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Tag: Susan Boyle

  • Chart Chat 1/13/10: All About Ke$ha

    Susan Boyle has finally met her match.

    After a six-week run at the top, Boyle loses the #1 spot on the Billboard Albums Chart to another new female artist. Dance/pop singer Ke$ha opens at the top with her debut album “Animal”. The album scans 152,000 copies in its’ first week out-easily beating Boyle’s total of 93,000.

    As is customary for this time of the year, the chart is very quiet. The next highest debut comes all the way down at #27, where “American Idol” Katharine McPhee debuts with her latest, scanning 15,000 copies. Only a small handful of albums showed an increase over the previous weeks’ sales, with an iTunes promotion being responsible for the biggest increases-for Radiohead’s “Kid A” and Lenny Kravitz’ “Greatest Hits”. The two decade-old albums more than doubled in sales this week, and it’s not a stretch to think that Lenny’s involvement in the leaked Michael Jackson track that briefly lit up the internets last week was also a catalyst in his sales increase.

    Another increase this week occurs towards the bottom of the Top 200, where Vampire Weekend’s debut re-enters at #199, with an 11% increase in scans over the previous week. Look for VW’s sophomore release, “Contra”, to challenge for the top spot next week. However, with Ke$ha being a new artist and people just now finding out about her, she could maintain her stronghold on the top of the charts for a second week.

    Here’s this week’s Top 20:

    1) Ke$ha “Animal”
    2) Susan Boyle “I Dreamed a Dream”
    3) Lady GaGa “The Fame”
    4) Alicia Keys “The Element of Freedom”
    5) Mary J. Blige “Stronger with Each Tear”
    6) Soundtrack “Alvin & the Chipmunks 2-The Squeaquel”
    7) Taylor Swift “Fearless”
    8) The Black Eyed Peas “The E.N.D.”
    9) Justin Bieber “My World”
    10) Lady GaGa “The Fame: Monster”
    11) Rihanna “Rated R”
    12) Michael Buble “Crazy Love”
    13) Young Money “We Are Young Money”
    14) Owl City “Ocean Eyes”
    15) Glee Cast “Glee: The Music Vol. 2”
    16) Eminem “Relapse”
    17) Lady Antebellum “Lady Antebellum”
    18) Carrie Underwood “Play On”
    19) John Mayer “Battle Studies”
    20) Glee Cast “Glee: The Music Vol. 1”

  • Chart Chat 2009 Wrap Up: Susan Boyle Falls Just Short

    Soundscan’s 2009 officially ended at midnight on Monday morning, and Taylor Swift and Susan Boyle were racing for the prize for best-selling album of the year. Swift manages to win in a photo finish. “Fearless” sold 3.22 million copies in the calendar year, just a shade over Boyle’s 3.10 million. Boyle can take some consolation in the fact that “I Dreamed a Dream” tops the Billboard album chart for a sixth consecutive week, with sales of 137,000 copies as the industry winds down from the holiday boom.

    Actually, this week’s Top 5 is very kind to the fairer sex. Aside from Boyle at the top and Swift at #5, the chart is filled out by a resurgent Lady GaGa at #2, Alicia Keys at #3 and Mary J. Blige at #4. The post-Christmas lull and a lack of new releases makes for a pretty uneventful chart, but that may change next week as newcomer Ke$ha challenges for the #1 spot.

    Let’s re-direct our attention to the year-end charts. Swift and Boyle had the only albums to move over 3 million units in 2009. All told, 5 albums crossed the 2 million mark, 22 albums crossed the 1 million mark and 62 albums scanned over half a million copies, as though we needed any further proof that the industry is shrinking-nearly 100 albums crossed the Gold barrier as recently as 2005.

    A few trends that jump out as I peruse the year-end totals:

    *Country is one genre that is illegal-download and recession proof. 14 country albums sold over half a million copies this year, led by two Taylor Swift albums. In addition to “Fearless”, her self-titled debut was the 35th best-selling album of the year with 782,000 copies sold. Other major country successes included Rascal Flatts, Carrie Underwood, the Zac Brown Band and the country-flavored “Hannah Montana” movie soundtrack, all of which were million-sellers.

    *Hip-hop had a mixed bag of a year. Three rap albums land in the Top 10. The Black Eyed Peas had the year’s 7th biggest seller with “The E.N.D.”, followed by Eminem’s “Relapse” at #8 and Jay-Z’s “Blueprint 3” at #9. The only other rap album to sell more than half a million units this past year was T.I.’s “Paper Trail”, which pops in at #58 with 530,000 units scanned. You could also technically include Kanye West’s “808s and Heartbreak”, which scanned 597,000 units this year, although it’s not a rap album per se.

    *If you’re an “American Idol” fan, now might be a good time to start buying music. Carrie Underwood’s “Play On” was the only album from an “Idol” alum to crash the million-sold barrier this year. She’s followed by Daughtry (#31, 882K) and Kelly Clarkson (#33, 813K). If you’re looking for other former “Idol”s, you have to go much lower on the chart, where you’ll find David Cook (#73), Underwood’s “Carnival Ride” (#74, Adam Lambert (#81), the first Daughtry album (#144), Underwood’s debut (#158), Jennifer Hudson (#166), Kris Allen (#183) and Kellie Pickler (#191).

    *Good old dependable rock & roll? Not so much. The biggest-selling rock album of the year was Kings of Leon’s “Only by the Night”, which lands at #10, with 1.4 million copies sold. Nickelback’s “Dark Horse” trails right behind at #11. Along with the “Twilight” soundtrack (#13), they are the only rock albums in the Top 20.

    *Then, of course, there’s Michael Jackson. “Number Ones” finished as the year’s third biggest-seller, with 2.4 million copies sold. It was followed by “This is It” (#12), “Thriller” (#14), and “The Essential Michael Jackson” (#20).

    *As far as sales disappointments go, albums by these superstar artists failed to even hit the 400,000 copies sold mark: Mariah Carey, Colbie Caillat, Creed, Fabolous, Rob Thomas and 50 Cent, while albums by Rick Ross and Bon Jovi have stalled under the 500,000 mark.
    Here are the year’s Top 40 sellers, according to Soundscan:

    1) Taylor Swift “Fearless”
    2) Susan Boyle “I Dreamed a Dream”
    3) Michael Jackson “Number Ones”
    4) Lady GaGa “The Fame”
    5) Andrea Bocelli “My Christmas”
    6) Soundtrack “Hannah Montana: The Movie”
    7) The Black Eyed Peas “The E.N.D.”
    8) Eminem “Relapse”
    9) Jay-Z “Blueprint 3”
    10) Kings of Leon “Only by the Night”
    11) Nickelback “Dark Horse”
    12) Michael Jackson “This is It”
    13) Soundtrack “Twilight”
    14) Michael Jackson “Thriller”
    15) Zac Brown Band “Foundation”
    16) Michael Buble “Crazy Love”
    17) Miley Cyrus “Time of Our Lives EP”
    18) Beyonce “I Am…Sasha Fierce”
    19) Carrie Underwood “Play On”
    20) Michael Jackson “The Essential Michael Jackson”
    21) Rascal Flatts “Unstoppable”
    22) U2 “No Line on the Horizon”
    23) Dave Matthews Band “Big Whiskey & the GrooGrux King”
    24) Lady Antebellum “Lady Antebellum”
    25) Soundtrack “Twilight: New Moon”
    26) Jason Aldean “Wide Open”
    27) Maxwell “BLACKsummersnight”
    28) Whitney Houston “I Look to You”
    29) Green Day “21st Century Breakdown”
    30) Darius Rucker “Learn to Live”
    31) Daughtry “Leave This Town”
    32) Various “Now That’s What I Call Music 32”
    33) Kelly Clarkson “All I Ever Wanted”
    34) P!nk “Funhouse”
    35) Taylor Swift “Taylor Swift”
    36) The Fray “The Fray”
    37) Alicia Keys “The Element of Freedom”
    38) Various “Now That’s What I Call Music 30”
    39) Justin Bieber “My World”
    40) Keith Urban “Defying Gravity”

  • Billboard Presents The Top Music Moments of the Decade

    In my haste to start covering year-end Soundscan stuff, I didn’t realize that there were actually 53 weeks in this chart year!! So we’ll take a look at some of those year end numbers NEXT week. This, of course, also means that Susan Boyle still has a chance to overtake Taylor Swift for the honor of having the year’s best selling album, although I would say that chance is rather slim, considering both the fact that sales are going to drop sharply in the coming week as well as the fact that the kids who will be cashing in gift cards and exchanging their uncool Christmas gifts will be more apt to pick up Taylor Swift and RETURN copies of the Susan Boyle album.

    Anyhoo, while we’re waiting for the year-end charts to be tabulated, let’s take a look at Billboard’s list of the Top 50 Music Moments of the past decade. This list is a pretty accurate compilation of the past ten years’ most earthshaking popular music moments. From ‘Nsync and Eminem’s massive sales at the decade’s outset to the popularity of the iPod, the device that changed the way we listen to music forever, a lot has happened, good and bad, in music.

    That said, some of the moments listed here made me raise my eyebrow. Was the Spice Girls’ reunion tour important to ANYONE? Did Noreaga’s “Oye Mi Canto” really kick off the reggaeton movement (and which was a bigger flash in the pan, reggaeton or Texas rap?)? Couldn’t they have used a more sensitive headline to describe Elliott Smith’s death? If Kanye West was unknown outside of hip-hop circles when he had his little Hurricane Katrina telethon outburst, then who were the three million people who bought “The College Dropout” BEFORE that incident? Who edited and proofed this thing? It’s one thing to see numerous spelling and grammatical errors in a blog like this (which is normally composed on the fly and has an audience of 30), but when Billboard magazine is making more spelling errors than me (and I assume they pay someone to ensure that those errors don’t happen), we definitely have a problem.