Elio Leoni-Sceti, chief executive of the company's recorded music division, will unveil the plans at a presentation to staff. The Italian Executive will announce that the business will be split into three distinct global units: new music, catalogue and music services, and with an increase in marketing resources, according to the Financial Times. The online music service EMI.com will launch this December.

Still, Leoni-Sceti isn't entirely optimistic about his company's future, saying that the road ahead will be "not be smooth or easy." While most labels have some separation between their new releases and catalog, it seems like creating a deeper divide between the two might not be a great idea for EMI, which needs to find a way to leverage its discography to make enough money to take chances on new artists. The company is counting on releases from Sarah Brightman and Tom Jones to create excitement in the fourth quarter, so clearly EMI has a A&R problem. And I doubt it'll be solved by sending the new release department out on an iceberg by itself.

EMI announces restructuring plans [Guardian]

You may remember Laka from the Eurovision entry on behalf of Bosnia this year, "Pokušaj," which finished in tenth place.

Laka has a long history in this music game, starting off with a few hits in his native country, including the smash "Piškila" (English translation: "You've Peed Yourself", apparently).

After a unsuccessful attempt at crossing over to American audiences in New York City, Laka headed back to Bosnia, making his big comeback with his solo album Zec, and his Eurovision run. Now, nominated for a MTV EMA, Laka—and someone who might be either his sister or wife, I'm not entirely clear— decided to take it all in.

They walked the red carpet!

They performed (I think)!

They won an award!

If only the entire show could have been filled with delightful moments like these, with more artists emulating Laka's song and hairstyles and clothing. Imagine how joyous it could have all been.

There were other winners, as well. The only other one I feel like mentioning specifically is Best Finnish Act Nightwish, mostly because Nightwish are awesome. I still haven't gotten over the departure of Tarja Turunen, but one has to accept change sometimes.

Nightwish, "Amaranth":

The complete list of winners below, according to Wikipedia which may or may not be correct, but does it make any difference? Rick Astley won a lifetime achievement award. I mean, come on.

* Album Of The Year : Britney Spears "Blackout"
* Headliner: Tokio Hotel
* Most Addictive Track: Pink "So What"
* Best Act Ever: Rick Astley
* New Act: Katy Perry
* Artists' Choice: Lil Wayne
* Act of 2008: Britney Spears
* Ultimate Urban: Kanye West
* Ultimate Legend: Paul McCartney
* Rock Out: 30 Seconds to Mars
* Europe’s Favourite: Emre Aydın
* Video Star: 30 Seconds to Mars "Beautiful Lie"
* Regional Awards
* Best UK Act: Leona Lewis
* Best German Act: Fettes Brot
* Best Danish Act: Suspekt
* Best Finnish Act: Nightwish
* Best Norwegian Act: Erik & Kriss
* Best Swedish Act: Neverstore
* Best Italian Act: Finley
* Best Dutch & Belgian Act: De Jeugd Van Tegenwoordig
* Best French Act: Zaho
* Best Polish Act: Feel
* Best Spanish Act: Amaral
* Best Russian Act: Dima Bilan
* Best Romanian & Moldovian Act: Morandi
* Best Portuguese Act: Buraka Som Sistema
* Best Adriatic Act: Elvir Laković
* Best Baltic Act: Happyendless
* Best Hungarian Act: Gonzo
* Best Turkish Act: Emre Aydın
* Best Ukrainian Act: Quest Pistols
* Best Greek Act: Stereo Mike
* Best Israeli Act: Shiri Maimon
* Best Arab Act: Karl Wolf

MTV Europe Music Awards [homepage]
[Photos: Getty Images]

MTV Europe Music Awards 2008 [MTV.co.uk]
Katy Perry - I Kissed A Girl [YouTube]

First, the offerings from the Rock Star Menu's grizzled (but not gristle-filled!) veterans Taking Back Sunday:

Taking Back Sunday’s Melty Grilled Chicken and Sausage Quesadilla (Taking Back Sunday): Last time, they gave you fries with the makings of a bacon cheeseburger all over them; this time, it's a quesadilla with chicken and sausage, as well as American cheese (?!), peppers, onions, pico de gallo, and something called "cilantro-lime ranch sauce."

And now the newbies. Remember the Boys Like Girls-themed egg dish that was threatened last time? Well, it's here!

The Great Eggsteak (Boys Like Girls): A hot roast beef sandwich with peppers, onions, spicy mayo, and pepper jack sounds great, doesn't it? Sure, it does... until you add scrambled eggs. Blech.

The Hot N Cold Cherry Chocolate Cappuccino (Katy Perry): Vanilla ice cream, hot fudge, french vanilla cappuccino, and cherries, including one on top of some whipped cream. Unfortunately, the ice cream can't be swapped out for yogurt with active cultures.

The Hooburrito (Hoobastank, duh): It's a burrito with "crispy" (read: fried) chicken strips, fried onion straws, and barbecue sauce. As well as pepper jack cheese and cheese sauce in the burrito—and more cheese sauce on the side. There's also a side of ranch. Which figures.

Denny's All-Nighter [Official site]
Earlier: Heart-Shaped Pancakes And White Chocolate Everywhere: Idolator Samples Denny's Musician-Inspired Offerings

Of course, the current lineup has the "...and many more" caveat, but what would the rest of the world do for entertainment on Dec. 5 if more acts were added to this incredible cavalcade of stars?

Rihanna
Katy Perry
Jesse McCartney
Fall Out Boy
Pussycat Dolls
and many more!

The Pussycat Dolls and Katy Perry? I'm going to need some heart medicine. However, you have to admire the career turn of Fall Out Boy, the only act on the bill who had any sort of organic growth as a band, playing gigs, etc. And now they're sandwiched between a kid who got his start on a soap opera and a Hollywood burlesque show turned pop group with largely interchangeable parts. You guys have come a long way from playing the Knights of Columbus!

Phooson 2008 [KZZP]

Devoted readers of this site will surely recognize the young woman who appears on the cover of the November 2008 edition of Blender: It is none other than Katy Perry, the bane of our esteemed Idolatrix's workaday existence.

Anono-Prick reckoned that Blender would have put “pop’s bi-curious babe,” as the display type on the cover puts it, front and center last month, since he remembered reading that the mag’s EIC Joe Levy hosted a party in Perry’s honor nearabout the MTV Music Video Awards. Clearly, the reporting and photo shoot for this cover story took place around that time.

It doesn’t much matter that Perry’s fashion aesthetic is premised on vintage Hollywood glamour tropes, and not upon those associated with Rick’s Cabaret, which Blender and its sister publication Maxim obviously prefer. When a young lady records a big summer hit song regarding inter-chick tongue dueling, it might as well be chum to sharks. It’s also clear which part of Perry’s physique Blender’s brain trust believes has the most appeal to their intended, perpetually erect readership.

So that’s settled! But! Wither whether Ms. Perry is good company? Levy charges longtime aide-de-quip Rob Sheffield, a man best known for excreting his airless, self-amused observations regarding popular music and television shows for whichever magazine Levy is running and for various VH1 talking head programs, with the task. This is notable, as it is seldom that Blender contributing editor Sheffield emerges from his one-liner-generating cocoon to interact with other humans in a journalistic endeavor. (AP only knows of one Sheffield-penned profile: an Aerosmith story for Rolling Stone).

And you know what? “Girl on Girl,” while headlined with startling lack of ingenuity, shows that Sheffield should go out and interview people a lot more. The piece ain’t gonna wow the American Society of Magazine Editors nominating committee —no article in Blender likely ever will. But Sheffield's prose seems much less caffeinated and clotted when he’s telling someone else’s story, and not rifling through reference after reference to little lasting effect, like Henny Youngman with a semiotics degree from Brown.

Sheffield follows Perry around for a few Warped Tour dates: the two discuss her childhood in her parents' evangelical ministry (her folks found the Lawd after both were immersed in the counterculture) and how she left the fold, her fondness for dressing up, her emo-hip-hop band-fronting boyfriend, and how That Song is imaginative more than autobiographical. Blender being fond of particular types of reportorial color, Sheffield also reports Perry’s fondness for making genitalia-oriented origami.

Perry seems like a fairly good egg, notwithstanding her perpetration of music that might drive a blog editor to jump out a 20th-floor window. Surely, her public profile and much of her music is calculated, but does she not project more individuality and spunk than the android strippers who adorned Blender's last cover? Heaven knows she didn’t appear to avoid topics many pop starlets dislike, and she certainly seemed to get along with Sheffield.

Sadly, the piece that directly precedes “Girl on Girl” finds Sheffield reverting to type. This month’s installment of his Station to Station column, “The Only Band That Matters,” finds him waxing euphoric over the act that apparently every individual to have graduated from an institute of higher learning since 1986 agrees is very, very good. AP daresays that "why Radiohead are so wonderful live" is a topic so commonplace that the marquee writer at a major music magazine should use the space dedicated to his musings to tackle a more novel topic. Self-identified music fans between the ages of 19 and 49 are more or less conditioned to like Radiohead, and it’ll be a long time before the band will be anything other than an exhausted topic. In any case, Sheffield doesn’t succeed in making a point beyond “Radiohead is boss.”

Incidentally, Sheffield never says that he attended a Radiohead concert this summer, only that his iPod contains two hours of live versions of “Idioteque” and other performances from the band’s tour. Perhaps attending a show would have inspired Sheffield to offer an original thought or two in his essay. If AP, for instance, had the use of a column in a music magazine to laud the music on his iPod, he’d talk about the greatness of Too $hort, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Blowfly, Robert Wyatt, or T-Pain. (The latter is given his due in “Pain’s World,” a fine piece this issue by senior editor Jonah Weiner.)

So Levy (who himself pens a four star review of Telltale Signs, the eighth archival series devoted to Bob Dylan; it’s the first piece he’s written for Blender) gives his pal free hand to do as he pleases, a mandate any critic would envy. Yet AP thinks it would benefit everyone—readers, interview subjects and most importantly Sheffield himself— if he got out of the house more. He has spent a decade processing staggering amounts of music and television so that he could proffer one-liners. This we know. But is he beginning to realize that getting out and encountering different people and ideas other than one’s own is healthy? You can listen to records and watch TV shows all you like, but records and TV shows can’t talk back to you. Proceeding down that path lies insularity of a most Christgauian variety.

Not that I don't love Al, but I do wonder if an "I Kissed A Girl" riff is what the country needs at this particularly dour moment, if only because K. Perry needs if anything less exposure and not more, and even if the song were as persona-satirizing as "Smells Like Nirvana," she would probably interpret the homage as yet another sign that she was just as awesome as she's deluded herself into thinking. Instead, I'm hoping that he goes the "appeal to the geeks" route once again and turns "Disturbia" into "Suburbia." Just think, it could be something of a sequel to White & Nerdy:

NEW SINGLE! [Weird Al's MySpace Blog]
Weird Al Yankovic [MySpace]

(PS: Being able to stream the entire Yankovic catalog on demand is almost making me a beliver in MySpace Music. Almost.)

1. Pink, "So What"
Streamable from Pink's MySpace page; not available for purchase via MySpace Music widget, despite presence on Amazon.

2. Kanye West, "Love Lockdown"
First 1:30 streamable from West's MySpace page; not available for purchase via MySpace Music widget, despite presence on Amazon.

3. T.I., "Whatever You Like"
Streamable from T.I.'s MySpace page; not available for purchase via widget, despite presence on Amazon.

4. Taylor Swift, "Love Story"
Seems to be bypassing MySpace Music's official player/commerce widget, opting instead to pre-sell her forthcoming album on MySpace (with the option to buy a $75 box set!) and give people the download for "Love Story" instantly.

5. Rihanna, "Disturbia"
Streamable from Rihanna's site; official version available for purchase if the user uses the album pull-down menu and selects Good Girl Gone Bad.

6. M.I.A., "Paper Planes"
Streamable from M.I.A.'s MySpace page; official version available for purchase if the user uses the album pull-down menu and selects either Kala or the "Planes" remix EP.

7. Katy Perry, "Hot N Cold"
Streamable from Perry's MySpace page; not available for purchase via widget, despite presence on Amazon. (On the bright side, the awfulness of having to visit Perry's page was mitigated slightly by a pop-up ad for Ted Leo & The Pharmacists. Teach the children, Ted!)

8. Jason Mraz, "I'm Yours"
Streamable from Mraz's MySpace page; official version available for purchase if the user uses the album pull-down menu and selects the right version of the "I'm Yours" digital single.

9. Estelle feat. Kanye West, "American Boy"
Streamable from Estelle's MySpace page; not available for purchase via widget, despite presence on Amazon. (It would appear that the Estelle insta-tribute band the Studio All-Stars don't have a MySpace page.)

10. David Archuleta, "Crush"
Streamable from Archuleta's MySpace page; available for purchase if you select "Crush" from the pull-down menu in the widget.

So, out of the ten most saleable songs in the U.S. right now, MySpace Music is letting its users purchase four of them—and all four have to be navigated to, instead of them being presented to the user straight off. Can someone tell me why Tom & Co. felt like they had to launch this thing today, before it was ready for prime-time at all? I know that the site's supposed to be "iterative," but not having six of the top ten singles for purchase on what is being pitched as a track-by-track marketplace is not unlike trying to open an outlet of The Gap that's missing jeans.

Earlier: MySpace Music Gets Ready For A Big Amazon Affiliate Check

This is the kind of mind-numbingly specific chart statistic that is almost impossible to prove or disprove, but I've got a strong hunch that the current Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart is the first to feature three female solo artists in a very long time, if it ever did. This week saw Modern Rock debuts from both M.I.A. and Santogold, with "Paper Planes" entering at No. 28 and "L.E.S. Artistes" at No. 40; completing the female-fronted trifecta is Katy Perry's "I Kissed A Girl." The Max Martin-produced pop smash, which debuted on the chart almost immediately after I made much ado about the Martin-masterminded Carolina Liar breaking the decade-old Martin/Modern barrier, is at No. 39 and on the verge of dropping off in its ninth week. And, just to add a cherry on top, the female-fronted Ting Tings are at No. 38 with "Shut Up and Let Me Go."

As you can see, these songs are all in the lower reaches of the chart; the highest any of them has reached so far was Perry's summit at No. 27, and only "Paper Planes," which has made it to the upper reaches of the Hot 100, seems to have the momentum to climb higher. And most of the songs are getting some kind of boost elsewhere, making their Modern Rock chart positions essentially a side effect of their mainstream prominence; M.I.A.'s song is in the Pineapple Express trailer; the Ting Tings' track is in an iTunes ad; and Perry made a speedy ascent up the pop charts, which preceded her rock radio push by several weeks. But the fact remains that these songs are getting played on rock stations that you might ordinarily be able to listen to for hours without hearing a single female vocalist.

There have, of course, been bigger Modern Rock hits by female-fronted acts in recent memory—Paramore scored two big singles in the past year. But they're a band made up of one highly recognizable girl singer and a bunch of relatively anonymous dudes, a format that's proven successful in the past for the likes of Garbage and the Cranberries. Female solo artists, on the other hand, are a lot more scarce on alt-rock airwaves, or at least have been for the past decade. When Billboard began the Modern Rock chart in 1988, the "college rock" scene as it was defined then was full of females, as well as fey males; it's progressively become more macho ever since. The very first Modern Rock No. 1 was Siouxsie and the Banshees' "Peek-A-Boo," and Siouxsie Sioux made regular appearances on the chart in its early years, as did the likes of Kate Bush, Sinead O'Connor, Suzanne Vega, and later on Tori Amos.

But then came the grunge era, which made alternative rock both much more popular and considerably more aggressive. Initially, bands with multiple female members like Belly, the Breeders and L7 maintained a strong radio presence, even as punk bands associated with the riot grrrl movement proved too underground or confrontational for mainstream radio, or perhaps just indifferent to catering to it. Male singer-songwriters like Robyn Hitchcock and Elvis Costello started disappearing from modern rock playlists a little quicker than their female counterparts, but in general things quickly became much more band-driven. Even essentially one-man operations like Nine Inch Nails tended to fly under pluralized band names. In fact, there may be only one significant male Modern Rock solo artist who hadn't previously fronted a popular band from the past 15 years: Beck.

Female solo artists were a little commonplace, at least up until the mid-'90s, but they always seemed in danger of going pop, and losing rock fans in the process. The Sugarcubes and 10,000 Maniacs were Modern Rock staples, as were Bjork and Natalie Merchant when they initially went solo. But as they gained bigger and broader fanbases, Modern Rock gradually dropped them. No Doubt, on the other hand, lost rock radio well before Gwen became a solo star. Jewel and Sarah McLachlan disappeared from rock playlists right around the time the Lilith Fair codified them as the new faces of adult-contemporary chick rock. Alanis Morrissette's Jagged Little Pill scored three Modern Rock No. 1s on the way to becoming one of the biggest selling albums of the '90s; after that, rock radio seemed to realize that there wasn't much more angst where "You Oughta Know" came from, and let Top 40 radio keep her.

The last time a female solo artist topped the chart was in 1996, when Tracy Bonham's "Mother, Mother" went to No. 1 shortly after Alanis reached that summit for the last time with "Ironic." In the ten years since Hole's "Celebrity Skin," the only female-fronted band that's topped the chart has been Evanescence—and that was with "Bring Me To Life," a duet with Paul McCoy of 12 Stones. Bands like the Donnas and Flyleaf have scored minor hits, but haven't ever really gotten close to that brass ring. For the most part, women have remained in supporting instrumental roles in mainstream rock in recent years, from Meg White to that time-worn cliche, the girl bassist.

It's not a surprise that two of the acts now on the chart—M.I.A. and the Ting Tings—hail from across the pond. In the last few years, we've seen many female solo artists from the UK who have gone over big in their homeland before crossing over to younger, hipper Americans: Lily Allen, Amy Winehouse, Kate Nash, Duffy, etc. But those artists were generally pigeonholed as pop or soul artists than as rock artists, and only Winehouse's "Rehab" had any kind of traction on Modern Rock radio. And then you've got the old issue of skin color: neither M.I.A. nor Santogold are white, and both have influences that stretch beyond rock. But Santogold's new wavey "L.E.S. Artistes" and M.I.A.'s Clash sample in "Paper Planes" have just enough guitar to comfortably fit in alongside the Weezers and the Seethers they're now sharing airtime with. Hell, M.I.A. might even be getting herself some of that political rap-rock audience that's made the Flobots so popular. (Yes, I hope I made you squirm with that comparison.)

The last thing I want to do is hasten the inevitability of a whole new round of "women in rock" trend pieces, mind you. But it's good to see a little more gender balance in Modern Rock, even if I don't particularly like any of the songs currently tipping the scales.

THE BANDS: In rough order: I arrived just as The Academy Is... launched into their set, and once again, they were 100% enjoyable, playing two new songs and causing nearly every female in the audience to have conniption fits. Some band on a side stage covered Leona Lewis' "Bleeding Love" and it just about fell apart at the end, although their take on it made the song much more tolerable than L. Lewis'. Gym Class Heroes' set was very tight, blending a few new tracks with songs from their SUNY Fredonia era, and their cover of Lamb Of God was surprising both in its actually happening and its being kind of good. Japanese all-lady ska outfit ORESKABAND was ridiculously fun, and brought back skanking to Long Island, something I thought I'd never see again on my home turf. Disco Ensemble were a Finnish dance-rock act possessing both catchy songs and a rock-star exuberance that reminded me of Vains Of Jenna, who also brought a full-on arena spectacle to a crowd of about 50 people when I saw them open for Poison last year. The lead singer of You Me And Everyone We Know's pleading voice was very much in the Ted Leo vein, which isn't all that surprising given that they, too, are from DC. The female-fronted British three-piece Tat played next to the skate ramp, which was fitting for their competent, if a bit cliched, punk. (The lead singer said her band was from "London town," which should give you an indication.) Automatic Loveletter's first song came off like a slightly crunchier Paramore, but then lead singer Juliet Simms strapped on an acoustic and went barreling into Alanis territory, complete with too-long outro. Ludo charmed me for the entirety of their set, in large part because their frontman's voice sounded like it belonged to a bookish alter ego of Placebo's Brian Molko. Cobra Starship's "Guilty Pleasure" was probably my favorite song of the day. Against Me! had an older average audience than any other act I saw all day, and they were tirelessly good. Say Anything made me write the words "too many syllables" in my notebook, an opinion that I suspect will bring out many people who will tell me that I am a thousand per cent wrong. Bring Me The Horizon made the audience collectively freak out with its grimy British death metal, and then encouraged the audience to form a huge mosh pit, during which I saw many punches thrown. And then there was Katy Perry, about whom more in a second.

THE BOOTHS: Each band, each corporate sponsor, and various other entities had booths set up around the sidelines, where people could buy merch, collect free swag, sign petitions, or find out how to properly examine their breasts. My favorite one was the Rock Band tent, where I was given the chance to play the game for the first time. (Research, right? I do write about it.) And as it turned out, the drummer and one of the guitar players in my band were none other than sidemen for Katy Perry, a fact that I found out after I got a 90% for screaming the lyrics to "Creep" into the drummer's ear. (I hope I wasn't too loud!)

The line outside the AT&T-sponsored booth offering autograph sessions with the likes of Gabe Saporta and members of All Time Low was super-long for most of the day, as was the one leading into some Trojan-sposnored "ride" where people I think got free condoms at the end. (The swag was being inflated and batted around during various sunset sets. Safe sex, everyone!) Pretty much every booth offering a meet and greet had a long line leading to it, a fact that helped make it impossible for anyone to see everything, since maneuvering around them was sometimes a bit of a trick; there were certain artists with whom it was possible to spend pretty much your entire day, between watching their normal set, watching their acoustic sets in various tents, and waiting in line for them at a meet and greet.

And finally, the booth selling the following T-shirt gave me an anchor on which I could stand all day:

I like to think that this is the one point Pitchfork Music Festival attendees and those people at the Warped Tour can (maybe) agree on.

THE CLOTHES: Many people chucked off whatever shirts they were wearing and put on whatever apparel they'd purchased at the tents, which I guess means the "don't be that guy" rule is as old as I am. Other popular Warped Tour fashions included: homemade shirts/chest-coverings advertising "free hugs" and "free kisses" (which, as the day went on, evolved into pleas for free blow jobs and breast-reveals from some dudes); bikini tops; Appetite-era Guns N' Roses t-shirts (seriously, I saw about 10 of them); shutter shades of all colors; Chuck Taylors, natch; and plaid shorts.

THE CONFUSING MESSAGES: PETA and other pro-vegetarianism organizations were, perhaps unsurprisingly, out in full force, although vegetarian foodstuffs were few and far between; there were a few stands selling French fries, including one that was inside the Coliseum and on the opposite side of the parking lot, but fries and pretzels were pretty much it as far as non-meaty food options went. Which is less than ideal for something that runs through lunch and dinner. Perhaps this was an issue with Nassau Coliseum's catering arm, but it sure did make me wish that the "vegetarian starter kit" one organization was handing out came with some soy dog samples. Also, for a festival that had its own booth touting its eco-consciousness, a) there sure were a lot of unopened bags of Doritos collecting in the corners and b) water was five freaking dollars a bottle.

THE END: Idolator bete noire Katy Perry was placed in the de facto "headlining" role for Saturday's show, so I had pretty much nowhere to hide during her set. (Most of the merch tents had packed up by then, thanks in part to gusty winds that were causing many a banner to skip across the lot.) She was pretty much as annoying in person as I expected, and the guitar on "U R So Gay" sounded like it had been lifted directly from some Swap N' Shop-worthy smooth jazz. Highlights, if you can call them that, included her taking a break to shout the word "PENIS!!!!" really loudly and prefacing her show-closing rendition of "I Kissed A Girl" with a call to her mom on a "bananaphone." (I told a friend that I was somewhat surprised she wasn't phoning home via hamburger, but perhaps even Perry thought that would have been too obvious.)

I did, however, enjoy that there were a few young ladies who took advantage of the mostly female crowd in front of Perry to hop up on top of everyone and crowd-surf. It was very '90s. As was some of the feel of the festival—the activist tents, the Converse, the Long Island Roller Derby team that had a a tent (!!), the surprisingly high number of chick-fronted acts I happened to run into—although the piles of merchandise offered by every act did bring the proceedings smack back into the current century, what with every band on the bill needing to make some extra scratch thanks to the recorded-music business being in its current state. I would go back next year, sure. Although I would definitely try to find a way to smuggle in my own water bottle, and maybe a granola bar or two, if only to stave off the exhaustion that kicked into my old bones at around 6 p.m.

Idolator [Twitter]

BEST FEMALE VIDEO:
Britney Spears - "Piece of Me"
Jive/Zomba Label Group
Director: Wayne Isham

Jordin Sparks - "No Air"
19/Jive/Zomba Label Group
Director: Chris Robinson

Katy Perry - "I Kissed A Girl"
Capitol
Director: Kinga Burza

Mariah Carey - "Touch My Body"
Island Def Jam Music Group
Director: Brett Ratner

Rihanna - "Take a Bow"
SRP/Def Jam
Director: Anthony Mandler

BEST MALE VIDEO:
Lil Wayne - "Lollipop"
Cash Money Records/Universal Motown
Director: Gil Green/D. Carter

Chris Brown - "With You"
Jive Records/Zomba
Director: Erik White/Chris Brown

Usher - "Love In This Club"
LaFace Records/Zomba Label Group
Director: The Brothers Strause

T.I. - "No Matter What"
Grand Hustle/Atlantic Records
Director: Self/James Lopez

Flo Rida - "Low"
Poe Boy Ent./Atlantic Records
Director: Bernard Gourley

Video Music Awards [MTV.com]

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]

You may remember that Katy Perry, girl-smooching flinger of homosexual epithets toward her former paramours, was once Katy Hudson, daughter of traveling ministers and budding Christian pop star. Take a look at how Freddie Mercury led her down the path to destruction:

Parental vigilance, however, was eventually undermined when Katy encountered the British rock group Queen at a slumber party. "I'm a huge fan of Freddie Mercury. I'm a fan of lots of music, but he was a turning point," she explains. "I wasn't allowed to listen to secular music when I was a kid, but there was a time when I was hanging out at my friend's house. We're trying on all our outfits, like girls do, and out of nowhere I heard the lyrics to 'Killer Queen.' Time stood still. The music was totally different from anything I'd heard. I still love Freddie Mercury. He was flamboyant with a twist of the operatic, but more importantly, he just didn't give a f—-."...

Somewhere along the way, full-on rebellion also crept in. By the time Katy talked to Blender magazine in October 2004, any pretense of trying to live the good Christian life had evaporated. With what writer Nick Duerden described as a "wicked laugh," Katy confessed, "I've done a lot of bad things. Use your imagination." She also said of her parents' strict rules during her teen years, "That's my parents. They're crazy! They're nuts!"

To think, this young lady who was once singing along to Carman tracks with her family has turned against not just her parents, but GOD.

Is there a little girl still looking for the comfort only Jesus can provide lurking behind that bisexual temptress exterior? Focus on the Family certainly thinks so.

But even as Katy Perry brazenly follows in the footsteps of Alanis and Madonna, there are hints that beneath her apparently calloused, world-weary exterior, she's still thinking about God. Take her song "Lost," for example. This vulnerable track is like a soundtrack for a prodigal daughter movie. "Have you ever been so lost/Known the way and still so lost?" she asks. "My mother says I should come back home but/Can't find the way 'cause the way is gone/So if I pray, am I just sending words into outer space?"

Passing references to God also turn up in some of her interviews. L.A. Times writer Emili Vesilind noted, tellingly, "Perry has 'Jesus' tattooed on her wrist in '50s script, but [she] gets shy for the first and only time when it's pointed out, covering it with her hand before reluctantly flashing it again." A hint that perhaps she's not quite so shameless as she would have people believe?

What now? How can we pray for young Katy? Will this prodigal daughter come home?

Only time will tell which Katy is the real deal, which one will outlast and outplay the other. At the moment, Katy Hudson's flirty and "dirty" alter ego is in the ascendant. Whether or not she'll ever "come to her senses" as the Bible says the prodigal son did in Luke 15 remains to be seen....

Interestingly, she expressed a better sense of how she might influence others when she was 17 than she does today. Back then she told Go! magazine's Cari Stone, "I know sometimes if I don't think about what I do or think about the things I say, then I'll just ruin it for everybody [and] keep giving that stereotype of teens—that they're irresponsible and not doing anything with their lives."

Now, Katy is indeed living down to a damaging, demeaning stereotype, one that our culture has already branded as "girls gone wild." Perhaps one day she'll recall the wisdom of her youth.

Perry's reckless self-stereotyping doesn't bother me all that much. Nor does the possibility of her re-embracing her old ways. But is there any way we could at least avoid a follow-up album?

A Tale of Two Katys [Plugged In Online]

I am delighted that Elio is joining as Chief Executive of EMI Music to lead the most exciting business transformation in the music industry. His career achievements and outstanding leadership qualities are ideally suited to ensuring that EMI is a successful business. Elio has the passion, drive and belief in the future of the music industry to realise the ambitions we all have for EMI. Having completed the organisational restructuring at the end of June and finalised our strategic work, Elio joins at the right time to shape, drive and lead EMI to become the world's most artist focused and consumer friendly music company.

Yeah, nothing says "we care about the artists" more than hiring a guy who knows how to make Lysol fly off the shelf. Then again, Leoni-Sceti's old company was praised for focusing "on a small number of high-margin brands prized by devoted customers." This might actually make him the perfect CEO for the age of Rihanna.

Found: Someone Who Wants To Run EMI's Music Business [Silicon Alley Insider]

- It's geeky to wear a T-shirt you just bought at the concert you're attending. Besides, your mother would want you to wash it first.

This would seem to be Gundersen's reinterpretation of the "Don't be that guy" rule from PCU, in which Jeremy Piven's character chastises, "What's this? You're wearing the shirt of the band you're going to see? Don't be that guy." Only with laundry. And Mom. Not cool, dude.

- If you must wear a Metallica T-shirt at a Metallica concert, make sure it's from three or four tours back.

Not only does this break the aforementioned "don't be that guy" rule, it also creates the false caste system that people who actually went to see Metallica in 2003 are somehow better than "newer" fans.

- Unless you're 8, a High School Musical T-shirt will draw snickers. However, a Schoolhouse Rock! shirt is kitschy.

But if you wear it to a Blind Melon show, are you "that guy"?

I guess it depends on whether post-Shannon Hoon death Blind Melon is a different band. (Let the arguing commence!)

A Nirvana T-shirt at a Foo Fighters concert is too obvious; Melvins, maybe. A Screaming Trees shirt at a Queens of the Stone Age concert or a Green Jello shirt at a Tool show will reveal you as a fan with roots.

I wholly disagree with this idea, because it violates a corollary of the "don't be that guy" rule that I like to term as "don't be that person who is trying to have 'cred,' even though the shirt bestowing such was probably purchased at Hot Topic anyway."

- Don't wear a Woodstock or Live Aid T-shirt unless you actually attended.

- Even if you were there, don't wear a Woodstock '99 T-shirt. Why admit it?

Because comedy = tragedy + time? Hey, it's been nine years. (Really, when was this thing written?)

- Never wear a Gary Glitter T-shirt. If you don't know why, look it up.

OK, this is probably good advice. Although I did hear "Rock & Roll Pt. 2" at a sporting event recently, so who knows, his ironic rehabilitation could be just around the bend...

Concert tour T-shirts crank up the style [USA Today]

Things obviously haven't going so well for last year's winner, Amy Winehouse. But the award has turned a bit of a corner after a rough run in the '90s, with recent winners including Carrie Underwood, John Legend, and Maroon 5. Still, the winner often seems to be a little predictable once the nominees are announced (did anyone think Ledisi was going to win in February?), so take your best guess (Duffy) of who will win (Duffy) from this list (Duffy) compiled by Martens.

Leona Lewis

The Ting Tings
Katy Perry
Vampire Weekend
Estelle

Santogold

She & Him

MGMT
Lil Mama
Duffy

From that list, I think you can immediately forget about She & Him; Merge probably doesn't carry the clout to pull of a win in a major category, even if the voters are taken in by what Martens describes as "a '50s-influenced sound, evidenced by Disneyana in songs like 'Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?' " Leona Lewis is generally the sort of act that does well at the Grammys, but without Clive Davis around to work the system in her favor, her pretty girl/good singer act might not be enough. MGMT, the Ting Tings, and Vampire Weekend are unlikely to stand too much of a chance besides a token nomination between them since one "rock" act usually grabs a nod (2008 example: Paramore).

Perhaps most intriguing is Santogold. Santi White been around the business for awhile and is doing an excellent job of turning her album into this year's version of Moby's Play, which can't hurt executives who are wondering where their next revenue stream might come from. Although Santogold's record itself seems on the verge of being too edgy for the notoriously stogy Grammy-voting bloc, she might be in the right place at the right time to pick up a few votes from those who want the Grammys to look hip.

Still, Martens hits the mark perfectly when describing Duffy's chances of taking home the award.

Duffy's vintage soul should be Grammy gold, if voters don't shy away from lauding a U.K. soul star two years running. On her debut, "Rockferry,"...Also working in Duffy's favor is her early success. Nearly two months after the album was released, it's still in the top 20, which is an impressive feat for a newcomer....

She's a perfectly inoffensive choice. Like Winehouse, Duffy's retro-themed tunes recall an era more than stand on their own. There's a bit more of a vagueness to an act like She & Him, a sense of familiarity that one can't quite place, but Duffy's appealingly sweet sense of song-craft works to her advantage.

Familiarity, vagueness, inoffensive appeal? Sounds like someone should clear a place on her mantel back in Wales.

Grammys midway Part 1: Estelle, Katy Perry and an early look at 2008's notable new artists [LA Times]
Grammys midway Part 2: Duffy, Zooey, Santogold and more [LA Times]

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)

• "'Mannequin,' a lament about a guy who's too stoic ('You're not a man, you're just a mannequin!'), recalls Cher's Eighties catalog. And the acoustic ode 'Thinking of You,' which compares an unrequited lover to 'an Indian summer in the middle of winter,' is generic Dawson's Creek schlock. Yes, Perry has a heart, but it sounds like her bustier's too tight for her to use it. " [Rolling Stone]
• "But Ms. Perry, who wrote or helped write every song here, has an easy way with melody and is best served by producers who give her room to emote. Dave Stewart (of Eurythmics) takes the helm on 'I'm Still Breathing,' a calm and certain obituary for a dead relationship. And 'Thinking of You,' produced by the underappreciated Butch Walker, is gently and compellingly angry. Turns out that feeling deeply is shocking enough." [NYT]
• "Engineered for short attention spans at just 44 minutes, One of the Boys is still more than enough to make this one long, hot summer for Perry." [Billboard]
• "The problem is not with Katy's gender-bending, it's that her heart isn't in it; she's just using it to get her places, so she sinks to crass, craven depths that turn One of the Boys into a grotesque emblem of all the wretched excesses of this decade." [AMG]

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)

If only Chris Martin were holding an iPhone 3G: then his band would be atop the charts.

As it stands, Coldplay's "Viva la Vida," fueled by Apple's latest saturation-play TV commercial for iTunes, makes a bid for the top of Billboard's Hot 100 and lands at No. 3. They storm Lil Wayne's "Lollipop" fortress armed with blockbuster digital sales and sparse radio airplay. If Steve Jobs' minions keep that sleek ad on the air a couple more weeks, Coldplay could yet see the summit.

And even if I were among the Coldplay-haters out there, I'd be rooting hard for Martin & co., because the next U.S. No. 1 single is either going to be theirs or Idolator's early pick for worst single of 2008.

By leaping into the top three, Coldplay score their biggest-ever U.S. hit, three years after "Speed of Sound" debuted and peaked at No. 8. Billboard chart columnist Fred Bronson notes that, as of last week, when "Viva" rose into the winners' circle, Coldplay became the first all-male U.K. band to score two Top 10 U.S. hits since Jesus Jones in 1991.

(Bonus points to the first commenter who can name the second Jesus Jones hit! Extra-double bonus if you can name the British girl group that scored multiple Top 10s more recently.)

Until the Viva la Vida album officially goes on sale, iTunes has an exclusive on legal downloads of "Viva la Vida" the single—unsurprisingly, given the Apple ad campaign. The song moves almost 220,000 buck-a-song downloads at iTunes, making it the week's top seller by a long shot (some 25,000 downloads over Lil Wayne). The band continues to work two singles simultaneously, but as with so many things in life, availability is trumped by publicity: the rock single release, "Violet Hill," is available at both iTunes and Amazon, but without the benefit of a heavily-played TV commercial, "Violet" moves 37,000 downloads, or about one-sixth the total of "Viva."

"Viva" is going to need to maintain that killer sales total, because its airplay as yet is anemic. It's nowhere to be found on the Hot 100 Airplay list. Top 40 stations haven't been enticed to play it yet, and even modern-rock stations, which do contribute points to the Hot 100, aren't playing it much, having already committed to the Top 10 Modern Rock hit "Violet Hill."

At this point, Weezy's "Lollipop" is clinging to the top rung, its fourth week there, thanks to inertia. His sales are impressively consistent week to week—as of late May, he's getting a boost from the release of the Kanye West remix—and he's had the most-played song at radio for five weeks now. As we say here all the time, you generally need both sales and airplay to top the Hot 100 and stay there.

Which is what makes Katy Perry's ghastly "I Kissed a Girl" such a formidable contender. It vaults 16 notches into the top five, and the boost comes from both your computer and your radio. On the digital side, sales more than doubled, ranking it third among buck-a-songs for the week. And on the airwaves, while it's still ranked below the 50 most-played songs at radio overall, "Kissed" is exploding at strictly Top 40 stations: up more than 1,100 spins in the last week alone, the biggest gainer at Z-Schlock broadcasters nationwide.

Double-barreled growth like that makes Perry the clear favorite to top