Ed. note: Chris “dennisobell” Molanphy, our resident chart guru, looks at the upward, downward, and lack of movement on this week’s Billboard charts:
If you’re trying to guess what might end up as Billboard’s top song of 2008, you might take a gander at this week’s Hot 100, where a prime contender is still sitting in the top three after peaking months ago.
That would be Leona Lewis’ “Bleeding Love,” the neo-diva ballad that’s outlasted anything her role model Mariah Carey has released so far this year. According to Nielsen SoundScan, which released its (mostly dismal) midyear report this week, Lewis’ smash is the top-selling single for the six-month period beginning Dec. 31 and ending June 29.
That doesn’t necessarily make the Lewis track a lock for the year’s top prize, due to some technicalities which I’ll discuss momentarily. But there is one thing that makes “Bleeding Love” emblematic of 2008: it’s an undeniable smash single which has proven tough for the artist to follow up.
According to SoundScan, the first-half ‘08 best-sellers are “Bleeding Love,” at 2.6 million downloads, Flo Rida’s “Low” featuring T-Pain, with 2.4 million, and Jordin Sparks’ duet with Chris Brown, “No Air,” which sold 2.1 million. All three songs are currently charting on the Hot 100. This week, about two months after its four-week run at No. 1, “Bleeding” sits pretty at No. 3. Sparks’ ballad, after peaking at No. 3, just fell out of the Top 10 last week, but it’s still hanging on to the Top 20 at No. 18. And the unkillable former No. 1 “Low,” now in its 36th week on the chart, finally falls out of the Top 40, down six spots to No. 42.
The Lewis and Sparks tracks sold virtually all of their copies in calendar 2008. But Flo Rida’s hit did serious business last year–about another one and a half million sold in 2007. “Low,” already the biggest-selling digital track of all time and still selling well (it ranks 52nd among this week’s top digital songs), is now about 5,000 copies shy of total cumulative sales of 4 million.
Mr. Rida’s 2007 sales are important to our discussion here, because as I’ve explained in this space before, Billboard persists in using an annoyingly skewed “chart year” in its year-end tallies, one that runs from Dec. 1 to Nov. 30. That extra month of sales will give “Low” a huge advantage in the year-end tally: it hit its stride last December and rose to No. 1 just after Christmas, months before anyone in America had even heard of Lewis.
Lewis is an established pop star in the UK, with three top hits to her credit (two No. 1’s and a double-sided No. 2 single). It’s too soon to say how she’ll be regarded here, but so far, the Lewis phenomenon in America is all about one massive song; Sony/BMG has held off formally releasing a second single until mid-July. I say “formally,” because of course, in the digital age, once an album is released any of its songs are de facto singles; and on the modern-day charts, any song radio chooses to play is Hot 100-eligible, regardless of a label’s marketing plans.
So far, neither the public nor radio programmers have flocked to a second Lewis song en masse. The label’s planned second hit is the thumping, midtempo pop track “Better in Time,” which has been charting on Billboard’s Pop 100 list for nearly two months (peaking at No. 45, now down a bit), but it has made no impression on the big chart. “Better” is Lewis’ second-biggest seller at iTunes, but comparing it to “Bleeding” is like comparing a minnow to a baleen whale. Among all digital tracks, “Better” only ranks 176th in sales this week, with 8,200 copies. These are decent numbers for a song that’s received little formal promotion as yet, but they’re a little anemic for the followup single to the year’s best-selling hit.
Lewis shouldn’t be too dejected by this state of affairs–it’s been a tougher year than expected for pop divas to follow up their hits. As I alluded above, Carey has had a tough time after her latest album produced a quick-burning No. 1, “Touch My Body.” In the time it’s taken Lewis’ handlers to milk “Bleeding Love” for sales and airplay, Carey’s people have already squeezed all they can out of “Touch” (now ranked No. 59 in its 20th and final week on the Hot 100); tried and failed with a second single, “Bye Bye” (peaked at No. 19, now down to No. 69); and started promoting a third hit, the Idolator-approved “I’ll Be Lovin’ U Long Time.” That third Carey single debuts this week at No. 100…on the Pop 100, not the Hot 100, where it is still M.I.A. So much for the year of Mimi.
And forget the divas–what about digital-sales giant Flo Rida? After “Low,” his Timbaland-assisted second single “Elevator” was a flop, peaking quickly at No. 16 before plummeting off the chart in under three months. And one week after his third single, “In the Ayer,” debuted at a more-than-solid No. 38, it’s down to No. 40.
Other than Sparks, who can still hope that her post-American Idol album will produce a third Top 10 charter (”One Step at a Time” debuts this week at No. 79), none of this year’s biggest smash songs has been followed by a serious hit.
That’s not to say no one is having a good year: Lil Wayne’s “Lollipop” is finally giving way to “A Milli” (up seven spots to No. 14); and Rihanna, still riding “Take a Bow” in the top five, has “Distrubia” waiting in the wings (up seven to No. 11–a surprise after her fluke debut last week).
But in a digital-fueled, singles-based economy, the charts are getting crueler all the time.
Here’s a rundown of the rest of this week’s charts:
• As we forecast last week, the Jonas Brothers made a splashy debut on the chart. “Burnin’ Up” materializes all the way up at No. 5–the second-biggest debut of the year after David Cook’s No. 3 appearance last month with “The Time of My Life.”
The Jonases probably would have placed even higher if the song had stronger radio airplay–thus far, it’s nonexistent on the Hot 100 Airplay list, but it ranks 31st on the all-Top 40 Pop 100 Airplay list. Expect “Burnin’” to hold on or move higher, unless fans get distracted by a succession of pre-album Jonas singles Disney plans to drop in the next few weeks. Speaking of which…
• A few weeks ago in this space, I talked at length about the unusual multi-single strategies fueling the recent blockbuster albums by Lil Wayne and Coldplay. According to a story in last week’s Billboard, this is a more coherent strategy than I first suspected, and (like so many things on the charts these days) it’s spurred by iTunes:
“Releasing a single for digital download before an album’s debut is about as standard these days as making it available to radio. But in the past few months, labels and artists have begun releasing multiple tracks in advance of an album’s street date to promote new releases, relying in no small degree on Apple’s iTunes Music Store’s Complete My Album feature to convert them into full-album sales — in some cases with striking effectiveness.”
It’s been a while since I’ve said anything nice about the music industry, but kudos to the labels’ promotion teams. This strategy takes advantage of an Apple feature in a way that benefits pretty much everybody: insatiable fans, who get to buy early singles confident they’ll save money off the iTunes album release later; the acts, who don’t have to be bound by the old, hidebound one-track-every-quarter release strategy; the labels, who protect their first-week album sales numbers; and Apple, of course.
Expect numerous superstar acts to try what we’ll now refer to as “pulling a Weezy,” dropping an array of early singles in the leadup to their albums’ release dates. The Jonases are first–they’ll prep fans for the mid-August release of A Little Bit Longer with, in order, “Pushing Me Away” on July 15, “Tonight” (no relation to the old New Kids hit, I guess) on July 29, and the title track on Aug. 5.
Top 10s
Last week’s position and total weeks charted in parentheses (Digital Songs chart includes total downloads/percentage change in parentheses):
Hot 100
1. Katy Perry, “I Kissed a Girl” (LW No. 1, 8 weeks)
2. Lil Wayne feat. Static Major, “Lollipop” (LW No. 2, 16 weeks)
3. Leona Lewis, “Bleeding Love” (LW No. 3, 20 weeks)
4. Rihanna, “Take a Bow” (LW No. 4, 12 weeks)
5. Jonas Brothers, “Burnin’ Up” (CHART DEBUT)
6. Coldplay, “Viva la Vida” (LW No. 6, 8 weeks)
7. Plies feat. Ne-Yo, “Bust It Baby (Part 2)” (LW No. 8, 14 weeks)
8. Chris Brown, “Forever” (LW No. 7, 10 weeks)
9. Demi Lovato & Joe Jonas, “This Is Me” (LW No. 11, 2 weeks)
10. Natasha Bedingfield, “Pocketful of Sunshine” (LW No. 5, 20 weeks)
Hot Digital Songs
1. Katy Perry, “I Kissed a Girl” (LW No. 1, 204,000 downloads, -6%)
2. Jonas Brothers, “Burnin’ Up” (CHART DEBUT, 183,000 downloads)
3. Demi Lovato & Joe Jonas, “This Is Me” (LW No. 2, 123,000 downloads, +7%)
4. Coldplay, “Viva la Vida” (LW No. 3, 137,000 downloads, +7%)
5. Rihanna, “Disturbia” (LW No. 6, 112,000 downloads, +2%)
6. Miley Cyrus, “7 Things” (LW No. 4, 106,000 downloads, -19%)
7. The Pussycat Dolls, “When I Grow Up” (LW No. 5, 103,000 downloads, -20%)
8. Lil Wayne feat. Static Major, “Lollipop” (LW No. 8, 93,000 downloads, -15%)
9. Metro Station, “Shake It” (LW No. 10, 91,000 downloads, -11%)
10. Rihanna, “Take a Bow” (LW No. 9, 88,000 downloads, -13%)
Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
1. Keyshia Cole, “Heaven Sent” (LW No. 1, 14 weeks)
2. Lil Wayne, “A Milli” (LW No. 4, 10 weeks)
3. Plies feat. Ne-Yo, “Bust It Baby (Part 2)” (LW No. 3, 18 weeks)
4. The-Dream, “I Luv Your Girl” (LW No. 5, 18 weeks)
5. Chris Brown, “Take You Down” (LW No. 6, 14 weeks)
6. Alicia Keys, “Teenage Love Affair” (LW No. 7, 20 weeks)
7. Lil Wayne feat. Static Major, “Lollipop” (LW No. 2, 16 weeks)
8. Usher feat. Beyonce and Lil Wayne, “Love in This Club, Part II” (LW No. 8, 10 weeks)
9. Trey Songz, “Last Time” (LW No. 9, 22 weeks)
10. Young Jeezy feat. Kanye West, “Put On” (LW No. 10, 8 weeks)
Hot Country Songs
1. Montgomery Gentry, “Back When I Knew It All” (LW No. 3, 19 weeks)
2. Blake Shelton, “Home” (LW No. 2, 23 weeks)
3. Kenny Chesney, “Better as a Memory” (LW No. 1, 15 weeks)
4. Alan Jackson, “Good Time” (LW No. 5, 12 weeks)
5. Dierks Bentley, “Trying to Stop Your Leaving” (LW No. 7, 25 weeks)
6. Brooks & Dunn, “Put a Girl in It” (LW No. 9, 10 weeks)
7. Carrie Underwood, “Last Name” (LW No. 4, 16 weeks)
8. Sugarland, “All I Want to Do” (LW No. 10, 6 weeks)
9. Brad Paisley, “I’m Still a Guy” (LW No. 6, 19 weeks)
10. Keith Anderson, “I Still Miss You” (LW No. 12, 22 weeks)
Hot Modern Rock Tracks
1. Weezer, “Pork & Beans” (LW No. 1, 11 weeks)
2. The Offspring, “Hammerhead” (LW No. 2, 8 weeks)
3. Foo Fighters, “Let It Die” (LW No. 3, 13 weeks)
4. Linkin Park, “Given Up” (LW No. 4, 17 weeks)
5. Seether, “Rise Above This” (LW No. 5, 19 weeks)
6. Death Cab for Cutie, “I Will Possess Your Heart” (LW No. 6, 15 weeks)
7. Disturbed, “Inside the Fire” (LW No. 9, 14 weeks)
8. Coldplay, “Viva la Vida” (LW No. 12, 4 weeks)
9. Nine Inch Nails, “Discipline” (LW No. 7, 10 weeks)
10. Flobots, “Handlebars” (LW No. 8, 13 weeks)
The ENTIRE Nas album’s leaked, and Nas has a YouTube video out saying it’s “fucking exciting.”
So this CD’s going to sell 300K first week.
“Mr. Rida” FTW
Chris — The multiple singles “Complete My Album” theory is brilliant, but flawed in its execution. Admittedly, i don’t use iTunes, but my experience has always been that pre-album singles are packaged online as distinct releases. I can buy the “A Milli” single, and the “Lollipop” single, but they won’t be considered as part of “Tha Carter 3″ when I complete my album.
As it is described in the Billboard excerpt, this policy only makes sense if people wait until the album comes out officially, cherry pick the singles from the complete tracklist, then come back later and want the whole album.
I don’t quite buy this argument:
“I say “formally,” because of course, in the digital age, once an album is released any of its songs are de facto singles; and on the modern-day charts, any song radio chooses to play is Hot 100-eligible, regardless of a label’s marketing plans. So far, neither the public nor radio programmers have flocked to a second Lewis song en masse.”
Radio is very reluctant to play other album tracks unless they’ve been formally serviced by the record company. They’ll wait until they see an official adds date announced and then you start to see a few early stations take the plunge ahead of the adds date. Better In Time follows this pattern almost exactly - it’s already started to pick up decent spins across three formats a couple of weeks ahead of the Pop adds date.
Similarly I don’t think there’s any real evidence that the public flocks en masse to buy putative future singles apart from the week of album release. We’ve seen this quite frequently in recent months with the likes of Mariah “prematurely” debuting Bye Bye and Migrate on the Hot 100 the week of the release of E=MC2, Usher with Moving Mountains and (ironically) Leona debuting Better In Time the week Spirit was released, only for the tracks to drop away the week after.
Without decent radio play and a video doing the rounds on BET/VH1/MTV/Fuse the public don’t decide to push a single into the charts. Unfortunately they still need shepherding despite the apparent revolution in music delivery.
@Halfwit: I got the Complete Your Album deal when I bought the Lil Wayne. There is a time limit on the offer, but it definitely included all the pre-release singles.
@Halfwit: Yeah, to back up what @The Illiterate said (you wouldn’t know this if you don’t actually use the iTunes Store), I was pleasantly surprised to find that when Tha Carter III was released, it registered the fact that I bought the prerelease “Lollipop” single (originally credited to its own one-song “Album”) and allowed me to Complete [the] Album for 99 cents off. So believe it or not, it works.
@UKidol: I see your overall point, and no doubt label promotions continue to lead both radio and the buying public to what the next “singles” (really more like emphasis tracks) are, nine times out of 10. But there’s also no doubt the public, via iTunes, has nudged the labels toward songs they weren’t ready to embrace in the last few years (just think of “My Humps,” for starters; or don’t, I wouldn’t blame you), and that even radio has jumped the gun on songs without the labels’ say-so.
Probably the most prominent example, which predates the iTunes Store but postdates the conversion of the Hot 100 into a “songs” not “singles” chart, was Nelly’s 2002 smash “Dilemma” featuring Kelly Rowland. I specifically remember Billboard noting at the time that radio–spurred by listener requests–surprised Universal by jumping on the song as the followup to “Hot in Herre” with no prodding from the label, which at the time was considering “Air Force Ones” the probable followup. “Dilemma” started scaling the charts by leaps and bounds while “Herre” was still on top, catching the label (happily) off-guard. That kind of chart move would have been impossible on a pre-1998 Hot 100, which is all I was trying to say above.
Just to state what I meant more clearly: A song chart that permits so-called “album cuts” to chart means that radio can push any song–even one not formally promoted by the labels–onto the charts on its own (rare, but possible). And a music business that now allows every song on virtually every album release to be purchased a la carte is effectively allowing the public to vote for its own singles (less rare–and in fact quite common for brief periods after a blockbuster album is released; a couple of Lil Wayne’s recent hits were not pushed by the label as single downloads). I’m not saying either of these phenomena is commonplace, but they’re not unheard of, either.
Besides, let’s not forget that label-surprising hits are not even strictly a digital-era phenomenon! From “Maggie May,” to “I WIll Survive,” to the live version of “Coming Up,” radio has famously forced labels to flip 45’s and promote former B-sides as A-sides numerous times. It happens just often enough to be fun.
P.S. to @UKidol: You might well be right about the next Leona Lewis single. I’ll admit I’m jumping the gun a bit above (and trying to remain noncommittal about the song’s chances).
Still, I think Occam’s razor, or Music Industry 101, tells us a few obvious things:
• A label that waits five months to follow up a No. 1 smash is at least a little nervous the followup won’t live up to the first song’s success. Please see Blunt, James; Powter, Daniel.
• A song that has charted on a smaller, niche chart (in this case, the Pop 100, for nearly two months) has to have gotten some meager amount of promotion from the label–at least a signal to certain PDs along the lines of, Hey, we’re not going for adds yet, but this is gonna be the followup, if you’re interested. But if the song has been bumping around the middle of a 100-position chart, clearly the public isn’t into the song enough to buy it or request it, so that it gets more airplay on those stations that are playing it.
• A song that’s selling 176th out of 200 digital songs–when followup album cuts from other acts with zero label promotion are doing Top 50 numbers–is not shaping up to be a hit. Cruel, but usually true.
@Rock You Like An Iracane: I think Nas is missing the point. Weezy’s allure was not the leaks, which didn’t hurt, but it was his nonstop guest appearances on other artist’s albums. It made his fans eager for him to deliver his own product, and he did.
I can’t stand these charts. Leona Lewis?! Aural garbage. I’m horrified by the artists and songs that are listed. Coldplay and Death Cab do not belong in the company of these talentless commodities. The rest is just saccharine shite. Billboard hurts me.
@Chris Molanphy: I fully take on board your comments re: surprise hits of the past. I just think there’s been such a sea change in the habits of consumers re: illegal downloading combined with instant access single track downloading, that the rules of the game have changed significantly.
These days any artist whose album has already sold considerable amounts are going to really struggle to post decent digital sales of follow up tracks. This is why we’ll see an increasing trend to do a “Rihanna” - release a couple of singles prior to the album, release a couple of ok tracks aimed specifically at certain radio genres, re-release album but only after sending two previously unreleased tracks to radio + iTunes.
The same patterns are occurring the world over, with the Hot100 partially insulated against these trends by the heavy use of airplay - a buffer most sales-only charts don’t have the luxury of.
On your points re: Better In Time:
“A label that waits five months to follow up a No. 1 smash is at least a little nervous the follow up won’t live up to the first song’s success …”
Of course, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s been delayed for that reason - it would make more sense to rush the follow to surf the tidal wave of success. With Bleeding Love being so incredibly successful (16 consecutive weeks now in the top 4 of the Hot100 and record-breaking numbers on Pop Airplay) it’s been more a case of having to delay the second release for fear of getting swamped by the predecessor.
“A song that has charted on a smaller … that are playing it.”
It charted on the main Hot100 chart due to sales of approx. 40,000 the week of the album release - not sure it has charted anywhere since (maybe a week or two extra on the Pop100 as those digital sales tailed off - very typical in the digital era).
Of course some PDs will have been aware of it being the second single, as it had already been released worldwide however very few have switched yet from Bleeding Love as the call out scores have remained ridiculously high. It is only within the last 10 days or so that we’ve started to see a few stations switch (and still well ahead of the adds date). The next 2-3 weeks is the best time to judge how it might do as listeners get the chance to hear the song and thus request it.
“A song that’s selling 176th out of 200 digital songs–when followup album cuts from other acts with zero label promotion are doing Top 50 numbers–is not shaping up to be a hit. Cruel, but usually true.”
If that was the peak after considerable airplay I’d agree, but with very little airplay yet? And as I said artists who sell major album numbers seem to struggle to sell follow-up singles digitally until the airplay really kicks in - look at Alicia, Usher and Mariah for examples. Better In Time jumped 60 places this week on the digital chart commensurate with a low level airplay build so we’ll see how further airplay rises affect it in the coming weeks.