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Pop Rock Nation

Author: Money Mike

  • Chart Chat Early Edition: AC/DC, Adele and More!!

    I’ve decided to play around a little with the Chart Chat concept. Instead of one comprehensive wrap-up on Sunday, I’ll shoot you Album chart news on Wednesday, singles chart news on Thursday, and the comprehensive wrap-up will now appear every other Sunday under the name Chart Chat Plus.

    *Obviously, the big news is AC/DC‘s #1 debut. Black Ice moves over 784,000 units to land at the top of the big chart. It’s the biggest debut of the year excluding Lil’ Wayne, and is the band’s first #1 album in well over a quarter century. Following last year’s Eagles release, this is the second album that’s a retail exclusive (only being sold at Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club) to debut at the top. It’s probably also worth mentioning that this album isn’t available digitally.

    *Brit soul/jazz siren Adele has jumped 129-46-11 following her appearance on the “Sarah Palin” episode of “Saturday Night Live”. Nice to see the rest of America catching on. I fell in love with this album the first time I heard it at the beginning of the year.

    *AC/DC’s strong debut eclipses the “High School Musical 3” soundtrack, which would have been #1 in most of this year’s other weeks. Instead, it lands at #2 with just under 300,000 units sold.

    *These two albums should hold on to their spots next week, but new albums from John Legend, Pink and Toby Keith are all expected to scan over 100,000 units in their first week, and who knows? One of them might just score an upset.

    This Week’s Top 20 Albums:

    01-“Black Ice” AC/DC

    02-“High School Musical 3” Soundtrack

    03-“Paper Trail” T.I.

    04-“Lucky Old Sun” Kenny Chesney

    05-“Death Magnetic” Metallica

    06-“Rock & Roll Jesus” Kid Rock

    07-“The Sound” Mary Mary

    08-“Year of the Gentleman” Ne-Yo

    09-“Jennifer Hudson” Jennifer Hudson

    10-“Tha Carter III” Lil’ Wayne

    11-“19” Adele

    12-“Good Girl Gone Bad” Rihanna

    13-“A Little Bit Longer” Jonas Brothers

    14-“We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things” Jason Mraz

    15-“The Recession” Young Jeezy

    16-“Covers” James Taylor

    17-“Gossip in the Grain” Ray LaMontagne

    18-“Damn Right Rebel Proud” Hank Williams III

    19-“Love on the Inside” SugarLand

    20-“Fearless” Jazmine Sullivan

  • John Legend’s Evolver: Can the Crooner Get Down?

    Photography by sry85.
    Photography by sry85.

    When it comes to smooth, mature soul music, John Legend is the man to beat. The protege of Kanye West, Legend (born John Stephens) has amassed strong sales, five Grammy Awards and critical kudos for his first couple of albums, Get Lifted and Once Again. He’s become known as the R&B singer you can take home to mom, a piano man in the mold of Lionel Richie and Brian McKnight. However, he’s also got a more pronounced hip-hop vibe and a wink-nudge, sly sexuality that’s a refreshing change from the crassness found in most R&B and hip-hop lyrics these days..

    Legend’s third album, Evolver, has been talked about as a departure. The spacy 80s synths of the bouncy first single Green Light certainly isn’t what you’d normally expect for the buttoned-up crooner, but a rap from the irrepressible Andre 3000 and the fun groove makes the song swing.. With Evolver finally in stores and online, two questions need to be asked. 1) Is the entire album a departure for John Legend, and 2) Can he make it work?

    (more…)

  • Infatueighties #73: Squeeze’s “Tempted”

    Infatueighties #73: Squeeze’s “Tempted”

    Squeeze Tempted Album CoverI discovered Tempted in 1994. As someone who was not listening to college radio in 1981 (cut me some slack, I was five), the only Squeeze I’d heard was (what I believe was) their lone Top 40 hit, 1987’s Hourglass. So, if I can thank the Reality Bites soundtrack for anything at all, it would be for introducing me to the greatness that is this song.

    Ever listen to a song and have a nagging suspicion that “this voice sounds familiar but I just can’t place it”? Well, imagine my surprise when I found out that the voice behind this song (most of it, anyway) was Paul Carrack, who scored a handful of hits as a solo artist (Don’t Shed a Tear almost made this list), in addition to being the lead singer of Seventies one hit wonders Ace (How Long) and the Genesis side project Mike & the Mechanics. The guy gets around, yeah?

    His soulful delivery, combined with the superior storytelling skills of Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook and the production of Elvis Costello (who knew?) has made Tempted a modern-day classic, even though it never hit the Top 40 on the American pop charts (wow, that was a run-on sentence).

    As a bonus, here’s the video for How Long, which would have made it pretty high if there was an Infatu-seventies column. Hmmm, that doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as well.