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  • Chart Chat 6/8/2008: Usher, Al Green, Coldplay and More!!!


    So, I had two choices this afternoon: go to Best Buy, pick up an air conditioner (and the new Weezer CD), lug it home on the T, or sit here in the sweltering heat (fully dressed) and finish this column. Guess which one I picked?

    Here’s this week’s charts, y’all (courtesy of Billboard):

    Top 20 Albums:

    1) “Here I Stand” Usher
    2) “Sex & The City Soundtrack” Various Artists
    3) “3 Doors Down” 3 Doors Down
    4) “II Trill” Bun B
    5) “Spirit” Leona Lewis
    6) “Nothing But the Best” Frank Sinatra
    7) “Rockferry” Duffy
    8) “E=MC2” Mariah Carey
    9) “Lay it Down” Al Green
    10) “Narrow Stairs” Death Cab for Cutie
    11) “Hard Candy” Madonna
    12) “Taylor Swift” Taylor Swift
    13) “We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things” Jason Mraz
    14) “35 Biggest Hits” Toby Keith
    15) “Home Before Dark” Neil Diamond
    16) “Julianne Hough” Julianne Hough
    17) “Now That’s What I Call Music 27” Various Artists
    18) “Fight With Tools” Flobots
    19) “Carnival Ride” Carrie Underwood
    20) “Rock & Roll Jesus” Kid Rock

    Top 20 Singles:

    1) “Lollipop” Lil’ Wayne feat. Static Major
    2) “Bleeding Love” Leona Lewis
    3) “Viva La Vida” Coldplay
    4) “Take a Bow” Rihanna
    5) “I Kissed a Girl” Katy Perry
    6) “Love in This Club” Usher feat. Young Jeezy
    7) “No Air” Jordin Sparks & Chris Brown
    8) “Sexy Can I” Ray J. & Yung Berg
    9) “Time of My Life” David Cook
    10) “4 Minutes” Madonna feat. Justin Timberlake
    11) “Pocketful of Sunshine” Natasha Bedingfield
    12) “Damaged” Danity Kane
    13) “Got Money” Lil’ Wayne feat. T-Pain
    14) “Bust it Baby Pt. 2” Plies feat. Ne-Yo
    15) “Leavin’” Jesse McCartney
    16) “Forever” Chris Brown
    17) “What You Got” Colby O’ Donis feat. Akon
    18) “Touch My Body” Mariah Carey
    19) “It’s Not My Time” 3 Doors Down
    20) “Love Song” Sara Bareilles

    *So…when can an album sell nearly a half-million copies in it’s first week and be considered a flop? When you’re Usher and your last album sold over 1 million copies in it’s first frame. “Here I Stand” scans enough to become the second highest debut of the year so far (after Mariah Carey), but one can’t help think that it’s kind of a disappointment. Let’s see how truclulent the already abrasive Usher becomes in the coming weeks and months. Let’s also see how the next two “big” event albums-Li’l Wayne and Coldplay-fare in it’s wake.

    *I tolerate Lil’ Wayne. As something of a hip-hop purist, the easy way out would be just to hate the guy, which I don’t. Not that you’ll ever see me running to the store to buy a Lil’ Wayne album (unless there’s money enclosed). However, the man has a record in the Top 20 with T-Pain. Put those two together and someone’s gotta die.

    *Reverend Al “The Ladies’ Pal” Green has his first top ten album in nearly 35 years with the solid “Lay it Down”. For those who haven’t heard it yet, this is definitely a worthwhile pickup if you’re an Al fan. The man has not lost a step since his glory days. Could he be the best soul singer of all time? Hmmm…I’d resisted that concept for a while, but I might be coming around…however, he better not bring this look back EVER…

    *”Viva La Vida” is now the biggest hit of Coldplay’s career. As someone who feels Chris Martin and the boys take a lot of unnecessary shit, this makes me happy. I’m very interested to see what Brian Eno does with them on this new album, pretentious title be damned.

    *”I Kissed a Girl” by Katy Perry? Hey folks, welcome to the first official novelty song of 2008. It wasn’t particularly good 15 years ago when Jill Sobule hit with a song by the same title (‘memba her?) and it’s not particularly good now. Aw, look at the video. She’s petting a PUSSYcat. Haha! It’s supposed to be ironic!! Katy, Pink called…she wants her sound back. And she probably HAS kissed…well, a LOT of girls. So there!!

    *Serious staying power for Kid Rock, as “Rock & Roll Jesus” closes in on the million scanned mark and jumps back into the Top 20 something like eight months after it’s release. Out of the whole “rap/rock” scene that he kinda got lumped in with a decade or so ago, who’d have thought that he’d pretty much be the last man standing?

    *That Flobots song still makes my ears bleed. Sorry guys.

  • Reality Rock Bottom Part Deux: Akon Guest Judges a Dance Competition (Seriously).


    It’s not just has-beens making humiliating appeals to reality TV show audiences to keep themselves in the public eye these days. It’s future has-beens -err, today’s pop up-and-comers. On this week’s finale episode of Bravo’s latest Project Runway-style competition Step It Up and Dance, hosted by Elizabeth Berkley (speaking of has-beens making humiliating appeals to reality TV show audiences), the guest judge for a preliminary challenge was none other than budding hip-hop mogul Akon.

    Joining Akon was his protégé Colby O’Donis (the show’s captions flatteringly identified him as a singer-songwriter) who wears a look of permanent bedazzlement and vacancy (think Lance Bass without the boy band to hide himself in). Colby O’Donis wasn’t there to judge. In fact, like a proper trophy boy, he barely spoke a word. And as it turns out, Colby was, in fact, the prize for this challenge. The winning dancer would appear in the, ahem, singer-songwriter’s forthcoming video, scheduled to be filmed in a couple weeks.

    The challenge involved the final four contestants – Cody Green, a Stepford dancer (from Canada!) with a respectable Broadway resume; Miguel Zarate, a flamboyant drama queen who bares a passing (from a distance, in the right light, if you squint really hard) resemblance to Prince, circa 1991; Michelle “Mochi” Camaya, a slinky, wildly versatile Filipino with a confident stage presence; and adorable underdog Nick Drago, the token straight guy with a chin like a cartoon robot – performing a sequence assembled by Rent choreographer Vincent Patterson set to Fergie‘s “Labels & Love” from the Sex and the City soundtrack. The sequence itself was a sort of razzle-dazzly number which had the dancers shopping for clothes like the Sex and the City foursome, only three of them were men, and a number of the moves were clearly meant to be danced by women.

    While all four performed the number respectably – even the hapless Nick, whose schtick was compared to Gene Kelly (“he’s a guy“) by one of the judges, was game for some awkwardly homo-but-not-really-erotic pairings – Mochi, as the only woman among them, had a clear advantage both in terms of the dancing, and, of course, the judging. While Akon was clearly impressed with the skills of Miguel, it was also abundantly clear that Miguel would not work in a Colby O’Donis video. It’s not just that Miguel could set off the gaydar of a small woodland creature 500 miles away: Miguel is, quite simply, a bigger star than Colby O’Donis. Mochi won the Akon challenge, and one can only guess that Colby O’Donis now sits on her mantle. Much to Miguel’s chagrin, Cody Green ultimately (and probably rightly) took the series’ $100,000 prize.

    -P. Lorentz

  • A Purple Celebration: Happy Birthday, Mr. Nelson


    Today, June 7th, 2008, is Prince Rogers Nelson’s 50th birthday. And despite the contrarian, slightly grumpy figure he’s cut over the last couple of years, no one can deny that these 62 inches of dynamite are responsible for some of the best music made over the past thirty years.

    In an age where most artists or bands are lucky to cut two or three classic albums, Prince has made at least four absolutely perfect (Dirty Mind, 1999, Purple Rain and Sign ‘o The Times) albums, with another 5 or 6 that come close (Controversy, Parade and The Gold Experience chief among those). He’s the total package-one of the all-time greats on two instruments (guitar and keyboards), a strong songwriter, an amazing entertainer and a top-shelf vocalist.

    Turn on pop radio today and every song that doesn’t sound like Michael Jackson sounds like Prince. The hollow drum-machine suound that he perfected in the early Eighties is still in just about every Neptunes, Timbaland or will.i.am production. Justin Timberlake can talk shit all he wants, but all “FutureSex/LoveSounds” is, is a Prince album with Michael Jackson vocals.

    Shit, how many artists are so bad ass that you can put together a greatest hits album of songs that he’s written and/or produced but didn’t sing and it would still be as bangin’ as a greatest hits album comprised solely of music he wrote/produced/performed?

    Since Mr. Nelson is notoriously prickly about people posting footage of him on the web, I won’t dig through Youtube to find video footage of him. However, we can’t celebrate the man properly without at least some music, so enjoy some excellent music that while not fronted by the man, contained his involvement.

    Stevie Nicks’ “Stand Back” was not only heavily influenced by Prince’s “1999”, but the man himself played keyboards on this record and got a co-write credit for his handiwork.

    “A Love Bizarre” is essentially a Prince song. He sings every line along with Sheila E. and adlibs enough that the song really should be considered a duet.

    Maybe someday, someone will be nice enough to release The Family’s album on CD. For those unaware, The Family was Prince’s attempt to a) keep a band in his stable after the dissolution of The Time and b) “get some of that Duran Duran money”. Their 1985 album is a highly soughty-after classic, not only because it’s a great album but also because it contains the original version of “Nothing Compares 2 U”, which went on to become a huge #1 for Sinead O’ Connor.

    Happy birthday, Mr. Nelson. How many guys out there can rock the shit out of Radiohead’s “Creep” in high heels while only being 15 years away from social security?