Best Act In The World: Coldplay
Best Album: Coldplay, Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends
Breakthrough Artist: Duffy
Best Live Act: Kaiser Chiefs
Best New Act: The Last Shadow Puppets
Best Track: Keane, "Spiraling"
Best Video: Vampire Weekend, "A-Punk"
Outstanding Contribution: David Gilmour
Classic Song: Meat Loaf, "Bat Out Of Hell"

The legendary composer [Jim Steinman]—who wrote the song for the album of the same name—said he created the track to be “the ultimate crash song”, “operatic annihilation” and a little piece of "Wagner".

Classic Songwriter: John Mellencamp
Q Icon: Adam Ant
Q Idol: Grace Jones
Q Innovation In Sound: Massive Attack
Q Inspiration: Cocteau Twins
Q Legend: Glen Campbell

Q Awards 2008 [Q]

He may not be quite up there in the annals of procrastination legend with Axl Rose or Dr. Dre, but one of rock's biggest holdouts in recent memory, Rage Against The Machine frontman Zack de la Rocha, put a product on retail shelves this summer after a long wait. In the seven years between his band's breakup and its recent reunion, de la Rocha reportedly worked on solo material with everyone from Trent Reznor to ?uestlove to DJ Shadow without ever releasing an album, or even anything other than a stray compilation track. So it's a little unexpected that now, after Rage has been back together and touring for a year, is when de la Rocha decides to release new music with a new band.

One Day As A Lion, de la Rocha's project with ex-Mars Volta drummer Jon Theodore, released a self-titled EP over the summer, and the single "Wild International" has spent the last 8 weeks in the lower reaches of the Modern Rock chart, peaking at No. 20. When I first heard the song and thought it was a surprise new Rage single, I was impressed, and when I realized it wasn't, I was even more impressed. The keyboards de la Rocha plays on the song may not be as inventively skronky as Tom Morello's guitar playing, but they're pretty damn close. de la Rocha seems to be focusing less on the rapping element of his vocals, which I appreciate, having never been a fan of the guy's rhymes.

Now that de la Rocha's ripped off the Band-Aid—and announced that there's a One Day full-length on the way—the question remains whether or not he'll continue to work on solo and side projects, and allow the Rage reunion to function as only a touring unit. Rage slowly grew into the fanbase that still clamors for them today, if their reception on the festival circuit last year was any indication, and they currently occupy a place in the alt-rock firmament. Singles like "Killing In The Name" and "Down Rodeo," which never appeared on the Modern Rock chart when they were initially released, till get significant airplay today. And though their rap-metal style may sound somewhat dated to younger rock fans, one thing is clear: In a year that acts like the Flobots, Rise Against, and M.I.A. are scoring Modern Rock hits left and right, nothing is too stridently leftist and vaguely "revolutionary" for alternative radio.

Speaking of seven-year sabbaticals, remember the Toadies? Fourteen years ago, "Possum Kingdom" made them, in my opinion, one of the finest one-hit wonders of '90s rock radio. But their quite good debut Rubberneck failed to yield any other big hits, and they took seven years to follow up that album in 2001, and another seven to deliver their third, No Deliverance. Though "Possum Kingdom" peaked at No. 4 on the Modern Rock chart and No. 9 on Mainstream Rock, the three Toadies singles that have charted since then have all done better on the Mainstream side. That includes the title track of their new album, which debuts at No. 39 this week. The nervous, punky sound of Rubberneck always led me to categorize the Texas band as more of an alt-rock act, but the southern-rock swing on "No Deliverance" leads me to believe differently:

There's perhaps no better way to illustrate the increasingly blurred line between alternative and active rock radio playlists than the career of Metallica. The band have been mainstays on the Mainstream Rock chart ever since 1991's self-titled "black album" made them household names. But back then, "metal" was pretty much a dirty word on the Modern Rock chart, which was still populated by dad-rock acts like Sting and Elvis Costello and just getting its first taste of grungy hard rock. Metallica's first minor dent on the Modern Rock chart didn't come until 1996's "Until It Sleeps," which coincided with the band outraging the headbanging faithful and earning derision from the alt-rock world by shearing their hockey hair and headlining Lollapalooza. "Sleeps" only peaked at No. 27, and none of the other Load or ReLoad singles charted on Modern Rock.

But alternative radio continued to skew more metal-friendly while Metallica released no new albums, but continued to flood the market with various stopgap projects. Those one-offs—Garage Inc., S&M, and the Mission: Impossible II soundtrack—helped the band chip away at alt-rock resistance, as did 2003's infamous shit sandwich St. Anger. Still, the band never cracked the Modern Rock top 10 until this month, with Death Magnetic's also totally awful lead single "The Day That Never Comes" currently sitting at No. 7. The song reached No. 1 in its third week on the Mainstream chart, but I'll be very curiously watching how far it climbs on the other chart. And changing whatever station plays the song while I'm tuned in.

Speaking of flipping radio dials, right before Labor Day, Idolator's Chris Molanphy declared Modern Rock "the most boring chart of the summer" thanks to its week-to-week stasis and overall lack of new blood. I more or less predicted this stasis back in May. But I have to admit, I'm a little impressed by how three of the four bands I singled out back then have absolutely dominated the chart: Weezer and Coldplay both topped the chart, while the Offspring scored two Top Five hits. And just as I suspected, Nine Inch Nails was the underperformer of the bunch, peaking at No. 6 and dropping off the chart completely in the same time frame that "Pork & Beans" clung to the top 10. It's possible that "Discipline" simply didn't connect with listeners in the same way that previous NIN hits did, but the fact that it was the band's first single since divorcing from Interscope does make me wonder how well it might have done with major-label promotional muscle behind it.

I don't dislike Fleet Foxes as much as some people around here, but a nomination for Best Album? Really? Also, I spent some time trying to discern the difference between a "New Act" and a "Breakthrough Artist" but then my head started to hurt, and I wanted to take a nap.

Also, if I live to be a thousand years old, I don't think I'll be able to understand the British love of Kings of Leon. I'm just not able to piece it together.

BREAKTHROUGH ARTIST:
Duffy
Adele
Santogold
Bon Iver
Gabriella Cilmi

BEST NEW ACT:
Fleet Foxes
Glasvegas
The Ting Tings
The Last Shadow Puppets
Vampire Weekend

BEST TRACK:
Keane - Spiralling
Duffy - Mercy
Coldplay - Violet Hill
Katy Perry - I Kissed A Girl
The Ting Tings - That's Not My Name

BEST VIDEO:
Hot Chip - Ready To The Floor
Coldplay - Violet Hill
The Ting Tings - That's Not My Name
Vampire Weekend - A-Punk
Goldfrapp - Happiness

BEST LIVE ACT:
Kaiser Chiefs
Kings Of Leon
Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds
The Verve
Rage Against The Machine

BEST ALBUM:
Coldplay - Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends
Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
The Last Shadow Puppets - The Age Of The Understatement
Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
Nick Cave And The Band Seeds - Dig!!! Lazarus, Dig!!!

BEST ACT IN THE WORLD TODAY:
Coldplay
Oasis
Muse
Metallica
Kings Of Leon

Coldplay lead Q Awards nominations [Music Week]

Now that I'm back, the M.I.A. song is down a bit, and the biggest news on the charts is the post-American Idol debut by tween-and-grandma fave David Archuleta.

It's a cruel business, this chart-column writing.

Nonetheless, the good news, for those of us who rooted against the stage-managed moppet during Idol's last season, is that Archie's losing out on the Hot 100's top slot—by a whisker—to Rihanna. Meanwhile, there's change on top of two other charts, including the deadly static Modern Rock list. Let's catch up, shall we?

Archuleta's "Crush" was the top-selling digital song of the week, with 166,000 downloads tallied. That handily outsold Rihanna's "Disturbia," and probably should have given him the Hot 100's penthouse in a lazy late-summer chart week.

But limited radio exposure held Archie back. While pure Top 40 stations gave "Crush" a respectable nearly 1,000 spins last week, that total wasn't enough to put Archuleta on the all-genre Hot 100 Airplay list, where he's completely absent. Just for comparison, "Disturbia" (now in its second week at No. 1 on the Hot 100) ranks 16th on the Airplay list; at the same pool of pure Top 40 stations, it received almost six times as many spins as "Crush" did last week.

Still, we have to give Archie props, because he pulls off a number of feats in Idol-contestant chart history. The most obvious is outcharting this year's winner, David Cook, whose highest-ranked hit to date (in his early-June week of Hot 100 dominance) was the No. 3 debut by "The Time of My Life." As Billboard chart guru Fred Bronson points out, that makes Archuleta—at least for now—one of only two runners-up in Idol history to outperform the winner from the same season. The first was Season 2's Clay Aiken, who went to No. 1 in 2003 with "This Is the Night" the same week that year's winner, Ruben Studdard, debuted at No. 2 with "Flying Without Wings."

What's less obvious is how unusual it is for an Idol finalist to debut this high with a song not performed on the show. With this No. 2 debut, Archie has just set a record in that rarefied category. I'm so used to contestants making a splash in the weeks just after the show's finale with the songs they performed on that show that at first, I didn't register that such a high debut now—months after Cook's coronation—is quite rare.

It's even more impressive when you look at the other three non-finale songs by Idol finalists that debuted in the Top 10. All did so thanks to extenuating circumstances: Aiken's "Solitaire," which debuted at No. 4 in 2004 but was known from his repertoire on the show; Carrie Underwood's "I'll Stand by You," which debuted at No. 6 in 2007 after she performed it on Idol Gives Back; and Kelly Clarkson's "Never Again," which debuted at No. 8 last year on anticipation surrounding her much-debated, Clive Davis-hated third album. By contrast, Archie's "Crush" debuted big despite limited exposure to the public on TV or radio, simply because scads of people were hot to buy anything the kid put out at the official start of his recording career.

Of course, many more people are awaiting the launch of Cook's recorded output, and it's entirely possible that his first post-Idol single will do Archie one better and debut at No. 1. For the first five seasons of the show, a No. 1 Hot 100 hit was a birthright: every winner those five years had one (except Studdard, who was replaced at No. 1 by runner-up Aiken). But the adjustment of Idol's business model from physical product to digital releases has broken the pattern, and Cook's plan to pursue rock radio airplay more avidly than Top 40 could result in an irregular chart performance.

Still, this isn't over: there's the battle later this fall between Cook and Archuleta over their respective albums' debut sales weeks to watch. Also, we'll have to see if "Crush" turns into a lasting hit, with full radio support, for Archie. Somewhat surprisingly, Cook has done well in this department—"The Time of My Life," his sappy finale song, smelled like a flash in the pan, but months later it's become a No. 3 Adult Contemporary hit and is still riding the Hot 100's upper reaches. (It's back to up No. 28 on that chart this week.)

One last Idol note, on the show winner who's suffered most at the vagaries of the charts. Quietly and with little fanfare, Jordin Sparks—the only Idol winner to not enjoy a Top Three hit with her finale song ("This Is My Now" peaked at a pitiful No. 15 in 2007)—has become a regular Hot 100 presence. Her current hit, "One Step at a Time," moves up four notches to No. 21 this week. If she can nudge it into the Top 10 in a few weeks, she'll be the only Idol winner to score three Top 10s from her debut album (following up "Tattoo" and the megasmash "No Air"). I'm not a fan of Sparks' tepid material, but I mention her here only because, unlike all of her Idol peers, she's arguably been earning her hits the old-fashioned way: patiently working them at radio, without any TV- or fan-fueled digital sales bursts, one hit at a time.

Here's a rundown of the rest of this week's charts:

• When the year-end charts come out in December, one single I expect to place higher than I originally expected is Coldplay's "Viva la Vida." Its early chart activity seemed like a classic all-sales, no-airplay, quick-burnout pattern, with the song debuting ahead of Coldplay's album in late May thanks to saturation play of Apple's TV commercial showcasing the song. After it peaked at No. 1 in mid-June, I expected "Viva" to tumble down the chart quickly, as Coldplay fans switched to buying their album and radio gave it the same solid-but-not-blockbuster airplay seen by previous Chris Martin ditties like "Speed of Sound."

But ever since "Viva" made the Top Five about a dozen weeks ago, it's never fallen below No. 7. In fact, the song has been knocking between Nos. 5, 6 and 7 for the last nine weeks. As it was in the beginning, iTunes has been a consistent provider of chart points; "Viva" has never left the Top 10 of Billboard's Digital Songs list in all that time. But airplay has seriously caught up: the song now ranks 11th among all radio songs—impressive for a song that's getting no support from R&B/hip-hop stations. It's turning into one of the longest-lasting Top 10 hits of the summer.

Now, it's pulled off one more feat: topping the Modern Rock chart. In its 11th chart week, "Viva" knocks Foo Fighters' "Let It Die" from the top of that list.

• Also moving up the Modern Rock list, well below the Top 10, is M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes," up six notches to No. 22. As Al Shipley pointed out, it debuted there last week, a rare solo-female hit in a mostly male format.

But forget that: the shocker I'm still getting over is its performance on the big chart. One week after "Planes" soared to No. 5 on the Hot 100 (it's down one notch this week), the question is, how far can M.I.A. go? Now that Pineapple Express, the movie with the trailer that made it a hit, is cooling at the box office, the song will likely have trouble penetrating much deeper into the Top Five. But it could knock around the Top 10 a while longer—not only is it still selling well (No. 4 at iTunes at this writing), it debuts on the Hot 100 Airplay list at a more-than-solid No. 66. With radio support, M.I.A. will likely be gunning us down and taking our money well into the fall.

• Keyshia Cole's "Heaven Sent" commanded R&B/Hip-Hop Songs for most of the summer with a nine-week run at No. 1, but there's been notable turnover recently. While I was away, Lil Wayne's "A Milli" took the crown in its 16th week. And this week, he's evicted by Rihanna, with her first-ever R&B chart-topper—but it's not the song she's leading with on the Hot 100. Instead, her chart-topping ballad from last spring, "Take a Bow," finally takes the crown on R&B/Hip-Hop. So this week, we have the unusual but not altogether rare occurrence of one artist crowning the Hot 100 and R&B lists with different songs. Perhaps unsurprisingly given its pure-pop sound, "Disturbia" doesn't appear to be doing what "Bow" did and blooming belatedly at black radio; it's nowhere to be found on the entire 100-position R&B/Hip-Hop chart.

• Country has seen a bunch of turnover recently, too. Two weeks ago Sugarland evicted Alan Jackson from No. 1 with their fluffy pop-crossover hit "All I Want to Do"; last week, they were tossed out by the unstoppable Taylor Swift, who scores her second country No. 1 (and fifth Top 10 overall) with "Should've Said No." And speaking of pretty young things scoring with two different hits at pop and elsewhere, this week, while Swift holds at No. 1 on the Country list, she scores her first-ever Top 10 hit on the Hot 100, debuting all the way up at No 10 with "Change," the advance single to her forthcoming second album.

I was asked yesterday how "Change" could be ranked 10th on the big pop chart and only 57th at Country, her native format, and the answer is simple: one chart uses sales, the other doesn't. "Change" debuts on Billboard's digital sales chart with a stellar 131,000 downloads, the week's third-best seller. That's enough to put her on the Hot 100, even without much airplay. Hot Country Songs, on the other hand, is an all-airplay list, and to country radio, "Change" is a fledgling hit. Doubtless, when "Should've" starts to fade, "Change" will rise fast—Swift is the hottest new act at the format, and the new album will likely have a massive debut later this fall.

• I'd just like to point out that, two months after its ignominious defeat at the hands of Tyga's irritating and now-disappeared "Coconut Juice," my pick for Idolator's 2008 Summer Jam, Estelle's "American Boy" featuring Kanye West, is still on the rise, up one notch this week to a nail-biting No. 11. Far as I'm concerned, summer has at least two more weeks to go unofficially (Labor Day is Sept. 1), or about five weeks officially (autumn begins Sept. 22). That's plenty of time for it to cross into the winner's circle.

Great, now I've gloated and probably jinxed it...

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. Rihanna, "Disturbia" (LW No. 1, 9 weeks)
2. David Archuleta, "Crush" (CHART DEBUT)
3. Chris Brown, "Forever" (LW No. 2, 17 weeks)
4. Katy Perry, "I Kissed a Girl" (LW No. 3, 15 weeks)
5. Coldplay, "Viva la Vida" (LW No. 6, 15 weeks)
6. M.I.A., "Paper Planes" (LW No. 5, 5 weeks)
7. Kardinal Offishall feat. Akon, "Dangerous" (LW No. 7, 15 weeks)
8. Rihanna, "Take a Bow" (LW No. 4, 19 weeks)
9. Ne-Yo, "Closer" (LW No. 10, 18 weeks)
10. Taylor Swift, "Change" (CHART DEBUT)

Hot Digital Songs
1. David Archuleta, "Crush" (CHART DEBUT)
2. Rihanna, "Disturbia" (LW No. 1)
3. Taylor Swift, "Change" (CHART DEBUT)
4. M.I.A., "Paper Planes" (LW No. 2)
5. Chris Brown, "Forever" (CHART DEBUT)
6. Estelle feat. Kanye West, "American Boy" (LW No. 7)
7. Coldplay, "Viva la Vida" (LW No. 8)
8. Katy Perry, "I Kissed a Girl" (LW No. 5)
9. Chris Brown, "Forever" (LW No. 9)
10. Jonas Brothers, "Burnin' Up" (LW No. 4)

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
1. Rihanna, "Take a Bow" (LW No. 3, 17 weeks)
2. Keyshia Cole, "Heaven Sent" (LW No. 2, 21 weeks)
3. Lil Wayne, "A Milli" (LW No. 1, 17 weeks)
4. Jazmine Sullivan, "Need U Bad" (LW No. 5, 16 weeks)
5. Young Jeezy feat. Kanye West, "Put On" (LW No. 4, 15 weeks)
6. Robin Thicke, "Magic" (LW No. 10, 13 weeks)
7. David Banner feat. Chris Brown, "Get Like Me" (LW No. 8, 25 weeks)
8. Chris Brown, "Take You Down" (LW No. 5, 21 weeks)
9. Yung Berg feat. Casha, "The Business" (LW No. 12, 13 weeks)
10. Rick Ross feat. Nelly and Avery Storm, "The Business" (LW No. 9, 14 weeks)

Hot Country Songs
1. Taylor Swift, "Should've Said No" (LW No. 1, 14 weeks)
2. Keith Urban, "You Look Good in My Shirt" (LW No. 2, 13 weeks)
3. Keith Anderson, "I Still Miss You" (LW No. 4, 29 weeks)
4. Jimmy Wayne, "Do You Believe Me Now" (LW No. 8, 21 weeks)
5. Brad Paisley, "Waitin' on a Woman" (LW No. 7, 10 weeks)
6. Brooks & Dunn, "Put a Girl in It" (LW No. 5, 17 weeks)
7. Sugarland, "All I Want to Do" (LW No. 3, 13 weeks)
8. Alan Jackson, "Good Time" (LW No. 6, 19 weeks)
9. George Strait, "Troubadour" (LW No. 9, 12 weeks)
10. Darius Rucker, "Don't Think I Don't Think About It" (LW No. 12, 18 weeks)

Hot Modern Rock Tracks
1. Coldplay, "Viva la Vida" (LW No. 2, 11 weeks)
2. Foo Fighters, "Let It Die" (LW No. 1, 20 weeks)
3. Staind, "Believe" (LW No. 4, 8 weeks)
4. Weezer, "Pork & Beans" (LW No. 3, 18 weeks)
5. Disturbed, "Inside the Fire" (LW No. 5, 21 weeks)
6. Carolina Liar, "I'm Not Over" (LW No. 6, 16 weeks)
7. Saving Abel, " Addicted" (LW No. 7, 22 weeks)
8. Ludo, "Love Me Dead" (LW No. 10, 22 weeks)
9. The Offspring, "Hammerhead" (LW No. 8, 15 weeks)
10. Linkin Park, "Given Up" (LW No. 9, 24 weeks)

Chris Brown Wrigley's commercial [YouTube]
VIVA LA VIDA - COLDPLAY iTunes commercial [YouTube]

Coldplay - Viva La Vida [YouTube; HT kanYe West: Blog]
Coldplay - Viva La Vida OFFICIAL ALTERNATE VERSION [YouTube]

The TV premiere of her concert film, which chronicles a show on the Best of Both Worlds Tour, is this Saturday. The movie was shot in 3-D, and the glasses needed to view Hannah/Miley in her illusory glory are exclusively available at Wal-Mart, where they're likely stocked somewhat near copies of her new album. Top that, Sugarland!

In other news, Nas' untitled album looks to make the now-standard second-week slide down the charts, while the improbable run of that ABBA covers album featuring Colin Firth continues. Speaking of improbable runs, thanks largely to people in my neighborhood, I believe, Kid Rock looks to grab a somewhat distant fourth place. Of course, as last week showed, these numbers can change rather quickly between now and the week's official close on Sunday, so place your chart-related wagers wisely.

The current projections:

1. Miley Cyrus (Hollywood) 360-380k
2. Sugarland (Mercury Nashville) 340-360k
3. Mamma Mia (Decca) 130-140k
4. Kid Rock (Atlantic) 85-90k
5. Coldplay (Capitol) 75-80k
6. Lil Wayne (Cash Money/Universal Motown) 75-80k
7. Nas (Def Jam/Columbia) 60-65k
8. Camp Rock (Walt Disney) 60-65k
9. Taylor Swift, Beautiful Eyes (Big Machine) 40-45k (Wal-Mart exclusive)
10. Now 28 (Capitol) 35-40k

Rumor Mill [HITS Daily Double]

Turns out the answer is: Anything by Lil Wayne. Weezy took five of the ten spots on June's edition of the "Ecast BarPulse" chart, which reflects purchases on jukeboxes operated by the Internet-juke company Ecast. (These are different than the ones operated by the Foreigner fans at TouchTunes. The Sugarland track is proving to be a real juggernaut, holding strong on the iTunes download charts as well. However, even Weezy can't knock off Katy Perry, which proves that my decision to never go anywhere is proving to be a good one.

The chart for June:

1. "I Kissed A Girl," Katy Perry
2. "A Milli," Lil Wayne
3. "Lollipop," Lil Wayne
4 "Viva La Vida," Coldplay
5. "Bust It Baby Part 2 (ft. Ne-Yo)," Plies
6. "All I Want To Do," Sugarland
7. "Mr. Carter," Lil Wayne
8. "Got Money," Lil Wayne
9. "Mercy," Duffy
10. "Mrs. Officer," Lil Wayne

Katy Perry Leads the Pack but Lil Wayne Comes Up Big on the June Ecast BarPulse [PR Newswire]

Albums released between October 2007 and the end of September '08 can be taken into account, so while will.i.am's Songs About Girls is ineligible, the Soulja Boy full-length is ready to receive the accolades it so richly deserves.

Here's the list Martens came up with:

Gnarls Barkley, The Odd Couple

Lupe Fiasco, The Cool

Sheryl Crow, Detours
Alicia Keys, As I Am
Radiohead, In Rainbows
Mariah Carey, E=MC²
Coldplay, Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Raising Sand

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!
Al Green, Lay It Down
Erykah Badu, New Amerykah Part One (4th World War)
Beck, Modern Guilt
Portishead, Third
Rhymefest, Man in the Mirror
Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III

Martens' picks make sense in one way or another, although Rhymefest's album in particular is a pipedream (a mixtape offered free online recieving a Grammy nod?), and Nick Cave probably shouldn't go picking out a tux for Grammy night just yet, either. And even if Lil Wayne is managing to keep the business afloat alongside Coldplay this summer, Tha Carter III might be a little out there for Grammy voters. Martens isn't re-listing acts he already profiled in his Best New Artist preview, in particular Duffy, but there are a few omissions that would be hard for Grammy voters to pass up: Bruce Springsteen's Magic, or possibly even the Wal-Mart-only Eagles disc.

It's hard for me to imagine the award going to anyone but Al Green, but sadly, it wouldn't surprise me if Sheryl Crow walked away with the small gold-plated phonograph either. Or Alison Krauss, who probably has a wing of her house just for Grammys. This might be a relatively complete list, since there aren't many other award-ready albums coming out before the deadline, unless you count Death Magnetic (I don't.) Which means that next year's Grammys might shape up to be one of the more depressing Grammy Awards ceremonies in recent memory, and that's saying a lot.

Grammys midway Part 3: An early look at the albums of the year [LA Times]
Grammys midway Part 4: Is this Coldplay or Mariah Carey's year? [LA Times]

Mine is the 21,120,387th visit to Coldplay's MySpace page. I am not greeted warmly. The British band — which is known for giant pop hits, a sheen of fakery and the marriage of its lead singer to Gwyneth Paltrow — does not exactly rush out to greet me. The page is rudimentary and indifferently decorated, like the apartment of four couchbound soccer addicts who barely look up when a girlfriend comes in.



So Coldplay is that kind of band. I thought it might be the other kind. MySpace offers only two design choices for pop acts who create pages there, meaning every single pop act in the world (almost). You can create a lazy, placeholder, MySpace-is-idiotic page, barely shuffling your feet to the social-network tune, like a goth kid at a school dance. Or you can kick out the jams, expand the brand, offer free downloads and revel in the sound and light of multimedia narcissism. What's an attention-hungry, ridicule-averse rock band to do?

If Coldplay were really "that kind of band" —the kind to nonchalantly brush off the importance of a flashy MySpace—their page would look like Bright Eyes' standard-issue "maintained by Saddle Creek" profile, which is a lot closer to "a goth kid at a school dance" than Coldplay's slick layout.

So in the last several years, virtually everyone trying to sell music has found it necessary to keep a presence on MySpace. It's there that music fans and A.& R. people alike play new songs, watch music videos, check concert information and chat with cybergroupies. And no matter how intensely rock stars balk at every part of the commercial-studded site that is controlled by Rupert Murdoch, they cave in and post a page. (Oh, yes, even the musician identified as "Bob Dylan — NEW YORK, New York — Classic Rock/Folk Rock — www.myspace.com/bobdylan" has one.)

So Bob Dylan's record company set up a MySpace under his name. You don't say!

How, then, to interpret Coldplay's standoffishness? On its MySpace page, the backdrop is plain white with a close-up of red-and-black brush strokes. Then, in the collagist style that holds MySpace in a chokehold, this black-white-and-red-all-over image is overlain with orderly boxes. One box is a banner ad. It reads, in turns: "Violet Hill video," "We're playing another free concert . . . ¡Barcelona!" and "Preorder new album on iTunes." These words seem to be scratched in a streak of the red paint in essay-exam handwriting that looks somehow both rushed and forced.

What Heffernan describes as "standoffishness" is really just the work of a pro web designer looking to make the page easily accessible to the wide variety of people who tend to enjoy Coldplay—the kind of MySpace that wouldn't seem daunting to a 50-year-old mom who heard some songs from the band's new album during a feature on All Things Considered. Why this rather obvious fact isn't apparent to a professional media critic for the flipping New York Times is anyone's guess.

Two other boxes are sparsely furnished. One brings to mind the postcollegiate bedroom of a guy who keeps nothing but a futon and a clock radio. Scroll down and it frames a photo of the band, sitting (it seems) on the kind of tufted, circular sofa you might find in the waiting area of an old train station. I turn to the commentary on this photo in hopes of an ID — "Ah, Victoria Station!" — but I'm scolded in a red MySpace typeface: "You must be someone's friend to make comments about them." Hmm. Quite.

This paragraph reads as if Heffernan is a Victorian-era English gentleman who's taken a time machine to present day and, upon recognizing the couch from Victoria Station, yearned to connect with his own time period, but was cruelly denied by modern technology. Quite distasteful indeed!

Why does Martin bow and scrape in this cringing way on MySpace? (Compare Coldplay's page with that of Nas, another performer with a hit record; it's all filmic strutting, with center-stage Nas in the superhero role, the Zeus role, the Christ role, the Barack Obama role.) One explanation for Martin's assertive humility is that Coldplay's music, for all its thundering and sparkling atmospherics, is often about one man's wretched interior life. A lone individual's grandiose psyche is typically the terrain of a solo artist, not a band. The fact that Martin has deputized his bandmates to help him carry out his own schemes and self-expression — like a full mariachi band called in for a romantic serenade — is maybe a little uncomfortable for him.

Coming from my computer's built-in speakers, Coldplay's music would sound tinny if I weren't also staring at Coldplay's screen-size MySpace "environment" — the scribbles, the spare illustrations. Because it lacks the conviction of a real, florid MySpace page, the environment is obscurely embarrassing. Yet, in a straightforward way, it underscores the embarrassment of Coldplay's music — the mawkishness, suppressed arrogance, halfheartedness and squeamishness about rock stardom. When illustrated by the graphics here, embarrassment seems like an entirely worthy theme for very hard soft rock.

For the first time, staring at the bad MySpace page and listening to songs on a computer, I understand Coldplay's music.

For the record, Nas' MySpace—which takes 45 seconds to "initiate"—is the very definition of hot mess, with text spilling out all over the layout, endless video content, and header animation that sends lesser browsers like Safari into hysterics. It's not exactly the pinnacle of web design, and arguably much less user-friendly than Coldplay's page.

The one thing Heffernan seems to get right here is that Coldplay's MySpace is supposed to reflect the band's sound and personality. But it's not "mawkishness, suppressed arrogance, halfheartedness and squeamishness about rock stardom" that come through; it's bland stylishness and mass appeal—which, here, are reflected by the band's unwillingness to crash users' browsers for the sake of having an animated graphic at the top.

Coldpage [New York Times]
Coldplay [MySpace]
Bright Eyes [MySpace]
Nas [MySpace]

- A Perfect Circle / Mer de Noms (2 LPs, gatefold jacket, satin stock, diecut white sleeves)
- Coldplay / Parachutes (1 LP, printed sleeve)
- Coldplay / A Rush Of Blood To The Head (1 LP, printed sleeve)
- Radiohead / OK Computer (2 LPs, gatefold jacket, color labels, printed sleeves)
- Radiohead / Kid A (2 10" 140-gram LPs, gatefold jacket, printed sleeves, color labels)
- Radiohead / Hail To The Thief (2 LPs, gatefold jacket, printed sleeves)
- Radiohead / Amnesiac (2 10" 140-gram LPs, gatefold jacket, printed sleeves, color labels)
- Steve Miller Band / Greatest Hits 1974-78 (1 LP, printed sleeve, color label)

You'd thnk that the Steve Miller Band reissue would be on a gatefold jacket for all those "midnight tokers," but I guess Capitol ran out of money for packaging after all the Radiohead rigamarole was done.

Capitol Launches Vinyl Campaign [Hypebot]

His initial stumble happens a little before the one-minute mark, with the new lines coming at 1:40, to the delight of those actually paying attention.

Martin's delivery doesn't sound particularly poised, and the song is slow enough that he could plausibly have come up with that bit of self-mockery. If I'm going to be offended by anything in this performance, it's his prancing, which starts at 2:35 and can also be seen at the beginning of this clip.

Now that's inexcusable.

Coldplay Changes, and Stays The Same [NYT]
Fix You (live @ MSG 6.23.08) [YouTube]
Coldplay MSG Free Concert. June 23. Fix you. FRONT ROW! [YouTube]

Biggest Debuts: Entering the charts at No. 3 was the soundtrack to the soon-to-be-sequeled Jonas Brothers vehicle Camp Rock, which sold 188,000 copies. Katy Perry came in at No. 9 with 47,000 copies of One Of The Boys, a sales total that might hint to her future home in the 99-cent bin. (Compare those numbers to those posted by her current hit, "I Kissed A Girl," which is No. 1 on the digital tracks chart; it sold about 228,000 copies this week and is (sigh) near the million mark overall. Talk about the pop hits a cultural moment deserves.)

The Offspring sold 46,000 copies of their latest comeback album, Rise And Fall, Rage And Grace, and came in at No. 10, while Judas Priest's double album about Nostradamus came in at a semi-predictable No. 11, selling 42,000 copies.

Notable Jumps: The cash-in reissue of Rihanna's Good Girl Gone Bad sold 63,000 copies—a 930% jump that was good enough for a leap from No. 124 to No. 7. The album has sold 1.3 million copies to date, which seems like a small total given the omnipresence of "Umbrella" and "Don't Stop The Music." Good thing she's got all those endorsements to back her up.

Dropping Off: Last week's No. 1, Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III, took a 69% hit, but it only fell to No. 2 on the overall chart since a one-week sales total of 309,000 is still pretty good in this more-anemic-than-ever market. (Billboard noted that while the year-to-year decline was only 6.7%, the week-to-week decline was 10.6%, or about a million units.)

Nickelback Award For Inexplicable Durability: Kid Rock continues his Warren Zevon-assisted run back up the album chart, with Rock N Roll Jesus selling 28,000 copies and inching up to No. 16.

This week's top 20, with sales totals in parentheses:
1. Coldplay, Viva La Vida (721,000)
2. Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III (309,000)
3. Camp Rock soundtrack (188,000)
4. Now 28 (81,000)
5. Plies, Definition Of Real (68,000)
6. Usher, Here I Stand (65,000)
7. Rihanna, Good Girl Gone Bad (63,000)
8. Disturbed, Indestructible (59,000)
9. Katy Perry, One Of The Boys (47,000)
10. The Offspring, Rise And Fall, Rage And Grace (46,000)
11. Judas Priest, Nostradamus (42,000)
12. Journey, Revelation (38,000)
13. Weezer (30,000)
14. 3 Doors Down (29,000)
15. Alanis Morrissette, Flavors Of Entanglement (29,000)
16. Kid Rock, Rock N' Roll Jesus (29,000)
17. Leona Lewis, Spirit (28,000)
18. Duffy, Rockferry (28,000)
19. Taylor Swift (27,000)
20. N.E.R.D., Seeing Sounds (24,000)

The top 10 digital albums, with sales totals in parentheses:
1. Coldplay, Viva La Vida (288,000)
2. Camp Rock soundtrack (38,000)
3. Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III (27,000)
4. Katy Perry, One Of The Boys (16,000)
5. The Offspring, Rise And Fall, Rage And Grace (11,000)
6. Disturbed, Indestructible (7,200)
7. Alanis Morrissette, Flavors Of Entanglement (6,700)
8. Coldplay, X & Y (6,200)
9. Sex And The City soundtrack (6,200)
10. Weezer (5,900)

EMI is the Bear Stearns of the music industry—once mighty, now declining rapidly and ripe for takeover and obliteration. But you'd never know it looking at the new Billboard Hot 100: two singles on EMI's U.S. flagship label, the 66-year-old Capitol Records, sit in the top two positions.

The chart is crowned by Coldplay's "Viva la Vida," the band's first-ever chart-topper and arguably the first No. 1 hit fueled entirely by Apple Inc. One lip-smack below them is Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl," which reaches No. 2—the latest leap in an inexorable march that will probably put her atop the chart before you fire up your July 4 barbecue.

Whether Perry ousts Chris Martin & co. from the penthouse next week or the week after will depend on the public's buying behavior this week, following the release of Coldplay's new blockbuster album. The interplay of song sales and album sales in the iTunes era is hard to predict—as shown by Lil Wayne's drop from No. 1, which we called wrong in a major way just last week.

Let's start with Capitol's victory. According to Billboard, the one-two punch of Coldplay and Perry marks the first time Capitol—that specific label, not any EMI/Capitol-distributed subsidiaries—has owned the Hot 100's Top Two since the first week of September 1967. You might guess that the Beatles were involved, and they were, but at No. 2. The gold medalist back then was Bobbie Gentry's "Ode to Billie Joe," which took over No. 1 from the Fabs' "All You Need Is Love." So: a coltish female and a best-selling British group—it's the same combo as this week, albeit in reverse order. (Let's hope history repeats and Perry never makes the Top 20 again, like Gentry, who deserved better.)

As for Coldplay, the title track from their new album remains the country's top-selling digital track for a third week, shifting roughly another quarter-million downloads. Until now, the song has been charting on the Hot 100 almost entirely from sales points, but radio finally joins the party; Billboard reports that the song is receiving top-20 airplay at a couple of niche formats, modern rock and adult top 40 (i.e., pop stations that appeal to your 30/40-something rugrat-raisers and Starbucks-drinkers). As a result, "Viva" makes its first appearance on the all-genre Hot 100 Airplay list, ranking as the 65th most-played song in the country.

Still, let's not kid ourselves: sales points are what made "Viva la Vida" a smash. And those sales have been exclusive to one store, iTunes. (As of this week, you can finally buy the song at Amazon, but those sales don't fall into the current chart's tracking week.) The million-plus iTunes purchases of "Viva" over the last month have been fueled almost entirely by the aggressively colorful Apple television commercial that's been running since late May.

For months, we've been watching the chart fortunes of the songs Apple chooses for its highest-profile iPod and Macintosh ads. Each has made a bigger splash than the last: from Feist's iPod nano-fueled hit last fall, which reached the Top 10; to Yael Naïm's MacBook Air-shilling smash this winter, which debuted in the Top 10. Now, Apple can claim its biggest win ever: a No. 1 hit it created virtually alone.

Am I overstating things? Sure, Coldplay is one of the world's biggest bands, and anything they release is bound to sell, Apple ad or no Apple ad.

But in the last month, we've had a nearly perfect, scientifically sound experiment: two simultaneous Coldplay singles with completely different promotional strategies. The first single, "Violet Hill," was released earlier and promoted aggressively to rock radio, and the band shot a Beatlesque music video, which has been receiving copious MTV play. The other single, "Viva," was released not long after "Violet," but it was promoted to radio later, and it did not receive any formal video treatment—except for Apple's TV ad.

In this accidental Pepsi Challenge, "Viva" has been the bigger hit by far, outselling "Violet" by as much as six to one. Apple can legitimately point to their ad as the X-factor: unlike "Violet," "Viva" has had little airplay, no video play and no other TV exposure except a taped performance on the MTV Movie Awards—which was two weeks ago and didn't seem to overwhelmingly help the song one way or another.

In short, any record executives rooting for a waning of Apple's influence over their industry have to look at this week's Hot 100 as very, very ominous news.

The only thing that will stop the Coldplay song's dominant chart run now is if fans decide to buy their album to the exclusion of their singles. You'd think I could make that prediction confidently. But I'm a little gun-shy this week, after I confidently—and wrongly—predicted in my last column that the owner of the next No. 1 album would also remain on top of the Hot 100.

It seemed like such a safe bet. We'd been talking about Lil Wayne's stunning, expected million-plus album sales for days. In the most triumphant week of his career, wouldn't it stand to reason that the all-around Weezy frenzy would keep the spring-dominating single "Lollipop" at No. 1 for another week?

You'd think that, but you'd be very wrong. "Lollipop" falls to No. 3 on the big chart, and that small move masks how seriously the song cratered. Digital sales of "Lollipop" in all its flavors—single version and album version, explicit and "clean"—drop, collectively, by more than a third from the week before (99,000 total downloads, down from 154,000). If not for radio airplay—"Lollipop" is still the most played song in the country—the song probably would've fallen out of the Top Five entirely. What happened?

Apparently, last week's singles-chart dominance by Weezy was just an amuse-bouche for the release of Tha Carter III. Once the album was available, fans sensibly decided that buying it was a sounder financial move than continuing to buy a half-dozen singles piecemeal. Simple economics, right?

Except, until recently, this hasn't been the trend. Back in November, I wrote in this column that, counterintuitively, "the release of an album seems to help, not hurt, already-rising songs whose release preceded their respective albums."

We had plenty of such evidence last fall. Alicia Keys reached No. 1 with "No One" the same week her album debuted with an impressive three-quarter-million in sales. Carrie Underwood saw her single "So Small" fly up the Hot 100 the same week her album debuted at No. 1. And how about the best Lil Wayne analogy of all: Kanye West, who debuted last September with 950,000 albums, nearly identical to Weezy's total; in that same week, his "Stronger" shot to No. 1 on the Hot 100. In all of these cases, the release of the album seemed to serve as fanfare to the buying public: hey! buy my album, or if you're too cheap, go to iTunes and download the first single.

Not this time. I have two theories about what's changed since last fall.

1. The cumulative effect of multiple singles. You don't release a half-dozen songs from an album, and score measurable airplay on all of them, without people deciding that album must be worth buying. Unlike Keys, Underwood and West, Weezy was too impatient to release just one leadoff single. Even if reviews for Tha Carter III have been a bit tepid, it's blindingly obvious that an album with six preordained hits must be worth a Hamilton. Which makes 99 cents for "Lollipop" seem like less of a deal.

2. The digital market still evolving—and becoming more album-friendly. The longer iTunes becomes entrenched as the nation's No. 1 music retailer, the more comfortable people get with the idea of buying song bundles there. The consumer who used to think, "digital is for singles, plastic is for albums" is probably coming around to the idea that albums can be digital, too. Never mind the fact that dozens of brick-and-mortar music stores have closed since last Christmas.

Which brings us back to Coldplay: both of the above trends apply to them. They have front-loaded the new album with two established hits, and they are megastars on iTunes. Early word has the album debuting with a record week of digital sales—they scored more than 140,000 downloads on the first day. By that rationale, sales of "Viva la Vida," the song, are sure to drop as fans devote their dollars to the full-length. Looking at the best-sellers on iTunes as of today, it's a little hard to tell (more than one version of the song is selling), but "Viva" does appear to be down overall.

If I were betting man, I'd lay money that the dreaded Perry will be No. 1 on the Hot 100 next week. But you didn't hear that from me.

Here's a rundown of the rest of this week's charts:

• While we're discussing the ways in which I was wrong, let me highlight two other recent botched calls.

Perhaps injecting my bias a bit overmuch, last week I speculated that the Pussycat Dolls' new single, "When I Grow Up," would recede this week. After all, the song's big leap last week was the result of the MTV Movie Awards, and that show doesn't exactly have legs. Oh, how wrong I was: "Grow Up" springs forward 13 places to No. 18, spurred by a 16% rise in digital sales. I forgot what a force the Dolls have always been at iTunes, where hits like "Stickwitu" and "Buttons" generated top 10 sales for months on end in 2005 and 2006. So: well done, Interscope promotions. Fair play to Nicole and all that.

My other bad call came a little less than two months ago, when Chris Brown debuted at an impressive No. 9 with "Forever" and I speculated that the Rihanna-like club track had "already peaked." Color me blush: "Forever" returns to the Top 10 this week, at a new peak of No. 8. As I noted in early May, the song debuted entirely on sales to rabid Brown fans, but it was going to need airplay to maintain its lofty position. It took a while, but it's finally happening: "Forever" is now the 15th most-played song on the radio, and its sales have held up all this time—it returned to the digital-sales top 10 last week.

Don't worry, I'm sure I'll return to being overconfident and obnoxious in a week or two.

• How dominant is Kenny Chesney on the Country chart? Enough that his "Better as a Memory" ousted Carrie Underwood from the No. 1 spot after she spent just one week there. And here's the kicker: her "Last Name" scores a bullet from Billboard, meaning that it grew in chart points last week; Chesney's song just grew more. "Better" jumps to No. 1 from No. 4, overtaking Brad Paisley and Rascal Flatts in the process.

All four singles from Chesney's last album, September 2007's Just Who I Am, have reached the Top Two on the Country list. Actually, all made it to No. 1, except the George Strait duet "Shiftwork," which peaked at No. 2, strangely. (I mean: Chesney plus Strait—that's the closest thing to a No. 1 guarantee you can get.)

• I mention this as consolation to Maura: her pick for Summer Jam of '08, Lloyd's "Girls Around the World" featuring Lil Wayne, may be a meager pop hit (No. 72 on the Hot 100). But over on the R&B/Hip-Hop Songs list, it's outcharting Estelle and Tyga by a damn sight, rising four notches this week to No. 15. Since this is an airplay-dominated chart, I think we can safely predict "Girls" will be booming from many a Jeep as the mercury rises—as sure a sign of summeriness as we Americans have. Got me throwin' up my hands!

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. Coldplay, "Viva la Vida" (LW No. 2, 6 weeks)
2. Katy Perry, "I Kissed a Girl" (LW No. 4, 6 weeks)
3. Lil Wayne feat. Static Major, "Lollipop" (LW No. 1, 14 weeks)
4. Leona Lewis, "Bleeding Love" (LW No. 3, 18 weeks)
5. Rihanna, "Take a Bow" (LW No. 5, 10 weeks)
6. Natasha Bedingfield, "Pocketful of Sunshine" (LW No. 9, 18 weeks)
7. Jordin Sparks with Chris Brown, "No Air" (LW No. 7, 24 weeks)
8. Chris Brown, "Forever" (LW No. 11, 8 weeks)
9. Usher feat. Young Jeezy, "Love in This Club" (LW No. 6, 18 weeks)
10. Metro Station, "Shake It" (LW No. 14, 11 weeks)

Hot Digital Songs
1. Coldplay, "Viva la Vida" (LW No. 1, 244,000 downloads, -4%)
2. Katy Perry, "I Kissed a Girl" (LW No. 2, 216,000 downloads, +8%)
3. Metro Station, "Shake It" (LW No. 8, 120,000 downloads, +28%)
4. Rihanna, "Take a Bow" (LW No. 3, 111,000 downloads, -5%)
5. Natasha Bedingfield, "Pocketful of Sunshine" (LW No. 5, 109,000 downloads, -3%)
6. Chris Brown, "Forever" (LW No. 7, 105,000 downloads, +36%)
7. Leona Lewis, "Bleeding Love" (LW No. 6, 94,000 downloads, -9%)
8. Jesse McCartney, "Leavin'" (LW No. 11, 88,000 downloads, +26%)
9. Madonna feat. Justin Timberlake, "4 Minutes" (LW No. 9, 78,000 downloads, -8%)
10. Pussycat Dolls, "When I Grow Up" (LW No. 12, 75,000 downloads, +16%)

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
1. Keyshia Cole, "Heaven Sent" (LW No. 1, 12 weeks)
2. Plies feat. Ne-Yo, "Bust It Baby (Part 2)" (LW No. 3, 16 weeks)
3. Lil Wayne feat. Static Major, "Lollipop" (LW No. 2, 14 weeks)
4. The-Dream, "I Luv Your Girl" (LW No. 5, 16 weeks)
5. Chris Brown, "Take You Down" (LW No. 4, 12 weeks)
6. Alicia Keys, "Teenage Love Affair" (LW No. 6, 18 weeks)
7. Lil Wayne, "A Milli" (LW No. 11, 8 weeks)
8. Usher feat. Beyonce and Lil Wayne, "Love in This Club, Part II" (LW No. 7, 8 weeks)
9. Trey Songz, "Last Time" (LW No. 10, 20 weeks)
10. Usher feat. Young Jeezy, "Love in This Club" (LW No. 9, 19 weeks)

Hot Country Songs
1. Kenny Chesney, "Better as a Memory" (LW No. 4, 13 weeks)
2. Carrie Underwood, "Last Name" (LW No. 1, 14 weeks)
3. Blake Shelton, "Home" (LW No. 5, 21 weeks)
4. Brad Paisley, "I'm Still a Guy" (LW No. 2, 17 weeks)
5. Rascal Flatts, "Every Day" (LW No. 3, 17 weeks)
6. Montgomery Gentry, "Back When I Knew It All" (LW No. 6, 17 weeks)
7. Alan Jackson, "Good Time" (LW No. 9, 10 weeks)
8. Dierks Bentley, "Trying to Stop Your Leaving" (LW No. 10, 23 weeks)
9. Lady Antebellum, "Love Don't Live Here" (LW No. 7, 37 weeks)
10. Brooks & Dunn, "Put a Girl in It" (LW No. 13, 8 weeks)

Hot Modern Rock Tracks
1. Weezer, "Pork & Beans" (LW No. 1, 9 weeks)
2. The Offspring, "Hammerhead" (LW No. 2, 6 weeks)
3. Foo Fighters, "Let It Die" (LW No. 3, 11 weeks)
4. Linkin Park, "Given Up" (LW No. 4, 15 weeks)
5. Seether, "Rise Above This" (LW No. 5, 17 weeks)
6. Death Cab for Cutie, "I Will Possess Your Heart" (LW No. 8, 13 weeks)
7. Flobots, "Handlebars" (LW No. 6, 11 weeks)
8. Nine Inch Nails, "Discipline" (LW No. 7, 8 weeks)
9. Disturbed, "Inside the Fire" (LW No. 11, 12 weeks)
10. The Raconteurs, "Salute Your Solution" (LW No. 9, 12 weeks)

• "Coldplay made its fortune on Martin's hypnotic roundelays, songs that bore simple titles like 'Clocks' and 'Fix You' and invoked comforting styles like the hymn and the lullaby. Eno pushes the band toward other forms based in circularity—the ambient music of the marketplace, the video game and the movie trailer—to make those warm little tunes even more marketable. Are they more memorable too? That depends on whether you like your chicken soup mild or spicy." [LA Times]

• "The record's violent, revolution-themed artwork is misleading. Viva is more like a bloodless coup—shrewd and inconspicuous in its progressive impulses." [Pitchfork]

• "Coldplay's desire to unite fans around the world with an entertainment they can all relate to is the band's strength, and a worthy goal. But on Viva La Vida, a record that wants to make strong statements, it's also a weakness. Sometimes, to say what needs to be said, you need to risk pissing people off." [Rolling Stone]

• "Coldplay is about sound, not sense. If a big, stadium-sized rock record can be praised for its nuances, Viva La Vida is it. But those looking for a bold progression to rival Eno's finest collaborations will be disappointed." [Chicago Tribune]

Oddly, Hoepfner notes that his song's subject, listening to the radio, would probably be a better fit for an iTunes ad than Coldplay singing about the Crusades. So far he's not seeking any financial restitution, and he's even joking that he stole the progression from Zelda on his band's blog. The similarity is vague enough that I think it's pretty canny of him to use these similarities as a way of getting the Creaky Boards some publicity, instead of going the more expensive lawsuit route. Probably won't get them closer to that Apple deal, though.

Coldplay Deny Stealing Song [Guardian]
coldplay + itunes steals viva la vida from creaky boards! [YouTube]

Lil Wayne is expected to triumph on next week's album chart, but this week, he has locked up a remarkable percentage of the Hot 100 singles chart: seven songs, starting with his five-week No. 1 champ "Lollipop."

This is the second time in three weeks that a single artist has laid claim to nearly a tenth of the chart; the other recent chart dominator was American Idol winner David Cook, who scored a mind-blowing 11 Hot 100 hits at the end of May. But Cook's feat was short-lived—he was down to three songs last week and is down to only one this week.

What makes Lil Wayne's feat impressive is not only that he could keep most of these seven songs on the chart for several weeks yet. It's that, a little bit like all-time record-holder the Beatles, he earned it.

Two Lil Wayne songs debut on the Hot 100's lower rungs, joining the five that were on the chart last week. Here's the latest list of his hits, with their exact credits shown (note that every song except "A Milli" includes vocals by someone else):

No. 1: Lil Wayne feat. Static Major, "Lollipop"
No. 21: Lil Wayne feat. T-Pain, "Got Money"
No. 27: Usher feat. Beyonce and Lil Wayne, "Love in This Club Part II"
No. 29: Lil Wayne, "A Milli"
No. 79: Lloyd feat. Lil Wayne, "Girls Around the World"
No. 81: Lil Wayne featuring Juelz Santana and Fabolous, "You Ain't Got Nuthin"
No. 92: Lil Wayne featuring Jay-Z, "Mr. Carter"

All five of the Lil Wayne-fronted singles appear on Tha Carter III. But remember, that album's only been on sale since Tuesday, and the Hot 100 captures data on songs from the prior week. Except for "Lollipop," most of his Hot 100 chart points are coming from digital sales, which means he released all four of the other songs as digital singles at the same damn time.

This is highly irregular major-label-act behavior, even in the iTunes era: you release one single, maybe two, in the leadup to an album, and generally promote one song to radio at a time. In this case, the sensible thing would have been to let "Lollipop" run its course, then release the followup "Got Money" just as the former single was peaking and start working radio stations to score airplay on the new hit.

Screw that, this release strategy seems to say. He released "A Milli" on iTunes in April, while "Lollipop" was still on the rise. "Got Money," the T-Pain-supported "official" followup hit, dropped the last week of May. Just one week later, and only a week before the album dropped, he released both "You Ain't Got Nuthin" and "Mr. Carter."

This throw-it-all-out-there approach has been the M.O. for both Lil Wayne and Cash Money, his formerly independent label, for years now. But I must say it's admirable of distributing label Universal that it's apparently not fighting Weezy's irrepressible need to release a song with every moon phase. (Or it could be a sign that they've totally relinquished control.)

Maybe that's because the strategy is working, even at radio. Most of Weezy's Hot 100 points are coming from sales, but virtually all of these songs are getting airplay, too—almost all of it from black radio. On the radio-dominated Hot R&B/Hip-Hop chart, Lil Wayne's name appears eight times—and half the songs he's attached to are in the Top 20 ("Lollipop," "Love in This Club," "A Milli," "Girls Around the World"). In fact, all of the Hot 100 songs shown above are receiving airplay except "You Ain't Got Nuthin." (The other two R&B/Hip-Hop charters: the six-month-old track from The Leak EP, "I'm Me"; and his supporting performance on Birdman's "I Run This.")

Right now on iTunes, in the wake of Tha Carter III's release, Lil Wayne dominates the store's best-selling tracks. Four versions of "Lollipop" are selling big; many of the above songs are still in the top 100; and there's yet another new song, "3 Peat." A week from now on the Hot 100, assuming none of his current hits drop off and "3 Peat" joins them, he could be even more dominant than he is now.

So where does all this place Lil Wayne in chart history?

When David Cook set the SoundScan-era record for Hot 100 dominance two weeks ago, Billboard chart columnist Fred Bronson fielded several grumbly letters from aging Boomers, who complained that comparing David Cook's 11 songs to the Beatles' 14 charters in April 1964 was a farce. To be fair to these thinly veiled Fabs fans, comparing chart phenomena in the modern era—with its whipsaw chart moves and instant-boom-and-bust singles—to the more regimented old-school charts is, shall we say, a bit fraught.

Still: you don't achieve what the Beatles, David Cook and Lil Wayne pulled off without something wonderfully weird going on. The fact is, all three acts have a rupture in the normal record-label release pattern to thank for their success. As Bronson explained in his column, the only reason the Fabs scored 14 simultaneous Hot 100 singles was the sheer number of labels releasing Beatles product before the group broke in the United States early in 1964; then, after their Ed Sullivan Show appearance, about a half-dozen tiny U.S. labels emptied their vaults of any Beatles-related tracks they'd been lucky enough to sign up.

In short, it was the combination of television and a series of contractual accidents resulting in a flood of songs—not unlike the combination of television and a weird contractual arrangement (iTunes' agreement to withhold Idol song-reporting until the show's final week) that propelled Cook's feat.

In fact, out of these three artists, Lil Wayne's feat looks the most traditional. One label let him release a slew of material all at once, and his rabid fans are buying and requesting virtually all of it. There's a word for that: popularity.

Here's a rundown of the rest of this week's charts:

• When we last left the race for No. 1, two songs were closing in on "Lollipop": Coldplay's Apple-fueled "Viva La Vida" and Katy Perry's tackiness-fueled "I Kissed a Girl." Both contenders move up one notch this week, and their respective patterns persist. For Coldplay, it's all about the digital—selling only at iTunes, the track moved a quarter-million downloads, a jump from its already-stunning total the prior week. But the airplay picture is still developing—it's absent from the all-genre Hot 100 Airplay list, but it does debut on Modern Rock tracks at No. 33 (the bigger Coldplay hit at rock radio, "Violet Hill," remains in the Top 10). For Perry, sales are lower but still huge—up another 27,000 or so to nearly 200,000—and airplay is growing all the time. "Kissed" is now among the 40 most-played songs at radio nationwide.

It may all be moot next week: Lil Wayne, currently enjoying the biggest moment of his career, will likely hold onto No. 1 for another week as Carter-mania keeps "Lollipop" selling and playing everywhere. Two weeks from now, however, if Coldplay sees a similar burst of attention from the release of Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends, the title track could make its final bid for the Hot 100 penthouse.

• The only chink in Weezy's armor this week: he no longer leads the R&B/Hip-Hop chart, as "Lollipop" is evicted from the top slot by the unstoppable Keyshia Cole. Just two weeks ago Billboard reported that Lil Wayne had one of the biggest leads in chart points for a No. 1 hit over the last couple of years. It's also a blow to Plies' Ne-Yo-backed "Bust It Baby," which had been holding at No. 2, waiting for Wayne to wane, and which Cole's "Heaven Sent" hops right over.

This is Cole's third consecutive R&B chart-topper, after "Let It Go" and "I Remember." Provocative topic for discussion: is Mary J. Blige handing over her hip-hop-soul crown? [Chart columnist ducks.]

• It took a bit longer than we expected, but Carrie Underwood finally tops Hot Country Songs with "Last Name." The girl-gone-wild, omigawd-what-have-I-done? tune takes a relatively big move from No. 5 to No. 1. After Underwood sang it on the May 21 American Idol finale in a leg-baring outfit, we expected country radio programmers to boost spins of the track, and it took a while, but here we are. This gives Underwood two consecutive albums with three No. 1 hits each. With just three years of recording history, she's become—no kidding—the 21st Century's biggest female country performer, beating the likes of Faith Hill, Jo Dee Messina and Sara Evans.

• After performing their comeback/let's-forget-Nicole's-solo-record-ever-happened hit on the MTV Movie Awards last week, the Pussycat Dolls "When I Grow Up" (which makes your columnist weep for the future) leaps 45 notches to No. 31 on the Hot 100. It's the biggest digital-sales gainer for the week, more than doubling its total to 64,000 downloads. That's a decent total, and enough to give the Dolls their sixth Top 40 hit overall—but other TV-fueled hits have performed far better this year. If I may start the schadenfreude party early, Scherzinger & co. shouldn't get too comfortable; the song isn't catching on at radio (yet) and will likely fall back next week.

• It's been a good year already for hip-hop comebacks, songs with Autotune, and supporting raps by Kanye West. So why shouldn't Young Jeezy jump on the bandwagon? The Hot 100's top debut this week is Jeezy's "Put On" featuring West, already a Top 40 hit with its No. 36 appearance. Looks like for 2008, Ayyyyyyyyy! has become AyyyeeeEEEeeoooowweeeeaaaayyyyy!

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. Lil Wayne feat. Static Major, "Lollipop" (LW No. 1, 13 weeks)
2. Coldplay, "Viva la Vida" (LW No. 3, 5 weeks)
3. Leona Lewis, "Bleeding Love" (LW No. 2, 17 weeks)
4. Katy Perry, "I Kissed a Girl" (LW No. 5, 5 weeks)
5. Rihanna, "Take a Bow" (LW No. 4, 9 weeks)
6. Usher feat. Young Jeezy, "Love in This Club" (LW No. 6, 17 weeks)
7. Jordin Sparks with Chris Brown, "No Air" (LW No. 7, 23 weeks)
8. Ray J & Yung Berg, "Sexy Can I" (LW No. 8, 19 weeks)
9. Natasha Bedingfield, "Pocketful of Sunshine" (LW No. 11, 17 weeks)
10. Madonna feat. Justin Timberlake, "4 Minutes" (LW No. 10, 12 weeks)

Hot Digital Songs
1. Coldplay, "Viva la Vida" (LW No. 1, 253,000 downloads, +15%)
2. Katy Perry, "I Kissed a Girl" (LW No. 3, 199,000 downloads, +16%)
3. Lil Wayne feat. Static Major, "Lollipop" (LW No. 2, 154,000 downloads, -20%)
4. Rihanna, "Take a Bow" (LW No. 3, 117,000 downloads, -6%)
5. Natasha Bedingfield, "Pocketful of Sunshine" (LW No. 8, 113,000 downloads, +3%)
6. Leona Lewis, "Bleeding Love" (LW No. 7, 103,000 downloads, -5%)
7. Chris Brown, "Forever" (LW No. 12, 102,000 downloads, +36%)
8. Metro Station, "Shake It" (LW No. 15, 93,000 downloads, +52%)
9. Madonna feat. Justin Timberlake, "4 Minutes" (LW No. 9, 84,000 downloads, -10%)
10. David Cook, "The Time of My Life" (LW No. 4, 80,000 downloads, -51%)

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
1. Keyshia Cole, "Heaven Sent" (LW No. 3, 11 weeks)
2. Lil Wayne feat. Static Major, "Lollipop" (LW No. 1, 13 weeks)
3. Plies feat. Ne-Yo, "Bust It Baby (Part 2)" (LW No. 2, 15 weeks)
4. Chris Brown, "Take You Down" (LW No. 4, 11 weeks)
5. The-Dream, "I Luv Your Girl" (LW No. 5, 15 weeks)
6. Alicia Keys, "Teenage Love Affair" (LW No. 8, 17 weeks)
7. Usher feat. Beyonce and Lil Wayne, "Love in This Club, Part II" (LW No. 9, 7 weeks)
8. Ashanti, "The Way That I Love You" (LW No. 6, 17 weeks)
9. Usher feat. Young Jeezy, "Love in This Club" (LW No. 7, 18 weeks)
10. Trey Songz, "Last Time" (LW No. 11, 19 weeks)

Hot Country Songs
1. Carrie Underwood, "Last Name" (LW No. 5, 13 weeks)
2. Brad Paisley, "I'm Still a Guy" (LW No. 1, 16 weeks)
3. Rascal Flatts, "Every Day" (LW No. 2, 16 weeks)
4. Kenny Chesney, "Better as a Memory" (LW No. 6, 12 weeks)
5. Blake Shelton, "Home" (LW No. 8, 20 weeks)
6. Montgomery Gentry, "Back When I Knew It All" (LW No. 9, 16 weeks)
7. Lady Antebellum, "Love Don't Live Here" (LW No. 3, 36 weeks)
8. James Otto, "Just Got Started Lovin' You" (LW No. 7, 34 weeks)
9. Alan Jackson, "Good Time" (LW No. 10, 9 weeks)
10. Dierks Bentley, "Trying to Stop Your Leaving" (LW No. 12, 22 weeks)

Hot Modern Rock Tracks
1. Weezer, "Pork & Beans" (LW No. 1, 8 weeks)
2. The Offspring, "Hammerhead" (LW No. 2, 5 weeks)
3. Foo Fighters, "Let It Die" (LW No. 5, 10 weeks)
4. Linkin Park, "Given Up" (LW No. 6, 14 weeks)
5. Seether, "Rise Above This" (LW No. 3, 16 weeks)
6. Flobots, "Handlebars" (LW No. 4, 10 weeks)
7. Nine Inch Nails, "Discipline" (LW No. 7, 7 weeks)
8. Death Cab for Cutie, "I Will Possess Your Heart" (LW No. 8, 12 weeks)
9. The Raconteurs, "Salute Your Solution" (LW No. 10, 11 weeks)
10. Coldplay, "Violet Hill" (LW No. 9, 6 weeks)

MARTIN: With Brian [Eno], he's not snobby about any kind of music. He'd say, ''Listen to this Donna Summer track and then this Boyz II Men track.'' Then we'd listen to Rammstein, and I played him a Limp Bizkit song. It could be literally like that, so we were able to plagiarize from the most extraordinary places.

Which Limp Bizkit song?
MARTIN: ''Rollin,'' which is my favorite. I love Limp Bizkit. Just watch, in about 10 years people will start saying, ''You know what? They were great.'' Because you can't question their energy and enthusiasm and that's Brian's big thing — he doesn't care what the music sounds like, as long as it has life in it. It might be unfashionable to say it at the moment, but Limp Bizkit had a lot of life in them when they were at their best. I'm proud to say it right here, live and on the record.

I don't even know how to respond to that...
MARTIN: I also think that their version of ''Behind Blue Eyes'' is better than the Who's. Call me sacrilege.

No, I call you a hero. Keep on rollin', Chris! You know what time it is!

Coldplay Talk Viva La Vida [EW]
Limp Bizkit - Rollin' (Air Raid Vehicle) [YouTube]

Oh, if only that deer-in-the-headlights look was being caused by some actual oncoming headlights. Here I go, thinking you've recorded one of the best singles of the year, one that finds a moving middle ground between the music of U2 and the Arcade Fire, and you have to ruin it by indulging in Bono's not-really-so-humble self-mocking messiah shtick and the Arcade Fire's penchant for raiding the wardrobe of a high school thespian club. Thom Yorke still wants to know how many trees had to die so you could do your idiot hop under streams of confetti at the MTV Movie Awards.

One of our big conversations that we always have in this band is, we don't see rock & roll as being about coke-taking, leather-trouser-wearing rebellion, because that to us is not rebellion anymore. The spirit of rock & roll is freedom. It's about following what you believe in and not caring what anyone else says. And if that means writing something on your hand, then you've got to write something on your hand. It doesn't matter if you don't look as cool as the Ramones — you're never going to, anyway. So I know that we'll be ridiculed for this and look stupid for that. But as long as we believe in what we're doing, we can't apologize for it.

You believe in looking like extras from a crap