Idolator

During the two weeks I was vacationing, Billboard reported changes atop all three of its flagship charts—including the blessed end of Katy Perry's No. 1 reign on the Hot 100, which was displaced by a Rihanna song I like a lot. Even more amazingly, a song that may be the most left-field hit of the decade—"Paper Planes" by M.I.A.—soared into the Top Five.

Now that I'm back, the M.I.A. song is down a bit, and the biggest news on the charts is the post-American Idol debut by tween-and-grandma fave David Archuleta.

It's a cruel business, this chart-column writing.

Nonetheless, the good news, for those of us who rooted against the stage-managed moppet during Idol's last season, is that Archie's losing out on the Hot 100's top slot—by a whisker—to Rihanna. Meanwhile, there's change on top of two other charts, including the deadly static Modern Rock list. Let's catch up, shall we?

Ed. note: Chris "dennisobell" Molanphy, our resident chart guru, looks at the upward, downward, and lack of movement on this week's Billboard charts:

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.

Ed. note: Chris "dennisobell" Molanphy, our resident chart guru, looks at the upward, downward, and lack of movement on the Billboard Hot 100 in the latest installment of "100 And Single." This week, he takes a break from the regular charts, which are sleepy just before the holiday, to focus on the hits of the year:

A couple of weeks ago in this space, we tried to handicap the likely winners on Billboard's year-end charts. Well, we'd like to tell you there was a last-minute, super-exciting, left-field surprise, but things went pretty much as expected. Thanks to the strange December-to-November "chart year" Billboard uses to calculate its year-end tallies, two releases that got their start back when 2006's turkeys were in the oven are the big winners for 2007: Beyonce's "Irreplaceable," and Chris Daughtry's self-monikered debut album. Maura has already covered the latter, so let's focus on Billboard's No. 1 Hot 100 song of the year.

"I hope you guys do one of these [Year-End Analysis] posts for iTunes' most downloaded artists, that list is insane." And having just spent a half-hour typing out^* iTunes' Top 20 best-selling songs, Top 20 best-selling albums, and Top 10 best-selling videos, I can vouch for the insanity. Want a 2007 list based not on the personal aesthetic whims of a couple of bloggers or an editorial staff trying to look hip or a publisher second-guessing what its audience wants/expects to appear on a year-end list, but a democratically chosen list based around raw commerce, a list voted for by the public, comprised entirely of what they were most willing to spend their .99 on during the last 12 months? Well here it is. And the public sucks. The full lists are after the jump, but for now my shell-shocked first thoughts.

THE GOOD: Maroon 5's louche dude funk gets a bad rap (though you'd have a hard time holding us to that sentiment when one of their ballads is playing) but even after following the numbers during the year, we're still a little surprised to see them topping the albums list ahead of Kanye. A few decent long-players stud the rest of the list, and a "Weird Al" appearance (in the Top Videos category) always brings a smile. But more than any single artist, people really plunked down for some Timbaland this year, no matter who he was featuring and/or producing. And with the exception of "Apologize," we're more than OK with hearing any of Tim's 2007 hits for the billionth time compared to...
THE BAD: Colbie Caillat! Daughtry! Akon! "Party Like A Rock Star"! A squeaky Stefani (who's at least not yodelling)! Nickelback mugging with half of America! Fergie at No. 1! When I die and go to blogger hell, this Top 20 playlist will be looped for all eternity, broken up only by the occasional airing of the complete works of Sufjan Stevens, as the editors of Stereogum beat me around the neck with rolled-up press releases.
THE WHAAAA? Some basic figures for you to contemplate and/or shudder over. Within the Top 100 best-selling singles of 2007 we have: Four Akon songs, four Avril Lavigne songs (including one remix), three Daughtry songs, two Fall Out Boy songs, three Fergie songs, five Justin Timberlake songs, two Kanye songs, two Maroon 5 songs, two My Chemical Romance songs, two Nickelback songs, two Pink songs (?!), three Rihanna songs, two Sean Kingston songs, two T-Pain songs (not counting collabos), and three Timbaland songs (not counting productions). That's nearly half of the Top 100 controlled by 15 artists, or a quarter of it controlled by seven if we only count the ones that scored three or more slots. Plus Feist was in the Top 20 albums, but download sensation "1-2-3-4" doesn't even show up until No. 80! So much for the new model.

[EDIT: The full list of the Top 100 best-selling singles is now posted after the jump thanks to the Excel skillz of commenter extraordinaire therichgirlsareweeping, and looking at it has cooled my ire a little, as many more decent-to-great songs start appearing the further down you go. However that Top 20 is, with a few exceptions, still awful awful awful.]

Ed. note: Chris "dennisobell" Molanphy, our resident chart guru, looks at the upward, downward, and lack of movement on this week's Billboard charts:

As I look at this week's charts, I recall a 1994 interview in which Paul McCartney assured the world that the highly anticipated, ultimately anticlimactic 1995 Beatles single "Free as a Bird" would have a "grungy" guitar sound.

As with so many things, Sir Paul was just ahead of his time—14 years later, one of the Fab Four's most cherished chart records would be nearly equaled by a dude who can make anything, even "Eleanor Rigby," sound like grunge.

That record is for most songs on the Billboard Hot 100 by a single act. It was set on April 11, 1964, by the Beatles, who were credited on 14 of that week's 100 songs. The Fabs still hold this record, for now.

But thanks to a confluence of chart-tabulation quirks, this week a former bartender from Missouri—who until now had never appeared on any Billboard chart—comes close to tying it, placing 11 songs on the Hot 100 all at once. In so doing, David Cook sets a new, blowout record for most debuts, comes within spitting distance of the Fabs' record, and generally makes the chart grungier than it's been since Paul gave that interview.

Atlanta hip-hop king T.I. vaults 70 places into the No. 1 spot on Billboard's Hot 100 this week with "Whatever You Like," a sing-songy, smudgy Xerox of his classic 2006 hit "What You Know."

With this move, Clifford Joseph Harris Jr. scores his first No. 1 as a lead artist (he was credited two years ago on Justin Timberlake's chart-topper "My Love") and sets a new Hot 100 record for biggest leap to the top spot. T.I. takes the record away from Maroon 5, who set it just 16 months ago when "Makes Me Wonder" leapt from No. 64 to No. 1 in a single bound. They, in turn, had stolen the record from Kelly Clarkson, whose only No. 1 hit, "A Moment Like This," held the record for about four years, after she leapt from No. 52 to the top in 2002.

Before Clarkson, this record was held for 28 years, by the Beatles' "Can't Buy Me Love" (No. 26-No. 1 in 1964). The fact that a record held for three decades has been broken thrice in the last six years says less about these songs' popularity and more about the quirks of the modern charts and the sometimes dysfunctional relationship between sales and airplay.

And it means T.I. shouldn't gloat for too long—this record's likely to be broken again.

In lieu of a traditional Top 40, Vibe has just published its list of the 44 best singles of 2007, and it's headed up by a... Fabolous collaboration with Ne-Yo that we never paid much attention to until now. Yes, Fabolous over Kanye, 50, Rihanna, "Crank That," anything featuring T-Pain, anything featuring a former American Idol contestant, and the way beyond omnipresent Lil Wayne. Never let it be said the folks at Vibe aren't listening to their hearts. The full 44 is after the jump, but first our thoughts on everything that fell below the standard set by Fabolous.

THE GOOD: M.I.A. sneaks in by dint of a Bun B/Rich Boy remix, Keyshia Cole scrapes the Top 10 with her Biggie-twisting Missy collaboration, and most of our favorite ringtones urban radio hits of the year make an appearance.
THE BAD: 50 Cent over Kanye upset! Momentarily peeved about this, but upon further reflection, "I Get Money" still bangs months later while the luster has faded a little on the Jackson-sampling sheen of "Good Life." Still, from an ideological standpoint, this feels suspect.
THE WHAAA? UGK's "International Players Anthem" not even in the Top 10? We'd call foul even if Pimp C hadn't just recently left us. (Okay, to be fair, Vibe's list was likely compiled long before his passing.)