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)

As predicted last week, Lil Wayne, supported by the late Static Major, has hit the top of Billboard's Hot 100 with "Lollipop." For longtime Weezy fans, it's a bit of a Pyrrhic victory—the first great rapper of the Web 2.0 era hemming in his flow to score a big hit. But nine years after his emergence on the Juvenile classic "Back That Azz Up," it's still a bit of a thrill to see Wayne's name gracing the top of the charts.

It's not only Weezy's first No. 1 but also his first Top 10 as a lead artist and, amazingly, his first trip to the top slot in 20 chart entries (21 if you include the Hot Boys' 2000 single "I Need a Hot Girl"). Prior to this, he'd never ascended any higher than No. 3 with his supporting performance on Destiny's Child's "Soldier."

How long he stays at No. 1 will depend on whether "Lollipop" settles in as a viral hit a la "Crank That" or "Low"—and on the competition percolating below him. The Top 10 is as fluid as it's been since last summer, which makes things fun for your humble chart columnist.

Weezy is the second act in the past month to evict "Bleeding Love" by Leona Lewis from the top slot, and he might not be the last. After Wednesday's well-received American Idol performance, digital sales of "Bleeding" have exploded again; it's the top-seller on iTunes as of this writing, meaning it could hit No. 1 for the third time next week. (After her initial week at No. 1 in March, Lewis gave way to Mariah Carey's "Touch My Body" for two weeks; that song currently holds on at No. 5.)

In a one-on-one contest between Wayne and Lewis next week, it's hard to say who would prevail. "Lollipop" continues to grow in airplay, but so does "Bleeding"; those are now the fifth and sixth most-played songs on U.S. radio, respectively. The bottom-line question is, is his airplay far enough ahead of hers that next week, when she outsells him on iTunes, he can overcome her download advantage?

One other observation: I mentioned last week that, among upwardly mobile hits, only Wayne's and Mariah's are enjoying airplay—and, hence, a chart boost—from both Top 40 and R&B/hip-hop radio. (Actually, I spoke too soon: Jordin Sparks and Chris Brown are getting a boost from R&B radio too. "No Air" moves into the R&B chart's Top 10 this week.)

The interesting question is, Why isn't Leona Lewis getting R&B radio airplay, too? This might sound like a stupid question—"Bleeding Love" is an adult-contemporary ballad sung by a British gal and written by two lily-white teen heartthrobs.

But being British didn't hold back Lisa Stansfield and her lily-white production team back in 1990. And speaking of 1990, let's ask another question: Is Lewis the new Mariah, or isn't she? Carey's crossover to black radio isn't a recent phenomenon—starting with "Vision of Love," Sony Music's major coup was selling Carey as biracial (which, ahem, she is) and getting her on R&B radio right away. Moving back to 2008, "Bleeding Love" is nowhere to be found on the entire 100-position, airplay-dominated Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. For her part, Lewis is the child of a Guyanese-Caribbean father and an Anglo-Welsh mother, which gives her arguably as much claim to a biracial heritage as the half-Venezuelan, half-Irish Carey.

Just saying: If I were on the Sony/BMG team breaking Lewis in America, I'd be a little worried about the total lack of crossover exposure she's getting. Once these industry pigeonholes are established, they're usually molded in concrete, and no matter how "soulful" Lewis's future projects are, she might face an uphill battle to be accepted on R&B radio.

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

• I keep talking about Madonna's latest single, even while it muddles around the middle of the Top 10—it crawls back up to No. 6 this week—because its chart performance has been an interesting case of the sales-vs.-airplay paradox.

Madge's "4 Minutes" returns to the top of the Digital Songs chart, selling another 186,000 copies; since its first full week of sales, it has never placed lower than second on the list of buck-a-song downloads. But its radio numbers are still huffing and puffing to catch up. It's now ranked 16th in airplay, up from 27th last week—one of its best weeks of radio growth, but that still leaves her at a handicap to the five records above her on the Hot 100. It's a reminder that even now, in these iTunes-centric times, radio still matters.

It's also an interesting sign of how the mighty have fallen. In the '80s and '90s, Madonna was what Top 40 programmers used to call an "instant add," with each new single a no-brainer for playlist rotation. Now, Madge has to prove herself track by track like everyone else, and programmers are still warming to the ditty even while fans buy it in droves.

We'll probably still be talking about "4 Minutes" in the weeks to come, because I expect it to see an iTunes sales surge when Hard Candy, her new album, drops. If her airplay keeps growing, that burst of sales might finally propel the song to No. 1.

• The biggest mover in the Top 40 this week is the latest single by John Mayer, "Say," which vaults to No. 12 from No. 35. "Say" has actually been out since last fall, when Mayer released it on the soundtrack to the geezer flick The Bucket List. So what accounts for this belated explosion? (Bucket isn't even out on DVD yet.) You can thank, or blame, reality TV. Mayer performed the tune a couple of weeks ago on Dancing with the Stars—and in the first full week after that performance "Say" sold 92,000 downloads, a jump of 131%. But it'll be a while before Mayer's ditty is polluting your brain, "Daughters"-style, at the grocery store: "Say" only ranks 65th in radio airplay.

• Country demigod George Strait scores his 43rd No. 1 hit with "I Saw God Today." That's a record for most No. 1 hits, beating out... George Strait, who surpassed Conway Twitty's 40 No. 1's back in 2006 and has been padding his total ever since. As I remind readers from time to time, the Hot Country list is all-airplay. In case you're curious, on the all-genre Hot 100, "Saw God" ranks at No. 33, mostly thanks to all that country radio exposure; he only sold about 12,000 downloads of the song last week.

• For the first time since last August, the Modern Rock Top 10 contains no Foo Fighters songs, as two of Dave Grohl's former No. 1 smashes simultaneously fall out of the winners' circle. The recent hit "Long Road to Ruin" tumbles to No. 12 from No. 4, while the deathless "The Pretender," which spent 36 of its 38 chart weeks in the Top 10, finally falls to No. 13. I would have loved to have told you that there were no Foos songs and no Linkin Park songs on that list, but just this week, the fourth Top 10 hit from LP's Minutes to Midnight, "Given Up," moves up to No. 8. For a Fooless, Linkinless Top 10, you'd have to go all the way back to April 2007.

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

Hot 100
1. Lil Wayne feat. Static Major, "Lollipop" (LW No. 2, 6 weeks)
2. Leona Lewis, "Bleeding Love" (LW No. 1, 10 weeks)
3. Jordin Sparks with Chris Brown, "No Air" (LW No. 3, 16 weeks)
4. Usher feat. Young Jeezy, "Love in This Club" (LW No. 4, 10 weeks)
5. Mariah Carey, "Touch My Body" (LW No. 5, 10 weeks)
6. Madonna feat. Justin Timberlake, "4 Minutes" (LW No. 7, 5 weeks)
7. Ray J & Yung Berg, "Sexy Can I" (LW No. 6, 12 weeks)
8. Sara Bareilles, "Love Song" (LW No. 9, 25 weeks)
9. Chris Brown, "With You" (LW No. 8, 21 weeks)
10. Miley Cyrus, "See You Again" (LW No. 11, 21 weeks)

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
1. Usher feat. Young Jeezy, "Love in This Club" (LW No. 1, 11 weeks)
2. Mariah Carey, "Touch My Body" (LW No. 2, 11 weeks)
3. Lil Wayne feat. Static Major, "Lollipop" (LW No. 3, 6 weeks)
4. Ray J & Yung Berg, "Sexy Can I" (LW No. 5, 15 weeks)
5. Keyshia Cole, "I Remember" (LW No. 4, 25 weeks)
6. Ashanti, "The Way That I Love You" (LW No. 8, 10 weeks)
7. Rick Ross feat. T-Pain, "The Boss" (LW No. 7, 15 weeks)
8. Jordin Sparks with Chris Brown, "No Air" (LW No. 12, 7 weeks)
9. Alicia Keys, "Like You'll Never See Me Again" (LW No. 9, 26 weeks)
10. J. Holiday, "Suffocate" (LW No. 10, 29 weeks)

Hot Country Songs
1. George Strait, "I Saw God Today" (LW No. 2, 11 weeks)
2. Trace Adkins, "You're Gonna Miss This" (LW No. 1, 20 weeks)
3. James Otto, "Just Got Started Lovin' You" (LW No. 3, 27 weeks)
4. Taylor Swift, "Picture to Burn" (LW No. 5, 15 weeks)
5. Phil Vassar, "Love Is A Beautiful Thing" (LW No. 6, 25 weeks)
6. Brad Paisley, "I'm Still a Guy" (LW No. 8, 9 weeks)
7. Rascal Flatts, "Every Day" (LW No. 9, 9 weeks)
8. Chris Cagle, "What Kinda Gone" (LW No. 4, 40 weeks)
9. Lady Antebellum, "Love Don't Live Here" (LW No. 11, 29 weeks)
10. Carrie Underwood, "Last Name" (LW No. 12, 6 weeks)

Hot Modern Rock Tracks
1. Seether, "Rise Above This" (LW No. 2, 9 weeks)
2. Puddle of Mudd, "Psycho" (LW No. 1, 25 weeks)
3. Atreyu, "Falling Down" (LW No. 3, 13 weeks)
4. The Raconteurs, "Salute Your Solution" (LW No. 7, 4 weeks)
5. 3 Doors Down, "It's Not My Time" (LW No. 6, 9 weeks)
6. The Bravery, "Believe" (LW No. 5, 29 weeks)
7. Flobots, "Handlebars" (LW No. 15, 3 weeks)
8. Linkin Park, "Given Up" (LW No. 13, 7 weeks)
9. Death Cab for Cutie, "I Will Possess Your Heart" (LW No. 10, 5 weeks)
10. Disturbed, "Inside the Fire" (LW No. 11, 4 weeks)

For all their popularity the world over, songs by Radiohead haven't exactly set the charts alight. (Even in their homeland: they've never scored a U.K. No. 1.) In part that's due to their status as a top-tier album act; fans would sooner buy the full-length than an individual track.

But it's also a function of Radiohead's erratic approach to singles. Sometimes they pack singles with invaluable B-sides for collectors; sometimes songs are only serviced to radio—and that includes some of the band's catchiest tunes ("Let Down," "Bodysnatchers").

This week, we have evidence that Radiohead should release singles more often—or at least, release them in pieces. They score only the second U.S. Top 40 hit of their career, with one of the least catchy songs on the catchier-than-usual In Rainbows.

"Nude" debuts on the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 37, instantly becoming their biggest hit since "Creep" made No. 34 in 1993. Honestly, though, the two hits aren't remotely comparable in terms of popularity. "Nude" achieves this high chart placement thanks to Radiohead releasing the song as a remix project, and asking rabid fans to pay 99 cents for each piece of the mix. Which they dutifully did.

"Nude" was released to iTunes on April 1 in six parts: the full song, plus separate stem tracks for voice, guitars, bass, drums and "String FX Etc." Each piece sells separately—something of a departure from the band's "pay what you want" ethic. If you want to create your own remix of "Nude," you probably have to spend six bucks to acquire all the pieces. (Although there is some evidence that a few fans skipped one or more parts—can't wait to hear what a drumless mix sounds like!)

The results, in week one: the original song sold just under 13,000 copies, and each of the four stems sold between about 9,200 and 9,800 copies. (If you're curious: the vocal stem sold best, then guitars, strings/effects, drums; as in life, bass pulls up the rear.) Total sales for all six pieces combined were just shy of 60,000.

Billboard had to make a policy decision for "Nude." When the original iTunes sales were tallied by SoundScan, the original song plus each stem were logged and charted separately. But for Hot 100 purposes—in keeping with Billboard's tendency to treat it as a "songs" chart, not a "tracks" chart—"Nude" is charting in one cumulative position, which makes it look bigger than it is. If the original song, sans stems, were to chart by itself, it would have made No. 96 on the digital sales chart and likely would have missed the Hot 100 entirely.

As a chart fan, there's one way to look at this that's a bit cynical, and one that's more optimistic. You could look at this as chart pollution—since when is a bass loop a legitimate proxy for a hit single? It's as if Radiohead is propping up a minor hit by finding a loophole through U.S. chart policy, not unlike the 2004 Prince album that was allowed to include free copies handed out at concerts in its Billboard tally, and charted much higher than it should have.

On the other hand, it's pretty obvious this chart event wasn't the intention of Radiohead's multi-mix release strategy. And it's undeniable that, as usual, they're coming up with innovative ways to get fans excited about actually paying something for music.

I'll just say this: right now, I'll bet Mariah Carey's people are meeting to discuss how they can make this multiple-stems remix gimmick work to their chart advantage. Keep an eye out for "Bye Bye," the drum loop, coming to iTunes this summer.

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

• More seriously, Mariah's No. 1 for a second week with "Touch My Body," but you might not guess from glancing at the Top 10 below just how vicious the competition in the Top Five has been. After surrendering the No. 1 spot last week, Leona Lewis isn't retreating without a fight—"Bleeding Love" is back up two spaces to No. 2, thanks to a comeback in her digital sales (up 9% to 198,000) and a surge in airplay (top 10 most-played for the first time). More to the point, Carey's digital sales have cratered surprisingly quickly: she's down 42% from last week's record-setting download sum (163,000 copies, from 282,000 in the prior frame) and now ranked fourth in digital sales. Only Carey's massive airplay, second only to Usher's, helps her retain the No. 1 position overall.

• Here at Idolator, we may have decided that Madonna's single with the two Tims is gimmicky and barely worthy as background noise. But to the public, it's a hit: "4 Minutes" achieves the rare feat of maintaining its sales total one week after a massive debut, holding at a stunning 217,000 copies. As a result, "4 Minutes" by Madonna featuring Justin Timberlake is now the top-selling song in the country and bullets at No. 3 on the Hot 100. Its radio airplay, while growing, is still well out of range, but watch out—if Mariah's sales continue to collapse and Leona can't claw her way back to No. 1, Madge could slip into the No. 1 slot in another week or two. Unless Weezy gets there first...

• Lil Wayne's "Lollipop" is the final scrapper in the Top Five, up three more notches to No. 4. Billboard rewards it with the week's "Sales Gainer" prize, thanks to its surge to 173,000 copies. And Weezy has a much smaller radio handicap than Madge, as "Lollipop" swells in airplay to become the 11th most-played song in the country (he's helped by R&B/Hip-Hop airplay, as evidenced by his leap into the Top 10 on that mostly-airplay chart). Bottom line, the battle for No. 1 is about to get interesting.

• On the sleepy-ass Modern Rock chart, there's a new No. 1, the strange appeal of which our man Al discussed weeks ago. But the real action is below the Top 10, where two songs from returning bands make big leaps just outside the winners' circle. The Raconteurs surge 15 places to No. 11 with "Salute Your Solution," likely thanks to the band's erratically released album finally getting into most radio programmers' hands. Right behind them: "I Will Possess Your Heart," the preview single from Death Cab for Cutie's forthcoming album Narrow Stairs, which speeds 10 places to No. 12.

• I'm not supposed to discuss album charts here, but we didn't get to run a "Who Charted?" this week, and I can't resist: Van Morrison has his first Top 10 album. No, not in the SoundScan era—ever. His highest charter prior to this week's No. 10 debut by Keep It Simple was the No. 15 peak of 1972's St. Dominic's Preview. Boy, you know the sales bar is low when elderly rock gods begin to chart like pop stars...

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

Hot 100
1. Mariah Carey, "Touch My Body" (LW No. 1, 8 weeks)
2. Leona Lewis, "Bleeding Love" (LW No. 4, 8 weeks)
3. Madonna feat. Justin Timberlake, "4 Minutes" (LW No. 3, 3 weeks)
4. Lil Wayne feat. Static Major, "Lollipop" (LW No. 7, 4 weeks)
5. Usher feat. Young Jeezy, "Love in This Club" (LW No. 2, 8 weeks)
6. Ray J & Yung Berg, "Sexy Can I" (LW No. 6, 10 weeks)
7. Jordin Sparks with Chris Brown, "No Air" (LW No. 5, 14 weeks)
8. Chris Brown, "With You" (LW No. 8, 19 weeks)
9. Sara Bareilles, "Love Song" (LW No. 9, 23 weeks)
10. Flo Rida feat. T-Pain, "Low" (LW No. 10, 24 weeks)

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
1. Usher feat. Young Jeezy, "Love in This Club" (LW No. 1, 9 weeks)
2. Mariah Carey, "Touch My Body" (LW No. 3, 9 weeks)
3. Keyshia Cole, "I Remember" (LW No. 2, 23 weeks)
4. Ray J & Yung Berg, "Sexy Can I" (LW No. 4, 13 weeks)
5. The-Dream, "Falsetto" (LW No. 5, 18 weeks)
6. J. Holiday, "Suffocate" (LW No. 8, 27 weeks)
7. Lil Wayne feat. Static Major, "Lollipop" (LW No. 15, 4 weeks)
8. Alicia Keys, "Like You'll Never See Me Again" (LW No. 6, 24 weeks)
9. Mario, "Crying Out for Me" (LW No. 7, 33 weeks)
10. Rick Ross feat. T-Pain, "The Boss" (LW No. 11, 13 weeks)

Hot Country Songs
1. Trace Adkins, "You're Gonna Miss This" (LW No. 1, 18 weeks)
2. George Strait, "I Saw God Today" (LW No. 2, 9 weeks)
3. Chris Cagle, "What Kinda Gone" (LW No. 3, 38 weeks)
4. James Otto, "Just Got Started Lovin' You" (LW No. 5, 25 weeks)
5. Taylor Swift, "Picture to Burn" (LW No. 7, 13 weeks)
6. Jason Aldean, "Laughed Until We Cried" (LW No. 6, 35 weeks)
7. Alan Jackson, "Small Town Southern Man" (LW No. 4, 22 weeks)
8. Phil Vassar, "Love Is A Beautiful Thing" (LW No. 10, 23 weeks)
9. Rascal Flatts, "Every Day" (LW No. 11, 7 weeks)
10. Brad Paisley, "I'm Still a Guy" (LW No. 12, 7 weeks)

Hot Modern Rock Tracks
1. Puddle of Mudd, "Psycho" (LW No. 2, 23 weeks)
2. Foo Fighters, "Long Road to Ruin" (LW No. 1, 24 weeks)
3. Seether, "Rise Above This" (LW No. 4, 7 weeks)
4. Atreyu, "Falling Down" (LW No. 3, 11 weeks)
5. The Bravery, "Believe" (LW No. 5, 27 weeks)
6. 3 Doors Down, "It's Not My Time" (LW No. 7, 7 weeks)
7. Foo Fighters, "The Pretender" (LW No. 8, 36 weeks)
8. Panic at the Disco, "Nine in the Afternoon" (LW No. 10, 10 weeks)
9. Linkin Park, "Shadow of the Day" (LW No. 6, 27 weeks)
10. Ashes Divide, "The Stone" (LW No. 13, 11 weeks)

As we previewed yesterday, Leona "Limey Mariah" Lewis has fulfilled our prediction from last week and shot to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with her debut single, "Bleeding Love."

But she's not the only newsmaker in the winners' circle. After one of the most stagnant winters in pop-chart history—just last week, the top seven records were unchanged—music lovers welcome spring by throwing a grenade into the middle of the Top 10, where songs scatter everywhere. The results: Lil Wayne has his first Top 10 hit as a lead artist, Lil Mama has her second, and an exceedingly tacky Ray J song is hurtling toward the top.

He'll have to wait, however, if he expects to crown the chart. Lewis is going to be replaced at No. 1 next week, but not by him.

First, a word about Weezy. "Lollipop," Lil Wayne's attempt to cash in on the T-Pain vocoder sound and the 50 Cent-style single-entendre, previews his long-delayed Tha Carter III with an actual Top 10 hit. Just two months ago, Wayne's supporting performance on Wyclef's "Sweetest Girl (Dollar Bill)" made it to No. 12; his highest charter to date as a supporting act was on Destiny's Child's No. 3 hit "Soldier" (2005). Frankly, both of those are better songs than "Lollipop," which features the recently deceased Static Major and not so much of the flow that makes Weezy a demigod. But at least he reaches the upper tier in style: the song makes this year's biggest move on the Hot 100, shooting 76 spots to No. 9 thanks to a fat debut on iTunes.

Until this week, the biggest jump of the year was last week's 73-place vault by Lil Mama's "Shawty Get Loose." Bucking the recent trend of songs that make a big move thanks to iTunes sales and then recede, "Shawty" has another great week and moves up another nine spots to No. 10, placing Lil Mama one space behind Lil Wayne and matching the peak position of last summer's "Lip Gloss."

Finally, Ray J's "Sexy Can I," the stupidest Top Three U.S. hit since "My Humps," now matches that song's peak position. It's right behind Lewis and Usher at No. 3, thanks to ever-growing airplay and digital sales blowing up by more than 50%. With its novelty lyrics and insidious hook, "Sexy" smells like the kind of fad hit that tops the charts from time to time, but if that's going to happen, it won't be anytime soon.

That's because Leona Lewis's forbear, Mariah Carey, is expected to fulfill her destiny next week and hurtle to No. 1 with the wispy, Jack-the-Page-fueled "Touch My Body." She will do it despite sliding one notch to No. 15 this week (she maintains her bullet), because the song's sales on iTunes are already explosive.

It'll be the least surprising leap to No. 1 from outside the Top 10 in chart history. And it will make chart history by putting Carey all alone in second place among acts with the most No. 1 hits, pulling her out of a tie with Elvis Presley and placing her just two smashes shy of the Beatles' all-time record.

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

• Even though we kind of saw it shaping up last week, the seven-notch leap to No. 1 by Lewis's "Bleeding Love" was something of a jaw-dropper. Usher's "Love in This Club" has been on a tear both in terms of sales and airplay (even as he falls to No. 2 this week, the song maintains its bullet), and Lewis's fat week of Oprah-fueled downloads might not have been enough to give her the edge. But radio helped: while Usher picked up more than 600 spins on monitored Top 40 stations last week, Lewis picked up over 700; he still leads her in airplay, but she's narrowed the gap considerably. That airplay plus her 219,000 buck-a-song downloads propel her to the top.

• What was the song of winter '08? Arguably, it wasn't Flo Rida's No. 1-hogging "Low," but rather the radio-burnout smash "Apologize" by OneRepublic (credited to producer Timbaland), which never reached the top slot but spent a staggering 25 weeks in the Top 10. That's not a record, but as Billboard chart columnist Fred Bronson points out, that's the longest any song has spent in the Top 10 since Santana's "Smooth" in 1999, which polluted our brains with Rob Thomas's white-boy mambo for 30 weeks.

It's somehow poetic that "Apologize" finally exits the Top 10 in the first chart following the onset of spring. But over at OneRepublic headquarters, they're still popping the bubbly: lead singer/songwriter Ryan Tedder cowrote "Bleeding Love," Leona Lewis's new No. 1. (The other writer: fellow moonlighting singer Jesse "Beautiful Soul" McCartney, who's also a moonlighting actor.)

• The Hot 100's highest debut of the week is yet another track by Flo Rida: "Roll," which has Sean Kingston backing him up, enters at No. 61. Uncle Flo's official followup single, "Elevator" with Timbaland, is back up at No. 19 but still hasn't matched its peak of No. 16 from three weeks ago. Both tracks benefit from the release of Flo Rida's album Mail on Sunday, but America must finally be sick of his original hit, "Low," because it's down in both sales and airplay.

• Other Hot 100 debutantes include "4 Minutes" by Madonna featuring Justin Timberlake (No. 68)—you can expect that song to shoot into the Top 10 next week, thanks to big iTunes sales; Ferras' American Idol-fueled "Hollywood's Not America" (No. 84); the presumptive second single from Gnarls Barkley's new album, "Going On" (No. 88); and Ne-Yo's "Go On Girl" (No. 96).

• Sam Endicott is having the last laugh: the Bravery, once dismissed as a Killers-imitating flash in the pan, is emerging as a staple modern-rock radio act. "Believe" is their biggest hit yet, elbowing into the Top Five on the Hot Modern Rock list and bubbling under the Hot 100. That sound you just heard was Brandon Flowers's ego shrinking a little.

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

Hot 100
1. Leona Lewis, "Bleeding Love" (LW No. 8, 6 weeks)
2. Usher Featuring Young Jeezy, "Love In This Club" (LW No. 1, 6 weeks)
3. Ray J & Yung Berg, "Sexy Can I" (LW No. 7, 8 weeks)
4. Chris Brown, "With You" (LW No. 2, 17 weeks)
5. Sara Bareilles, "Love Song" (LW No. 4, 21 weeks)
6. Jordin Sparks with Chris Brown, "No Air" (LW No. 6, 12 weeks)
3. Flo Rida feat. T-Pain, "Low" (LW No. 7, 22 weeks)
8. Rihanna, "Don't Stop the Music" (LW No. 5, 18 weeks)
9. Lil Wayne feat. Static Major, "Lollipop" (LW No. 85, 2 weeks)
10. Lil Mama feat. Chris Brown & T-Pain, "Shawty Get Loose" (LW No. 19, 5 weeks)

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
1. Keyshia Cole, "I Remember" (LW No. 1, 21 weeks)
2. Usher Featuring Young Jeezy, "Love In This Club" (LW No. 6, 7 weeks)
3. The-Dream, "Falsetto" (LW No. 3, 16 weeks)
4. Alicia Keys, "Like You'll Never See Me Again" (LW No. 2, 22 weeks)
5. Ray J & Yung Berg, "Sexy Can I" (LW No. 11, 11 weeks)
6. Mario, "Crying Out for Me" (LW No. 9, 30 weeks)
7. J. Holiday, "Suffocate" (LW No. 4, 25 weeks)
8. Mariah Carey, "Touch My Body" (LW No. 10, 7 weeks)
9. Mary J. Blige, "Just Fine" (LW No. 5, 26 weeks)
10. Chris Brown, "With You" (LW No. 7, 17 weeks)

Hot Country Songs
1. Alan Jackson, "Small Town Southern Man" (LW No. 1, 20 weeks)
2. Trace Adkins, "You're Gonna Miss This" (LW No. 3, 16 weeks)
3. Chris Cagle, "What Kinda Gone" (LW No. 6, 36 weeks)
4. George Strait, "I Saw God Today" (LW No. 7, 7 weeks)
5. Carrie Underwood, "All-American Girl" (LW No. 2, 17 weeks)
6. James Otto, "Just Got Started Lovin' You" (LW No. 9, 23 weeks)
7. Rodney Atkins, "Cleaning This Gun (Come on in Boy)" (LW No. 4, 27 weeks)
8. Jason Aldean, "Laughed Until We Cried" (LW No. 10, 33 weeks)
9. Taylor Swift, "Picture to Burn" (LW No. 11, 11 weeks)
10. Phil Vassar, "Love Is A Beautiful Thing" (LW No. 13, 21 weeks)

Hot Modern Rock Tracks
1. Foo Fighters, "Long Road to Ruin" (LW No. 1, 22 weeks)
2. Puddle of Mudd, "Psycho" (LW No. 2, 21 weeks)
3. Linkin Park, "Shadow of the Day" (LW No. 3, 25 weeks)
4. The Bravery, "Believe" (LW No. 7, 25 weeks)
5. Atreyu, "Falling Down" (LW No. 9, 9 weeks)
6. Seether, "Rise Above This" (LW No. 11, 5 weeks)
7. Seether, "Fake It" (LW No. 4, 30 weeks)
8. Foo Fighters, "The Pretender" (LW No. 6, 34 weeks)
9. Paramore, "crushcrushcrush" (LW No. 5, 19 weeks)
10. 3 Doors Down, "It's Not My Time" (LW No. 14, 5 weeks)

You thought Beyonce vs. Rihanna was an old school-new school catfight? We've got a better one.

British belter Leona Lewis hurtles 13 spots to No. 8 on Billboard's Hot 100 with "Bleeding Love." Already dubbed "the next Mariah Carey" by multiple news outlets since winning British television's The X Factor last fall, Lewis is now clearly making a fast break for No. 1 in America. And she's doing it at the very moment her melismatic model is herself on the way up. Within two to three weeks, we could be witnessing an epic diva battle for the top slot.

Whitney and Mariah's late '80s-early '90s rise was a little unsettling because of their respective record labels' military efficiency in breaking them on the U.S. charts. Whitney endured just one single that fell short of No. 1 ("You Give Good Love," No. 3, 1985) before laying waste to the last half of the decade with a string of chart-toppers. Mariah didn't even have to suffer through one subpar hit, shooting to No. 1 with her debut "Vision of Love" in 1990 and never looking back.

Clive Davis' protégé and Tommy Mottola's discovery came to power in an era of easily bought-and-sold charts, thanks to radio programmers territorialized by "indie" payola and retailers who could be nudged by label pressure or enticed to sell 49-cent loss-leader cassingles. Two decades later, with payola less overt and retail rapidly dying, it's hard to imagine another mass-appeal diva enjoying such a swift, coordinated march to U.S. chart dominance. (Even Celine Dion took longer to break and enjoyed far fewer U.S. hits.)

Well, imagine this: it is happening again. The campaign to break Lewis in America, coming on the heels of the swift dominance of her homeland, would put D-Day to shame. Labels might not be able to buy off radio and retail the way they used to, but they know how to deploy other influences.

Like Oprah Winfrey, Dion's erstwhile secret weapon. In an appearance on Oprah earlier this week with her mentor Simon Cowell, Lewis received the queen of all media's blessing ("a star is born," saith The O). The March 17 appearance didn't even directly affect this week's charts, but the surrounding promotion no doubt goosed "Bleeding's" numbers in the week leading up to it—radio plays shot up, and its sales doubled at iTunes. The setup for her album, dropping in America on April 8, couldn't be better planned.

"Bleeding Love" has been on the Hot 100 for five weeks, exactly the same number as Carey's "Touch My Body." When the two singles materialized on the charts a month ago, Carey debuted at No. 57 and Lewis down at No. 85. Both have made impressive chart moves since, but in the last couple of weeks, Carey has reached a momentary ceiling while Lewis has been vaulting about 20 notches a week. This week, Carey crawls up two spots to No. 14; Lewis sneaks around her, moving from just outside the Top 20 to inside the Top 10 in a single week.

Of course, as we pointed out here a couple of weeks ago, Carey continues to chart with a major handicap: no iTunes sales. But that'll change next Tuesday, when "Touch My Body" hits iTunes. Because of Billboard reporting delays, these sales won't affect the Hot 100 for another two weeks, but you can expect Carey to storm instantly to No. 1 at Apple's store. Which gives Lewis' team a clear deadline: get "Bleeding Love" to No. 1 on the Hot 100 within two weeks, or get shut out by the original diva.

At the risk of reading too much industry drama into this imagined rivalry, there are some delicious ironies here. Carey, famously broken in the '90s by Mottola's Sony Music machine, is now on rival label Island Def Jam. And Lewis is on a version of Carey's old label—specifically, the now-merged Sony BMG. That merger is doubly ironic: in the '90s, Carey was Sony's answer to the Arista-bred Houston, but now those labels (Arista is part of BMG) are united in breaking Lewis and, one imagines, defeating Carey.

"Bleeding" is iTunes' top seller as we speak, and we can only imagine how well it's selling this week, post-Oprah. Lewis' performance on the next Hot 100 will likely be impressive. But the window to earn her very own "Vision of Love" is closing fast.

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

• If I seem a little overexcited to talk about the songs at Nos. 8 and 14, it's because the very top of the chart is stuck in quicksand: Nos. 1 through 7 are all the same as last week, starting with three-week No. 1 champ Usher. His digital sales are down about 16%, but his airplay is up by the same amount, so he's still on a roll and keeps his bullet. "Love in This Club" is now the third-most-played song in the country, after Chris Brown's "With You" and Flo Rida's "Low."

• I suspect Maura will be thrilled to hear that the much-loved, oft-delayed Lil Mama has made a comeback, with the biggest leap on the Hot 100 so far this year. It's just too bad she had to go to the same well every other charting R&B act is using to get a hit. "Shawty Get Loose" features support from Chris Brown (him again) and... no shit, T-Pain (him again). Thanks to a solid debut week on iTunes (72,000 downloads), the song shoots 73 spaces to No. 19. Last year, "Lip Gloss" (still her best hit) reached No. 10.

• Speaking of our favorite Lil's: the R&B/Hip-Hop chart continues to be a snooze-fest up top, but the top debut at No. 57 is the latest from Lil Wayne (featuring Static Major), "Lollipop." Amazingly, despite its heavily vocoder-like effects, it does not feature T-Pain.

• Following up our discussion earlier this week on Vampire Weekend post-Saturday Night Live, their hit "A-Punk" is catching on at rock radio, albeit gradually. It's up three notches to No. 30 on Modern Rock Tracks this week. Given how slowly everything on that chart moves, three spots is really not bad. But I wouldn't look for that album to go gold anytime soon.

• For you club-dwellers, Billboard chart columnist Fred Bronson offers an update on veteran Kristine W this week. She possesses one of the strongest hit streaks on any chart in history: all but one of her 12 hits on the Hot Club Play chart since 1994 have gone to No. 1 (the spoiler, 2006's "I'll Be Your Light," peaked at No. 2). She scores the 11th of those club hits this week, as her cover of Diana Ross' "The Boss" rises to No. 1.

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

Hot 100
1. Usher Featuring Young Jeezy, "Love In This Club" (LW No. 1, 5 weeks)
2. Chris Brown, "With You" (LW No. 2, 16 weeks)
3. Flo Rida feat. T-Pain, "Low" (LW No. 3, 21 weeks)
4. Sara Bareilles, "Love Song" (LW No. 4, 20 weeks)
5. Rihanna, "Don't Stop the Music" (LW No. 5, 17 weeks)
6. Jordin Sparks with Chris Brown, "No Air" (LW No. 6, 11 weeks)
7. Ray J & Yung Berg, "Sexy Can I" (LW No. 7, 7 weeks)
8. Leona Lewis, "Bleeding Love" (LW No. 21, 5 weeks)
9. Timbaland feat. OneRepublic, "Apologize" (LW No. 8, 33 weeks)
10. Lupe Fiasco feat. Matthew Santos, "Superstar" (LW No. 10, 14 weeks)

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
1. Keyshia Cole, "I Remember" (LW No. 1, 20 weeks)
2. Alicia Keys, "Like You'll Never See Me Again" (LW No. 2, 21 weeks)
3. The-Dream, "Falsetto" (LW No. 3, 15 weeks)
4. J. Holiday, "Suffocate" (LW No. 4, 24 weeks)
5. Mary J. Blige, "Just Fine" (LW No. 5, 25 weeks)
6. Usher Featuring Young Jeezy, "Love In This Club" (LW No. 9, 6 weeks)
7. Chris Brown, "With You" (LW No. 6, 16 weeks)
8. Shawty Lo, "Dey Know" (LW No. 8, 24 weeks)
9. Mario, "Crying Out for Me" (LW No. 7, 29 weeks)
10. Mariah Carey, "Touch My Body" (LW No. 11, 6 weeks)

Hot Country Songs
1. Alan Jackson, "Small Town Southern Man" (LW No. 2, 19 weeks)
2. Carrie Underwood, "All-American Girl" (LW No. 1, 16 weeks)
3. Trace Adkins, "You're Gonna Miss This" (LW No. 5, 15 weeks)
4. Rodney Atkins, "Cleaning This Gun (Come on in Boy)" (LW No. 4, 26 weeks)
5. Kenny Chesney with George Strait, "Shiftwork" (LW No. 3, 22 weeks)
6. Chris Cagle, "What Kinda Gone" (LW No. 7, 35 weeks)
7. George Strait, "I Saw God Today" (LW No. 8, 6 weeks)
8. Chuck Wicks, "Stealing Cinderella" (LW No. 6, 30 weeks)
9. James Otto, "Just Got Started Lovin' You" (LW No. 10, 22 weeks)
10. Jason Aldean, "Laughed Until We Cried" (LW No. 9, 32 weeks)

Hot Modern Rock Tracks
1. Foo Fighters, "Long Road to Ruin" (LW No. 1, 21 weeks)
2. Puddle of Mudd, "Psycho" (LW No. 3, 20 weeks)
3. Linkin Park, "Shadow of the Day" (LW No. 2, 24 weeks)
4. Seether, "Fake It" (LW No. 4, 29 weeks)
5. Paramore, "crushcrushcrush" (LW No. 5, 18 weeks)
6. Foo Fighters, "The Pretender" (LW No. 6, 33 weeks)
7. The Bravery, "Believe" (LW No. 9, 24 weeks)
8. Jack Johnson, "If I Had Eyes" (LW No. 7, 15 weeks)
9. Atreyu, "Falling Down" (LW No. 11, 8 weeks)
10. Rise Against, "The Good Left Undone" (LW No. 8, 38 weeks)

When the producers of American Idol announced at the start of this season that, for the first time, they would be selling contestants' performances on iTunes, but that iTunes had agreed not to report those sales publicly or to Billboard, we chart geeks grumbled. How would we know how big an impact the show had on consumers' instant whims?

We needn't have worried—we've still got plenty of old songs, the ones the contestants sing, to keep an eye on. Long story short—the show is still huge, and it affects music sales like nothing since Ed Sullivan. Idol contestant Jason Castro: the estates of Cohen and Buckley thank you.

The top Digital Song in the country, according to Billboard and SoundScan, is Jeff Buckley's 1994 cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah." Taken from his album Grace, Buckley's angelic cover blasted through 178,000 downloads last week.

Of course, as we've discussed in this space before, sales of old songs are not eligible for the Billboard Hot 100 unless they're being "actively promoted" to radio. That excludes Buckley from the big chart, and that's a real shame. He never appeared on the Hot 100, not even its lower rungs, during his tragically short career; on the Modern Rock chart, one lone song, "Last Goodbye," also from Grace, crept up to No. 19 in 1995.

We'll never know how high "Hallelujah"—which has never appeared on the Hot 100 by any artist, despite its many covers—might have charted had it not been for the Billboard age-based eligibility rule. It's doubtful Buckley would have seriously threatened Usher for No. 1; the latter's "Love in This Club" has not just sales but fast-growing airplay propelling it. But with sales like "Hallelujah's," it's safe to guess the song would have pulled something like Yael Naïm's TV-fueled, airplay-lacking "New Song" last month and at least made the Top 10.

Ever since the iTunes Music Store came online in 2003, one year after Idol debuted in the United States, we've seen dozens of old songs covered by the finalists make the upper reaches of Apple's best-sellers list in the days immediately following their performances. What makes "Hallelujah" special is how long it's hanging on—as recently as two days ago, iTunes was reporting Buckley's tune as its top seller, and as of today it's still in Apple's top five.

It appears that the dreadlocked Castro has actually turned on a large portion of America—the portion not yet acquainted with Buckley—to "Hallelujah," and it's becoming a word-of-mouth hit. The day I hear Buckley's angelic voice coming out of the adult-schlock radio station blaring at my local drugstore—that's one less moment I have to hear Celine Dion!—I think I'm going to feel grateful to Jason Castro, too.

Less Love in Usher's Old Club: You might notice that "Love in This Club," already tops on the all-genre Hot 100, is only just reaching the R&B/Hip-Hop Top 10 this week. You can either view that as evidence of Usher cooling off with his base, or take it as a sign of what makes the R&B chart different from the pop chart: in a word, sales, or the lack thereof. (Even as Usher's airplay continues to explode, his chart-topping performance on the Hot 100 is still due overwhelmingly to digital sales.)

The R&B/Hip-Hop chart is stuck in a pre-iTunes time warp, with no digital sales component and total dominance by airplay; physical singles sales are included, but you can imagine how miniscule a factor they are in 2008. Basically, the R&B chart looks and behaves the way the Hot 100 did from 1998 through 2004, when it was essentially an airplay chart, before the Big Bang moment in 2005 when iTunes sales were incorporated.

The sticky problem is, Billboard hasn't yet figured out how to bring digital sales into the R&B/Hip-Hop chart without hurting its brand. The R&B charts are meant to reflect, in large part, what black-owned or -catering stores sell to their customer base. Adding digital sales would likely marginalize this fragile group of retailers. Plus, there's the small matter of how to identify a "core" (read: probably black, preferably living someplace other than Iowa) R&B song buyer on the Internet—it's not as simple as narrowing iTunes' sales to only those songs that get played on R&B or hip-hop stations.

No one wants to hurt the core economy that makes this chart viable and vibrant. Still, it's willful denial to believe that, at this late date, thousands of historically R&B-leaning consumers aren't buying the bulk of their songs online.

Billboard is aware of the issue, obviously. Buried in the magazine a couple of times since last year, the editors have made reference to figuring out the black-digital-sales conundrum, and they have made noises about adding a digital-sales component. So stay tuned.

(Before you ask: So long as the country chart remains airplay-only, as it has for decades, this isn't an issue with that chart or that demographic.)

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

• Entering the Top 10 this week, each for the first time, are Ray J and Lupe Fiasco. And each has an assist: Ray J from Yung Berg, whose rap on "Sexy Can I" follows up his own hit "Sexy Lady" (sense a theme?) from late last summer; and Lupe Fiasco from no-really-I'm-not-the-dude-from-Coldplay crooner Matthew Santos, who provides the chewy melodic hook on "Superstar." Finally leaving the Top 10 after five months: Alicia Keys's deathless No. 1 smash "No One."

• Over the years, the Brits have managed to sell back to us their versions of pop-star forms we invented: rock combos, soul singers, even the occasional rapper. Add "Whitney/Mariah-style diva" to the list: the Simon Cowell-produced belter Leona Lewis is now officially a U.S. Top 40 act. Lewis leaps 20 notches to No. 21 with her diva ballad "Bleeding Love." After winning the U.K.-based competition The X Factor last fall, Lewis has already set records in Old Blighty and across Europe, recently knocking off Arctic Monkeys' two-year-old U.K. record for the biggest week of album sales by a debut act. Anyway, fellow melisma haters, brace yourselves: the debut single's performance means her album will probably be a smash when they launch it here in a few weeks.

• He doesn't look so scary anymore—Flo Rida's "Elevator" is down six slots to No. 22 this week. As Nelson Muntz would say: HA-ha!

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

Hot 100
1. Usher Featuring Young Jeezy, "Love In This Club" (LW No. 1, 4 weeks)
2. Chris Brown, "With You" (LW No. 3, 15 weeks)
3. Flo Rida feat. T-Pain, "Low" (LW No. 2, 20 weeks)
4. Sara Bareilles, "Love Song" (LW No. 5, 19 weeks)
5. Rihanna, "Don't Stop the Music" (LW No. 4, 16 weeks)
6. Jordin Sparks with Chris Brown, "No Air" (LW No. 6, 10 weeks)
7. Ray J & Yung Berg, "Sexy Can I" (LW No. 13, 6 weeks)
8. Timbaland feat. OneRepublic, "Apologize" (LW No. 7, 32 weeks)
9. Webbie, Lil' Phat & Lil' Boosie, "Independent" (LW No. 9, 16 weeks)
10. Lupe Fiasco feat. Matthew Santos, "Superstar" (LW No. 11, 13 weeks)

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
1. Keyshia Cole, "I Remember" (LW No. 1, 19 weeks)
2. Alicia Keys, "Like You'll Never See Me Again" (LW No. 2, 20 weeks)
3. The-Dream, "Falsetto" (LW No. 4, 14 weeks)
4. J. Holiday, "Suffocate" (LW No. 3, 23 weeks)
5. Mary J. Blige, "Just Fine" (LW No. 5, 24 weeks)
6. Chris Brown, "With You" (LW No. 6, 15 weeks)
7. Mario, "Crying Out for Me" (LW No. 7, 28 weeks)
8. Shawty Lo, "Dey Know" (LW No. 8, 23 weeks)
9. Usher Featuring Young Jeezy, "Love In This Club" (LW No. 11, 5 weeks)
10. Webbie, Lil' Phat & Lil' Boosie, "Independent" (LW No. 9, 21 weeks)

Hot Country Songs
1. Carrie Underwood, "All-American Girl" (LW No. 1, 15 weeks)
2. Alan Jackson, "Small Town Southern Man" (LW No. 3, 18 weeks)
3. Kenny Chesney with George Strait, "Shiftwork" (LW No. 4, 21 weeks)
4. Rodney Atkins, "Cleaning This Gun (Come on in Boy)" (LW No. 2, 25 weeks)
5. Trace Adkins, "You're Gonna Miss This" (LW No. 6, 14 weeks)
6. Chuck Wicks, "Stealing Cinderella" (LW No. 5, 29 weeks)
7. Chris Cagle, "What Kinda Gone" (LW No. 9, 34 weeks)
8. George Strait, "I Saw God Today" (LW No. 8, 5 weeks)
9. Jason Aldean, "Laughed Until We Cried" (LW No. 10, 31 weeks)
10. James Otto, "Just Got Started Lovin' You" (LW No. 12, 21 weeks)

Hot Modern Rock Tracks
1. Foo Fighters, "Long Road to Ruin" (LW No. 1, 20 weeks)
2. Linkin Park, "Shadow of the Day" (LW No. 2, 23 weeks)
3. Puddle of Mudd, "Psycho" (LW No. 5, 19 weeks)
4. Seether, "Fake It" (LW No. 3, 28 weeks)
5. Paramore, "crushcrushcrush" (LW No. 4, 17 weeks)
6. Foo Fighters, "The Pretender" (LW No. 6, 32 weeks)
7. Jack Johnson, "If I Had Eyes" (LW No. 9, 14 weeks)
8. Rise Against, "The Good Left Undone" (LW No. 7, 37 weeks)
9. The Bravery, "Believe" (LW No. 11, 23 weeks)
10. Avenged Sevenfold, "Almost Easy" (LW No. 8, 23 weeks)

Forget what I said last week: apparently there was pent-up demand for new Usher material.

Even after three intervening years that saw little more than a flop vanity movie and some wedding-related tabloid embarrassment, Mr. Raymond remains beloved by pop and R&B radio and, most importantly, consumers—198,000 iTunes buyers can't be wrong.

Well, maybe they can. Let's be honest: "Love in This Club" is probably the weakest leadoff single for any Usher album since he broke big a decade ago. Musically and production-wise, it can't hold a candle to "You Make Me Wanna...," "U Remind Me" or "Yeah!" But we'll overlook that for at least a week, so deep is our gratitude that "Club" dethroned 10-week Billboard Hot 100 dominator Flo Rida, whose "Low" finally succumbs and shrinks to No. 2.

Our gratitude to Usher only deepens as we examine the rest of the Top Five. If he hadn't made a 50-point surge to No. 1—the third-largest leap to the top in Hot 100 history, after Maroon 5's "Makes Me Wonder" last year and Kelly Clarkson's "A Moment Like This" in 2002—Flo Rida would still be No. 1 this week. That's less a testament to how strong "Low" still is than to how weak its three upper-chart challengers are: Chris Brown's "With You," Rihanna's "Don't Stop the Music" and Sara Bareilles's "Love Song" each fall one slot, in lockstep, behind Flo Rida. (Bareilles at least retains her bullet, which means she could come back next week.) Message to Chris, Ri and Sara: thanks for nothing!

"Love in This Club" is Usher's first real chart test of the iTunes era, and he passes with flying colors. When Confessions, the No. 1 album of 2004, spawned four No. 1 smashes four years ago, iTunes was going on one year old, and the Hot 100 was still compiled using only airplay points and (nearly negligible) physical single sales. Even if iTunes had been a factor on the Hot 100 back then, its effect on Usher's performance might have been muted: BMG didn't release the megasmash "Yeah!" to iTunes during most of its chart run, fearful of the effect on album sales. (When they finally relented sometime late in 2004, "Yeah!" became one of the top iTunes downloads of the year.)

But in 2008, with Usher's album-drop date still up in the air and iTunes the dominant factor on chart performance, the label couldn't reasonably expect a big hit without uncaging the song online. It seems to have been a worthwhile move: the comeback of one of Sony/BMG's key superstars is now all but assured.

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

• A quick word on two songs surging into the Top 20: Flo Rida's followup hit, "Elevator," makes a solid 12-space move up to No. 16 after his massive 72-point vault last week. I'll say it again: this is decent performance, but "Elevator," unlike "Low," is going to have to earn its way up the chart the slow-and-steady way.

The even bigger mover, and the biggest sales gainer on the entire chart, is Janet Jackson's beleaguered single "Feedback," which after 10 weeks is finally both a Top 40 and Top 20 hit. Thanks to a flurry of digital sales spurred by the release of Discipline, the single leaps 34 places to No. 19. Now, the bad news: with little major-market airplay ("Feedback" is nowhere to be found on the Hot 100 Airplay chart), "Feedback" will fall back next week. If I were at Island Def Jam, I'd be teeing up the far, far better pop track "Rock With U" to radio now.

• Maura mentioned Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova's "Falling Slowly" the other day, but just to emphasize how big an effect TV exposure has on digital sales, it's the top debut on the Hot 100 this week at No. 61, thanks entirely to its 41,000 buck-a-song buyers in the week after the Oscars. The song never appeared on any Billboard chart while Once was in theaters, but is still considered current enough to make the charts. That's not the case with a different TV-benefiting song, John Lennon's 37-year-old "Imagine," which sells 20,000 downloads thanks to David "Pageant Boy" Archuleta's American Idol performance last week.

• Speaking of Idol: Jordin Sparks is still working to erase her reputation as the only one of the show's winners not to score a No. 1 (or at least No. 2) hit. "No Air" shoots into the Top 10 and will probably make the Top Five in a week or two.

• With the Top 10 of the Hot 100 so sluggish (notwithstanding Usher), I find myself envying the turnover in the Hot Country chart's Top 10. Carrie Underwood shoots up four spots to take No. 1 with "All American Girl"; her live performance on Saturday Night Live two weekends ago had to have helped. And among the two songs entering the winners' circle is the indefatigable George Strait, with his roughly 2 millionth Top 10 hit. "I Saw God Today"? Try "I AM God Today"—so dominant is Strait that his earlier Top 10 hit, the Kenny Chesney duet "Shiftwork," is still there.

• In the midst of a snoozy R&B Top 10, singer-songwriter The-Dream is quietly amassing his biggest hit as a lead artist: the glass-shattering, Smoove B-like "Falsetto" sneaks up to No. 4, outdoing the No. 6 R&B peak of "Shawty Is a 10."

Bets on when his label finally releases his duet with Rihanna, Idolator fave "Livin' a Lie"? (My theory: Rihanna's people are waiting until her current album is bled dry of singles.)

• This week a tremendously unhip act who's now on his fifth album scores his first Modern Rock Top 10 hit—after he's crossed over to soccer moms and Starbucks denizens. This goes against the typical pattern; for example, suburban Volvo-rockers Nickelback are now considered poison to Modern programmers, years after their dominant "How You Remind Me" days. But surf-pop bro Jack Johnson defies convention, inching into the Top 10 with "If I Had Eyes"; prior to this, his best performance on the chart was the No. 22 peak of the Brushfire Fairytales track "Flake" back in 2002. Guess his new album's whole dude-I'm-totally-bummed-out vibe did the trick.

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

Hot 100
1. Usher Featuring Young Jeezy, "Love In This Club" (LW No. 51, 3 weeks)
2. Flo Rida feat. T-Pain, "Low" (LW No. 1, 19 weeks)
3. Chris Brown, "With You" (LW No. 2, 14 weeks)
4. Rihanna, "Don't Stop the Music" (LW No. 3, 15 weeks)
5. Sara Bareilles, "Love Song" (LW No. 5, 18 weeks)
6. Jordin Sparks with Chris Brown, "No Air" (LW No. 13, 9 weeks)
7. Timbaland feat. OneRepublic, "Apologize" (LW No. 6, 31 weeks)
8. Alicia Keys, "No One" (LW No. 5, 26 weeks)
9. Webbie, Lil' Phat & Lil' Boosie, "Independent" (LW No. 9, 15 weeks)
10. Snoop Dogg, "Sensual Seduction" (LW No. 7, 14 weeks)

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
1. Keyshia Cole, "I Remember" (LW No. 1, 18 weeks)
2. Alicia Keys, "Like You'll Never See Me Again" (LW No. 2, 19 weeks)
3. J. Holiday, "Suffocate" (LW No. 3, 22 weeks)
4. The-Dream, "Falsetto" (LW No. 7, 13 weeks)
5. Mary J. Blige, "Just Fine" (LW No. 4, 23 weeks)
6. Chris Brown, "With You" (LW No. 5, 14 weeks)
7. Mario, "Crying Out for Me" (LW No. 6, 27 weeks)
8. Shawty Lo, "Dey Know" (LW No. 11, 22 weeks)
9. Webbie, Lil' Phat & Lil' Boosie, "Independent" (LW No. 8, 20 weeks)
10. Snoop Dogg, "Sensual Seduction" (LW No. 9, 17 weeks)

Hot Country Songs
1. Carrie Underwood, "All-American Girl" (LW No. 5, 14 weeks)
2. Rodney Atkins, "Cleaning This Gun (Come on in Boy)" (LW No. 1, 24 weeks)
3. Alan Jackson, "Small Town Southern Man" (LW No. 4, 17 weeks)
4. Kenny Chesney with George Strait, "Shiftwork" (LW No. 2, 20 weeks)
5. Chuck Wicks, "Stealing Cinderella" (LW No. 7, 28 weeks)
6. Trace Adkins, "You're Gonna Miss This" (LW No. 10, 13 weeks)
7. Gary Allan, "Watching Airplanes" (LW No. 6, 33 weeks)
8. George Strait, "I Saw God Today" (LW No. 12, 4 weeks)
9. Chris Cagle, "What Kinda Gone" (LW No. 11, 32 weeks)
10. Jason Aldean, "Laughed Until We Cried" (LW No. 14, 30 weeks)

Hot Modern Rock Tracks
1. Foo Fighters, "Long Road to Ruin" (LW No. 1, 19 weeks)
2. Linkin Park, "Shadow of the Day" (LW No. 3, 22 weeks)
3. Seether, "Fake It" (LW No. 2, 27 weeks)
4. Paramore, "crushcrushcrush" (LW No. 4, 16 weeks)
5. Puddle of Mudd, "Psycho" (LW No. 6, 18 weeks)
6. Foo Fighters, "The Pretender" (LW No. 5, 31 weeks)
7. Rise Against, "The Good Left Undone" (LW No. 8, 36 weeks)
8. Avenged Sevenfold, "Almost Easy" (LW No. 7, 22 weeks)
9. Jack Johnson, "If I Had Eyes" (LW No. 11, 13 weeks)
10. Radiohead, "Bodysnatchers" (LW No. 9, 19 weeks)

One of the top debuts on this week's Billboard's Hot 100 might look a little old: Amy Winehouse's "You Know I'm No Good," which 11 months ago marked her first appearance on any U.S. chart, reenters at No. 77, instantly surpassing its original peak.

Winehouse's return is, of course, sparked by her appearance at last week's Grammy Awards, where she pummeled her way through a nerve-wracking twofer of "No Good" and "Rehab." The winner of the Record and Song of the Year trophies, "Rehab" would seem to be the likeliest post-Grammy chart beneficiary. But the quirks of Billboard chart rules make th