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Tag: Prince

  • Chart Chat 7/24/08: Jesse McCartney, The Jonas Brothers, Alanis and More!!!

    And…we’re off! Here are this week’s Top 20 Singles and Albums as provided by the lovely folks at Billboard Communications.

      Top 20 Albums

    1) “Untitled”-Nas
    2) “Tha Carter III”-Li’l Wayne
    3) “Mamma Mia Soundtrack”-Various Artists
    4) “Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends”-Coldplay
    5) “Camp Rock Soundtrack”-Various Artists
    6) “Rock & Roll Jesus”-Kid Rock
    7) “Life, Death, Love & Freedom”-John Mellencamp
    8) “The Greatest Story Ever Told”-David Banner
    9) “Beautiful Eyes EP”-Taylor Swift
    10) “Good Girl Gone Bad”-Rihanna
    11) “Now That’s What I Call Music Vol. 28”-Various Artists
    12) “Taylor Swift”-Taylor Swift
    13) “All Sides”-O.A.R.
    14) “Around the Bend”-Randy Travis
    15) “One of the Boys”-Katy Perry
    16) “Modern Guilt”-Beck
    17) “Indestructible”-Disturbed
    18) “Revelation”-Journey
    19) “Here I Stand”-Usher
    20) “The Dark Knight”-Soundtrack

    The cover of pop singer Jesse McCartney\'s latest CD, \"Departure\".
      Top 20 Singles

    1) “I Kissed a Girl”-Katy Perry
    2) “Take a Bow”-Rihanna
    3) “Forever”-Chris Brown
    4) “Lollipop”-Li’l Wayne feat. Static Major
    5) “Viva La Vida”-Coldplay
    6) “Bleeding Love”-Leona Lewis
    7) “Pocketful of Sunshine”-Natasha Bedingfield
    8) “A Milli”-Li’l Wayne
    9) “Dangerous”-Kardinal Offishal feat. Akon
    10) “Leavin’”-Jesse McCartney
    11) “Burnin’ Up”-The Jonas Brothers
    12) “When I Grow Up”-Pussycat Dolls
    13) “7 Things”-Miley Cyrus
    14) “Bust it Baby Pt. 2”-Plies feat. Ne-Yo
    15) “Disturbia”-Rihanna
    16) “Pushin’ Me Away”-The Jonas Brothers
    17) “Shake It”-Metro Station
    18) “Get Like Me”-David Banner feat. Chris Brown
    19) “Closer”-Ne-Yo
    20) “Lolli Lolli (Pop That Body)”-Three 6 Mafia feat. Project Pat, Young D & Superpower

    *Well, I’ll be damned. Not only did “Mamma Mia” do mighty fine business at the box office, but the soundtrack nearly doubled in sales this week (and promises to do the same next week). Considering this, as well as the fact that “Hairspray” was the soundtrack hit of last summer, is it safe to say that gay men comprise a quite large segment of the music buying audience?

    *The Jonas Brothers (who are in the Top 20 twice this week) are on the cover of the latest issue of Rolling Stone. Don’t you think Jann Wenner would have caught more than a little shit if he’d put Hanson on the cover of RS 10 years ago or put the New Kids on the cover 20 years ago?

    *I knew I could work an NKOTB reference into this column somewhere.

    *Wasn’t Jesse McCartney trying to be Ryan Cabrera five years ago? Why is he trying to be Ne-Yo these days?

    *Never thought a Canadian rapper would make his way into the Top 10 in America? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Kardinal Offishall. I’ll spare you the video. You can thank me later.

    *It should be fairly obvious, and I think I’ve mentioned it before, but isn’t it so easy to look at the top selling albums, then look at the most popular singles and realize who’s buying what these days?

    *For a band that gets collectively rimmed by the rock press as much as The Hold Steady does, you’ve gotta imagine that the #30 start for their new album “Stay Positive” has gotta be something of a disappointment. When Randy Travis sells more records than you in his first week twenty years after his peak, you’ve got to be just a little embarrassed, no?

    *This week’s “Catch a Falling Star” award is shared by Alanis Morissette and Weezer. Alanis’s record sales have been dropping ever since everyone and their momma bought “Jagged Little Pill” in ’95-’96. “Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie” sold 3 or 4 million off of fumes, the next album debuted at #1 and promptly sank like a stone, and outside of a brief resurgence due to the re-recorded version of “Pill”, Alanis has slowly sunk into marginalia. Her latest album, “Flavors of Entanglement”, shows some sign of life this week, bouncing up 18 spots to #40 this week, but for an album to be out of the Top 40 within a month and a half when one of your older albums spent twice that amount of time at #1 has got to sting a little bit. As for Rivers Cuomo and his boys, it seems like word of mouth is what sunk Weezer’s “Red Album”. With the general consensus being that this is by far the worst album of the band’s career, the album stands at #42 after 7 weeks. Ah, well. Rivers always has that degree to fall back on.

    *Finally, “The Dark Knight” soundtrack debuts at #20 this week. It’s not near as successful as the soundtracks to some of the earlier “Batman” movies, but charts extremely well for an album of instrumental score music. And it’s a perfect way to end this week’s Chart Chat with…”Batdance”!! YAY!!!

    Fuck. I forgot. Prince hates the internets these days. Oh well.I tried, y’all. Till next week.

  • Is Entertainment Weekly’s List of the 100 Greatest Albums of the Past 25 Years a Purple Mess?

    I actually meant to discuss this a couple weeks ago when it was actually current news, but hey, better late than never.

    I’m a list guy. I can spend hours, days on end attempting to make sense of lists of the best sitcoms of all time, or whether “Off the Wall” or “Thriller” is the Purple Rain Cover better Michael Jackson album (“Off the Wall” is), or…well, you get the picture. Anyway, the folks at “Entertainment Weekly” published their 1,000th issue a couple weeks ago (congratulations to them), and they posted lists of the 100 greatest TV shows, movies, books and records of the past 25 years. While the TV and movie lists were interesting (book lists don’t move me), I was most intrigued by their list of the Top 100 albums. Sitting pretty at the top of the list was…”To the Extreme” by Vanilla Ice.

    Obviously, I’m kidding. The album they picked for the #1 spot was Prince’s “Purple Rain”, which struck me as sort of a strange choice. I mean, it’s logical. Hell, it’s an incredible fucking album. It’s just not a standard or expected choice. I would have expected “OK Computer” or “Nevermind” (both of which would have been as deserving…”Nevermind” didn’t even make the list), or, if the EW folks wanted to be edgy, Winehouse’s “Back To Black” or any of the three qualifying Kanye West albums. But “Purple Rain” just seems like sort of a left-field choice, or as left-field as any album as huge as “Purple Rain” was can be, considering the damn thing spent damn near six months at #1 on the charts.

    (more…)

  • 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?