As we approach the end of a summer in which some (including including our esteemed editor) claim that there was no one Song of Summer thanks to Michael Jackson looming large in the afterlife, we are a few weeks away from a rare act of chart dominance: Total Hot 100 ownership by a single act for every week of a calendar season.
The Black Eyed Peas have held the top spot on Billboard’s flagship chart for 21 weeks, so long that they’ve already set a new record for consecutive dominance by a single act (beating Usher). Billboard has celebrated that feat with copious coverage.
But for cultural critics who care less about raw chart statistics and more about how said numbers reflect the Zeitgeist, owning an entire summer lock, stock and barrel is a more interesting accomplishment. Depending on whether you define “summer” as going from Memorial Day to Labor Day or from June 21 to Sept. 22, the Peas either have this feat locked up or are just a few weeks away from it.
If they actually make it all the way to mid-September, the Peas will be the first credited artist (not just writer or featured act) to dominate for a full American summer. But several other acts have come pretty close. More »
Back in my school days, Valentine’s Day was a time for exchanging cheap perforated Valentines cards and inedible Necco hearts, and punishing the unpopular kids by “forgetting” to give them anything. (I was perhaps one of those unpopular kids.) If you were really lucky you got a mixtape from a girl, and I did get a few in my day, even if they were from girl-space-friends and not girlfriends. What was disturbing was the presence of “Every Breath You Take” on said mixtapes, given it’s the kind of love song that John Wayne Gacy might write. Even Sting himself says it’s a paean to controlling someone:
The numbers for the year’s biggest tours are in, and it looks like Bon Jovi’s country-tinged Lost Highway Tour is 2008’s top grosser, pulling in $210.6 million and two million fans. And they didn’t just drive back and forth in New Jersey! They totally left the state!* In fact, New Jersey kept on rocking at No. 2: Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band’s Magic Tour conjured $204.5 million dollars (plus $31 million not counted from last year). That’s a lot of Camaros! Full list after the jump:
In the face of tough economic times and not very many big-ticket shows, the concert industry actually did better this summer than it did in 2007! Well, if you only look at one measure of the industry, anyway. Billboard reports that overall concert grosses from May 1 to Labor Day were $1 billion, which is up 5% from $948.5 million in 2007. Hooray! More money! But lurking underneath those higher numbers is a slightly more troubling statistic–overall attendance was actually down 4% year-to-year, from 19.5 million tickets sold in 2007 to 18.7 million sold this year. (And that doesn’t even count the number of people who didn’t go to shows that they’d already bought tickets for because the price of gas was too high.) So basically that difference was made up by higher ticket prices, which will probably only be driven upward as a result of these sorta-happy numbers and ever-weakening consumer confidence. The No. 1 ticket last summer: Kenny Chesney, thanks to his filling the “concert-as-party” void left by the lack of a Jimmy Buffett summer jaunt. The 10 highest-grossing tours are after the jump–how many did you attend?
Next Saturday, New York public-broadcasting stations WNET and WLIW will host a one-day pledge drive where contributors can get the chance to attend the Police’s final show on their reunion tour, which will take place in August at Madison Square Garden. (A pair of tickets will come with a $150 pledge; a $5,000 pledge will snag a VIP package that includes dinner, a party, and attendance at a soundcheck.) The goal, according to Educational Broadcasting Corporation CEO Neal Shapiro, is to “get in touch with the boomer generation,” the 44-62-year-olds who are just a hair younger than PBS’ current core audience and who clearly don’t have enough music-related media directed at them right now. You’d think that the long-term growth of the channel would perhaps inspire them to look toward the generation after the boomers as well, but given that WNET has mysteriously decided to not air this season of Austin City Limits, a show that actually features musicians who aren’t making the reunion-tour victory lap from time to time, the likelihood of the execs not wanting to rock the gray-haired boat is high.
Weiland, the estranged singer of Velvet Revolver, has teamed up with members of Army Of Anyone and Bomb Shelter Studios owner Eric Kretz for a tour that will hit more than 50 amphitheaters this summer and fall. And this isn’t the only unexpected supergroup that’s formed from music’s bigger names over the years–other groups have also embarked on tours, while a few have even released albums. Other examples after the jump.
The Police will go on one more North American tour this summer and that’s it, no more shows, they swear, no matter how desperate for one more round of raking in the cash the business needs and no matter how much money Live Nation waves in their general direction. More »
Pollstar’s list of the top 20 concert tours of 2007 had good news for Sting and bad news for pretty much anyone else trying to figure out if the road life would help make up the money lost by nosediving album sales. The 20 top-grossing tours–which were led by the Police’s reunion jaunt, which grossed $131.9 million–made a total of $996 million, a number that’s down 15% from last year’s top 20 total.
THE GOOD: Despite being shut out of rock radio formats that aren’t saddled with the word “classic,” the aging rock fan still has a place in the big-ticket music industry because he can still spend money. Namely, on tours by classic-rock staples like Genesis, Roger Waters, and Van Halen. OK, this isn’t “the good” as much as it is “the obvious,” but hey, something has to keep the music business hoping that its next gasp for air is slightly worth it, right?
THE BAD: Miley “Hannah Montana” Cyrus–one of only two musicians on the list under the age of 25*–comes in at No. 15, which seems low until you remember that it was the low price of tickets on the legal market (they averaged $54 a seat) that led to the sellouts, the “secondary market” freakouts, and the 400-pound Miley Cyrus statues.
THE WHAAA? Not that I like Genesis all that much, but it has to smart that their big reunion tour (which made $47.6 million) was outgrossed by the umpteenth leg of Rod Freaking Stewart’s “Trampling On Any Legacy I Still Have Left” jaunt ($49 million).
* The other: Wolfgang Van Halen. You forgot about him, didn’t you?
The Police’s 84-date reunion tour was the highest-grossing jaunt of 2007, earning $243 million and selling 2.2 million tickets worldwide–an average of about $110 a ticket. Wait, does this officially mean that the curse of Sting is broken? More »
The Police’s 84-date reunion tour was the highest-grossing jaunt of 2007, earning $243 million and selling 2.2 million tickets worldwide–an average of about $110 a ticket. Wait, does this officially mean that the curse of Sting is broken? More »
