Idolator

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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File under "scenarios that I kind of wished had played out in real time": "Apple had reportedly been sufficiently annoyed by [Warner Music Group's decision to pull Estelle's Shine from the iTunes Store] that it threatened to retaliate by pulling all mentions of WMG product from the various splash pages of the iTunes Store on a worldwide basis, apart from Metallica. Had Warner not capitulated, the absence of iTunes visibility would have had a devastating impact on Q4 sales, while the leadership of Edgar Bronfman Jr. and Lyor Cohen would have once again been called into question, with the inevitable negative implications for WMG stock." [HITS Daily Double]

In the wake of Kid Rock finding success by holding his album back from iTunes while having a fairly big radio hit, Kid's label Atlantic Records decided to experiment with the Kid's strategy, pulling the British singer Estelle's album Shine from the iTunes Store two weeks ago. The move, which was ostensibly made in order to boost sales of the album after the success of its lead single, the Kanye West-assisted "American Boy," resulted in sales of the album dropping 16%, then experiencing a 9% gain last week. Meanwhile, "Boy" plummeted to No. 57 on the Hot 100 last week; there, it suffered the indignity of being beat out by its own inferior insta-cover, which had the advantage of being available on the store. Perhaps that was just embarrassing enough for Atlantic to restore the album on iTunes; yesterday when I opened up the online-music destination, there was a huge ad for Shine in the middle of the store's splash page. More »

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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