Charting the Charts
In what I hope will be a semi-regular feature, I dissect some of the trends emerging in the Billboard charts.
Lake is Sexy, Land is Back: two Timbas vault to top of charts. With 250,000 iTunes downloads sold in a single week - a near-record - Justin Timberlake's "SexyBack" shoots from No. 31 to No. 1 on the Hot 100. It's producer Timbaland's second #1 hit of 2006, just four weeks after Nelly Furtado's "Promiscuous" spent its last week there. In between those two Timba #1s was Fergie's scholarly, Rhodes-level opus "London Bridge," which falls back to make room for J. Lake after three weeks on top. In short, our long national nightmare is over.
"Crazy" seals its fate; a nation weeps. Falling from No. 4 after eight weeks (!) at No. 2, Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" earns an unusual distinction: the only song to peak in the runner-up slot in all of 2006. In other words, every other song that's landed at No. 2 this calendar year has then moved up to No. 1. I promise this is the last thing I'll write about this song for several months.
Most important hip-hop group of the last 10 years beaten by Puffy protégés. Everyone had OutKast preordained to debut at #1 with the Idlewild soundtrack, but instead Danity Kane, a troupe formed through Diddy's Making the Band, beat them handily. (It wasn't even close.) André 3000 has been bored with hip-hop for about five years now, and I think we all know that the only reason Big Boi has convinced his peripatetic brutha to keep making OutKast records was the awards and the big paydays. With Idlewild the movie sleepy at the box office and their latest music shown up by a bunch of reality-TV stars, isn't it time to drop the facade and let Dre go Hollywood already? It was a good ride while it lasted.
Expect insufferable boomers to crow next week. Early indications from retailers this week have Bob Dylan selling around 150,000 copies of Modern Times by week's end, which would give him enough to top next week's album chart. It'd be his first #1 album since Desire in 1976. I'm happy for Bob, and the album is genuinely good, but the next week of arts journalism is going to be insufferable. Brace yourselves for a wave of congratulatory articles by middle-aged pundits, who will lump this accomplishment in with Johnny Cash's unlikely #1 album a month and a half ago as some kind of "return of the demigods" to the charts - conveniently ignoring that album sales are so shitty this year that even Cash's and Dylan's piddling totals are enough to go all the way. And that the only people still buying CDs were alive for Woodstock.
Lake is Sexy, Land is Back: two Timbas vault to top of charts. With 250,000 iTunes downloads sold in a single week - a near-record - Justin Timberlake's "SexyBack" shoots from No. 31 to No. 1 on the Hot 100. It's producer Timbaland's second #1 hit of 2006, just four weeks after Nelly Furtado's "Promiscuous" spent its last week there. In between those two Timba #1s was Fergie's scholarly, Rhodes-level opus "London Bridge," which falls back to make room for J. Lake after three weeks on top. In short, our long national nightmare is over.
"Crazy" seals its fate; a nation weeps. Falling from No. 4 after eight weeks (!) at No. 2, Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" earns an unusual distinction: the only song to peak in the runner-up slot in all of 2006. In other words, every other song that's landed at No. 2 this calendar year has then moved up to No. 1. I promise this is the last thing I'll write about this song for several months.
Most important hip-hop group of the last 10 years beaten by Puffy protégés. Everyone had OutKast preordained to debut at #1 with the Idlewild soundtrack, but instead Danity Kane, a troupe formed through Diddy's Making the Band, beat them handily. (It wasn't even close.) André 3000 has been bored with hip-hop for about five years now, and I think we all know that the only reason Big Boi has convinced his peripatetic brutha to keep making OutKast records was the awards and the big paydays. With Idlewild the movie sleepy at the box office and their latest music shown up by a bunch of reality-TV stars, isn't it time to drop the facade and let Dre go Hollywood already? It was a good ride while it lasted.
Expect insufferable boomers to crow next week. Early indications from retailers this week have Bob Dylan selling around 150,000 copies of Modern Times by week's end, which would give him enough to top next week's album chart. It'd be his first #1 album since Desire in 1976. I'm happy for Bob, and the album is genuinely good, but the next week of arts journalism is going to be insufferable. Brace yourselves for a wave of congratulatory articles by middle-aged pundits, who will lump this accomplishment in with Johnny Cash's unlikely #1 album a month and a half ago as some kind of "return of the demigods" to the charts - conveniently ignoring that album sales are so shitty this year that even Cash's and Dylan's piddling totals are enough to go all the way. And that the only people still buying CDs were alive for Woodstock.