• "But in what qualifies as a sort of progress, here these songs are the most thoughtful. 'Just to Get High' is aimed at a friend who becomes a drug addict. And two of the album’s best numbers, 'I’d Come for You' and 'Never Gonna Be Alone,' are about asking for a second chance. Could it be that Nickelback has seen the error of its ways and is apologizing?" [NYT]

• "Lyrics revel in dorkitude, hair-metal style: 'No class / No taste / No shirt / 'N shitfaced.' The two liveliest songs celebrate getting wasted with the bros; the most melodramatic laments a friend's overdose. Lange keeps things rolling—and to his credit, Chad Kroeger gratifyingly comes off as more of a regular guy than a rock star." [Rolling Stone]

• "The ballads—with the exception of the cheeky 'This Afternoon'—define generic: glossy, hollow and insipid. The Skid Row-ish tale of a life wasted is a waste of four minutes you’ll never get back. If you want to hear the band’s first legit metal riff, download 'Something In Your Mouth.' ” [Boston Herald]

• "Their ability to switch effortlessly between R-rated Animal House antics ('No class, no taste / No shirt'n s—faced') and earnest inspirational-poster goo ('Leave no stone unturned, leave your fears behind / And try to take the path less traveled'). A foolish consistency, after all, isn't just the hobgoblin of little minds—it totally gets in the way of dudedom, too." [Entertainment Weekly]

• "I guess there’s a large market for lowest common denominator, route one rock with all the excellence and drama removed, to be replaced with the leering cluelessness of best forgotten American '80s outfits such as REO Speedwagon. This really is the flogging of a dead, not dark, horse. Take it to the glue factory." [The Mirror]

ONE-LISTEN VERDICT: The sixth album from seemingly unkillable Canadian act Nickelback is co-produced by countryman Mutt Lange, a fact that's belied by the pre-grunge sheen over so much of it. It starts off with the "Crazy Bitch" rewrite "Something In Your Mouth" and gets downer and dirtier from there: The Intervention-ready "Just To Get High" sounds like post-Dr. Feelgood Motley Crue, right down to the lyrics about junkiedom; "Shakin' Hands," which is about a woman who's a gold-digger, a stripper, and a whore, recalls Poison's "Fallen Angel," only with a touch more misogyny. And then there's the big ballad "Never Gonna Be Alone," which could have just as easily been performed by longtime Lange pal Bryan Adams, and on which Chad Kroeger slips out of his post-grunge growl and into that "extra octave" territory mined by Def Leppard to great effect. There's even a "silly outro" track—"This Afternoon," which one could see as Nickelback's attempt to answer the question, "What if there was a rock version of 'Because I Got High,' only without Afroman and with lots of guitar strumming?"

THE BEST TRACK: It's gotta be "Gotta Be Somebody," on which Kroeger dispenses with the sort of icky bro-dom that's going to ensure this album sells as many copies as an album can in late 2008 and indulges in some Alphaville-biting "Up With People" schtick.

That's a pretty evergreen question for critics, so let's see if we can't dance around it a bit. Ex-ska punker and current Hinder/Daughtry/et al songwriter Brian Howes complains that "the media are looking for the next cool thing, whereas Middle Americans just want good music that makes 'em feel good." But this is a little disingenuous. There have always been rock bands dismissed by critics that proved immensely popular with the public both on and between the coasts: Kiss, Led Zeppelin (Howes' argument is one that runs through Zep bio Hammer of the Gods), and even metal itself all fall into this pattern. What's new here is the other side of the equation. Powers writes: "Since the days when former art-school kids the Rolling Stones declared themselves exiled on Main Street, populism has served as a normalizing counterpoint to rock's freaky bohemian tendencies." And that was great when freaky bohemian bands were selling lots of records and getting lots of attention. As Howes points out, however, "The people in Middle America seem to still buy records." The other folks—consumers of what we might as well call "blue-state rock" to be consistent—don't so much. If all we care about is continuing to hear music that sounds like it's trying to be freaky and bohemian, that's fine. But if we care about music as a cultural force, it's a problem.

Howes doesn't actually name a band in his critique of the media's focus on the "next big thing," because who would he name right now? (TV on the Radio? Vampire Weekend?) Kiss v. Pink Floyd seems like a real red state/blue state kind of taste division since the sides were relatively equal in numbers. But blue-state rock is a third party right now, and it suffers from the same problem all third parties do: the media won't cover it, and no one wants to get too invested in it because it doesn't seem viable. Lots of new bands feature the kind of biographical or thematic hooks that the non-music press could grab onto, but it's very hard to justify covering bands that are selling so few records.

Though the rhetoric of rock is that it's something that exists at the margins of society, it's always drawn a lot of its power from its importance. And playing music that only a few thousand people seem to care about doesn't, by extension, seem important. Third parties may come up with some great proposals, but without the votes—read here as album sales—there's no chance that they'll have any influence on the collective enterprise at hand. As long as Hinder's selling and your particular indie fave isn't, more people outside the music-writing bubble will think "rock" sounds like Hinder.

'Flyover rock' rocks the heartland [LA Times]

With that 79-place jump (which, ahem…I called last week), T.I. accomplishes two major chart feats. New No. 1 “Live Your Life” featuring Rihanna sets the record for the biggest leap to the top in history—which would be unremarkable, given the frequency with which this record has been broken recently, if not for the fact that T.I. is beating himself, having reset the mark just six weeks ago.

More impressively, by ousting his own “Whatever You Like,” T.I. joins a very elite club: acts that succeeded themselves at No. 1. During the Hot 100’s entire 50-year history, there have only been eight, and if you ignore featuring-artist credits, the number is six.

Besides these chart feats, T.I.’s hit also sets a record for the biggest debut sales week for a digital single. But we might want to get used to that happening. Already, iTunes is reporting a wave of new best-sellers as the music industry’s last blockbuster holiday hits full swing.

Let’s hold off on discussing T.I.’s record-setting leap (yawn) and talk about how the firehose of digital sales affects his single and several others.

Since Apple’s iTunes Store opened for business five years ago, the week just after Christmas has set a new record for digital sales volume, as millions of new iPod owners rush to their computers to fill the devices. By early January, Apple has crowned a new song the all-time one-week best-seller. The most recent beneficiary and current record-holder is Flo Rida, whose pop-rap smash (and likely No. 1 hit for all of 2008) “Low” sold nearly half a million downloads in the week between Christmas and New Year’s.

Just to give you an idea of scale, in a typical week, maybe five songs sell more than 100,000 copies. During that most recent late-December week, the top 24 songs all sold that well, and the 10 best-sellers moved more than 200,000 each.

That’s what makes this otherwise ordinary early-October sales week notable: almost the entire Top 10 of Billboard’s Digital Songs chart sold in the six-figure range, and each song in the Top Five moved more than 140,000. That’s not Christmas-big, but it’s impressive at a time that doesn’t seem to have any specific holiday or special-event-related trigger. If the forthcoming (inevitably dreadful) holiday season has any effect at all, it’s the fact that all of the blockbuster albums on which the industry has pinned its fourth-quarter hopes have leadoff singles, and they’re all dropping now.

These include new tracks by Christina Aguilera, Nickelback and David Cook, all of which we discussed in this column last week. Two of those three records make even more impressive Hot 100 debuts than I expected, and a fourth one I didn’t mention last week outperforms expectations as well.

Aguilera’s “Keeps Gettin’ Better” and Nickelback’s “Gotta Be Somebody” both debut within the big chart’s Top 10—at Nos. 7 and 10, respectively. Each is fueled by a decent amount of airplay and a whole lot of sales: 144,000 downloads for Xtina, 127,000 for the Canuck post-grungers.

The Cook single, by contrast, is a bit of an underperformer. With 109,000 downloads, Cook’s “Light On” makes a respectable Hot 100 showing at No. 17. But compared with fellow American Idol finalist David Archuleta, whose “Crush” debuted at No. 2 in August with 166,000 downloads in its first week, those numbers look a little… um, light. (Sorry.) Where Cook’s hit goes from here will depend on radio’s embrace, and so far things don’t look good: “Light On” is totally absent not only from the all-genre Hot 100 Airplay list but from both the Mainstream and Modern Rock charts, despite Cook’s status as the first Idol “rocker” winner and the presence of co-writer Chris Cornell.

Finally, the Killers' catchiest song (and weirdest chorus lyric) in years results in their second-biggest Hot 100 debut: “Human” sells 70,000 copies and enters the big chart at No. 32. Only 2006’s “When You Were Young” did better, debuting at No. 29. Credit their promotional team with good timing: the band’s appearance on Saturday Night Live last weekend, in the last 24 hours of the tracking week for the chart, probably accounts for many thousands of those downloads.

All of these songs’ sales totals are impressive, but they’re dwarfed by the song at No. 1.

“Live Your Life” isn’t the lead single of T.I.’s Paper Trail, which debuts atop the album chart this week. Technically, “Life” isn’t even a single at all—despite previewing it at MTV’s Video Music Awards in early September and giving radio stations advance copies, Atlantic Records (and Island Def Jam, Rihanna’s label, which is co-promoting the song) never made it available at iTunes in advance of the album, Weezy-style. But the instant T.I.’s album dropped at iTunes, with all of its tracks simultaneously on sale at 99 cents, an army of fans swept in to buy the song.

To be exact, 335,000 fans bought it, making “Life” the second-biggest one-week seller of all time behind Flo Rida’s “Low,” and the biggest-selling digital song (a) in a non-holiday week and (b) in its debut week. The previous record-holder for that last distinction was Mariah Carey, who moved 286,000 copies of “Touch My Body” in its debut week last spring.

The first-week sales of “Life” are more than double those for this week’s second-biggest seller, Pink’s “So What.” In terms of the Hot 100, sales like that made the leap to No. 1 by the T.I./Rihanna song inevitable, regardless of how much airplay the song was receiving. But hey, airplay ain’t shabby: “Life” is already the 22nd most-played song at radio nationwide. On the airplay-heavy Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, “Life” is already in the Top 10.

As for the records T.I. sets, succeeding himself at No. 1 is the real mind-blower, because so few acts have done it. And when they do, it’s usually a sign that they’re at a peak of culture-dominating popularity: think the Beatles in 1964, Boyz II Men in 1994, or Usher in 2004.

In his column this week, Fred Bronson at Billboard has the complete list of acts that have done it, and he counts nine. But that includes an Elvis Presley twofer that precedes the existence of the Hot 100 (back in the days when Billboard reported multiple big singles charts), and two acts that scored with a featured-artist credit: Puff Daddy in 1997 (his “I’ll Be Missing You” was succeeded by the Notorious B.I.G.–fronted “Mo Money Mo Problems”), and Ja Rule in 2002 (his “Always on Time” was followed by Jennifer Lopez’s “Ain’t It Funny”). I’d argue to put those acts on a lower tier, leaving a half-dozen who did it on the Hot 100, with tracks they fronted: the Beatles, Boyz, Nelly, OutKast (a bit of a cheat to those of us who regard “Hey Ya!” as an André 3000 single and “The Way You Move” as a Big Boi single, but never mind), Usher, and now Clifford “T.I.” Harris Jr.

When T.I. soared from No. 71 to No. 1 with “Whatever You Like” in late August, I sniffed that this chart feat was becoming less amazing all the time, as several current acts like Usher and Maroon 5 had leapt to the top from outside the Top 40 (or, in Rihanna’s case, routinely: she’s done it three times).

Indeed, by beating his own record this week with the 80–1 leap of “Live Your Life,” the Atlanta rap king shrinks the time between record-breaking instances almost as low as it can go. It took 38 years for the Beatles (“Can’t Buy Me Love,” 1964, 26–1) to lose the record to Kelly Clarkson (“A Moment Like This,” 2002, 52–1); four and a half years for her to lose it to Maroon 5 (“Makes Me Wonder,” 2007, 64–1); 16 months for them to lose it to T.I.’s “Whatever”; and a month and a half for him to beat it himself.

Let me reiterate one word in the prior paragraph: almost. The smallest possible gap between record-setting instances, of course, would be one week, and it’s possible that that’s about to happen.

This week, Britney Spears debuts on the Hot 100 at No. 96 with “Womanizer,” entirely thanks to radio points. The song was until recently not available for purchase. Like T.I. a week ago, Spears has garnered remarkable out-of-the-box airplay, as “Womanizer” already ranks 55th among all songs spun, just a couple of weeks after going to radio. Which means the formula that sent T.I.’s last two hits to No. 1—first, early airplay, then an instant explosion of sales—is working for Spears as well: “Womanizer” was put on sale at iTunes three days ago, and lo and behold, at this writing it’s Apple’s top-seller, beating “Live Your Life.”

Should Britney pull a one-week sales total on the scale of T.I.’s—over 300,000, or even just the low 200’s—next week she could leap from No. 96 to No. 1, defeating his record after just seven days and possibly setting it for all time. That is, unless one day the stars align and a song debuts at Nos. 97, 98, 99 or 100 before shooting to the top. And then, once we’ve run out of Hot 100 positions, we’d never have to talk about this increasingly dubious chart record again.

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

• A couple more tidbits about the Killers: “Human,” with its New Order–esque synth sound, is being received warmly at the band’s “home format.” Last week, the song entered the Modern Rock chart at No. 13. That’s by far their best debut there—“When You Were Young” debuted at No. 27 on that list in the summer of 2006. And this week, “Human” becomes the band’s fastest Top 10 Modern Rock hit, rising to No. 8; “Young,” by contrast, took three weeks to move into the winners’ circle.

• When Billboard publishes its year-end charts, I’ll be a bit surprised if the person with the No. 1 R&B/Hip-Hop song of the year isn’t Keyshia Cole. She’ll either do it with her seven-week chart-topper from last winter/spring, “I Remember”; or her even bigger nine-week chart-topper from last spring/summer, “Heaven Sent.” I mention this because the latter just won’t die: a week after “Heaven” dropped out of the R&B/Hip-Hop Top 10 after a four-month run there, it jumps back to No. 9, for reasons known only to urban radio programmers. Interesting tidbit: because “Heaven” moved into the Top 10 last May the week after “Remember” dropped out, last week’s chart was the first week since early January that Cole hasn’t been somewhere inside the R&B Top 10. Even Alicia Keys (the other likely year-end winner) has been out of the winners’ circle more weeks than Cole.

• Some quick notes on struggling hits: Sony’s quest to give Leona Lewis a second Top 10 hit on the Hot 100 hasn’t died yet, as “Better in Time” creeps up four spaces to No. 14. "Better" might still make it, but Lewis’ team is really sweating it—the song is now in its 13th week on the Hot 100, and the label was pushing it to radio a couple of months before that. Just for perspective, “Bleeding Love,” best-selling single of this calendar year, made the Top 10 in its fifth chart week last March.

Right next to Lewis, at No. 15, is a song that just two weeks ago I thought stood a chance of reaching No. 1: Kanye West’s “Love Lockdown.” The collapse in his digital sales, in a week where iTunes buyers have other shiny new songs to distract them, is the culprit; “Lockdown” now ranks 12th on the Digital Songs chart. On the big chart, “Lockdown” has probably peaked overall, but continued growth at radio—it now ranks 48th there, up from 69th a week ago—could bring it back to the Top 10 by the time ’Ye’s 808 and Heartbreak drops in November.

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. T.I. feat. Rihanna, "Live Your Life" (LW No. 80, 2 weeks)
2. T.I., "Whatever You Like" (LW No. 1, 9 weeks)
3. Pink, "So What" (LW No. 2, 7 weeks)
4. Rihanna, "Disturbia" (LW No. 4, 16 weeks)
5. Kevin Rudolf feat. Lil Wayne, "Let It Rock" (LW No. 15, 6 weeks)
6. Katy Perry, "Hot N Cold" (LW No. 6, 10 weeks)
7. Christina Aguilera, "Keeps Gettin' Better" (CHART DEBUT)
8. T-Pain feat. Lil Wayne, "Can't Believe It" (LW No. 7, 10 weeks)
9. M.I.A., "Paper Planes" (LW No. 5, 12 weeks)
10. Nickelback, "Gotta Be Somebody" (CHART DEBUT)

Hot Digital Songs
1. T.I. feat. Rihanna, "Live Your Life" (CHART DEBUT, 335,000 downloads)
2. Pink, "So What" (LW No. 2, 165,000 downloads)
3. Kevin Rudolf feat. Lil Wayne, "Let It Rock" (LW No. 10, 148,000 downloads)
4. T.I., "Whatever You Like" (LW No. 1)
5. Christina Aguilera, "Keeps Gettin' Better" (CHART DEBUT, 144,000 downloads)
6. Nickelback, "Gotta Be Somebody" (CHART DEBUT, 127,000 downloads)
7. Katy Perry, "Hot N Cold" (LW No. 4)
8. David Cook, "Light On" (CHART DEBUT, 109,000 downloads)
9. Taylor Swift, "Love Story" (LW No. 5)
10. Rihanna, "Disturbia" (LW No. 7)

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
1. T.I., "Whatever You Like" (LW No. 1, 12 weeks)
2. Jennifer Hudson, "Spotlight" (LW No. 3, 21 weeks)
3. T-Pain feat. Lil Wayne, "Can't Believe It," (LW No. 2, 13 weeks)
4. Jazmine Sullivan, "Need U Bad" (LW No. 4, 23 weeks)
5. Ne-Yo, "Miss Independent" (LW No. 6, 11 weeks)
6. Lil Wayne feat. Bobby Valentino, "Mrs. Officer" (LW No. 5, 14 weeks)
7. Lil Wayne feat. T-Pain, "Got Money" (LW No. 7, 21 weeks)
8. T.I. feat. Rihanna, "Live Your Life" (LW No. 16, 4 weeks)
9. Keyshia Cole, "Heaven Sent" (LW No. 13, 28 weeks)
10. Robin Thicke, "Magic" (LW No. 9, 20 weeks)

Hot Country Songs
1. Kenny Chesney, "Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven" (LW No. 2, 10 weeks)
2. Darius Rucker, "Don't Think I Don't Think About It" (LW No. 1, 25 weeks)
3. Toby Keith, "She Never Cried in Front of Me" (LW No. 3, 15 weeks)
4. Carrie Underwood, "Just a Dream" (LW No. 6, 13 weeks)
5. Kid Rock, "All Summer Long" (LW No. 4, 21 weeks)
6. Brad Paisley, "Waitin' on a Woman" (LW No. 8, 17 weeks)
7. Jimmy Wayne, "Do You Believe Me Now" (LW No. 5, 28 weeks)
8. Tim McGraw, "Let It Go" (LW No. 9, 12 weeks)
9. Taylor Swift, "Love Story" (LW No. 11, 4 weeks)
10. George Strait, "Troubadour" (LW No. 7, 19 weeks)

Hot Modern Rock Tracks
1. The Offspring, "You're Gonna Go Far, Kid" (LW No. 1, 11 weeks)
2. Weezer, "Troublemaker" (LW No. 2, 13 weeks)
3. Staind, "Believe" (LW No. 3, 15 weeks)
4. Apocalyptica feat. Adam Gontier, "I Don't Care" (LW No. 6, 14 weeks)
5. Rise Against, "Re-Education (Through Labor)" (LW No. 4, 7 weeks)
6. Metallica, "The Day That Never Comes" (LW No. 5, 7 weeks)
7. Carolina Liar, "I’m Not Over" (LW No. 7, 23 weeks)
8. The Killers, "Human" (LW No. 13, 2 weeks)
9. Theory of a Deadman, "Bad Girlfriend" (LW No. 10, 16 weeks)
10. Kings of Leon, "Sex on Fire" (LW No. 17, 7 weeks)

The “jump ball” I expected to break within the Top Three turned out to be a dead ball, as the three hits hold their positions. T.I. actually outsold both Pink and Kanye West at buck-a-song retailers, blunting those two challengers’ previous digital-sales advantages and padding his already huge lead at radio. West, in particular, will probably muddle along for a while now, as his sales two weeks later have fallen off, and his airplay is emerging, steadily but slowly.

Besides, T.I. appears be settling into a long run atop the chart, and within a week or two it might be with a different song. His newest hit, previewed three weeks ago with Rihanna at the MTV Video Music Awards, leads a parade of fall contenders that will likely explode on next week’s chart. So in effect, this week feels like the calm before the pre-holiday storm.

All the action this week isn’t on the Hot 100: It’s at iTunes, where a handful of highly anticipated pre-album song releases are selling like gangbusters. Let’s run them down, because the sales they’re ringing up now will shake up the big chart next week:

T.I. featuring Rihanna, “Live Your Life”: Also known as “The Numa Numa Song, Redux.” This irresistible melding of T.I.’s flow with one of the biggest Internet memes of all time, vocalized by the Barbadian chart goddess, has been iTunes’ top seller since midweek. That’s because it appeared there as a 99-cent download on Tuesday, the same day T.I.’s new album Paper Trail dropped. Clearly, tens of thousands of pop fans had been anticipating the download availability of “Live Your Life” since the VMA performance, and I can understand why: it’s a better song than “Whatever You Like,” with a more interesting T.I. rap, and the “Numa” hook is remarkably suited to Rihanna’s voice. Moreover, for all its millions of YouTube views, O-Zone’s “Dragostea din tei” (the song soundtracking “Numa Numa”) never had a breakout moment as a digital song in America, and T.I.’s hit will serve as its proxy.

“Live Your Life” is already on the Hot 100, debuting this week at No. 80 not because of sales but because it’s already the 45th most-played song in the country. That’s a staggering airplay ranking for a song that’s only been available to radio programmers for a couple of weeks. Expect “Life” to positively explode on next week’s chart—possibly shooting all the way to No. 1, which would set a new chart record. There have been countless examples in chart history where a superstar act releases a just-okay song as his album’s first single, gets a big hit with it, and then drops the monster, which becomes the massive, memorable hit. Long story short, I suspect “Life” will be the “Billie Jean” to “Whatever You Like”’s “The Girl Is Mine.”

Christina Aguilera, “Keeps Gettin’ Better”: Also debuted to the world at the VMAs, Xtina’s lead single for her forthcoming greatest-hits disc was released to the U.S. iTunes Store on Tuesday. It’s already selling phenomenally there, which might surprise some of us here who were kinda “meh” on her and co-writer Linda Perry’s thin Goldfrapp ripoff. But homegirl has fans, and it doesn’t hurt that “Keeps” is garnering solid radio attention already, debuting this week on the Hot 100 Airplay list at a respectable No. 71. Expect a Top 40, probably Top 20 and possibly Top 10 debut on the Hot 100 next week.

Nickelback, “Gotta Be Somebody”: Previewing the followup to the longest-charting hit album of the 2000s (sigh), the Canuck radio-dominators offer this synthy prom anthem, already iTunes’ third-biggest seller after four days on-sale. Which is fairly remarkable, considering hardcore Nickelback fans were able to download the MP3 free for 24 hours this past Monday. No measurable Top 40 airplay yet, but expect a massive debut on the rock charts shortly and a probable Top 20 debut on the big chart.

David Cook, “Light On”: Message to David Archuleta: it’s on! The leadoff single to the 2008 American Idol winner’s debut album comes freighted with oddly fey cover art and huge expectations. One month after the runner-up moved 166,000 downloads in a week and crashed onto the chart at No. 2, Cook’s grunge-schlock single is looking like a somewhat milder performer; iTunes currently has it ranked fourth. The interesting thing to watch next week won’t necessarily be the debut of “Light On” on the Hot 100—it’ll be whether the song, cowritten by Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell, musters enough cred to make an appearance on any of the rock charts. As Idol’s first “rock” winner, Cook and his handlers clearly see the young-white-male formats as keys to his success when his album drops in November—reportedly the same week Nickelback’s album debuts.

(For the record, both Davids have outperformed expectations at radio this year. Cook’s single from the Idol finale, “The Time of My Life,” held on long after its explosive chart debut in May. It ended up riding the Top 40 all summer long, eventually also topping the Adult Contemporary chart—the slow-as-molasses, dull-as-dirt format that nonetheless represents thousands of radio stations and millions of listeners. And Archuleta’s hit, after its big August debut, has emerged as a solid radio hit, now among the 50 most-played songs nationwide and hanging onto the Hot 100’s Top 20.)

With these four singles all storming iTunes’ Top Five in the same week, it’s fair to say the holiday sales race is on, and next week’s Hot 100 will be the first scorecard.

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

• There’s one more digital single making waves on iTunes, but it’s not new and has been rising on the Hot 100, quietly and steadily, for a little over a month now: “Let It Rock,” by Kevin Rudolf, featuring his label boss Lil Wayne. Kevin who? We’ve seen so many hits by Wayne this year, teaming him with virtually every luminary in hip-hop and R&B, but this one is the opposite of those singles: it’s a pop/rock record from a Miami-based singer who’s about to drop his debut album on the New Orleans–based Cash Money label, Weezy’s career home. Rudolf is his newest protégé and a branch-out into a different genre, kind of like what OneRepublic was to Timbaland last year with “Apologize.” (Except “Rock” doesn’t make you want to tear your hair out.) As such, “Rock,” which moves up six spots to No. 15 on the Hot 100, is the only hit song Weezy’s name has appeared on all year that isn’t on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop list. It’s already among the 10 biggest-selling digital songs this week, and with radio growth solid (it now ranks 43rd on Hot 100 Airplay), it should make the big chart’s Top 10 within a week or two.

• Speaking of hits with limited name recognition, Raheem DeVaughn, an R&B singer who’s never made the R&B/Hip-Hop chart’s Top 10, is a week away from making a different kind of Top 10: the list of longest-charting R&B hits. At 56 weeks, DeVaughn’s “Woman” will be among the 10 longevity champs next week, as Billboard chart guru Fred Bronson notes in his column this week.

All I’ll add to Fred’s post is that, with this feat, DeVaughn becomes the Duncan Sheik of the R&B/Hip-Hop chart. Having peaked at a lowly No. 17 last April, “Woman” is by far the lowest-charting of the R&B list’s longevity champs, including such undeniable smashes as Mary J. Blige’s “Be Without You” (the all-time leader, with a staggering 75 weeks on the chart in 2005–07), Usher’s “You Make Me Wanna” and R. Kelly’s “Step in the Name of Love.” All of DeVaughn’s fellow hangers-on peaked in the Top Five or thereabouts. On the Hot 100’s list of all-time longevity champs, there are several songs that didn’t make the Top 10, such as Paula Cole’s “I Don’t Want to Wait.” But for a brief time in 1996, Duncan Sheik held the longevity title with “Barely Breathing,” a mellow-radio favorite that hung around the Hot 100 for 55 weeks despite only peaking at No. 15.

(Sheik’s record was beaten within a few months, first by Los Del Rio’s 60-week-charting No. 1 smash “Macarena,” and then again a year later by what are now the two all-time champs: Jewel’s 65-week double-sided hit “You Were Meant for Me”/”Foolish Games” and LeAnn Rimes’s 69-week monster “How Do I Live.”)

So: congrats, Raheem. And maybe you can browbeat your label into working the phones a little more assiduously for the next single?

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. T.I., "Whatever You Like" (LW No. 1, 8 weeks)
2. Pink, "So What" (LW No. 2, 6 weeks)
3. Kanye West, "Love Lockdown" (LW No. 3, 2 weeks)
4. Rihanna, "Disturbia" (LW No. 4, 15 weeks)
5. M.I.A., "Paper Planes" (LW No. 6, 11 weeks)
6. Katy Perry, "Hot N Cold" (LW No. 9, 9 weeks)
7. T-Pain feat. Lil Wayne, "Can't Believe It" (LW No. 8, 9 weeks)
8. Ne-Yo, "Closer" (LW No. 7, 24 weeks)
9. Taylor Swift, "Love Story" (LW No. 5, 3 weeks)
10. Estelle feat. Kanye West, "American Boy" (LW No. 10, 24 weeks)

Hot Digital Songs
1. T.I., "Whatever You Like" (LW No. 3)
2. Pink, "So What" (LW No. 1)
3. Kanye West, "Love Lockdown" (LW No. 2)
4. Katy Perry, "Hot N Cold" (LW No. 7)
5. Taylor Swift, "Love Story" (LW No. 4)
6. M.I.A., "Paper Planes" (LW No. 6)
7. Rihanna, "Disturbia" (LW No. 5)
8. Jason Mraz, "I’m Yours" (LW No. 8)
9. Akon, "Right Now (Na Na Na)" (CHART DEBUT)
10. Kevin Rudolf feat. Lil Wayne, "Let It Rock" (LW No. 12)

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
1. T.I., "Whatever You Like" (LW No. 1, 11 weeks)
2. T-Pain feat. Lil Wayne, "Can't Believe It," (LW No. 2, 12 weeks)
3. Jennifer Hudson, "Spotlight" (LW No. 4, 20 weeks)
4. Jazmine Sullivan, "Need U Bad" (LW No. 3, 22 weeks)
5. Lil Wayne feat. Bobby Valentino, "Mrs. Officer" (LW No. 5, 13 weeks)
6. Ne-Yo, "Miss Independent" (LW No. 6, 10 weeks)
7. Lil Wayne feat. T-Pain, "Got Money" (LW No. 9, 20 weeks)
8. Plies feat. Jamie Foxx & The-Dream, "Please Excuse My Hands" (LW No. 11, 16 weeks)
9. Robin Thicke, "Magic" (LW No. 8, 19 weeks)
10. Young Jeezy feat. Kanye West, "Put On" (LW No. 7, 21 weeks)

Hot Country Songs
1. Darius Rucker, "Don't Think I Don't Think About It" (LW No. 1, 24 weeks)
2. Kenny Chesney, "Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven" (LW No. 2, 9 weeks)
3. Toby Keith, "She Never Cried in Front of Me" (LW No. 5, 14 weeks)
4. Kid Rock, "All Summer Long" (LW No. 4, 20 weeks)
5. Jimmy Wayne, "Do You Believe Me Now" (LW No. 3, 27 weeks)
6. Carrie Underwood, "Just a Dream" (LW No. 7, 12 weeks)
7. George Strait, "Troubadour" (LW No. 8, 18 weeks)
8. Brad Paisley, "Waitin' on a Woman" (LW No. 6, 16 weeks)
9. Tim McGraw, "Let It Go" (LW No. 11, 11 weeks)
10. Luke Bryan, "Country Man" (LW No. 12, 30 weeks)

Hot Modern Rock Tracks
1. The Offspring, "You're Gonna Go Far, Kid" (LW No. 1, 10 weeks)
2. Weezer, "Troublemaker" (LW No. 3, 12 weeks)
3. Staind, "Believe" (LW No. 2, 14 weeks)
4. Rise Against, "Re-Education (Through Labor)" (LW No. 5, 6 weeks)
5. Metallica, "The Day That Never Comes" (LW No. 6, 6 weeks)
6. Apocalyptica feat. Adam Gontier, "I Don't Care" (LW No. 8, 13 weeks)
7. Carolina Liar, "I’m Not Over" (LW No. 4, 22 weeks)
8. Foo Fighters, "Let It Die" (LW No. 7, 26 weeks)
9. Coldplay, "Viva la Vida" (LW No. 9, 17 weeks)
10. Theory of a Deadman, "Bad Girlfriend" (LW No. 11, 15 weeks)

ONE-LISTEN VERDICT: When I started listening to the song that was claiming to be the first single from Nickelback's forthcoming Dark Horse—which is being given out as a free download today only—I was greeted by synth intro that sounds like it was leftover from a Killers recording session, and became pretty convinced that the band was punking any longtime listeners who dared think of not paying for the track. But then Chad Kroeger's nu-hesher yelp came in, and all was right (?) with the world. "Gotta Be Somebody" represents something of a lighter direction for the band (there will be no "OMG, it's the same song!!" mash-ups with this song and other pieces of the Nickelback catalog), and I credit that to the production work of one Robert John "Mutt" Lange, who probably saw the rock-radio success of pop-friendly fare like Carolina Liar and figured that the time was right for Canada's Great Rock Hope to at least add a synthesizer to their sound. Time will tell whether or not listeners will embrace this change in artistic direction, but hey, at least Lange taught the guys some new chords.

WHERE TO FIND IT: It's available until 6 a.m. Tuesday at Roadrunner Records' site, so get it now! Or, you know, wait for it to show up on one of those shady MP3 blogs.

I grew up assuming that anyone on tv was mind-bogglingly rich. It's a common enough mistake that I share with the cast of Big Brother. Sometimes, it's true. Some pop stars are very, very rich. Jay-Z's various businesses have earned him $1bn. Former Beatles are on £500 million each. The members of Coldplay are worth £30m each. Even Craig David is sitting on £10m.

I don't think it's going to last. Why should a musician who sells one million albums a year be paid so much more than the editor of a national newspaper that sells one billion copies a year? In ten years' time, maybe five, being a pop star will be a profitable profession. Like being a barrister or a consultant. But not like being a juice carton magnate.

This isn't a moral or cultural opinion. Gary Glitter can earn £50,000 a year on royalties accrued every time Rock & Roll (Part 2) is played at an NFL game. So what? All that tells us is that he was lucky enough to be part of the never-to-be-repeated phenomenon that was The Music Industry of the Latter Years of the 20th Century.

I immediately trust him because of his droll Big Brother quip. And, to answer his question: most people don't usually want to be/have sex with newspaper editors, and will not pay money to consume their image.

Not surprisingly, times were good. Vinyl records were cheap to manufacture but hard to copy. Recording studios were vastly expensive to hire, so musicians were dependent on the industry to get records made. Most of all, as internet marketeer Seth Godin reminded executives at Columbia Records last year, people didn't like pop stars, they loved them. It seemed natural that pop stars should be rich. And they were.

Now, all that is gone, washed away by the digital tide. The great, profit-hyping discovery that was the CD - we can get everyone to buy their record collection all over again, for twice the price! - proved in the long run to be the industry's nemesis. Too late, the labels realised that in fact they had been flogging infinitely duplicable digital masters to the public. And nobody ever got rich selling something expensive that you can get for free.

I do take issue with the "people don't love pop stars anymore" argument (exhibit A). If anything, people (especially young people) love musicians more than ever because they have so much access to them. Unfortunately (for the musicians, at least) this modern idol worship is as free as it is instantly accessible.

Internet clever person Kevin Kelly has written a great essay called 1,000 True Fans. He sets out how a musician (or writer, or artist) should be able to make a comfortable living (say $100,000 a year) if they can offer sufficiently enticing products to a sufficient number of true fans. His maths are fuzzy but his basic argument is sound. It's no longer enough to have two million people like your song, buy the single and earn you a house. They'll just download it, and you won't see a penny. Instead, you need a deeper relationship with fewer people.

By "deeper relationship" he means "a really good merch table."

What will it look like from the rock star's end of the telescope? In fairness, most working musicians in rock and roll's Premiership, if not its Big Four, have accepted that the days of driving Rolls-Royces into private pools are long gone. In the 1970s, Elton, Led Zep and the Stones set the standard of rock star ostentation that is now of use only to filmmakers and potboiler novelists. Today's famous musicians work harder and are paid less, and in the future it'll only get worse. A rock star used to be a demigod who bathed in money each morning. In the future, they'll look with envy on Java programmers or hedge fund managers.

That may be a tad drastic, but not far off from the truth. (Although one hopes that they'll see a better fate than the one possibly faced by hedge fund managers.) On the one hand, it's kind of interesting in a nice way to see the "rock star" ideal deflated a bit—there's no real reason why someone who can write a good pop song should have the right to extravagant conspicuous consumption. On the other hand, what is the rock illusion going to consist of if it can't be at least partially defined by the shorthand term "cool"? The most successful rock stars around right now are Nickelback—they even sell records!—but they don't come close to the idea of 1970s-era rock cool by any stretch of the imagination.

Musicians may finally be learning their place, but the world will definitely lose something as a result.

Why Should Rock Stars Expect to be Rich? [The Word]

A few ideas:

Country. A huge draw in the States, but not so much outside of it. Unless, of course, Live Nation manages to snag Shania Twain, who's been out of the recorded-music world since her 2005 song for the Desperate Housewives soundtrack and who's been known to experiment with global sounds. If anything, now would be an opportune time for her to make a fresh start.

Indie. In the wake of the Fillmore rebranding disaster, Live Nation is trying to shore up its smaller-sized theaters, and an act that's big, but more suited to its smaller-sized venues, could help. And as it happens, there is one life-changing act out there who's open to working with a "label partner" for the independent release of its next album.

Hard rock/metal. Of course, this depends on how metal you think Motley Crue really is, particularly in comparison to Nickelback.

Some genre that is relatively unknown in these parts, since these deals are global. Just saying.

Also, did you know that Nickelback's Mike Kroeger claims that his band's name comes from him saying "Here's your nickel back" during his coffee-jockey job at a Vancouver Starbucks, and not from the American football term for a secondary defensive back? Although I wonder if that's just a backstory that's been concocted for them to appeal beyond the jock crowd...

Nickelback signs with Live Nation [Variety]
Nickelback latest to join Live Nation in global deal [Reuters]

Quoth Friedman, or whatever Live Nation mole put the Post-sized bee in his bonnet:

So let's clear up reports from Tuesday that her big fall tour isn't selling out. With the sole exception of Los Angeles' Dodger Stadium, the Sweet and Sticky tour, I am told, will outpace Madonna's last tour significantly.

Indeed, Dodger Stadium is the only venue Madonna hasn't sold out. Of course, the show isn't for five months. The fact that she's sold half the stadium now for November is pretty darn impressive

Well, first off, it's the Sticky and Sweet Tour, but that can easily be blamed on copyeditors who don't feel like slogging through Friedman's paeans to his pals too closely. The real falsity here is Friedman's assertion that Dodger Stadium is "the only venue Madonna hasn't sold out." Yesterday I did a little Ticketmaster searching for Madonna's shows in Boston and Houston, and found available seats at both dates; repeating that experiment just now revealed similar results. (I just did a plain old search, without any wiggling around for VIP seating or secondary-market offers.) Is there another definition of "sold out" that I'm not aware of? Or does he not care about those markets, since later on he puffs up his chest and says, "She's already sold out four shows at the Garden and out in New Jersey at what used to be the Continental Airlines Arena — now the Izod Arena. She's also sold out most of her venues in Europe." (Not to mention that it's the Izod Center, but again, the copyeditor assigned to this story was probably weeping by this point.)

Friedman also whines about the evil Mr. M. Group not promoting Madonna's shaping-up-to-be-a-dud Hard Candy properly:

Meanwhile, a better question to ask is why can't WMG cough up a follow-up single to "4 Minutes"? That is, assuming they would want to. "Hard Candy" is full of candidates such as "Miles Away" and "Give It to Me."

But WMG hasn't had made a move. By contrast, Mariah Carey — whose sales have outpaced Madonna's considerably — is already on her third single from her contemporaneous release, "E=MC2."

Two things: One, I do believe that part of the reason Mariah's on the verge of releasing her third single from E=MC² was that "Bye Bye" was kind of a flop; and two, apparently he forgot about the video for "Give It To Me," which has actually been spotted by this writer on MTV, of all places. But that's OK, because it's pretty forgettable.

Squatting at yourself in front of a mirror, Madonna? Is this leftover footage from "Hung Up"?

Anyway, Friedman also claims in the piece that Live Nation is on the verge of signing 360 deals with Nickelback and Shakira, but given that he claims that Nickelback's hits include "The Reason," we can assume that maybe he thought he heard "Nickelback" when what he really heard was the name of another band with a kinda-dumb, three-syllable name.

Is Madonna Being Sabotaged? [Fox 411 via Coolfer]
Earlier: Madonna's Ticket Sales Give Live Nation Something Else To Suck On

Kweller released his solo full-length debut Sha Sha on March 5 of that year. It was the perfect pop-rock album from start to finish, with few curveballs that would deem it unfit for commercial radio (unless you consider adorableness a liability)—but it went completely unnoticed by the Top 40 format. What, after all, does Nickelback's "How You Remind Me" have that Kweller's "Wasted & Ready" doesn't?

Malaise? Electric guitars? Some sort of reference to alcohol abuse? A vague sense of contempt toward women? "Wasted & Ready" has all of these things, but—and here's the important distinction—it is actually fun to listen to. Now, "fun" may be a subjective concept. So here's an experiment:

1. Put on "How You Remind Me" and sing along. You're pouting, aren't you? You feel weighed down somehow; you can feel your angsty goatee coming in, right?
2. Repeat step 1, only replace the Nickelback with "Wasted & Ready." Try it in a car, with the stereo's volume turned way up. It's got a nice buoyant quality that picks you up, and doesn't you down, Chad K.-style, after a rousing sing-along.

(And, just as a sort of afterthought—how is that Marcy Playground's "Sex and Candy" was the most ubiquitous song of the late '90s, but the line "Sex reminds her of eating spaghetti" never caught on?)

For yet another straightforward guitar rock Ben Kweller track that should have made it to at least rock radio, I give you "Commerce, TX":

What's wrong with this song? Is the line "I got a pet hedgehog/Drinkin' Jager all day" just too intellectual for the masses?

While those two songs conquer "How You Remind Me" in the electric guitar league, the track off of Sha Sha perhaps most deserving of radio domination is the unbearably sweet piano-driven "Falling":

(Speaking of unbearably sweet: Ben Kweller and a baby!)

For the four minutes that this song encompasses Ben Kweller are an amazing fluke of pop music, a perfect combination of Billy Joel and Carole King, seemingly poised to save us all from the depths of muddy alt-rock forever. And yet, somehow, millions of teen girls were never given the opportunity to let themselves get caught up in the bridge-to-chorus crescendo where the drums slowly build and the violins swell and Kweller sweetly declares "Wanna hold you like never before, 'cause we're falling and I love you more and more."

It's way too late now to save 2002, but here's hoping that someday commercial radio will stop short-changing listeners so severely and give artists like Ben Kweller even a solitary spin—or, at the very least, scale down the Nickelback. For everyone's sake.

I put my own dick in my mouth. I was 14 and much more flexible at the time. It was soft and required a lot of pulling. I really wanted that case of beer.

I could sit here and tell you how Nickelback's music already reminds me of dudes straining to self-pleasure themselves in front of an audience—hunched over, sweaty, flaccid, embarrassing. But I'd rather use my time to complain that there's no version of UGK's "I'm So Bad (I Can Suck My Own Dick)" on YouTube that I can link to.

Chad reveals saucy party trick [The Sun via our pal Reed Fischer]

Just sayin', if you're going to spend seventy three million dollars to acquire the services of Nickelback, you might want to make sure they're signed for more than just one album.

Executives within WMG now believe the board has finally figured out that Cohen has neither the talent nor the intelligence to lead the company, and that the man behind the curtain at Def Jam was obviously Russell Simmons.

A key example of Cohen's ineptitude is the Nickelback dilemma, which comes after Cohen initiated the purchase of 73% of Roadrunner for $73m, neglecting the fact that Nickelback owed just one more LP (not three, as he's been spinning).

Now, Warner is in the unenviable position of having to shell out elephant bucks in order to keep the band (represented by attorney John Branca) or be left with another bad deal, alongside Bad Boy, Bulldog, the Eagles and Madonna.

Nickelback's four albums have sold a total of more than 16 million in the U.S. alone, including The State (March 2000): 713k; Silver Side Up (Sept. 2001): 5.37m; Long Road (Sept. 2003): 3.37m; All the Right Reasons (Oct. 2005): 6.64m, all but the last (which shifted over in midstream to WMG) through Roadrunner's previous deal with Island Def Jam.

Of all the stupid things Bronfman and his cohorts have done to the once storied Warner brand (and there are plenty, forgetting to check the fine print on one of its biggest acquisitions might be among the dumbest. If Nickelback can bolt after one more album to the highest bidder, even having the Dresden Dolls under your corporate umbrella won't be much of a consolation.

IB BAD EXCLUSIVE: IS THAT FISH YOU SMELL? [Hits Daily Double, might require some sort of sign-in]

USA Today takes a look at the Canadian outfit's sales achievement, noting via pretty graph that six albums released back in 2000 also reached the six-million mark: those albums were by Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, Nelly, Britney Spears, Eminem, and 'N Sync. (Eminem's Marshall Mathers LP and 'N Sync's No Strings Attached both sold more than 10 million copies, earning the "diamond" certification.) 2002 had four six-million sellers, with Nelly and Eminem reaching that mark again; they were joined by Avril Lavigne and Norah Jones.

USA Today scribe Ken Barnes attributes Nickelback's staying power to touring, talent, and radio appeal; I'd add that there's still a market for their straightforward, straight-outta-'96 sound, despite all the A&R freaking out over blog-beloved bands, smudged-eyeliner groups, and outfits that still want to fly the tattered flag of nu-metal. Not that I really want to be subjected to a bunch of retreads of ten-times-Xeroxed Pearl Jam every time I leave the house, but the barreling popularity of Nickelback (not to mention Daughtry) actually has made me consistently surprised by the majors' resistance toward being more conservative. Sure, Nickelback will never be "cool," but it's not like red-cap-era Fred Durst doesn't look like a complete moron in hindsight.

Nickelback's 'Reasons' joins rare 6M sales club [USA Today]

Nickelback's fifth album, released Oct. 4, 2005, has become a phenomenon that's not only eclipsed "Silver Side Up" but is arguably the biggest rock album of the century so far. It's been in the top 30 of The Billboard 200 for 102 consecutive weeks and is currently No. 7. The last artist in that rarefied position was fellow Canadian Shania Twain, whose 1997 release "Come On Over" spent its first 123 weeks in the top 30.

During the course of its run, "All the Right Reasons" has also notched a head-spinning array of accomplishments that have contributed to its longevity. The album is six-times-platinum in the United States, with more than 8 million copies sold worldwide. After debuting at No. 1 with first-week sales of 325,000, it's never sold fewer than 25,000 copies in a given week and has enjoyed significant spikes during each of the last two holiday seasons. A two-disc special edition of the album released in July has also bolstered its sales life.

It's actually since slipped to No. 15. But still: Feel worse than you did when you got up? I know I do. I also know the century is only seven years old or so, but the words "arguably the biggest rock album of the century so far" coupled with "Nickelback" makes the days when I was battered with "Man, I Feel Like A Woman" nonstop while I was stacking boxes of copy paper for eight hours straight seem like the happiest time of my life.

Nickelback: A View From The Top [Billboard]

"Everything is completely up in the air, and no one's in a hurry to do anything," frontman Chad Kroeger tells Billboard.com. "We just finished up two years touring on this record, and we're all a little crispy."

His older brother, bassist Mike Kroeger, concurs, saying that after seven singles, "I think it's probably time for us to sort of fade into the shadows for a little bit and give everybody a little bit of a breather before we come out with our next stuff. An early return, in my opinion, would be a mistake."

"Can we make a better record than 'All the Right Reasons?'" he continues. "I don't know. It's gonna be really tough to make this great, new record jam-packed full of magical moments that we're gonna love and the fans are gonna love. That's all in the stars at the moment."

Now that's the money quote! Could anyone make a better record than All the Right Reasons? I think the answer is, yes, literally anyone could. The trick is getting a hold of whatever black magic dust it was they sprinkled over that album to make it so inexplicably irresistible to mass culture.

Nickelback In No Rush To Make New Album [Billboard]

Billy Gibbons, Chad Kroeger, and Kid Rock massacre ZZ Top's "Tush" at last night's Billboard Music Awards. Not shown: The rest of Nickelback, who spent the performance proving that they can't even master the task of being a semi-competent bar band.

[Photo: Getty Images]

If it's Wednesday, it must mean it's time for our weekly album-sales recap, in which we find out just how quickly the music industry is sliding into complete and utter chaos. As expected, Rick Ross' Port of Miami was No. 1, scanning 187,000 copies, while Breaking Benjamin—a band we've never heard, but who are no doubt as terrible as we expect—came in at No. 2 with Phobia, which sold 125,000 copies. And despite not being sold at Wal-Mart, Slayer's Christ Illusion debuted at No. 5, thanks to 62,000 heathens.

Now for the bad news: Nickelback is on the chart not once, but twice, thanks to their appearance on Now 22 (No. 3) and their own All The Right Reasons album (No. 10). Maybe Slayer's right, and there is no god.

"Rick Ross' 'Hustle' Pays Off With No. 1 Debut" [Billboard]