ONE-LISTEN VERDICT: I know it's probably uncharitable to say not-very-nice things about efforts put forth for a good cause, and Lord knows the "female singers are all so processed" argument is more than a little bit old. But this LA Reid and Babyface-produced benefit single (proceeds will go to the cancer-research nonprofit Stand Up For Cancer) is less notable for sounding exactly like what you'd think an LA Reid and Babyface-produced benefit single made in 2008 and more notable for processing the voices of all the boldfaced names singing on the track into a smooth oleo. Only Rihanna, Fergie, and Melissa Etheridge broke through the Velveeta barrier; shoot, I needed a second listen to figure out that Beyonce was probably singing the opening couplet, and she's not exactly the type who's wont to "blend." Perhaps the production is actually a statement on how everyone should give up their egos for the fight against what is obviously an awful disease, but for some reason I suspect that we're going to see quite the melisma contest during the performance of the track on the charity's attendant telethon, which airs Sept. 5.

WHERE TO FIND IT: Clear Channel's Boston top-40 station has the track streaming, although a warning to any of you who may click while at work: It's on autoplay, so find some headphones first.

The upper reaches of this week's Billboard Hot 100 are a little sleepy—two songs sneak into the bottom rungs of the Top 10, and every song above them either holds position or moves at most a spot or two.

But one of the Top 10 entrants boasts an unusual pair of credits: he has his first Top 10 hit as a recording act in the same week that he's enjoying his first chart-topper as a songwriter. Making it somewhat more unusual, at least among multi-hyphenate types: he just turned 21 about a month ago.

We're talking about former boy bander, former small-screen star, and TRL mainstay Jesse McCartney. The song he co-wrote—Leona Lewis' "Bleeding Love," penned with OneRepublic schlock-meister Ryan Tedder—is actually in its fourth nonconsecutive week at No. 1. The newer hit is his own: "Leavin'," which leaps four spots to No. 10 after a huge, iTunes-fueled debut last week.

Throw in the fact that he did a voice for the March blockbuster Horton Hears A Who! and this kid's having an awfully good spring.

Most weeks, a song rising four places into the Top 10 is nothing to blog about, but McCartney's little move defies recent trends in a big way. Just moving up the chart at all after such a big, sales-driven debut is unusual.

Look at what happened to last week's highest debut, Chris Brown's "Forever," which materialized at No. 9. As I expected, this so-called "special edition" bonus cut fell out of the Top 10 in week two. It follows the typical pattern of songs that debut big on sales alone but haven't gotten on the radio yet. Sure enough, "Forever"'s sales drop 21% and it continues to lack radio airplay.

I expected that, after popping onto the chart at No. 14 last week, McCartney would experience a similar second-week swoon. After all, "Leavin'" has been available to radio stations and MTV since early March, and until last week it looked like a flop. But the song's numbers actually improved in week two: digital sales now top 100,000, an 8% improvement, and it's finally made an appearance on Billboard's all-format radio list. Radio PDs are usually quite a bit slower to respond to sales smashes.

Nowadays it's not at all unusual in the world of hip-hop to see acts flipping between writing/producing and performing. When a Diddy or Fitty type is hot, you'll see them all over the charts with multiple above- and below-the-line credits. But in the pop world, at least recently, it's fairly unusual for someone so young to pull it off.

And the simultaneous coming-out as writer and performer is quite unusual, even in the not-so-recent past. Big hits co-written by that other McCartney, but performed by other acts, came after a slew of Beatles smashes. Other singer-songwriters flipped the order, first writing Top 10s and then recording their own: Dylan scored hits by the likes of Peter, Paul and Mary years before "Like a Rolling Stone"; for Bruce Springsteen, Top 10s penned for Manfred Mann and the Pointer Sisters came before his own "Hungry Heart."

Okay, I'm not going to remotely compare this TRL pipsqueak's talents to any of the above. "Leavin'" is charming and catchy and that's about it; and that Leona Lewis hit is rapidly turning into an earworm fungus. (Actually, the fact that I love the verse and build of "Bleeding Love" and hate the repetitive-ass chorus makes me want to credit McCartney with the former and blame Ryan "Apologize" Tedder for the latter.) Also, it's not as if McCartney just started recording—his slow-building, eventually inescapable hit "Beautiful Soul" reached the Top 20 way back in 2004.

Still, the fact that he now bookends the Top 10 after never appearing there at all before a few weeks ago is a worthy achievement. Nice going, Bradin.

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

• I shouldn't neglect the other new Top 10 hit, which actually made a bigger move than McCartney, up 11 spaces to No. 8. But the reason Natasha Bedingfield's "Pocketful of Sunshine" don't impress me much is that it had an assist from American Idol—Bedingfield performed the song on last week's results show. "Sunshine" is the third-biggest digital seller this week, more than doubling to 135,000 downloads, but radio is still catching up; in its third week on the all-airplay list, it sits just outside the top 50.

This is Bedingfield's first Top 10 hit since her unkillable up-with-people anthem "Unwritten" reached No. 5 two years ago. Two years is not a bad span between Top 10 hits, but it's notable because there have been numerous failed attempts to get the British Bedingfield past the sophomore jinx in America over the past year: her British hit "I Wanna Have Your Babies" was nixed for American release last year, and her incongruous duet with Sean Kingston, "Love Like This," just missed the Top 10 in January and didn't do much for sales of her U.S. album. The "Sunshine" single finally appears to be doing the trick, as her album sales are up 200% this week.

• Weezer moves into the penthouse on the Modern Rock chart with "Pork and Beans," surprising no one after last week's explosion into the Top Three on that list. On the big chart, however, the single is looking like a dud, falling six spots to No. 90. Digital sales are down 11%, and non-rock radio stations aren't picking up on the laconic twanger at all—it's nowhere to be found on the Hot 100 Airplay list.

• Madonna's quest to take "4 Minutes" to No. 1 is clearly over. Even though Hard Candy debuted atop the album charts, the single doesn't get the typical corresponding release-week boost and slips two notches to No. 6 on the Hot 100. That may be because, like Mariah Carey, Madge is already moving on to single number two: the Pharrell Williams-backed "Give It 2 Me" is the Hot 100's top debut at No. 57, thanks to its nearly 30,000 digital downloads. It's kind of ironic, because slow-moving PDs were just catching on to "4 Minutes"—after weeks of slow-growing airplay, it's finally approaching the 10 most-played songs on the radio.

• We'll talk more about this next week, but for now, I'll give you a topic to discuss. Resolved: special-edition bonus tracks are a scam, but they work.

The reason we'll have more to talk about a week hence is that next week's chart-topper could be Rihanna's "Take a Bow," a song from the forthcoming "special edition" of Good Girl Gone Bad. "Bow" currently resides all the way down at No. 53 after four weeks on the chart, but thus far it's been charting based on airplay alone. That's about to change, big-time: "Bow" was released this past Tuesday on iTunes and already is No. 1 there. Like Chris Brown with his "special edition" track "Forever," sales alone for "Bow" will undoubtedly be enough to vault it into the Top 10. But unlike Brown, she's got solid and growing airplay for the snippy ballad, which suggests a leap all the way to the top is possible. Stay tuned.

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

Hot 100
1. Leona Lewis, "Bleeding Love" (LW No. 1, 12 weeks)
2. Lil Wayne feat. Static Major, "Lollipop" (LW No. 2, 8 weeks)
3. Jordin Sparks with Chris Brown, "No Air" (LW No. 3, 18 weeks)
4. Usher feat. Young Jeezy, "Love in This Club" (LW No. 5, 12 weeks)
5. Ray J & Yung Berg, "Sexy Can I" (LW No. 6, 14 weeks)
6. Madonna feat. Justin Timberlake, "4 Minutes" (LW No. 4, 7 weeks)
7. Mariah Carey, "Touch My Body" (LW No. 7, 12 weeks)
8. Natasha Bedingfield, "Pocketful of Sunshine" (LW No. 19, 12 weeks)
9. Sara Bareilles, "Love Song" (LW No. 8, 27 weeks)
10. Jesse McCartney, "Leavin'" (LW No. 14, 2 weeks)

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
1. Lil Wayne feat. Static Major, "Lollipop" (LW No. 1, 8 weeks)
2. Ashanti, "The Way That I Love You" (LW No. 4, 12 weeks)
3. Usher feat. Young Jeezy, "Love in This Club" (LW No. 3, 13 weeks)
4. Mariah Carey, "Touch My Body" (LW No. 2, 13 weeks)
5. Jordin Sparks with Chris Brown, "No Air" (LW No. 7, 9 weeks)
6. Rick Ross feat. T-Pain, "The Boss" (LW No. 5, 17 weeks)
7. Plies feat. Ne-Yo, "Bust It Baby (Part 2)" (LW No. 10, 10 weeks)
8. Ray J & Yung Berg, "Sexy Can I" (LW No. 6, 17 weeks)
9. Keyshia Cole, "I Remember" (LW No. 8, 27 weeks)
10. 2 Pistols feat. T-Pain and Tay Dizm, "She Got It" (LW No. 9, 16 weeks)

Hot Country Songs
1. James Otto, "Just Got Started Lovin' You" (LW No. 2, 29 weeks)
2. George Strait, "I Saw God Today" (LW No. 1, 13 weeks)
3. Taylor Swift, "Picture to Burn" (LW No. 4, 17 weeks)
4. Trace Adkins, "You're Gonna Miss This" (LW No. 3, 22 weeks)
5. Brad Paisley, "I'm Still a Guy" (LW No. 6, 11 weeks)
6. Phil Vassar, "Love Is A Beautiful Thing" (LW No. 5, 27 weeks)
7. Rascal Flatts, "Every Day" (LW No. 7, 11 weeks)
8. Lady Antebellum, "Love Don't Live Here" (LW No. 8, 31 weeks)
9. Kenny Chesney, "Better as a Memory" (LW No. 10, 7 weeks)
10. Carrie Underwood, "Last Name" (LW No. 9, 8 weeks)

Hot Modern Rock Tracks
1. Weezer, "Pork & Beans" (LW No. 3, 3 weeks)
2. Seether, "Rise Above This" (LW No. 1, 11 weeks)
3. Flobots, "Handlebars" (LW No. 5, 5 weeks)
4. Puddle of Mudd, "Psycho" (LW No. 2, 27 weeks)
5. Atreyu, "Falling Down" (LW No. 4, 15 weeks)
6. The Raconteurs, "Salute Your Solution" (LW No. 6, 6 weeks)
7. Linkin Park, "Given Up" (LW No. 8, 9 weeks)
8. Death Cab for Cutie, "I Will Possess Your Heart" (LW No. 9, 7 weeks)
9. 3 Doors Down, "It's Not My Time" (LW No. 7, 11 weeks)
10. Disturbed, "Inside the Fire" (LW No. 11, 6 weeks)

Psyche^*. They're actually at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas showing off the "John Lennon Educational Tour Bus," which is kind of like the Stripes RV, except instead of machine guns it's got "a high-end Apple Mac Pro loaded with Ableton Live, Logic Studio, Final Cut Studio and Sibelius music notation software, supplemented by an Apple XServe and XRAID system which facilitates high-bandwidth HD multimedia production and storage" and is rolling from town to town to "provide students with free hands-on opportunities to make music, produce video projects, and shoot digital photos in the mobile recording studios. The Lennon Bus also has an illustrious history as a hit maker, with chart topping singles from The Black Eyed Peas and Fergie recorded on board." Which should make anyone proud, but most especially these guys:

"The Bus, a 501(c)(3) venture, is made possible through the generosity of sponsors including Maxell Corporation, Apple, NAMM, Roland, Godin Guitars, Edirol by Roland, Sibelius, Audio-Technica, Sonicbids, Digidesign, Aphex Systems, Sony, Musician's Friend, Neutrik, Glyph Technologies, Ampeg, Ableton, Mackie, Crate, Apogee, Disc Makers, Smart Technologies, Antares, Bogen Imaging, IK Multimedia, McDSP, SKB, Ultimate Support, PureVolume.com, Planet Waves, Spectrasonics, Music Player Network, Native Instruments, and Boss."

And the creative spirit of John Lennon! Don't forget!

will.i.am Joins Yoko Ono To Introduce The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus [ProHipHop]

^* Sorry. I really promise to never do that again. But I just couldn't resist.

During its nine-year reign of terror, Everybody Loves Raymond was a pox on the bloated corpus of prime time, senselessly propelling Brad Garrett and his insidious antics to national fame while constantly overshadowing more creative, and, you know, funnier shows (such as, ahem, Arrested Development) at the Emmys (seriously, how did Doris Roberts win over the brilliant Jessica Walter so many times? It was rigged!). It was just determined to hang around and sit in network TV's proverbial recliner year after year, eating chips and wiping grease stains on the armrests. Simply put, it was lazy and generally humorless, which makes it perfect fodder for tribute videos. So get out your Jive dictionary and prepare to release your inhibitions/feel the rain on your skin:

Song: "Jive Talkin" by the Bee Gees
Concept: Everybody Loves Raymond as a boring dance at a community rec center that's deejayed by your least-favorite uncle.
What an appropriately bland song choice! In fact, if Everybody Loves Raymond were a song, it would probably be "Jive Talkin'." Both emit an aggressive banality usually reserved for daytime TV commercials, and for this reason it is perhaps dangerous to combine them into one product. And yet, as usual, YouTube has tragically little regard for common courtesy. Where this video really succeeds is in approximating the experience of actually sitting through an episode of ELR. The editing is extremely sub-par, which makes the video kind of listless and boring, and the still shots are just plain lazy. It really is just as much of a failure as the show itself.
Best music-to-image sync-up moment: The dance sequence midway through is about the only thing that's actually matched up with the music.
Silliest music-to-image sync-up-moment: At about 1:18 a funeral scene is matched to the swirly keyboard solo. Of all the sitcom antics one could pair with this part of the song...a funeral?

Song: "Unwritten" by Natasha Bedingfield
Concept: Everybody Loves Raymond as The Hills.
I've avoided directly addressing the tribute video creators, but I'm going to go ahead and go there now because both of these videos were made by the same person, and both are horribly edited. So, tvgirlonline, please, please step up your game. This video is even worse than the last. You need to grasp the concept of the quick cut, because your videos are like watching paint dry in slow motion. Seriously! You're obsessed with a terrible TV show, I can deal with that, but, please, don't bring these dreadfully assembled tributes into the universe. Anyway, the vaguely entertaining concept of the "Unwritten"/ELR combo is outweighed by the utter boringness of actually watching the video, and that's about all I can say, really, except maybe that more pop songs should be this tolerable. If Natasha and Kelly C. did a small club tour I'd totally be there.
Best music-to-image sync-up moment : The cut at 3:02 is actually synced up to the big break in the song, making it the most compelling moment of the entire video.
Silliest music-to-image sync-up moment: Any time Peter Boyle and Doris Roberts are onscreen, because you can pretend that you're actually watching the opening credits to The Hills and that they've been added as cast members.

Verdict: The winner of this week's match-up is...neither! They both suck, so instead I'm giving the victory to this ELR tribute set to "Semi-Charmed Life."

Natasha Bedingfield - I Wanna Have Your Babies [MP3, link expired; via O.C.]