@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

“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.

“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/

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.

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.