We complain often around here about the mainstream media’s tendency to oversimplify music stories in their quest for an easy headline. This week, Billboard’s Hot 100 and Billboard 200 suggest splashy headlines that practically write themselves: Return of the Big-Voiced Divas!
Topping the album chart is Whitney Houston’s much-dissected comeback effort I Look to You, her first No. 1 disc in more than 16 years. And breaking into the Top 10 on the songs chart is her onetime rival and duet partner, Mariah Carey, with the beleaguered pre-album track “Obsessed” — the single that might bring her one step closer to tying the Beatles’ all-time record for Hot 100 chart-toppers.
So: mission accomplished, right? We can pretend pegged jeans and Bill Clinton are back in style, because Diva Era Redux is on? (Why not: Melrose Place is on the tube again!)
Sure, let’s let the two aging pop queens enjoy their week of glory; in Houston’s case especially, it’s earned (and all the intense press Carey’s been getting lately almost makes me feel for her). But a close look at the numbers that brought them back to the winners’ circle suggests that we might not be talking much about these two come Christmas.
The 305,000 copies I Look to You sold last week were a better total than even some of the most optimistic prognosticators anticipated. According to Billboard, it’s Houston’s biggest sales week since the early ’90s, when The Bodyguard soundtrack dominated Christmas 1992 and became the first album of the Soundscan era to shift a million copies in a week.
Houston’s win this week brings up one of my favorite data points about her. It’s only her second No. 1 debut (out of four total career chart-toppers). But the interesting part is that she scored the first one a long, long time ago, in what we now consider the music-biz Stone Age: the years before Soundscan.
Until 1991, when Soundscan data took over the Billboard charts, only a half-dozen albums had ever debuted at No. 1. That list is so short that if you’re a true geek like me, you can rattle it off from memory: Elton John’s Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy and Rock of the Westies (both 1975); Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life (1976); Bruce Springsteen’s Live 1975‒85 (1986); Whitney Houston’s Whitney, and Michael Jackson’s Bad (both 1987).
These are not quite those five acts’ best albums. (I’m an Innervisions man.) But in all six cases, the artist was coming off a string of hits and at a near-zenith of popularity and cultural dominance. They’d have to be: in the old days when Billboard compiled the charts by calling and faxing retailers manually, it was rare to find a plurality of them reporting that a brand-new album was their best-seller. Prior to ’91, the music business was perceived as being about the steady climb to the top. But Soundscan revealed that music is a lot more like the movie business — flicks debut on top but rarely ever grow to there — than anybody guessed.
After Billboard flipped the switch, hundreds of albums debuted at No. 1. The first, just two months after the Soundscan launch in the spring of ’91, was Skid Row’s Slave to the Grind — not, I think even Maura would agree, a disc with the stature of the above six titles. Since then, acts as fleeting as Tha Dogg Pound, Godsmack and Danity Kane have made No. 1 debuts.
But Houston’s Whitney did it in the era when it really mattered, making her, in June 1987, not just the first woman to debut atop the album chart but also the youngest and the newest — she was 23, and on her second album. (I was a teenager, but even I recall how this feat stunned the industry at the time. Reportedly, Epic/CBS Records vowed that very week that Jackson’s Bad would have to debut on top later that summer, even if they had to buy off every retailer in America. Whatever they did, they pulled it off.)
Nowadays, of course, not only is a No. 1 album debut more common, but the cratering of the music industry has severely lowered the bar, so that discs selling as few as 60,000 copies can rule the Billboard 200. In that context, Houston’s total this week is mightily impressive, even if she does get ousted from the top slot next week by Jay-Z. (At one week, that would make I Look to You by far her shortest-lived chart-topper, versus the 14 weeks spent on top by 1985’s Whitney Houston, 11 weeks for Whitney and 20 weeks for The Bodyguard.)
But the other difference between the old days and today is the formerly tighter relationship between hit albums and hit singles. All six of the pre-Soundscan No. 1 debuts produced Top 10 singles — in four cases, No. 1 singles (all but Elton’s Captain Fantastic and Bruce’s Live). Nowadays, in our era of narrowcasting and audience atomization, any act with a big enough rabid fanbase, even with no radio support whatsoever, can rule the roost for a single week.
And Whitney, in her week of triumph, has two singles from I Look to You on the Hot 100, but neither one’s likely to be blaring from a car or supermarket checkout lane near you. The title track moves up 28 big spaces to… No. 70. And the Alicia Keys–penned (and actually quite excellent) dance-pop track “Million Dollar Bill” debuts at No. 100. No wonder we’re all wondering how Whitney will fare on Oprah next week or in the Grammy nominations in December; for now, at least, radio and iTunes aren’t going to keep her album afloat on the charts.
As for Carey, her rise to No. 7 on the Hot 100 with “Obsessed” represents a quite literal breakthrough, after the song’s three frustrating weeks stuck at No. 11. She thereby avoids the ignominy (as reported in my last column) of seeing an album-leading single fall short of the top 10, as two of her last three such singles did.
The song’s rise is due to genuine momentum at both radio and iTunes. She’s bulleted on the Hot 100 Airplay list, now ranked seventh among all radio songs nationwide. And her digital sales—combining sales of both Carey’s original mix and the Gucci Mane remix—are up about 4% this week, returning her to the Top 10 of the Digital Songs chart.
Trouble is, that momentum is going to have to seriously pick up if Carey is to make the Top Five, never mind No. 1. (A reminder, for those who don’t already have it burned in their memory banks: With 18 career No. 1 singles, Carey is just two shy of the Beatles’ 20 chart-toppers, one of their most cherished chart records and one that Carey fans have been hot for her to break since her last album.)
Carey’s sales are less than half that of this week’s top-selling single by Miley Cyrus, and her radio audience is a fraction of the spins received by the Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling,” radio’s most-played song (and the Hot 100 chart-topper for an 11th week). Carey’s growth this week is solid, but “Obsessed” rises on the big chart mostly because the songs above her last week fell back in sales and airplay.
Say this for her: Unlike Whitney Houston, whose singles-chart dominance occurred mostly in a tight dozen years from about 1986 to 1998, Carey has spent all of the last 19 years trying to keep up with current pop trends — and, mostly, getting rewarded for it. Billboard notes that the only years since 1990 Carey hasn’t appeared in the Hot 100’s Top 10 are 2002, 2004 and 2007. Staying abreast of the current Top 40 while pushing 40 is no mean feat, and the fact that Carey consistently pulls it off shows an Joe DiMaggio—like consistency that’s not to be dismissed.
I’d be a fool to bet against Carey’s forthcoming Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel when it drops later this month; a Houston-like week of album-chart dominance is all but assured. Still, what Whitney and Mariah really have in common as we enter the fall hit-music derby is a pop audience not predisposed to reward them beyond, perhaps, a week or three of curiosity.
When I think of these two’s conjoined fate, I think back to their only recorded duet, 1998’s “When You Believe” (recorded for the soundtrack of the animated Bible flick The Prince of Egypt). With both divas still chart champions, the industry braced for a hit of epic proportions, and headline-writers were already crafting tales of Moses-level domination. Instead, the tune stalled at No. 15 and was out of the Top 40 within weeks. Sometimes, the public just doesn’t want to follow the script.
Here’s a rundown of the rest of this week’s charts:
• In the last fortnight, rock programmers seem to have collectively decided to shake up their playlists for fall. After a deadly slow summer dominated by Linkin Park and the Silversun Pickups, the Alternative chart’s Top Five is all aflutter this week, with three songs less than two months old — by Alice in Chains, Muse and Pearl Jam — plus a new No. 1.
That chart-topper is the three-month-old “Notion” by Kings of Leon, 2009’s premier rock debutantes. Of course, we use that word loosely, given the Kings’ long, well-documented struggle to break in America after four albums. “Notion” is the third consecutive bell-ringer from the band’s Only by the Night, a change in chart fate that’s exceedingly rare. I had to think hard to recall an act that scored three Modern Rock chart-toppers from a single album after scoring none at all from any of their prior discs. Only one other act qualifies: Green Day, who pulled three No. 1’s from Dookie in 1994—95 after their two prior albums, 39/Smooth and Kerplunk! got no radio love at all. And I’m not sure that even really counts, given that Dookie was that band’s major-label debut, and even at the start of the ’90s, when Green Day began recording, it was rare for an indie-label band to score a Modern Rock hit. So I guess we can legitimately call Kings of Leon the biggest turnaround story in the Alternative/Modern chart’s 21-year history.
• As our long national nightmare of Black Eyed Peas domination enters its 23rd week, we eye the Top 10 of the Hot 100 to see who might stand a chance at ousting them sometime before the trees denude themselves. It’s not promising. Rarely in the two years I’ve been doing this column has there been, among the songs in the Top 10, such a mismatch between sales and airplay.
That is, for every song except the Peas’ chart-topper “I Gotta Feeling.” While the late-summer dominator continues to wilt in sales — it’s been outdone by Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the U.S.A.” at iTunes for a month now, and this week it just barely outsells Jay Sean’s No. 3 “Down” — it’s still radio’s most-played track by a wide margin. At radio, the only track close to approaching it is the second-ranked Taylor Swift single “You Belong with Me”; but on the big chart, Swift’s weakening sales (she’s 12th among all digital songs) result in a No. 6 Hot 100 placement. What about Swift’s gal pal Miley? “U.S.A.” is still the nation’s biggest download, but those sales are starting to drop (down 6% to 179,000), and her airplay isn’t remotely close enough to make up the difference: “Party” is the 35th most-played song at radio. It’s a similar story through most of the Top 10.
The one song that gives me some hope comes from Jay-Z, whose “Run This Town” with Rihanna and Kanye West is already, in seven short weeks, the seventh most-played song at radio and a six-figure download (up slightly this week, to 120,000). A couple of years ago, I might have theorized that the release of The Blueprint 3 would give a promotional boost to his single, a phenomenon that used to be common around 2006 and 2007. But over the last year-plus, as album sales have gradually migrated to the digital realm, first-week album sales for big acts have generally hurt singles sales, as fans decide the full-length is more important to own than the hit track. So if Jay, Ri, and Kanye are going to rescue us from the Peas, it’s going to take at least a couple more weeks.
Top 10s
(Billboard issue date September 19, 2009; based on data collected August 31-September 6)
Last week’s position and total weeks charted in parentheses (Digital Songs chart includes total downloads/percentage change in parentheses):
Hot 100
1. The Black Eyed Peas, “I Gotta Feeling” (LW No. 1, 13 weeks)
2. Jay Sean feat. Lil Wayne, “Down” (LW No. 2, 10 weeks)
3. Miley Cyrus, “Party in the U.S.A.” (LW No. 3, 4 weeks)
4. Jay-Z feat. Rihanna & Kanye West, “Run This Town” (LW No. 6, 6 weeks)
5. Kings of Leon, “Use Somebody” (LW No. 4, 32 weeks)
6. Taylor Swift, “You Belong with Me” (LW No. 5, 20 weeks)
7. Mariah Carey, “Obsessed” (LW No. 11, 9 weeks)
8. Pitbull, “Hotel Room Service” (LW No. 9, 12 weeks)
9. Jason DeRulo, “Whatcha Say” (LW No. 13, 4 weeks)
10. Drake, “Best I Ever Had” (LW No. 7, 18 weeks)
Hot Digital Songs
1. Miley Cyrus, “Party in the U.S.A.” (LW No. 1, 179,000 downloads)
2. The Black Eyed Peas, “I Gotta Feeling” (LW No. 2, 147,000 downloads)
3. Jay Sean feat. Lil Wayne, “Down” (LW No. 3, 146,000 downloads)
4. Jay-Z feat. Rihanna & Kanye West, “Run This Town” (LW No. 4, 120,000 downloads)
5. Jason DeRulo, “Whatcha Say” (LW No. 5, 112,000 downloads)
6. Kings of Leon, “Use Somebody” (LW No. 6, 97,000 downloads)
7. Pitbull, “Hotel Room Service” (LW No. 9, 84,000 downloads)
8. Cobra Starship feat. Leighton Meester, “Good Girls Go Bad” (LW No. 7, 82,000 downloads)
9. Shakira, “She Wolf/Loba” (LW No. 8, 76,000 downloads)
10. Mariah Carey, “Obsessed” (LW No. 12, 72,000 downloads)
Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
1. Maxwell, “Pretty Wings” (LW No. 1, 19 weeks)
2. Mario feat. Gucci Mane & Sean Garrett, “Break Up” (LW No. 2, 18 weeks)
3. Drake feat. Trey Songz, “Successful” (LW No. 3, 13 weeks)
4. Fabolous feat. The-Dream, “Throw It in the Bag” (LW No. 5, 17 weeks)
5. Drake, “Best I Ever Had” (LW No. 7, 21 weeks)
6. Ginuwine, “Last Chance” (LW No. 5, 28 weeks)
7. Gucci Mane feat. Plies, “Wasted” (LW No. 10, 13 weeks)
8. Jay-Z feat. Rihanna & Kanye West, “Run This Town” (LW No. 9, 7 weeks)
9. Pleasure P, “Under” (LW No. 13, 11 weeks)
10. Mary Mary feat. Kierra “KiKi” Sheard, “God in Me” (LW No. 11, 42 weeks)
Hot Country Songs
1. Jason Aldean, “Big Green Tractor” (LW No. 1, 17 weeks)
2. George Strait, “Living for the Night” (LW No. 4, 15 weeks)
3. Justin Moore, “Small Town U.S.A.” (LW No. 5, 31 weeks)
4. Toby Keith, “American Ride” (LW No. 7, 10 weeks)
5. Randy Houser, “Boots On” (LW No. 2, 29 weeks)
6. Rascal Flatts, “Summer Nights” (LW No. 3, 21 weeks)
7. Keith Urban, “Only You Can Love Me This Way” (LW No. 9, 10 weeks)
8. Blake Shelton, “I’ll Just Hold On” (LW No. 8, 29 weeks)
9. Chris Young, “Gettin’ You Home (The Black Dress Song)” (LW No. 12, 30 weeks)
10. Jack Ingram, “Barefoot and Crazy” (LW No. 10, 25 weeks)
Hot Alternative Tracks
1. Kings of Leon, “Notion” (LW No. 3, 15 weeks)
2. Alice in Chains, “Check My Brain” (LW No. 5, 4 weeks)
3. Muse, “Uprising” (LW No. 6, 5 weeks)
4. Pearl Jam, “The Fixer” (LW No. 4, 7 weeks)
5. Silversun Pickups, “Panic Switch” (LW No. 2, 26 weeks)
6. Rise Against, “Savior” (LW No. 7, 12 weeks)
7. Linkin Park, “New Divide” (LW No. 1, 16 weeks)
8. Weezer, “(If You’re Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To,” (LW No. 10, 3 weeks)
9. Paramore, “Ignorance” (LW No. 8, 9 weeks)
10. Chevelle, “Jars” (LW No. 12, 11 weeks)
I agree with you Chris that the great hope comes from Jay-Z. ‘Run This Town’ seems to be gaining more airplay and because of the dream team on the song, they should easily be able to snatch the torch from BEP’s. I think we both know that Jay’s also going straight to the top of the Billboard 200 next week. I guess it’s partly because he’s Jay-Z and when you look at his history (10 no. 1 albums) he can really do it in his sleep. The thing is, I’m still on the lookout for a massive single that will be the BEP’s true successor since I don’t think ‘Run This Town’ has the same lasting power. I’m really hoping Rihanna would just hurry up and team up with The-Dream again and make us all a little happier.
Hey Maura! Please don’t be quick to dismiss “Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel” by Mariah Carey. It hasn’t been released yet and from the snippets I heard from Amazon, I’m positive you’d backtrack from you’re statements a few months from now. Look at what happened to Emancipation of Mimi. Many people dismissed it outright. However, with proper handling and having people listen to it, many realized it was a good album . . . and they went buying. It’s articles like yours that tend to damage an album’s chances of success. Have a listen first before you dismiss it. You might even like it, even if you rarely appreciate her work. Thank you.
Oh come on, if someone doesn’t like Carey up to now a late-career sinker isn’t going to convince them. Plus, by all signs this is going to be a real dog.
Not exactly the strongest Hot 100 in terms of chart points. Can see BEP having another two weeks at the top.
@barnok: Hey Barnok! First, why don’t you double-check who actually wrote this article. Hint: it’s not Maura. Secondly, can you give up the relentless Mariah cheerleading? It’s kind of pathetic. If you don’t like what Idolator is posting about her (which to be honest, isn’t particularly mean-spirited), stop visiting the site. Simple.
See, I had completely forgotten that there was a Whitney Houston/Mariah Carey duet. It reminds me of the Beyonce/Shakira duet “Beautiful Liar.” On the heels of “Irreplacable” and “Hips Don’t Lie,” I thought that was going to be a monster. Instead, it had a sales-fueled 94-3 jump and that was about it since I don’t think it caught on very much on radio in the US.
They tumbled big this week but big ups to Skillet for having the #2 album last week. I’m not even terribly religious but I really like what they do; I bought four songs off “Comatose.” And it’s not one of the first two singles but “Awake and Alive” was the #100 single last week. That’s a song that would be absolutely massive at alternative/rock radio if Christian acts got any airplay.
There’s so much shakeup on the alternative chart there it might be time to tune in again on the way to work instead of listening to the iPod. Things were getting stale even by that chart’s standards.
Ten bucks says Kings of Leon are up for Best New Artist. Hey, it happened to Fountains of Wayne on their third album…
See, that’s the reason why you should not write garbage . . . week after week after week. Any one of you in this blog could have written this piece of junk and the tone would be the same. You all dislike Mariah Carey. Or anyone whom common people like. You all like INDIE . . . ALTERNATIVE . . . artsy-fartsy types of music that I don’t really care about. Very elitist way of looking at music in general, if I may say. You see, it’s all very subjective. You like what you like and I like what I like. The difference is you have the medium to voice your opinions through this blog, we do not. And stating my opinion . . . you call it “relentless Mariah cheerleading” even, is PATHETIC? Come on, give me a break! Like you, I’m just stating my opinion and wanting to share my thoughts. Is that a crime? Your blog is unavoidable, you should be proud of that. If you search MARIAH CAREY in Google, your page comes up with the link, and what am I supposed to do, ignore it do nothing while you put a damper on my girl? You don’t have all the free press you know. Allow me to rant my opinions. Thank you.
What I didn’t really like in your article to be specific is when you said “what Whitney and Mariah really have in common as we enter the fall hit-music derby is a pop audience not predisposed to reward them beyond, perhaps, a week or three of curiosity”. I’m sorry but many people are not merely curious about her or even Whitney. Give people a chance to hear her new album and let’s see and decide if your statement is valid. You generalize a bit much and sometimes, readers of your blog (which is considerable in number) would accept it as FACT and would not give her new album a benefit of the doubt and actually listen to it. You see, you’re in a position to influence the buying public and I hate to see people turning away from her because he read in “good authority” that her music is merely a “curiosity” and is not worth listening to. Please take a listen when it comes out and tell me what you think then. If you think it stinks . . . then its your opinion. At least you took time to listen.
@barnok: I would just like to thank you for saying that I am “in a position to influence the buying public” and a “good authority.” Such flattery! Muchas gracias.
What I say about you and this blog is true . . . and welcome. Just please don’t be quick to judge an artist just because you don’t like them or not have an interest in them. Let others who know the artist and their body of work be the one to judge any material that they put out. At least, we will be in a win-win situation. Thanks.
I’m a long-time Houston fan (one of my first albums as an extremely small child was ‘Whitney,’ actually) and although the last ten years have been abysmal, and this record isn’t brilliant, I quite liked it and I hope it has some continued success, or at least clings on to the charts long enough to make her some money because she seems to have worked her ass off to come out of something deep, and to make it at least seem meaningful. “Million Dollar Bill” is a fire cracker, a hell of a single that should’ve come out in July rather than that tropey ballad crap, and I rather wish the entire album had either gone that sort of retro-funk route, or instead went in the eighties-synthy route of track number two, the quite stylized but also quite good “Nothin’ But Love.” I have few opinions of Mariah Carey, since I find her insubstantial and lacking any clear pop personality, of the sort I enjoy out of the few people singers I take the time to keep up with and continue to support, but I certainly wish her luck because I think it’s important that older singers continue to have a voice in modern pop music (no matter what George Michael says about it being only for the young).
And to feed the troll, as someone who has a broad range of musical genre interests, from pop to rock to funk to hip-hop to even folk, you’ve got some nerve talking about this being crap. Idolator has been and remains perhaps the single best pop music blog in the long cluttered crap chute of music blogs. Sometimes it is unfair when people realistically size up a musician; I myself like Mandy Moore an awful lot, and was slightly dismayed that Maura found her last album to be rather vague as artistic statements go, but I respect Maura (and Chris, for having compiled a wonderful chart essay rather than just posting odd numbers) enough to trust their tastes on the matter while still remaining confident in my own. Music is, as you said, subjective, and it would seem that while the writers on Idolator go out of their way to be nuanced and fair to the general spirit of discussion, your own blinding brand loyalty to a single pop persona has hindered your ability to do the same. Furthermore, of all of the places on the internet that I read about music, this has got to be one of the single most welcoming and warm environments of any; there is no elitism, as you wanted to indicate with your anti-indie mouthfull, and Maura herself has given props to a wide cross-section of music that now comprises the term “pop” including trend-steered hip-hop and frat-oriented rock, and especially to genres that the ACTUAL snobs would usually loathe, such as the careful attention paid to things like country and even Christian music, two genres I knew little about before I began reading this site years ago. It’s a shame you missed that, because there’s a wonderful thread that’s run through the articles for a long, long, long time that seems to encourage people to simply like what they like despite what others say, and not at all the message you seemed to indicate that they, and we, were engendering “elitist” tastes with our lesser genre-appreciation. This is a great site, and if you can’t dig it, you are more than welcome to just leave, because you’re cluttering an otherwise great dialogue for people who actually seem to love all music.
And sorry Chris, I didn’t mean to write a competing essay, you did a great job with this, especially giving Kings Of Leon their unprecedented due!
@ampersandparade Hey, I admit I can’t counter what you essayed on. I do agree to some of your points. As I said, this blog is unavoidable. You can’t tell me to leave as I have things on my mind that I’d like to express especially if it has something to do with my “own blinding brand loyalty to a single pop persona”, that is Mariah Carey. Forgive me for saying that I feel the writers in this blog have biases against artists that I like. You can’t deny its true. Since they are not afraid to write about it, why the should I be afraid defending her? Because you can make a term paper out of it and lambast me? No siree! I will not be silenced. At least I don’t go on calling people a TROLL and asking them to leave. Calling their articles GARBAGE is extreme. I apologize for that. But I was mad . . . and clearly you are not. It’s not that I don’t “dig” what they say, it’s just that I don’t agree with what’s being written. Ergo, I will have my say on the matter. What’s a good board without a counterpoint?
@barnok: Good Lord, you are insane. Useful I guess in that you’re boosting our traffic, but you do realize that criticism ≠ “hating”? Are you like this with your friends, too, always cheering them on even when you think they’re making decisions that might not be the best for them in the long run?
Also any accusations of “bias” are laughable, as “bias” is generally something that’s cloaked. (Again, I refer you to the dictionary.) I think you’ll see that neither I nor my writers are less than up front about what we do and don’t like in music.
Barnok, let’s get something straight. Nobody is saying you don’t have a right to free speech. It’s just that virtually all of your posts on Idolator (I checked) are of the “I must defend Mariah against any less-than-fawning opinions”. It’s boring, predictable and you sound like a broken record. Try offering up something different every now and then and maybe people will take you seriously.
“you search MARIAH CAREY in Google, your page comes up with the link, and what am I supposed to do,” - laughable. Come on now. No disrespect to Maura, but this blog is not “unavoidable”. We’re not talking about RollingStone or Time Magazine’s message boards.
“You all like INDIE . . . ALTERNATIVE . . . artsy-fartsy types of music that I don’t really care about. Very elitist way of looking at music in general”. Seriously, are you reading the same blog I am? Because one of the main reasons I love Idolator is because it embraces good music in general, regardless of being “mainstream” or “indie” If you actually spent some time here reading the articles, rather than going straight for the Mariah posts, maybe you would realize this.
Now quick, EW.com just posted a list of the 50 worst albums of the decade…and your girl is at #24 with Charmbracelet!! Go now, and defend her honor from the haters, before it’s too late!!
http://music-mix.ew.com/2009/09/11/50-worst-albums/
I, too, must admit that I only found this site because of its subject — Mariah Carey’s resurgence (or, as you prefer to call it, “fleeting redemption”) on the Billboard Hot 100. And while much of your chart analysis is correct (in that we live in a music industry far different from that of the past), the other half is ludacris, at best.
“Obsessed” will probably never make it to the Top Five, and not even close to #1 for that matter. But its chart resurgence is an excellent story, because the likes of Perez Hilton and THIS website have been trashing the single’s digital and commercial performance. The fact that it can rebound after the press having a field-day with Eminem’s explicitly inappropriate response and falling as low as #20 on the Hot 100 is a success within itself.
What you fail to note is that a resurgence of this kind has rarely happened on this iTunes-era Hot 100. Because it doesn’t follow the iTunes-era rules. First and foremost, the single’s success is more and more due to its love on the airwaves than digital sales. Stalling in the teens on the iTunes charts and still being able to be requested heavily on Top 40/CHR formats is a feat within itself. “Obsessed” is taking the classic route to success, versus, per say, the route Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the USA” has taken.
The failure that was “E=MC2″ was credited with poor single choices. After hearing “Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel” in its entirety, it became clear to me that with the right single choices, the album has the potential to be a success.
There is no way any media outlet should mark off “I Want to Know What Love Is” as a paltry effort — ballad remakes have a notorious reception for being successful, especially if backed by the right voice and production. Mariah Carey does no injustice to the original and still comes off with a power-ballad leagues ahead of newcomers. Anyone in the music industry would have made this choice. Knowing that the Billboard Hot 100 is unpredictable, I won’t be quick to call this a #1 single or a top 10, at that, but it’s undeniably a set-up for success. With the right promotion and publicity, it can become more reality than potential.
@muze Thank you. I’m being battered here. I’ve been called a troll . . . insane . . . laughable . . .implied to be stupid even because of my vocabulary choices. Just because I’m defending “a single pop persona”. As I’ve said, I have been reading posts from your site well over a year now. What attracted my attention was the way reviews were being presented. That is, through the ears of multiple personalities . . . sometimes a whole family. That makes the review refreshing and unconventional. It’s not one-dimensional. I rarely find that kind of review of the charts or albums anymore. I missed that. And my “single pop persona” usually gets cutting jibes, and that irks me. Sorry.
So is it just me, or does the cover of Whitney Houston’s album totally look like a Myspace self-portrait? (”ok, I think my whole head is in the viewfinder now…shit, how did those floating words get in?”)
@muze:
And while much of your chart analysis is correct (in that we live in a music industry far different from that of the past), the other half is ludacris, at best.
A world where half of the charts is locked down by Ludacris…thanks, you have just spawned my nightmares for tonight.
DOWN, SKEET SKEET