced that this was something I needed to own, and I wasn’t disappointed.

    Clocking in at a lightning-fast 34 minutes, Vampire Weekend’s album is a fast, fun listen. The band fuses together several musical elements that are quite different and somehow makes it work.

    I was hooked from the second I heard the album’s opener, Mansard Roof. I don’t know what the hell a mansard roof is (actually I do now, I googled it), and the lyrics don’t amount to much (for me, anyway), but the second I heard the African-inspired drumbeat kick in, my *ss was moving and sometimes that’s all that matters. The band members are obviously inspired by Afrobeat (or they raided their parents’ record collections for old Talking Heads and Paul Simon albums), and they kind of take the p*ss out of the juxtaposition between their blueblood upbringing and the sound of their music with tongue-in-cheek song titles like Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa.

    Current single A-Punk is another winner, with a breakneck beat (featuring flute interludes!) that suggests The Ramones as played by the New York Philharmonic, complete with staccato “Ay! Ay! Ay! Ay!” choruses. Meanwhile, M79 (named after one of the buses that runs from one side of Central Park to the other) has a jaunty rhythm that’s goosed along by a pretty impressive-sounding string section…well, certainly more impressive than any strings I’ve heard on a rock record in recent memory.

    Being young Ivy Leaguers (or maybe just being young New Yorkers…ha!), the band is lyrically on the obtuse/pretentious side. Your enjoyment of this record will probably be from an instrumental or a melodic standpoint more than it’ll be from a lyrical standpoint. That’s not to say the band doesn’t come up with some interesting things to say. I’m not sure what the hell Oxford Comma is about, but any rock band who can get away with quoting the King of Crunk (“First the window, then it’s to the wall/Li’l Jon, he always tells the truth”) is fine by me. The clearest narrative here is Walcott, which tells the story of the title character as he escapes vampires in Massachusetts and escapes to New Jersey. The lyrics originally popped up in a screenplay co-written by lead vocalist Ezra Koenig, titled…you guessed it, “Vampire Weekend”.

    I guess the best way to describe the music on this album is “sophisticated lo-fi”. It’s certainly not overproduced, with a tossed-off quality that’s completely endearing. You’ve also gotta love the varied elements of ear-candy, from the Coldplay-esque rolling piano (at about 11X Coldplay’s usual speed) featured in the aforementioned Walcott to The Kids Don’t Stand A Chance, which sounds like dub reggae meets “Turn Turn Turn” by The Byrds. The thing is, despite sounding underproduced (in the best possible way), you can also tell that these kids have some serious chops. The album is bare-bones but not amateurish.

    It’s also loads of fun, and I recommend Vampire Weekend for that factor alone. There’s a lot of manufactured hype and buzz from everyone-industry insiders, critics, bloggers-but these dudes are the real deal. It’s indie pop (in the truest sense…this album is actually independently distributed) that you don’t have to be a hipster douchebag to enjoy.

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