If you're trying to guess what might end up as Billboard's top song of 2008, you might take a gander at this week's Hot 100, where a prime contender is still sitting in the top three after peaking months ago.

That would be Leona Lewis' "Bleeding Love," the neo-diva ballad that's outlasted anything her role model Mariah Carey has released so far this year. According to Nielsen SoundScan, which released its (mostly dismal) midyear report this week, Lewis' smash is the top-selling single for the six-month period beginning Dec. 31 and ending June 29.

That doesn't necessarily make the Lewis track a lock for the year's top prize, due to some technicalities which I'll discuss momentarily. But there is one thing that makes "Bleeding Love" emblematic of 2008: it's an undeniable smash single which has proven tough for the artist to follow up.

According to SoundScan, the first-half '08 best-sellers are "Bleeding Love," at 2.6 million downloads, Flo Rida's "Low" featuring T-Pain, with 2.4 million, and Jordin Sparks' duet with Chris Brown, "No Air," which sold 2.1 million. All three songs are currently charting on the Hot 100. This week, about two months after its four-week run at No. 1, "Bleeding" sits pretty at No. 3. Sparks' ballad, after peaking at No. 3, just fell out of the Top 10 last week, but it's still hanging on to the Top 20 at No. 18. And the unkillable former No. 1 "Low," now in its 36th week on the chart, finally falls out of the Top 40, down six spots to No. 42.

The Lewis and Sparks tracks sold virtually all of their copies in calendar 2008. But Flo Rida's hit did serious business last year—about another one and a half million sold in 2007. "Low," already the biggest-selling digital track of all time and still selling well (it ranks 52nd among this week's top digital songs), is now about 5,000 copies shy of total cumulative sales of 4 million.

Mr. Rida's 2007 sales are important to our discussion here, because as I've explained in this space before, Billboard persists in using an annoyingly skewed "chart year" in its year-end tallies, one that runs from Dec. 1 to Nov. 30. That extra month of sales will give "Low" a huge advantage in the year-end tally: it hit its stride last December and rose to No. 1 just after Christmas, months before anyone in America had even heard of Lewis.

Lewis is an established pop star in the UK, with three top hits to her credit (two No. 1's and a double-sided No. 2 single). It's too soon to say how she'll be regarded here, but so far, the Lewis phenomenon in America is all about one massive song; Sony/BMG has held off formally releasing a second single until mid-July. I say "formally," because of course, in the digital age, once an album is released any of its songs are de facto singles; and on the modern-day charts, any song radio chooses to play is Hot 100-eligible, regardless of a label's marketing plans.

So far, neither the public nor radio programmers have flocked to a second Lewis song en masse. The label's planned second hit is the thumping, midtempo pop track "Better in Time," which has been charting on Billboard's Pop 100 list for nearly two months (peaking at No. 45, now down a bit), but it has made no impression on the big chart. "Better" is Lewis' second-biggest seller at iTunes, but comparing it to "Bleeding" is like comparing a minnow to a baleen whale. Among all digital tracks, "Better" only ranks 176th in sales this week, with 8,200 copies. These are decent numbers for a song that's received little formal promotion as yet, but they're a little anemic for the followup single to the year's best-selling hit.

Lewis shouldn't be too dejected by this state of affairs—it's been a tougher year than expected for pop divas to follow up their hits. As I alluded above, Carey has had a tough time after her latest album produced a quick-burning No. 1, "Touch My Body." In the time it's taken Lewis' handlers to milk "Bleeding Love" for sales and airplay, Carey's people have already squeezed all they can out of "Touch" (now ranked No. 59 in its 20th and final week on the Hot 100); tried and failed with a second single, "Bye Bye" (peaked at No. 19, now down to No. 69); and started promoting a third hit, the Idolator-approved "I'll Be Lovin' U Long Time." That third Carey single debuts this week at No. 100...on the Pop 100, not the Hot 100, where it is still M.I.A. So much for the year of Mimi.

And forget the divas—what about digital-sales giant Flo Rida? After "Low," his Timbaland-assisted second single "Elevator" was a flop, peaking quickly at No. 16 before plummeting off the chart in under three months. And one week after his third single, "In the Ayer," debuted at a more-than-solid No. 38, it's down to No. 40.

Other than Sparks, who can still hope that her post-American Idol album will produce a third Top 10 charter ("One Step at a Time" debuts this week at No. 79), none of this year's biggest smash songs has been followed by a serious hit.

That's not to say no one is having a good year: Lil Wayne's "Lollipop" is finally giving way to "A Milli" (up seven spots to No. 14); and Rihanna, still riding "Take a Bow" in the top five, has "Distrubia" waiting in the wings (up seven to No. 11—a surprise after her fluke debut last week).

But in a digital-fueled, singles-based economy, the charts are getting crueler all the time.

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

• As we forecast last week, the Jonas Brothers made a splashy debut on the chart. "Burnin' Up" materializes all the way up at No. 5—the second-biggest debut of the year after David Cook's No. 3 appearance last month with "The Time of My Life."

The Jonases probably would have placed even higher if the song had stronger radio airplay—thus far, it's nonexistent on the Hot 100 Airplay list, but it ranks 31st on the all-Top 40 Pop 100 Airplay list. Expect "Burnin'" to hold on or move higher, unless fans get distracted by a succession of pre-album Jonas singles Disney plans to drop in the next few weeks. Speaking of which...

• A few weeks ago in this space, I talked at length about the unusual multi-single strategies fueling the recent blockbuster albums by Lil Wayne and Coldplay. According to a story in last week's Billboard, this is a more coherent strategy than I first suspected, and (like so many things on the charts these days) it's spurred by iTunes:

"Releasing a single for digital download before an album's debut is about as standard these days as making it available to radio. But in the past few months, labels and artists have begun releasing multiple tracks in advance of an album's street date to promote new releases, relying in no small degree on Apple's iTunes Music Store's Complete My Album feature to convert them into full-album sales — in some cases with striking effectiveness."

It's been a while since I've said anything nice about the music industry, but kudos to the labels' promotion teams. This strategy takes advantage of an Apple feature in a way that benefits pretty much everybody: insatiable fans, who get to buy early singles confident they'll save money off the iTunes album release later; the acts, who don't have to be bound by the old, hidebound one-track-every-quarter release strategy; the labels, who protect their first-week album sales numbers; and Apple, of course.

Expect numerous superstar acts to try what we'll now refer to as "pulling a Weezy," dropping an array of early singles in the leadup to their albums' release dates. The Jonases are first—they'll prep fans for the mid-August release of A Little Bit Longer with, in order, "Pushing Me Away" on July 15, "Tonight" (no relation to the old New Kids hit, I guess) on July 29, and the title track on Aug. 5.

Top 10s
Last week's position and total weeks charted in parentheses (Digital Songs chart includes total downloads/percentage change in parentheses):

Hot 100
1. Katy Perry, "I Kissed a Girl" (LW No. 1, 8 weeks)
2. Lil Wayne feat. Static Major, "Lollipop" (LW No. 2, 16 weeks)
3. Leona Lewis, "Bleeding Love" (LW No. 3, 20 weeks)
4. Rihanna, "Take a Bow" (LW No. 4, 12 weeks)
5. Jonas Brothers, "Burnin' Up" (CHART DEBUT)
6. Coldplay, "Viva la Vida" (LW No. 6, 8 weeks)
7. Plies feat. Ne-Yo, "Bust It Baby (Part 2)" (LW No. 8, 14 weeks)
8. Chris Brown, "Forever" (LW No. 7, 10 weeks)
9. Demi Lovato & Joe Jonas, "This Is Me" (LW No. 11, 2 weeks)
10. Natasha Bedingfield, "Pocketful of Sunshine" (LW No. 5, 20 weeks)

Hot Digital Songs
1. Katy Perry, "I Kissed a Girl" (LW No. 1, 204,000 downloads, -6%)
2. Jonas Brothers, "Burnin' Up" (CHART DEBUT, 183,000 downloads)
3. Demi Lovato & Joe Jonas, "This Is Me" (LW No. 2, 123,000 downloads, +7%)
4. Coldplay, "Viva la Vida" (LW No. 3, 137,000 downloads, +7%)
5. Rihanna, "Disturbia" (LW No. 6, 112,000 downloads, +2%)
6. Miley Cyrus, "7 Things" (LW No. 4, 106,000 downloads, -19%)
7. The Pussycat Dolls, "When I Grow Up" (LW No. 5, 103,000 downloads, -20%)
8. Lil Wayne feat. Static Major, "Lollipop" (LW No. 8, 93,000 downloads, -15%)
9. Metro Station, "Shake It" (LW No. 10, 91,000 downloads, -11%)
10. Rihanna, "Take a Bow" (LW No. 9, 88,000 downloads, -13%)

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
1. Keyshia Cole, "Heaven Sent" (LW No. 1, 14 weeks)
2. Lil Wayne, "A Milli" (LW No. 4, 10 weeks)
3. Plies feat. Ne-Yo, "Bust It Baby (Part 2)" (LW No. 3, 18 weeks)
4. The-Dream, "I Luv Your Girl" (LW No. 5, 18 weeks)
5. Chris Brown, "Take You Down" (LW No. 6, 14 weeks)
6. Alicia Keys, "Teenage Love Affair" (LW No. 7, 20 weeks)
7. Lil Wayne feat. Static Major, "Lollipop" (LW No. 2, 16 weeks)
8. Usher feat. Beyonce and Lil Wayne, "Love in This Club, Part II" (LW No. 8, 10 weeks)
9. Trey Songz, "Last Time" (LW No. 9, 22 weeks)
10. Young Jeezy feat. Kanye West, "Put On" (LW No. 10, 8 weeks)

Hot Country Songs
1. Montgomery Gentry, "Back When I Knew It All" (LW No. 3, 19 weeks)
2. Blake Shelton, "Home" (LW No. 2, 23 weeks)
3. Kenny Chesney, "Better as a Memory" (LW No. 1, 15 weeks)
4. Alan Jackson, "Good Time" (LW No. 5, 12 weeks)
5. Dierks Bentley, "Trying to Stop Your Leaving" (LW No. 7, 25 weeks)
6. Brooks & Dunn, "Put a Girl in It" (LW No. 9, 10 weeks)
7. Carrie Underwood, "Last Name" (LW No. 4, 16 weeks)
8. Sugarland, "All I Want to Do" (LW No. 10, 6 weeks)
9. Brad Paisley, "I'm Still a Guy" (LW No. 6, 19 weeks)
10. Keith Anderson, "I Still Miss You" (LW No. 12, 22 weeks)

Hot Modern Rock Tracks
1. Weezer, "Pork & Beans" (LW No. 1, 11 weeks)
2. The Offspring, "Hammerhead" (LW No. 2, 8 weeks)
3. Foo Fighters, "Let It Die" (LW No. 3, 13 weeks)
4. Linkin Park, "Given Up" (LW No. 4, 17 weeks)
5. Seether, "Rise Above This" (LW No. 5, 19 weeks)
6. Death Cab for Cutie, "I Will Possess Your Heart" (LW No. 6, 15 weeks)
7. Disturbed, "Inside the Fire" (LW No. 9, 14 weeks)
8. Coldplay, "Viva la Vida" (LW No. 12, 4 weeks)
9. Nine Inch Nails, "Discipline" (LW No. 7, 10 weeks)
10. Flobots, "Handlebars" (LW No. 8, 13 weeks)

As Dan Gibson noted in an IM to me, it's hard to not at least appreciate the effort; surely every reader of this site has made the "lol, MTV doesn't show videos anymore" joke at least once in the past five years. The live-performance aspect of the show was also noble, and having Snoop Dogg and Panic at the Disco collaborate on "Gin And Juice" at the show's end was fine (as a bonus, it made me dig up Sissy Bar's MySpace page).

I wasn't surprised that only 30 seconds were allotted to each of the "vintage" videos that aired on the broadcast, which included Idolator pick "Bastards of Young." More irritating than that, really, was the fact that for a show that was supposed to be about the music and its associated videos, FNMTV sure felt like it had to remind viewers over and over that, yes, the people on screen were famous, solo-album flops be damned. The filler ranged from a NBC Summer Olympics-reminiscent look at the "rise" of Flo Rida to an awkward interview between Wentz and the Pussycat Dolls, and recaps of the featured clips were provided by both an instant text-message poll of the crowd (the cell-phone era equivalent of "it has a beat and you can dance to it," I guess) and a video review panel that featured MTV News' James Montgomery and the Gym Class Heroes' Travis McCoy spouting reasons why each video may have been worthy of "instant classic" status. The extra padding and the fact that commercial interruptions were limited dragged the show out, and I was left to wonder why some of these bits weren't cut in favor of another Panic performance, or maybe—gasp!—another video?

It seems odd that the attention-span-challenged youth of today really need six minutes of filler and an invitation to make their own video responses in order to properly process a clip attached to a four-minute pop song, even one as shitty as the one accompanying the Pussycat Dolls' unintentional ode to the end of the 21st-century gilded age, "When I Grow Up."

If you fast forward to the end, you can see Scherzherface making a series of increasingly crazy faces (and miss most of the song, to boot).

I suspect that week two of the show will reveal some tweaks—apparently in addition to the four new clips (including one by Vampire Weekend, oh boy) we're going to see live performances by both Lil Wayne and Duffy. Here's hoping they team up for a performance, just for the sake of making her a bit interesting.

FNMTV Premieres [mtv.com]

Flo Rida - Elevator [YouTube]

Forget what I said last week: apparently there was pent-up demand for new Usher material.

Even after three intervening years that saw little more than a flop vanity movie and some wedding-related tabloid embarrassment, Mr. Raymond remains beloved by pop and R&B radio and, most importantly, consumers—198,000 iTunes buyers can't be wrong.

Well, maybe they can. Let's be honest: "Love in This Club" is probably the weakest leadoff single for any Usher album since he broke big a decade ago. Musically and production-wise, it can't hold a candle to "You Make Me Wanna...," "U Remind Me" or "Yeah!" But we'll overlook that for at least a week, so deep is our gratitude that "Club" dethroned 10-week Billboard Hot 100 dominator Flo Rida, whose "Low" finally succumbs and shrinks to No. 2.

Our gratitude to Usher only deepens as we examine the rest of the Top Five. If he hadn't made a 50-point surge to No. 1—the third-largest leap to the top in Hot 100 history, after Maroon 5's "Makes Me Wonder" last year and Kelly Clarkson's "A Moment Like This" in 2002—Flo Rida would still be No. 1 this week. That's less a testament to how strong "Low" still is than to how weak its three upper-chart challengers are: Chris Brown's "With You," Rihanna's "Don't Stop the Music" and Sara Bareilles's "Love Song" each fall one slot, in lockstep, behind Flo Rida. (Bareilles at least retains her bullet, which means she could come back next week.) Message to Chris, Ri and Sara: thanks for nothing!

"Love in This Club" is Usher's first real chart test of the iTunes era, and he passes with flying colors. When Confessions, the No. 1 album of 2004, spawned four No. 1 smashes four years ago, iTunes was going on one year old, and the Hot 100 was still compiled using only airplay points and (nearly negligible) physical single sales. Even if iTunes had been a factor on the Hot 100 back then, its effect on Usher's performance might have been muted: BMG didn't release the megasmash "Yeah!" to iTunes during most of its chart run, fearful of the effect on album sales. (When they finally relented sometime late in 2004, "Yeah!" became one of the top iTunes downloads of the year.)

But in 2008, with Usher's album-drop date still up in the air and iTunes the dominant factor on chart performance, the label couldn't reasonably expect a big hit without uncaging the song online. It seems to have been a worthwhile move: the comeback of one of Sony/BMG's key superstars is now all but assured.

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

• A quick word on two songs surging into the Top 20: Flo Rida's followup hit, "Elevator," makes a solid 12-space move up to No. 16 after his massive 72-point vault last week. I'll say it again: this is decent performance, but "Elevator," unlike "Low," is going to have to earn its way up the chart the slow-and-steady way.

The even bigger mover, and the biggest sales gainer on the entire chart, is Janet Jackson's beleaguered single "Feedback," which after 10 weeks is finally both a Top 40 and Top 20 hit. Thanks to a flurry of digital sales spurred by the release of Discipline, the single leaps 34 places to No. 19. Now, the bad news: with little major-market airplay ("Feedback" is nowhere to be found on the Hot 100 Airplay chart), "Feedback" will fall back next week. If I were at Island Def Jam, I'd be teeing up the far, far better pop track "Rock With U" to radio now.

• Maura mentioned Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova's "Falling Slowly" the other day, but just to emphasize how big an effect TV exposure has on digital sales, it's the top debut on the Hot 100 this week at No. 61, thanks entirely to its 41,000 buck-a-song buyers in the week after the Oscars. The song never appeared on any Billboard chart while Once was in theaters, but is still considered current enough to make the charts. That's not the case with a different TV-benefiting song, John Lennon's 37-year-old "Imagine," which sells 20,000 downloads thanks to David "Pageant Boy" Archuleta's American Idol performance last week.

• Speaking of Idol: Jordin Sparks is still working to erase her reputation as the only one of the show's winners not to score a No. 1 (or at least No. 2) hit. "No Air" shoots into the Top 10 and will probably make the Top Five in a week or two.

• With the Top 10 of the Hot 100 so sluggish (notwithstanding Usher), I find myself envying the turnover in the Hot Country chart's Top 10. Carrie Underwood shoots up four spots to take No. 1 with "All American Girl"; her live performance on Saturday Night Live two weekends ago had to have helped. And among the two songs entering the winners' circle is the indefatigable George Strait, with his roughly 2 millionth Top 10 hit. "I Saw God Today"? Try "I AM God Today"—so dominant is Strait that his earlier Top 10 hit, the Kenny Chesney duet "Shiftwork," is still there.

• In the midst of a snoozy R&B Top 10, singer-songwriter The-Dream is quietly amassing his biggest hit as a lead artist: the glass-shattering, Smoove B-like "Falsetto" sneaks up to No. 4, outdoing the No. 6 R&B peak of "Shawty Is a 10."

Bets on when his label finally releases his duet with Rihanna, Idolator fave "Livin' a Lie"? (My theory: Rihanna's people are waiting until her current album is bled dry of singles.)

• This week a tremendously unhip act who's now on his fifth album scores his first Modern Rock Top 10 hit—after he's crossed over to soccer moms and Starbucks denizens. This goes against the typical pattern; for example, suburban Volvo-rockers Nickelback are now considered poison to Modern programmers, years after their dominant "How You Remind Me" days. But surf-pop bro Jack Johnson defies convention, inching into the Top 10 with "If I Had Eyes"; prior to this, his best performance on the chart was the No. 22 peak of the Brushfire Fairytales track "Flake" back in 2002. Guess his new album's whole dude-I'm-totally-bummed-out vibe did the trick.

Top 10s
Last week's position and total weeks charted in parentheses:

Hot 100
1. Usher Featuring Young Jeezy, "Love In This Club" (LW No. 51, 3 weeks)
2. Flo Rida feat. T-Pain, "Low" (LW No. 1, 19 weeks)
3. Chris Brown, "With You" (LW No. 2, 14 weeks)
4. Rihanna, "Don't Stop the Music" (LW No. 3, 15 weeks)
5. Sara Bareilles, "Love Song" (LW No. 5, 18 weeks)
6. Jordin Sparks with Chris Brown, "No Air" (LW No. 13, 9 weeks)
7. Timbaland feat. OneRepublic, "Apologize" (LW No. 6, 31 weeks)
8. Alicia Keys, "No One" (LW No. 5, 26 weeks)
9. Webbie, Lil' Phat & Lil' Boosie, "Independent" (LW No. 9, 15 weeks)
10. Snoop Dogg, "Sensual Seduction" (LW No. 7, 14 weeks)

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
1. Keyshia Cole, "I Remember" (LW No. 1, 18 weeks)
2. Alicia Keys, "Like You'll Never See Me Again" (LW No. 2, 19 weeks)
3. J. Holiday, "Suffocate" (LW No. 3, 22 weeks)
4. The-Dream, "Falsetto" (LW No. 7, 13 weeks)
5. Mary J. Blige, "Just Fine" (LW No. 4, 23 weeks)
6. Chris Brown, "With You" (LW No. 5, 14 weeks)
7. Mario, "Crying Out for Me" (LW No. 6, 27 weeks)
8. Shawty Lo, "Dey Know" (LW No. 11, 22 weeks)
9. Webbie, Lil' Phat & Lil' Boosie, "Independent" (LW No. 8, 20 weeks)
10. Snoop Dogg, "Sensual Seduction" (LW No. 9, 17 weeks)

Hot Country Songs
1. Carrie Underwood, "All-American Girl" (LW No. 5, 14 weeks)
2. Rodney Atkins, "Cleaning This Gun (Come on in Boy)" (LW No. 1, 24 weeks)
3. Alan Jackson, "Small Town Southern Man" (LW No. 4, 17 weeks)
4. Kenny Chesney with George Strait, "Shiftwork" (LW No. 2, 20 weeks)
5. Chuck Wicks, "Stealing Cinderella" (LW No. 7, 28 weeks)
6. Trace Adkins, "You're Gonna Miss This" (LW No. 10, 13 weeks)
7. Gary Allan, "Watching Airplanes" (LW No. 6, 33 weeks)
8. George Strait, "I Saw God Today" (LW No. 12, 4 weeks)
9. Chris Cagle, "What Kinda Gone" (LW No. 11, 32 weeks)
10. Jason Aldean, "Laughed Until We Cried" (LW No. 14, 30 weeks)

Hot Modern Rock Tracks
1. Foo Fighters, "Long Road to Ruin" (LW No. 1, 19 weeks)
2. Linkin Park, "Shadow of the Day" (LW No. 3, 22 weeks)
3. Seether, "Fake It" (LW No. 2, 27 weeks)
4. Paramore, "crushcrushcrush" (LW No. 4, 16 weeks)
5. Puddle of Mudd, "Psycho" (LW No. 6, 18 weeks)
6. Foo Fighters, "The Pretender" (LW No. 5, 31 weeks)
7. Rise Against, "The Good Left Undone" (LW No. 8, 36 weeks)
8. Avenged Sevenfold, "Almost Easy" (LW No. 7, 22 weeks)
9. Jack Johnson, "If I Had Eyes" (LW No. 11, 13 weeks)
10. Radiohead, "Bodysnatchers" (LW No. 9, 19 weeks)

* OK, so one of these acts is, like, president of the United States and the other the president of American Samoa. I'll get to the White Stripes later...

Yesterday on Idolator, Maura brought up a subject I've been downplaying here since 2008 began: mediocre pop-rapper Flo Rida's depressing death grip on Billboard's Hot 100. Mostly, I've avoided a deep discussion of his T-Pain-assisted No. 1 smash "Low"—now in its 10th week atop the chart, matching last winter's run by Beyoncé's "Irreplaceable"—because there's not much to tell. Its sales have been massive since fall, it has led in radio airplay since mid-January, and no single has seriously challenged it for No. 1 all winter.

But as Maura noted, we'll have to pay mind to Mr. Rida now that his followup single, the Timbaland-assisted "Elevator," is making a fast break up the chart. The thought that "Low" would be succeeded by another Flo Rida song is enough to make one swear off Billboard forever.

Don't despair. There are a lot of ways for this story to play out, and I'd say it's less than 50-50 that Uncle Flo will succeed himself at the top. Let's run down some scenarios.

First, let's examine "Low" itself. It's down in both airplay and sales for the Billboard tracking week, and if it's going to hold onto No. 1 much longer, it will be because of weak competition (more on that in a moment). It seems to be approaching a historical sales ceiling: only two songs in legal-downloading history, OneRepublic's "Apologize" and Soulja Boy's "Crank That," have sold more than three million copies. And while "Low" (a hair under the three-million mark on this week's digital-sales charts) will easily top the cumulative sales of OneRepublic and Soulja Boy (both around 3.1 million) before the counting's done, the song's market is likely reaching a saturation point.

On the radio side, the song's support is heavy but narrow. Since hip-hop seriously crossed over to pop radio a decade ago, there has been a subspecies of rap hit that does only moderate business at R&B radio (think Nelly's more recent hits, or the Black Eyed Peas). "Low" is one of those songs; it's never risen above No. 9 on the R&B/Hip-Hop chart. When Top 40 radio finally tires of it, it's done.

Honestly, it should have been done on the Hot 100 weeks ago, if the songs at Nos. 2 and 3 could have sealed the deal. Each has had the opposite handicap from the other: Chris Brown's "With You" is a radio star—it just toppled "Low" as the most-played song in America this week—but it's suffered from good-not-great sales throughout its run; this week, at 89,000 copies, it moved just over half of what "Low" sells in an off-week. And Rihanna's "Don't Stop the Music" has been selling over six figures a week but is taking a while to catch up in airplay; as a full-on club song, its radio exposure probably has a ceiling.

This leaves three songs that could save us from further Flo Rida tyranny—and only one of them is in the Top 10 right now:

• "Love Song" by Sara Bareilles, now up to No. 4, is already outselling "Low" at iTunes—that won't be reflected until next week's charts—and is turning into a serious radio hit. Her radio deficit is still massive, but if her sales stay this strong, it won't matter.

• "Touch My Body" by Mariah Carey, up 23 spots to No. 34, is charting with one hand tied behind its back: it's not for sale yet. Considering this handicap, it's performing phenomenally on the current, iTunes-heavy chart—only radio is providing the song with chart points, and it's already in the Top 20 in airplay. Such instant airwave dominance is rare. Island Def Jam hasn't breathed a word about when or if the song will drop on iTunes; so until they do, we have to assume it'll meander around the middle of the chart. But if they do drop it digitally, stand the hell back.

• "Love in The Club" by Usher, currently charting all the way down at No. 51, is the most likely No. 1 contender, and it may even reach that point as soon as next week for one simple reason: iTunes. As this astute commenter noted yesterday, it debuted there last week and is already No. 1. We'll know if it's pulled off a coup next week, when we find out how big its first-week sales are. The big question: four years after his Confessions juggernaut, and after numerous album-release delays, how pent-up is demand for Usher?

As for the new Flo Rida hit, "Elevator" is almost certainly on its way to the Top 10, but No. 1 is not a foregone conclusion. With a 72-point leap this week (from No. 100 to No. 28), "Elevator" is making the kinds of moves that are made by a future No. 1. But the main reason for the pole-vault is its debut last week on iTunes.

For an act following up a massive hit, the sales of "Elevator" aren't exactly explosive; it moved 64,000 copies, well short of the six-figure totals we typically see atop the download chart. Just for comparison, when "Low" hit iTunes last fall, it flew from No. 64 all the way to No. 6 in a single week. No. 28 doesn't look all that impressive by comparison. As of today, "Elevator" has moved into iTunes' top five, but it's still selling less than "Low."

"Elevator" will probably see one more big surge in the next month, during the week in mid-March that Flo Rida's album drops. Whether it becomes as massive as "Low" after that will depend on how fast it catches on at radio. In the meantime, I think it's quite likely that at least one of the above five songs will interrupt tattoo-boy's epic run.

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

• Yes, the White Stripes are No. 1 on a Billboard chart this week, and at first glance it appears impressive: Hot Singles Sales. They're tops there for the second week in a row with the third single from Icky Thump, the Patti Page cover "Conquest."

Thing is, Hot Singles Sales is the old-school, pre-iTunes chart that tracks actual physical singles—you remember those! So do Jack and Meg White, because they've released the track on a series of sexy colored-vinyl 45's, complete with trading cards and B-sides recorded with Beck. I don't have access to full SoundScan sales data, but suffice it to say it's unlikely that "Conquest" is selling much beyond the low five-figure range. Or even less: In a typical week, when there isn't a new CD single from an American Idol winner or a High School Musical star, the No. 1 single on Hot Singles Sales moves as little as 1,000 copies or less. So, as long as the Stripes keep copies of "Conquest" available, they could be leading this chart for months.

• The biggest digital-sales gainer on the Hot 100 is the second official single from American Idol season six winner Jordin Sparks. "No Air," her duet with Chris Brown, is up more than 40% in sales for the week and leaps 10 notches to No. 13 on the big chart.

That makes the song a likely near-term Top 10 candidate, but it's not the only one. Right now, there's a fleet of planes on the runway from Nos. 11 through 15, all with bullets and upward momentum: Miley Cyrus' "See You Again," Lupe Fiasco's "Superstar," "No Air," Alicia Keys' "Like You'll Never See Me Again," and Linkin Park's "Shadow of the Day."

• New No. 1 on the Hot Dance Club Play chart: Britney Spears's "Piece of Me," which peaked in the Top 20 of the Hot 100 a month ago. The strangest track entering that chart's Top 10: a remix of matchbox twenty's "How Far We've Come." Yes, that matchbox twenty. (Sorry to leave you with the image of Rob Thomas doing the running man.)

Top 10s
Last week's position and total weeks charted in parentheses:

Hot 100
1. Flo Rida feat. T-Pain, "Low" (LW No. 1, 18 weeks)
2. Chris Brown, "With You" (LW No. 2, 13 weeks)
3. Rihanna, "Don't Stop the Music" (LW No. 3, 14 weeks)
4. Sara Bareilles, "Love Song" (LW No. 5, 17 weeks)
5. Alicia Keys, "No One" (LW No. 4, 25 weeks)
6. Timbaland feat. OneRepublic, "Apologize" (LW No. 6, 30 weeks)
7. Snoop Dogg, "Sensual Seduction" (LW No. 7, 13 weeks)
8. Sean Kingston, "Take You There" (LW No. 8, 17 weeks)
9. Webbie, Lil' Phat & Lil' Boosie, "Independent" (LW No. 10, 14 weeks)
10. Buckcherry, "Sorry" (LW No. 9, 12 weeks)

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
1. Keyshia Cole, "I Remember" (LW No. 1, 17 weeks)
2. Alicia Keys, "Like You'll Never See Me Again" (LW No. 2, 18 weeks)
3. J. Holiday, "Suffocate" (LW No. 3, 21 weeks)
4. Mary J. Blige, "Just Fine" (LW No. 4, 22 weeks)
5. Chris Brown, "With You" (LW No. 7, 13 weeks)
6. Mario, "Cryin' Out for Me" (LW No. 5, 26 weeks)
7. The-Dream, "Falsetto" (LW No. 6, 12 weeks)
8. Webbie, Lil' Phat & Lil' Boosie, "Independent" (LW No. 10, 19 weeks)
9. Snoop Dogg, "Sensual Seduction" (LW No. 8, 16 weeks)
10. Flo Rida feat. T-Pain, "Low" (LW No. 9, 23 weeks)

Hot Country Songs
1. Rodney Atkins, "Cleaning This Gun (Come on in Boy)" (LW No. 1, 23 weeks)
2. Kenny Chesney with George Strait, "Shiftwork" (LW No. 4, 19 weeks)
3. Brad Paisley, "Letter to Me" (LW No. 3, 20 weeks)
4. Alan Jackson, "Small Town Southern Man" (LW No. 5, 16 weeks)
5. Carrie Underwood, "All-American Girl" (LW No. 7, 13 weeks)
6. Gary Allan, "Watching Airplanes" (LW No. 2, 32 weeks)
7. Chuck Wicks, "Stealing Cinderella" (LW No. 9, 27 weeks)
8. Billy Ray Cyrus with Miley Cyrus, "Ready, Set, Don't Go" (LW No. 6, 31 weeks)
9. Chris Cagle, " What Kinda Gone" (LW No. 11, 32 weeks)
10. Trace Adkins, " You're Gonna Miss This" (LW No. 12, 12 weeks)

Hot Modern Rock Tracks
1. Foo Fighters, "Long Road to Ruin" (LW No. 1, 18 weeks)
2. Seether, "Fake It" (LW No. 2, 26 weeks)
3. Linkin Park, "Shadow of the Day" (LW No. 3, 21 weeks)
4. Paramore, "crushcrushcrush" (LW No. 4, 15 weeks)
5. Foo Fighters, "The Pretender" (LW No. 5, 30 weeks)
6. Puddle of Mudd, "Psycho" (LW No. 10, 17 weeks)
7. Avenged Sevenfold, "Almost Easy" (LW No. 6, 21 weeks)
8. Rise Against, "The Good Left Undone" (LW No. 7, 35 weeks)
9. Radiohead, "Bodysnatchers" (LW No. 8, 18 weeks)
10. The Bravery, "Believe" (LW No. 9, 21 weeks)

[Photos: AP]

YouTube itself is a massive exercise in futility, but I have to say—and do remember what my specialty is around here—that Barker's videos just might be the most existentially exhausting clips on YouTube. A shirtless man more or less drums along to the beat of a song. What does it mean? And why do we need to look further than the kid next door with the drum set for this? At least with something like the sleepy kitten videos you get a modicum of preciousness.

It would be one thing if Barker improved upon or at least rearranged the original songs. But—and maybe this is due to my lack of formal percussion eduction—it kind of just sounds like he's adding an extra layer of cacophony. God forbid he ever set his drumsticks upon Flo Rida's five-minute birthday cake opus, which is already so offensively overproduced that an extra drum track might explode it into infinity:

Either way, we should all just keep our fingers crossed that he never considers the Alvin and the Chipmunks version of "Low" for the drum treatment.

It's weeks like this when you begin to see why record execs fear the Internet and hate Steve Jobs. In a post-holiday frame where 98% of albums—the industry's cash cow—sell less than the week before, iTunes enjoys its annual post-Christmas, iPod-filling sales bonanza, fueling a record week of sales for 99-cent digital singles. The big beneficiary: Billboard's current Hot 100 champ, Flo Rida, whose No. 1 smash with T-Pain, "Low," becomes an all-out blockbuster, selling more downloads (nearly half a million) in a single week than any song in iTunes history.

The Magic of Post-Christmas: Ever since the dawn of accurate sales counts in 1991, we have learned more about the music-buying habits of the consumer, especially at holiday time. If the weeks leading up to Christmas give us a window into what people want to give each other—in other words, how our angelic sides behave—the week after Christmas tells us what the devil's whispering in our ears.

It was that very first post-SoundScan post-Christmas, after all, that gave Nirvana its dawn-of-a-generation moment, as hordes of teens home for the holidays in 1991 returned the Michael Jackson CDs their grandparents gave them for Nevermind.

In 1998, DMX invented the hip-hop December blockbuster in similar fashion, dropping his second album on the counterintuitive release date of December 22 and ringing up 670,000 first-week sales, mostly to kids whose parents would never put anything called Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood under the tree. The decade since has seen a score of hip-hop acts try to replicate the same feat, holding CDs until the last three weeks of the year, to try to get a piece of that unaccompanied-minor-with-a-gift-card dollar.

The dawn of the iTunes age has done for singles what SoundScan did for albums, offering a snapshot into not so much people's dirtiest impulses, as their most fleeting. Simply put, what songs do new iPod owners want to own now-now-now!!—and what artists do they never expect to own at full length?

Since the iTunes Store opened for business in 2003, songs both great and dreadful have benefited from the post-Santa sweepstakes, everything from OutKast's "Hey Ya!" and Snoop Dogg's "Drop It Like It's Hot" to D4L's "Laffy Taffy" and Fergie's "Fergalicious." Three of the aforementioned came from albums that were also big sellers; but all four songs, as digital downloads, momentarily outsold their respective albums, at least to that point (D4L's album never caught up with the sales of "Laffy Taffy").

Fifty-two weeks ago, "Fergalicious" moved 294,000 digital singles in the seven days after Christmas, setting the iTunes sales record that held until this week. It's interesting (blissful, almost) to recall a time, pre-"Big Girls Don't Cry," when Fergie was still perceived as a song-to-song act and her album was a semi-flop. One year later, with the Ferg crossed over to adult-leaning radio and The Dutchess triple-platinum, Fergie can rest easy. Which is good for her, because her iTunes record wasn't just beaten, it was obliterated.

Riches of an Embarrassment: Just by being at the right place—the top of the charts—at the right time, Flo Rida sells a mind-blowing 470,000 digital downloads, topping Fergie's year-old sales mark by nearly 60%. For the record, the country's top-selling single outdoes this week's top-selling album, Mary J. Blige's Growing Pains, by nearly two-and-a-half-to-one.

Given how flaccid "Low" is as a song, one wonders if a few thousand of those buyers, on their maiden voyage through iTunes sometime on Boxing Day, simply decided to click "BUY" on the site's current No. 1 seller as a 99-cent, what-the-hell lark. In general, what was already a hit before the holiday remains a hit afterward, just with more sales. (The exception: rising teen country star Taylor Swift, who rides two tracks, including one nearly year-old country hit, into the Top 20 for the first time.)

The Top 20 we've pasted below looks very static, positions-wise — but every song listed posts a digital-sales increase ranging from 123% to 330%. That former, smaller increase went to Sara Bareilles, whose "Love Song" was already selling strongly before Christmas. The latter, fatter increase belongs to Soulja Boy, whose old hit "Crank That" returns to the Top Five some four months after it peaked. The song's 245,000 in sales is higher than in any week the song was No. 1 on the Hot 100 last fall. If I were Soulja Boy, I'd be worried: a nation of iPod carriers have voted on his career trajectory with a cacophony of 99-cent mouse clicks.

Stuff to Watch: The one Hot 100 chart factor we haven't discussed at all this week is radio airplay, and there's a good reason. Right up to New Year's Day, radio playlists are dominated either by holiday fare or, in the case of Top 40 stations, year-end hit surveys. That makes it a nearly negligible factor on this week's chart, where sales have such an outsize influence. But as I type, playlists are returning to normal, and that plus the inevitable comedown in digital sales will make next week's chart rather topsy-turvy. Expect the old hits that saw comebacks this week, the "Crank That"s and "Stronger"s, to plummet again, and rising hits like Wyclef's "Sweetest Girl" and Chris Brown's "With You" to resume their march upward. The one current riser to watch will be Bareilles—her smaller sales increase this week suggests that the song is already a growing hit and if airplay catches up, she could make a play for the big chart's Top Five after the new-year shakeup hits.

The top 20, with last week's position and total weeks charted in parentheses:
1. Flo Rida feat. T-Pain, "Low" (LW No. 1, 10 weeks)
2. Alicia Keys, "No One" (LW No. 2, 17 weeks)
3. Timbaland feat. OneRepublic, "Apologize" (LW No. 3, 22 weeks)
4. Chris Brown feat. T-Pain, "Kiss Kiss" (LW No. 4, 16 weeks)
5. Soulja Boy, "Crank That (Soulja Boy), Soulja Boy Tell'em" (LW No. 11, 25 weeks)
6. Fergie, "Clumsy" (LW No. 5, 12 weeks)
7. Colbie Caillat, "Bubbly" (LW No. 7, 27 weeks)
8. Finger Eleven, "Paralyzer" (LW No. 6, 30 weeks)
9. Sara Bareilles, "Love Song" (LW No. 9, 9 weeks)
10. Jordin Sparks, "Tattoo" (LW No. 8, 14 weeks)
11. Baby Bash feat. T-Pain, "Cyclone" (LW No. 13, 23 weeks)
12. Wyclef Jean Featuring Akon, Lil Wayne & Niia, " Sweetest Girl (Dollar Bill)" (LW No. 12, 16 weeks)
13. Sean Kingston, "Take You There" (LW No. 15, 9 weeks)
14. Kanye West, "Stronger" (LW No. 20, 23 weeks)
15. Rihanna feat. Ne-Yo, "Hate That I Love You" (LW No. 10, 18 weeks)
16. Kanye West feat. T-Pain, "Good Life" (LW No. 14, 16 weeks)
17. Taylor Swift, "Our Song" (LW No. 26, 14 weeks)
18. Chris Brown, "With You" (LW No. 16, 5 weeks)
19. Taylor Swift, "Teardrops on My Guitar" (LW No. 23, 30 weeks)
20. Natasha Bedingfield feat. Sean Kingston, "Love Like This" (LW No. 18, 11 weeks)

Tidily, the first Billboard Hot 100 dated for 2008 brings the new year's first No. 1 single, as Flo Rida's generic, T-Pain-backed banger "Low" finally ends Alicia Keys's run at the top after five weeks. On the whole, the chart looks a lot like last week's: static toward the top (the No. 1 changeover notwithstanding) but with lots of interesting activity in the lower regions.

The Year of Weezy? Let's skip the activity in the Top Five—we've been talking about "Low," "No One," "Apologize," "Kiss Kiss" and "Clumsy" for months—and do like we did last week, running down some lower-chart highlights:

• For a pair of well-known, omnipresent hip-hop figures, Wyclef Jean and Lil Wayne have fairly middling pop-chart histories, but that might be about to change. "Sweetest Girl (Dollar Bill)" (also featuring R&B/jazz songstress Niia and some dude named Akon, who sings the song's stickiest hook) vaults 11 slots, landing just outside the Top 10. Likely fueling the jump: the release of the inevitable, Wu Tang-biting remix that makes the song's "C.R.E.A.M." allusion complete. As a lead artist, Clef has only one solo Top 10 to his name, 1997-98's "Gone 'Til November"; his featured appearances on smashes by Destiny's Child and Shakira were bigger (and he probably made more cheddar on the song he produced and wrote for Santana, 2000's 10-week chart-topper "Maria Maria"). Similarly, Lil Wayne has done better as a featured act, only riding into the Top 10 on hits by Destiny's Child ("Soldier") and Lloyd ("You"). This Clef-credited hit won't change Weezy's stats, but his expert rap on "Sweetest Girl" might set him up for the pop crossover he probably fears and covets in equal measure.

• Improbably, Finger Eleven are still climbing the charts with "Paralyzer." Now approaching its 30th chart week, the song is one rung below the Top Five, breathing down Fergie's neck.

• What were we saying last week about Alicia Keys as the double-hit juggernaut? Scratch that, and take a look at Chris Brown. "With You," the followup to his former chart-topper "Kiss Kiss," leaps nine spots into the Top 20, mostly thanks to a major boost in radio airplay. Meanwhile, Keys has a bad Hot 100 week for a change, as her pair of Top 20 hits, both the former chart-topper and the fast-moving followup, erode. "Like You'll Never See Me Again" drops due mostly to weak iTunes sales, even as airplay continues to grow. The good news for Keys: the new single's digital sales will likely recover after the holidays—she's been busy selling tons of albums—and "Like" is already a smash on the R&B/Hip-Hop chart, where it moves to No. 1, ousting "No One."

• Ickiest chart appearance of the week goes to Alvin and the Chipmunks, whose 2007 remake of their own "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)" is the Hot 100's top debut at No. 70, thanks wholly to digital-song sales. Like the movie from which it's taken—already past $100 million at the box office in just two-plus weeks!—the song is evidence of the public's ghastly taste. Unlike the movie, the song is so unmistakably Christmas-themed that it will (hopefully) be gone by Martin Luther King Day.

• After looking all but dead for weeks, "Piece of Me" by Britney Spears finally becomes an official Top 40 hit, shooting 24 spots to No. 21. Radio airplay has been just okay on "Piece," but the rocket fuel comes from digital sales, where Brit-Brit sees one of the week's biggest gains from new iPod-fillers. Which brings us to our final topic...

Stuff to Watch: Next week's chart will reflect the answer to what is possibly the most interesting music-related chart question of the past three years: What song(s) will win big in the annual post-Christmas iTunes sales bonanza? Each year for the past three, the week between Christmas and New Year's has set a new record for volume of sales on Apple's song store, as iPod gift recipients rush to their PCs to load up on music. In the past, it's made at least one strange record a big hit: D4L's "Laffy Taffy," which topped the Hot 100 for a single week in January 2006 as a nation collectively decided D4L were worth about 99 cents. This year, clearly the equally one-hit-smelling Flo Rida will benefit; but expect more established acts with current big singles, like Britney, to get a bump, too.

The top 20, with last week's position and total weeks charted in parentheses:
1. Flo Rida feat. T-Pain, "Low" (LW No. 2, 9 weeks)
2. Alicia Keys, "No One" (LW No. 1, 16 weeks)
3. Timbaland feat. OneRepublic, "Apologize" (LW No. 3, 21 weeks)
4. Chris Brown feat. T-Pain, "Kiss Kiss" (LW No. 4, 15 weeks)
5. Fergie, "Clumsy" (LW No. 5, 11 weeks)
6. Finger Eleven, "Paralyzer" (LW No. 7, 29 weeks)
7. Colbie Caillat, "Bubbly" (LW No. 6, 26 weeks)
8. Jordin Sparks, "Tattoo" (LW No. 8, 13 weeks)
9. Sara Bareilles, "Love Song" (LW No. 16, 8 weeks)
10. Rihanna feat. Ne-Yo, "Hate That I Love You" (LW No. 9, 17 weeks)
11. Soulja Boy, "Crank That (Soulja Boy), Soulja Boy Tell'em" (LW No. 11, 24 weeks)
12. Wyclef Jean Featuring Akon, Lil Wayne & Niia, " Sweetest Girl (Dollar Bill)" (LW No. 23, 15 weeks)
13. Baby Bash feat. T-Pain, "Cyclone" (LW No. 12, 22 weeks)
14. Kanye West feat. T-Pain, "Good Life" (LW No. 10, 15 weeks)
15. Sean Kingston, "Take You There" (LW No. 18, 8 weeks)
16. Chris Brown, "With You" (LW No. 25, 4 weeks)
17. Plies feat. Akon, "Hypnotized" (LW No. 14, 13 weeks)
18. Natasha Bedingfield feat. Sean Kingston, "Love Like This" (LW No. 19, 10 weeks)
19. Alicia Keys, "Like You'll Never See Me Again" (LW No. 13, 7 weeks)
20. Kanye West, "Stronger" (LW No. 17, 22 weeks)