chris molanphy - Page 3

Whatever He Likes: T.I. Holds Chart Penthouse, Takes Reservation for Next Week

Chris Molanphy | October 3, 2008 3:00 am
Chris Molanphy | October 3, 2008 3:00 am

whatever.jpgIn a sleepy week for Billboard‘s Hot 100, Atlanta rap king T.I. maintains his grip on the No. 1 spot, his fifth nonconsecutive week there, with “Whatever You Like.”

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.

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Darius Rucker Leaves Hootie Behind, Shows Kanye The Way To Cross Over

Chris Molanphy | September 26, 2008 3:00 am
Chris Molanphy | September 26, 2008 3:00 am

When this column launched one year ago this week, Kanye West was locked in a mortal struggle for the top of Billboard‘s Hot 100, first defeating and then retreating from a smash by Soulja Boy.

Twelve months later, the smash holding down the No. 1 spot has changed—this time, it’s from a more seasoned hip-hop figure, T.I.—but the challenger is the same. West storms the ramparts again, this time with his all-singing hit “Love Lockdown.” An eye-popping iTunes debut gives West a No. 3 entrance on the big chart, the best start for a single in his career. It also gives him a clear shot at scoring his fourth career No. 1 single next week.

And while Kanye’s reveling in the reception his first straight-R&B joint is receiving, he can glance over to the new No. 1 single on Hot Country Songs. There, a guy 11 years his senior is showing chart historians how this whole crossover thing is done.

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Pink And Estelle Have The Last Laugh

Chris Molanphy | September 19, 2008 3:00 am
Chris Molanphy | September 19, 2008 3:00 am

In this week of financial horrors, created largely by formerly cocksure men, it’s perhaps apropos that a couple of ladies post the most gloat-worthy performances in the upper reaches of Billboard‘s Hot 100.

That starts at the top, where Pink, a nearly decade-long veteran of the chart wars, scores her first solo No. 1 (and second overall), “So What.” And she does it with the largest one-week digital sales total we’ve seen since the beginning of summer.

A few rungs down, U.K. chanteuse and Atlantic Records guinea pig Estelle stages a massive comeback. Her return to iTunes fuels a 44-space move by her Kanye West–supported single “American Boy,” to a new peak of No. 9. Not a moment too soon: one week before the official start of fall in the United States, and a month after it appeared to have peaked at No. 11, our runner-up in the Idolator 2008 Summer Jam competition is finally an official U.S. Top 10 hit. Revenge is sweet.

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Toppling ‘The Wall’: The Farce Of Double-Counting In The RIAA’s All-Time Platinum List

Chris Molanphy | September 17, 2008 3:00 am
Chris Molanphy | September 17, 2008 3:00 am

Reading the New York Times obituary of Pink Floyd’s Richard Wright yesterday, I came upon a statistic that the newspaper ran unquestioningly that ticked me off, as it always does when I see similar statements in print:

Pink Floyd’s 1979 album, “The Wall,” eventually sold 23 million copies in the United States.

No, it didn’t, I grumbled to myself. It’s a double-album—by RIAA math, that means it sold about 11.5 million. SNARL!

There are many things wrong with the Recording Industry Association of America’s system for certifying albums gold, platinum, multiplatinum, and (now) diamond. There’s the counting of records shipped, not sold; I’ve seen discs certified platinum that have actually SoundScanned fewer than 700,000 copies. On the other side of the ledger, there are discs that are under-certified because of the RIAA’s outmoded system requiring labels to request certification—short-changing dozens of classic Motown artists, for example.

But nothing in the RIAA metals methodology sticks in my craw more than double-counting. It’s the biggest scam in record-industry self-tallying, and the main reason it’s infuriating is the very example cited above: journalists and music fans the world over use the RIAA’s certs as their yardstick for all-time album sales. It’s basically a total distortion of rock history.

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Ruth Vs. Maris, meet “Twist” Vs. “Smooth”: All-Time Hot 100 Pits Old Against New

Chris Molanphy | September 12, 2008 2:00 am
Chris Molanphy | September 12, 2008 2:00 am

numberones.jpgBaseball is such a rich sport for data geeks, what with every move made by a player having a number attached to it. But the inconsistencies and outright mistakes in the sport’s long history, from the number of games in a season to the exclusion of the Negro Leagues, make the sport even moregeek-friendly–those missteps become something else to debate, at least when fans aren’t mulling the current statistical effects of controlled substances.

Mistakes and inconsistencies are two of many things baseball geekery and music-chart geekery have in common. (Lord knows the music business has its substances.) Billboard has changed the rules behind the Hot 100 often enough to keep guys like me talking for days on end.

From flip-flopping rules about B-sides, to shifting radio genres, to the belated inclusion of album cuts on the singles charts, chronicling chart history means making allowances for a slew of discrepancies. The biggest discrepancy of all is the 1991 shift in the charts wrought by SoundScan, a B.C.-A.D. moment that makes comparing old and new hits an exercise in near-futility.

You need to keep this top-of-mind when you take in the so-called All-Time Hot 100, released by Billboard this week as part of its celebration of the chart’s 50th anniversary. The final result, led by Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” and Santana and Rob Thomas’ “Smooth,” is less interesting than the contortions the magazine went through to put them there.

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Strummin’ In The Girls’ Room: Jason Mraz’s Folksy Ditty Climbs The Charts

Chris Molanphy | September 5, 2008 2:30 am
Chris Molanphy | September 5, 2008 2:30 am

jasonmraz.jpgLast fall and winter, chart fans noted the return to the radio of a style that, until recently, was pretty unfashionable on Billboard‘s Hot 100: pure-pop female singer-songwriters.

Strummier and sunnier than their Lilith counterparts in the ’90s and closer in kinship to California’s post-Joni ladies of the ’70s, two gals with hard-to-spell names led this ’07 boomlet with a pair of Top Five smashes: Colbie Caillat, with “Bubbly,” and Sara Bareilles, with “Love Song.” The surprise success of American Idol‘s Brooke White, who seemed every week to be channeling Carole King, only fueled the theory.

Trouble is, neither Caillat nor Bareilles has had an easy time following up those easy-listening hits. Caillat has fared respectably, with a No. 20 followup (“Realize”), but not spectacularly. And Bareilles is completely stalled, with “Love Song” still leading the Adult Contemporary chart but no followup–on the Hot 100, or anywhere–all these months later.

So, new theory: maybe pop fans weren’t latching onto these ladies’ earthy-girl personas at all, but their sound.

Which brings us to Jason Mraz. He makes a big move into the Top 10 this week and, just in time for fall, proves the bedroom-girlypop sound can still hit big in 2008, even if the act in question possesses an extra Y chromosome.

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T.I. Sets Perennially Broken Hot 100 Record

Chris Molanphy | August 29, 2008 2:00 am
Chris Molanphy | August 29, 2008 2:00 am

whatever.jpgAtlanta 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.

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Once More, With Loathing: Are Labels Moving To Kill The Single Again?

Chris Molanphy | August 28, 2008 10:00 am
Chris Molanphy | August 28, 2008 10:00 am

americanboy.jpg Last Friday, one of the regular commenters on my “100 and Single” column poured cold water all over my prediction that Estelle’s “American Boy” might finally creep into the U.S. Top 10. Noted regular reader ukidol, “Estelle’s song has been removed from iTunes since the start of the week, so she’ll drop sharply in the next chart. Think they’re hoping for a Kid Rock-style album boost.”

We won’t find out how Estelle fared until the new Hot 100 appears later today, but yesterday’s release of SoundScan figures bears out ukidol’s prediction. “American Boy,” which the prior week was the sixth-best selling digital song in the country, fell to 64th, as its sales took a 78% tumble from 86,700 copies to 19,100 copies. (Presumably, virtually all of those 19,100 copies sold in the first day or two of the tracking week before the song got pulled from iTunes.)

As of last week, “American Boy” was at No. 11 on the big chart. While the radio half of the Hot 100’s sales-plus-airplay formulation might keep the song from falling out of the Top 40, no amount of radio growth will keep it from dropping at least a double-digit number of slots–if not this week, then the next.

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Who’s A Big Pop Star? Yes, You Are! David Archuleta’s Post-“Idol” Chart Debut

Chris Molanphy | August 22, 2008 2:30 am
Chris Molanphy | August 22, 2008 2:30 am

archie.jpgDuring 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?

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noah | August 14, 2008 1:45 am
noah | August 14, 2008 1:45 am

Idolator’s chart guru Chris Molanphy is taking time out of his vacation to chat with the fine people at WNYC’s Soundcheck this afternoon. He’ll be on at around 2:15 p.m. ET and sharing his thoughts the Billboard Hot 100’s 50th anniversary. More »


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