Idolator

Ed. note: Chris "dennisobell" Molanphy, our resident chart guru, looks at the upward, downward, and lack of movement on this week's Billboard charts:

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

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

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

Ed. note: Chris "dennisobell" Molanphy, our resident chart guru, looks at the upward, downward, and lack of movement on this week's Billboard charts:

Forget that sleepy winter we just endured. We've got a horse race.

The top slot on Billboard's Hot 100 has turned into a revolving door, as Mariah Carey succumbs to the gal she replaced just two weeks ago.

Boosted by the U.S. release of her debut album, Leona Lewis rides her biggest week of digital sales yet (223,000 downloads) to recapture the top slot on the chart with "Bleeding Love." Back in March, when the song first rose to No. 1, we snarked about the power of Oprah to make this British reality-show ingénue an American pop star. But at this point, it's only fair to say that Lewis' song is pretty much doing the heavy lifting on its own.

Lewis shouldn't get too comfortable, however: Almost every other song in the Top Five could plausibly replace her next week, including "Touch My Body," the Carey song she replaced.

Our headline was actually one out of the several hundred text messages that scrolled across a video ticker high above the stage at Madison Square Garden on Friday night, when a sold-out crowd of tweens and teens (and Idolator) took in the pop chart mish-mash of New York radio station Z100's annual Jingle Ball, and the junior high horndogs who sent in that text weren't talking about James Brown's sidemen, but the Jonas Brothers, the pre-fab pop-punk puppy dogs fresh off a leg of the Hannah Montana tour. All night, the mere mention of the Brothers' names prompted screams so loud you'd think the arena had spontaneously popped a collective cherry, and for four hours, hundreds of exclamation point-riddled messages pledged love to one Brother or another, though usually more along the lines of a chaste hug than fellatio. And taken against the rest of the evening's performances, America's squealing affection towards Disney's latest attempt to bail out the industry (for at least another 12 months) wasn't necessarily misplaced.