Amid the stasis, the steady performance of T.I.’s two simultaneous hits wins the day, as his Rihanna duet “Live Your Life” finally does something I’d been expecting for weeks now: it returns to No. 1, knocking out his other chart-topper, “Whatever You Like.” It’s the second time these songs have traded places; “Life” first replaced “Whatever” in the penthouse four weeks ago. Digital sales for “Life” are a model of consistency, as the song shifts another 184,000 downloads (up 2% from last week) more than a month after dropping on iTunes.

Take a good look at what’s in this week's Top 10—we could be living with these songs for a while. It’s too soon to tell for sure, but I have a sense that as we head toward the holidays, the song charts are seizing up as they often do at year-end and through the early winter.

For some acts like T.I., this will be good news. For others who rely on certain radio formats, this could be a problem. Jason Mraz, we’re looking in your direction.

Last year, from about November through February, songs like Alicia Keys’s “No One,” Timbaland and OneRepublic’s “Apologize” and Flo Rida’s “Low” settled in for long runs in the Top Five. There will probably be a bit more movement in the Top 10 before year’s end, but it’s likely to be slow again, for a number of broad-based reasons.

You’d think that the tsunami of big CD releases about to hit retail in the next five weeks would mean lots of new song action. But the lead tracks from most of those albums—from the likes of Beyoncé, Nickelback, Kanye, Britney and American Idol’s two Davids—dropped weeks ago.

Layer on top of that the likely lock-in of radio playlists the closer we get to Santa Day. As our fearless leader reported yesterday, many stations' flips to an all-Christmas format just get earlier, and more competitive, every year.

Many of the stations making this two-month-or-more switch are adult-contemporary, which means any song on the Hot 100 relying at least in part on A/C airplay is going to lose a major source of chart points. This year, that might not be too big a deal, because there are few songs near the top of the chart over-relying on the dentist’s-office format. (Last year at this time, Fergie’s “Big Girls Don’t Cry” was clinging to A/C late in its run, and Carrie Underwood’s near-record run with “Before He Cheats” was almost entirely the result of A/C playing it to death.) Some songs belatedly catching on at A/C, like Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida” and Daughtry’s “What About Now,” might suffer on the Hot 100, but those songs have already had healthy runs on the big chart.

But there’s got to be some concern over at Jason Mraz Central. “I’m Yours,” his chirpy acoustic ditty, is back in the Top 10 after knocking around the teens for a few weeks, largely because it’s finally caught on at radio. The song first broke into the Top 10 two months ago thanks to its placement in a TV ad and subsequent iTunes sales, but radio programmers were slow to adopt it. Now, it’s the 10th most-played current song at A/C stations, and it’s top-ranked at Adult Top 40 stations.

But Christmas formatting means bad timing for Mraz’s radio breakthrough. Its overall radio points will likely be considerably lower, even if the song continues to rise on the A/C chart, because Billboard removes non-current tracks, including Christmas oldies, from the list. (By next month, the most-played song at A/C nationwide might actually be “A Holly Jolly Christmas,” but you’ll never know that by looking at the chart.) To their credit, Mraz’s team at Atlantic has successfully pushed the song at regular Top 40 radio, which might keep it afloat once its A/C spins crater.

Other lite-FM favorites have likely gone as far as they’ll go—including Leona Lewis, who came tantalizingly close to a second U.S. Top 10 hit with “Better in Time.”

Lewis’ followup got stuck at No. 11 for two weeks. (It’s now down to No. 15.) It was damaged in part by her earlier success. “Bleeding Love” won’t die at A/C radio—it still ranks second in airplay there, more than seven months after its debut—and programmers are slow to play anything else by her. “Better” crawls up to No. 26 on the A/C list this week, with a bullet. But as with Mraz, even if the song keeps rising on the list, its actual airplay totals will shrink, and a Hot 100 comeback becomes near-impossible.

Anyone want to bet on whether Simon Cowell complains about our inability to fully appreciate his protégé when Idol returns next winter?

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

• Speaking of songs we’ll be stuck with for the rest of the year: In a week when an American-born descendant from Kenya rewrites history, I suppose it’s appropriate that the biggest mover in the Top 10 is from a Senegalese guy who’s made Africa-to-America crossover look easy for years now. Akon's “Right Now (Na Na Na)” is rising up the Hot 100 the old-fashioned way, with steady increases in sales and airplay week after week. The song breaks six figures in digital sales for the first time this week, shifting 117,000 downloads, and it’s now the 15th most-played song at radio barely a month after it debuted.

• Akon’s hand is also behind the biggest leap in the top half of the Hot 100, by Lady GaGa’s über-catchy “Just Dance,” up 22 spaces to No. 27. Akon is uncredited but provides backup vocals on the track, alongside his more prominent protégé Colby O'Donis.

It’s been a pretty good year for the Queens-born O'Donis, who one could call Akon’s attempt to find his own Robin Thicke. The two teamed up on a Top 20 hit last spring with “What You Got,” released on Akon’s Interscope-distributed vanity label Kon Live, and Akon also executive-produced the 19-year-old’s debut album Colby O. That’s the not-so-good part of O’Donis' year—the album debuted healthily with about 10,000 in sales, then plummeted off the album chart two weeks later. The GaGa track—which debuts on the Airplay chart at No. 61 and is currently receiving heavy spins on my local Top 40 station—will likely keep O’Donis’ profile alive until the label picks out a worthy followup single from his own album.

• At a time when modern-rock radio is fully embracing mainstream hard rock—from Rise Against to Guns N’ Roses—post-indie nerds Death Cab for Cutie are doing notably consistent business there. Narrow Stairs is their second album in a row to produce two Top 10 Modern Rock hits, as “Cath…” sneaks up one notch to No. 10, a few months after “I Will Possess Your Heart” peaked at No. 6. In 2005–06, Plans spun off the hits “Soul Meets Body” (No. 5) and “Crooked Teeth” (No. 10).

• A correction: Last week I said that “If I Were a Boy” was the ninth Top 10 hit of Beyoncé’s solo career, but it’s actually her 10th. I forgot about the No. 3–peaking “Beautiful Liar,” her flashy but short-lived duet with Shakira. Honestly, can you blame me?

This means B has already tied Destiny’s Child’s U.S. track record for Top 10 hits, and if “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” makes a big leap into the winner’s circle following its expected digital release in a couple of weeks, she’ll surpass her former group. As of this week, “Ladies” continues to chart on airplay alone, up 12 spots to No. 44.

Top 10s
Last week's position and total weeks charted in parentheses (Digital Songs chart includes total downloads/percentage change in parentheses):

Hot 100
1. T.I. feat. Rihanna, "Live Your Life" (LW No. 2, 6 weeks)
2. T.I., "Whatever You Like" (LW No. 1, 13 weeks)
3. Pink, "So What" (LW No. 4, 11 weeks)
4. Katy Perry, "Hot N Cold" (LW No. 6, 14 weeks)
5. Beyoncé, "If I Were a Boy" (LW No. 3, 4 weeks)
6. Britney Spears, "Womanizer" (LW No. 5, 5 weeks)
7. Kevin Rudolf feat. Lil Wayne, "Let It Rock" (LW No. 7, 10 weeks)
8. Ne-Yo, "Miss Independent" (LW No. 8, 11 weeks)
9. Akon, "Right Now (Na Na Na)" (LW No. 14, 6 weeks)
10. Jason Mraz, "I’m Yours" (LW No. 10, 29 weeks)

Hot Digital Songs
1. T.I. feat. Rihanna, "Live Your Life" (LW No. 3, 184,000 downloads)
2. Taylor Swift, "You're Not Sorry" (CHART DEBUT)
3. Beyoncé, "If I Were a Boy" (LW No. 1)
4. Britney Spears, "Womanizer" (LW No. 2)
5. Pink, "So What" (LW No. 7)
6. Kevin Rudolf feat. Lil Wayne, "Let It Rock" (LW No. 4)
7. Katy Perry, "Hot N Cold" (LW No. 5)
8. T.I., "Whatever You Like" (LW No. 6)
9. Akon, "Right Now (Na Na Na)" (LW No. 12, 117,000 downloads)
10. Jason Mraz, "I’m Yours" (LW No. 9)

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
1. Ne-Yo, "Miss Independent" (LW No. 1, 15 weeks)
2. Jennifer Hudson, "Spotlight" (LW No. 2, 25 weeks)
3. T.I., "Whatever You Like" (LW No. 3, 16 weeks)
4. T.I. feat. Rihanna, "Live Your Life" (LW No. 7, 8 weeks)
5. T-Pain feat. Lil Wayne, "Can't Believe It," (LW No. 4, 17 weeks)
6. Jazmine Sullivan, "Need U Bad" (LW No. 6, 27 weeks)
7. Beyoncé, "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" (LW No. 8, 4 weeks)
8. Lil Wayne feat. Bobby Valentino, "Mrs. Officer" (LW No. 5, 18 weeks)
9. Jazmine Sullivan, "Bust Your Windows" (LW No. 9, 8 weeks)
10. Slim feat. Yung Joc, "So Fly" (LW No. 10, 22 weeks)

Hot Country Songs
1. Carrie Underwood, "Just a Dream" (LW No. 1, 17 weeks)
2. Taylor Swift, "Love Story" (LW No. 3, 8 weeks)
3. Zac Brown Band, "Chicken Fried" (LW No. 6, 20 weeks)
4. Tim McGraw, "Let It Go" (LW No. 5, 16 weeks)
5. Toby Keith, "She Never Cried in Front of Me" (LW No. 2, 19 weeks)
6. Montgomery Gentry, "Roll with Me" (LW No. 8, 15 weeks)
7. Sugarland, "Already Gone" (LW No. 9, 10 weeks)
8. Kenny Chesney, "Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven" (LW No. 4, 14 weeks)
9. Rascal Flatts, "Here" (LW No. 11, 9 weeks)
10. Brad Paisley with Keith Urban, "Start a Band" (LW No. 10, 8 weeks)

Hot Modern Rock Tracks
1. The Offspring, "You're Gonna Go Far, Kid" (LW No. 1, 15 weeks)
2. Weezer, "Troublemaker" (LW No. 2, 17 weeks)
3. Kings of Leon, "Sex on Fire" (LW No. 5, 11 weeks)
4. Rise Against, "Re-Education (Through Labor)" (LW No. 3, 11 weeks)
5. Apocalyptica feat. Adam Gontier, "I Don't Care" (LW No. 4, 18 weeks)
6. The Killers, "Human" (LW No. 6, 6 weeks)
7. Metallica, "The Day That Never Comes" (LW No. 7, 11 weeks)
8. Theory of a Deadman, "Bad Girlfriend" (LW No. 9, 20 weeks)
9. Staind, "Believe" (LW No. 8, 19 weeks)
10. Death Cab for Cutie, "Cath..." (LW No. 11, 10 weeks)

Just a year ago, a 65-space jump to No. 3 would have been enough to make our eyes pop. When Britney Spears did it in early October 2007 with “Gimme More,” it was considered something of a triumph—especially as she was at the height of her meltdown phase and coming off a tragic performance at the 2007 Video Music Awards.

Now, we’re a little harder to impress. In its third week on the charts, “Boy” makes the exact same move from No. 68 to No. 3—and chart geeks yawn. That’s because the last two months have brought three straight leaps all the way to No. 1 from below No. 70. (The most recent was by Spears herself, whose “Womanizer” bested “Gimme More” by shooting from No. 96 to the penthouse.)

Still, Beyoncé’s got nothing to be ashamed of: her gender-flip of Prince’s “If I Was Your Girlfriend” (well, I like to think of it that way) is her ninth career Top 10 single and sold almost 190,000 digital downloads. And it brings her one hit away from matching the career chart record of the group she ditched four years ago.

Destiny’s Child, B’s erstwhile group, scored a total of 10 U.S. Top 10 hits. (That actually understates their global popularity a bit: in Britain, Australia, and Canada, they scored 12.) Those 10 U.S. hits are out of 14 Top 40 hits, which is itself an impressive track record; in a little over six years, all of their singles either made the top 40 of the Hot 100 or didn’t chart here at all (usually because they weren’t promoted here). Among their hits were four No. 1s: “Bills, Bills, Bills” (1999), “Say My Name” (2000), “Independent Women, Part I” (2000) and “Bootylicious” (2001).

With “Boy,” Beyoncé scores her ninth Top 10 hit, just one hit away from Destiny’s total. A couple of her hits have missed the Top 40, but that’s not too shameful (especially in the iTunes era, when some songs chart based on brief spurts of digital sales; DC missed that phenomenon entirely). B also has four career No. 1 hits: “Crazy in Love” (2003), still her all-time best as far as I’m concerned; “Baby Boy” with Sean Paul (2003); “Check on It” with Slim Thug and Bun-B (2006); and “Irreplaceable” (2006, and the top Billboard pop hit for all of 2007). At least for now, “Boy” isn’t going to give her bragging rights to a fifth.

It took Destiny’s Child a little over six years to amass their 10 Top 10s, and that’s pretty much exactly where B is in her career, if we start her “solo” career (which overlaps with the last Destiny’s album and a greatest-hits collection) in 2002. That’s when she made an appearance on “’03 Bonnie and Clyde,” a duet with then-future husband Jay-Z. (Think I’m making up that Prince comparison? B actually sings a couple of lines from “If I Was Your Girlfriend” on that hit.)

It’s quite likely that Beyoncé will tie her former group's Top 10 track record soon, maybe even in the next few weeks. “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It),” the other single leading off I Am… Sasha Fierce, is already a fast-breaking Top 10 R&B hit. It will presumably be available for individual download when the album drops in two weeks, and a sales rush would make “Single Ladies” an easy Top 10 hit on the Hot 100.

Just to address one elephant in the room, which Beyoncé’s casting in the movie Dreamgirls hinted at: B seems to be doing better as a solo act when compared with Diana Ross after she left the Supremes. Ross’s solo career—six No. 1’s, 14 Top 10s, and 30 Top 40s over 15 years—is impressive by almost any reckoning. Any reckoning, that is, except that of the Supremes, the second-biggest pop-chart act of the ’60s (after the Beatles), with 12 No. 1’s, 19 Top 10s, and 26 Top 40s in a remarkably tight six-year-and-change timeframe. (Unlike Destiny’s Child, the Supremes continued to exist after Ross left in 1970—and without her they scored seven more Top 40 hits by 1976.)

I guess, thinking for a minute less like a chart columnist and more like a critic, it could be argued that Beyoncé’s entire career has been as a glorified solo act, and that we might as well tote those DC hits in her column. Unlike dad/manager Mathew Knowles, who by all accounts knew what his girl was doing from the moment Destiny’s Child launched in 1997, it took Berry Gordy a few years to reconceive his star group as a solo-act preparatory vehicle—they only became “Diana Ross and the Supremes” halfway through 1967. On the other hand, unlike Diana, Beyoncé returned to the group in 2004 even after scoring her first raft of solo hits, and the Knowleses insisted on regarding DC as its own distinct thing.

No matter what, among big solo careers that followed already-big group careers—from Beatles/Paul McCartney to Simon and Garfunkel/Paul Simon to Wham!/George Michael—Ms. Knowles already ranks among the bigger ones, and within a few years she’ll probably have Ms. Ross beat for the biggest two-act career by a woman. Not too shabby.

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

• It’s stasis above Beyoncé on the Hot 100, with T.I.’s simultaneous hits holding position in the top two slots. “Whatever You Like” continues to slip in sales—at 137,000 downloads, it’s down 11% this week, after a 5% drop last week—but it’s still growing at radio, and that airplay dominance keeps it in the top slot overall for a seventh week. Even so, T.I.’s chart-topper loses its bullet on this week’s chart. But his “Live Your Life,” at No. 2, is bulleted and still growing. The Rihanna duet sells another 180,000 downloads, and as I kinda predicted last week, it’s now the third most-played song at radio, up from fourth. I’m done trying to predict when or if the T.I./Rihanna duet will return to No. 1, but all signs continue to point to a comeback.

• David Cook’s “Light On” makes a modest chart comeback three weeks after it debuted at a tepid (for him) No. 17 and a week after it dropped off the Hot 100 entirely. A rebound in his digital sales, to about 34,000 copies, fuels a re-entry on the big chart at No. 60. It remains absent at most radio stations, including all rock formats and most Top 40 stations—with the exception of Adult Top 40, where it’s up seven slots to rank 29th.

The next week or two might be really interesting for Cook’s chart performance. As of this writing, on iTunes, “Light On” is down, relatively, once again. But that will likely all change in the last 24 hours of the tracking week, after Cook performs the song on a Saturday Night Live episode featuring an appearance by John McCain. A sales boost is inevitable, and the only question is how big that one day will be. SNL has already worked wonders for British singer Adele, who makes her Hot 100 debut this week with “Chasing Pavements” at No. 82, after her performance on the show’s highly-rated episode featuring Sarah Palin. With 25,000 downloads, she’s up 73% over the prior week—but this is actually her second chart week after the SNL performance; one day of sales in the prior chart week did give her a massive sales boost, but not enough to make the big chart immediately.

Bottom line: expect a bit of a pop for Cook next week and maybe a bigger boost the week after—which will help his promotional team get what they really need: the attention of thus far uninterested radio programmers.

• Only one song, Brad Paisley’s former No. 1 “Waitin’ on a Woman,” dropped out of the Country Top 10 this week, and it’s replaced by a new song from… Brad Paisley. “Start a Band,” a duet with Keith Urban, is the leadoff single from Paisley’s forthcoming album and 2008 Worst Album Cover Of The Year contender Play. You have to admire the guy’s consistency: he pumped four Country No. 1 singles from 2007 Worst Cover nominee 5th Gear; he re-released the album (booooo!) with new songs on it, including the aforementioned “Waitin’…,” scoring a fifth consecutive No. 1; and now he moves back into the winners’ circle the very week the previous hit falls out. Unlike slugger Kenny Chesney, who dominated radio last week with six hits from his new album, Paisley is Country’s Joe DiMaggio, batting for a single each time he steps to the plate.

• In a horrible real-world week for Jennifer Hudson, the parallel world of the charts is also a little unkind, as “Spotlight” falls out of the R&B/Hip-Hop chart’s top spot after two weeks there. I would surmise that the gentle, midtempo song is becoming somewhat inadequate radio programming compared with the magnitude of her family tragedy. No word on whether or if Arista will promote a followup single from Hudson’s album, and it’s hard to speculate how her personal travails will affect her radio profile over the next few weeks. The death of a star herself has given chart boosts to the likes of Aaliyah, but Hudson’s sympathy-inspiring situation is rather different.

Forgetting all this awfulness for a moment, the one nice thing about the turnover in the R&B chart’s top spot is who takes over: Ne-Yo, with the utterly superb single “Miss Independent.” Amazingly, this is his first chart-topper there, about two and a half years after he first reached No. 1 on the Hot 100 with “So Sick.”

Top 10s
Last week's position and total weeks charted in parentheses (Digital Songs chart includes total downloads/percentage change in parentheses):

Hot 100
1. T.I., "Whatever You Like" (LW No. 1, 12 weeks)
2. T.I. feat. Rihanna, "Live Your Life" (LW No. 2, 5 weeks)
3. Beyoncé, "If I Were a Boy" (LW No. 68, 3 weeks)
4. Pink, "So What" (LW No. 3, 10 weeks)
5. Britney Spears, "Womanizer" (LW No. 4, 4 weeks)
6. Katy Perry, "Hot N Cold" (LW No. 5, 13 weeks)
7. Kevin Rudolf feat. Lil Wayne, "Let It Rock" (LW No. 7, 9 weeks)
8. Ne-Yo, "Miss Independent" (LW No. 8, 10 weeks)
9. Rihanna, "Disturbia" (LW No. 6, 19 weeks)
10. Jason Mraz, "I’m Yours" (LW No. 13, 28 weeks)

Hot Digital Songs
1. Beyoncé, "If I Were a Boy" (CHART DEBUT, 190,000 downloads)
2. Britney Spears, "Womanizer" (LW No. 1, 181,000 downloads)
3. T.I. feat. Rihanna, "Live Your Life" (LW No. 2, 180,000 downloads)
4. Kevin Rudolf feat. Lil Wayne, "Let It Rock" (LW No. 7, 142,000 downloads)
5. Katy Perry, "Hot N Cold" (LW No. 6, 137,000 downloads)
6. T.I., "Whatever You Like" (LW No. 4, 137,000 downloads)
7. Pink, "So What" (LW No. 5, 133,000 downloads)
8. Kanye West, "Love Lockdown" (LW No. 8, 96,000 downloads)
9. Jason Mraz, "I’m Yours" (LW No. 12, 96,000 downloads)
10. Taylor Swift, "Love Story" (LW No. 9, 88,000 downloads)

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
1. Ne-Yo, "Miss Independent" (LW No. 2, 14 weeks)
2. Jennifer Hudson, "Spotlight" (LW No. 1, 24 weeks)
3. T.I., "Whatever You Like" (LW No. 3, 15 weeks)
4. T-Pain feat. Lil Wayne, "Can't Believe It," (LW No. 4, 16 weeks)
5. Lil Wayne feat. Bobby Valentino, "Mrs. Officer" (LW No. 6, 17 weeks)
6. Jazmine Sullivan, "Need U Bad" (LW No. 5, 26 weeks)
7. T.I. feat. Rihanna, "Live Your Life" (LW No. 7, 7 weeks)
8. Beyoncé, "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" (LW No. 10, 3 weeks)
9. Jazmine Sullivan, "Bust Your Windows" (LW No. 8, 7 weeks)
10. Slim feat. Yung Joc, "So Fly" (LW No. 9, 21 weeks)

Hot Country Songs
1. Carrie Underwood, "Just a Dream" (LW No. 3, 16 weeks)
2. Toby Keith, "She Never Cried in Front of Me" (LW No. 1, 18 weeks)
3. Taylor Swift, "Love Story" (LW No. 4, 7 weeks)
4. Kenny Chesney, "Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven" (LW No. 2, 13 weeks)
5. Tim McGraw, "Let It Go" (LW No. 6, 15 weeks)
6. Zac Brown Band, "Chicken Fried" (LW No. 7, 19 weeks)
7. Darius Rucker, "Don't Think I Don't Think About It" (LW No. 5, 28 weeks)
8. Montgomery Gentry, "Roll with Me" (LW No. 9, 14 weeks)
9. Sugarland, "Already Gone" (LW No. 8, 9 weeks)
10. Brad Paisley with Keith Urban, "Start a Band" (LW No. 13, 20 weeks)

Hot Modern Rock Tracks
1. The Offspring, "You're Gonna Go Far, Kid" (LW No. 1, 14 weeks)
2. Weezer, "Troublemaker" (LW No. 2, 16 weeks)
3. Rise Against, "Re-Education (Through Labor)" (LW No. 3, 10 weeks)
4. Apocalyptica feat. Adam Gontier, "I Don't Care" (LW No. 4, 17 weeks)
5. Kings of Leon, "Sex on Fire" (LW No. 5, 10 weeks)
6. The Killers, "Human" (LW No. 6, 5 weeks)
7. Metallica, "The Day That Never Comes" (LW No. 8, 10 weeks)
8. Staind, "Believe" (LW No. 7, 18 weeks)
9. Theory of a Deadman, "Bad Girlfriend" (LW No. 9, 19 weeks)
10. Nickelback, "Gotta Be Somebody" (LW No. 10, 4 weeks)

That durable smash by Atlanta rap deity T.I. moves into the penthouse for the third time since late August. Directly behind it is T.I.’s simultaneous hit, the Rihanna duet “Live Your Life,” which moves up to No. 2 two weeks after it spent a sole week in the top spot.

After I bravely predicted a few weeks ago that the irresistible “Life” would dominate the fall and make “Whatever” a distant memory, the T-and-Ri pairing has had a hard time holding onto the top spot. Last week’s coup by Britney Spears’s well-hyped “Womanizer” was pretty predictable. But the idea that T.I.’s new hit would also have to fight off his older one—a loping, sluggish song that’s neither a ballad nor a club jam—was a development few saw coming, least of all me.

If there’s one thing it shows, it’s that for all our talk here in recent weeks about the dominance of digital sales on the charts these days, airplay still matters. “Whatever” wouldn’t still be competing for the top slot without radio’s fervent support.

On the Hot 100, “Whatever You Like” is in its sixth non-consecutive week at No. 1, but the more telling statistic is it’s now in its fifth week as the most-played song in the country. It’s not doing shabbily at iTunes and other digital stores, mind you, shifting 154,000 downloads. That makes it the chart week’s fourth-biggest seller—impressive, especially for a two-month-old single, but not enough to top the big chart if it weren’t for all those radio spins.

The airplay is coming from multiple formats—from the more predictable R&B/hip-hop and rhythmic Top 40 stations, where it’s currently or recently has been top-ranked; to mainstream Top 40, where it’s now in the top five; and even the Latin rhythm format, where it recently made the top 10. (In any given week, Latin stations spin a half-dozen or more current English-language hits alongside regulars like Juanes and Daddy Yankee.)

One of the smarter comments I received this week on my special bonus column on AC/DC’s singles-chart history came from a self-proclaimed former “radio guy” who worked at a rock station in the ’80s and ’90s. He observed how certain hits would be affected by “dayparting,” the industry term for segregating certain songs to parts of the day when they’re likely to find favor with that hour’s listeners. The average radio station doesn’t actually have one monolithic type of listener all day and night—older listeners tend to tune in mostly during the day, up through drive time, then leave the radio to teens at night, when more aggressive or adventurous stuff can be played.

In that light, it probably doesn’t hurt that “Whatever You Like” is T.I.’s first hit in which he does almost no rapping—except for his opening chitchat as the song starts, the whole song is sung. That means program directors can safely slot it in both daylight hours, when older demographics would object to anything with heavy straight rapping, and at night, when T.I.-loving kids will sing along.

In a normal post-iTunes era week on the Hot 100, whatever’s on top of the Digital Songs list is also No. 1 on the big chart. That’s because the sales list tends to be topped by the smash of the moment—new records enjoying a burst of sales from eager fans—and those sales can be so large, they swamp whatever advantage the most-played radio hits have. But in certain weeks where the top-sellers are all relatively evenly matched, like this week, airplay makes a big difference.

Among the top four digital sellers—Spears’ “Womanizer,” the T.I.–Rihanna duet, Taylor Swift’s new hit “Fearless,” and T.I.’s “Whatever”—there’s only a difference of about 47,000 downloads. That might sound like a lot, but just for comparison, last week the spread among the top four was almost 130,000 copies; the top single (Britney’s) outsold the runner-up (T.I./Rihanna) by almost 60,000 alone.

Meanwhile, over on the Hot 100 Airplay list, which ranks spins across all current-based radio formats, these four records are all over the place: “Whatever” ranks first, “Life” ranks fourth, “Womanizer” is 38th, and Swift’s latest isn’t registering at all (radio is still focusing on her older “Love Story”). That radio lead is what makes “Whatever” the overall leader on the Hot 100.

As impressive as “Whatever” looks right now, beneath the surface “Life” is still the outperformer. The duet’s fourth-place ranking at radio is in only its fourth week charting—absurdly fast, considering how slowly programmers normally add new records. (The Britney record is also in its fourth week at radio and isn’t doing nearly that well, hampered in part by the smaller number of radio formats playing her.) “Life” moved from No. 45 on the airplay chart three weeks ago, to No. 22, then No. 9, now No. 4, an Olympian feat of playlist penetration. All this, and it’s still selling like crazy: at 198,000 copies, “Life” is only about 3,000 short of Britney’s digital downloads.

What I’m saying is, there’s a great chance “Live Your Life” will return to No. 1, even if “Whatever” continues to get more airplay and “Womanizer” continues to outsell it. When “Life” went to No. 1 two weeks ago, its record-setting sales total made airplay numbers moot. Now that its sales are less massive (but still big!) airplay matters, and now the song’s got lots of it. Another week of rising airplay—let’s say it becomes the third-most-played radio hit—and sales in the neighborhood of 200K again would likely give it enough chart points to recapture the flag.

That is, unless something stops it. A song completely out of left field—currently outside the Top Five, Top 10 or even Top 40—could shoot to No. 1 on a big sales burst. Of the last four No. 1 hits, three (“Whatever,” “Life,” “Womanizer”) shot to the top from below No. 70, and we might see yet another pole-vaulter next week. At this writing, the top seller on iTunes is Beyoncé’s “If I Were a Boy,” which just hit the store on Tuesday and has been charting on the Hot 100 for two weeks on airplay alone. Currently No. 68, “Boy” will surely leap into the Top Five next week and, with a sales total similar to T.I.’s or Britney’s, could very well leap to the top.

Nonetheless, if there’s one part of my faulty pro-“Life” prediction that might bear out, it’s that the O-Zone–sampling hit will likely be wafting from radios right through the holidays, whether it makes a comeback to the penthouse or not.

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

• How ’bout another prediction? “Fearless,” that new hit by Taylor Swift, which makes its Hot 100 debut at No. 9, will drop big-time on next week’s chart. Why so confident? Well, for one thing, as I hinted above, the debut is due entirely to sales and not airplay, and that won’t last. (Check the current standings at iTunes: “Fearless” is down to No. 12, after topping Apple’s list last week and starting at No. 3 on Billboard’s full Digital Songs list.) For another, most of the blockbuster digital sellers we’ve seen in the last few weeks have enjoyed a week or two of high Hot 100 placement before falling, sometimes precipitously. Take a look at these performance snapshots by recent top sellers that had big Hot 100 debuts:

Taylor Swift, “Change”: Debuted at No. 10 (August 30), two weeks later at No. 100, now off the chart.
Taylor Swift, “Love Story”: Debuted at No. 16 (September 27), next week No. 5, now No. 14.
Christina Aguilera, “Keeps Gettin’ Better”: Debuted at No. 7 (October 18), last week No. 17, now No. 27.
Nickelback, “Gotta Be Somebody”: Debuted at No. 10 (October 18), last week No. 16, now No. 17.
The Killers, “Human”: Debuted at No. 32 (October 18), last week No. 52, now No. 58.
David Cook, “Light On”: Debuted at No. 17 (October 18), last week No. 66, now off the chart.

In this light, the aforementioned hits by Britney and T.I. look especially impressive—even after their initial weeks of big sales, they’re still riding high. But here’s the difference: those high-flying Britney and T.I. hits began their lives with solid radio airplay, then piled big sales onto it. They didn’t debut high on the chart, like the hits listed above from Swift, Aguilera et al. If those songs had posted strong airplay first, they’d have debuted low on the Hot 100, then jumped up the chart when digital sales came pouring in. Instead, they had anemic airplay, scored a week or two of big sales from rabid fans, but then had nothing to keep them aloft when sales fell back to earth.

Are you detecting the theme of this week’s column? Sales are flashy and overpowering, but airplay is what keeps hits alive.

• Toby Keith takes over No. 1 on Hot Country Songs with “She Never Cried in Front of Me (Even When People Accused Her of Spending Too Much on Her Campaign Wardrobe).” (Okay, I made up the part in parentheses.)

With that move, Keith retains his lead as the guy with the most country chart-toppers this decade. Since 2000, Mr. Boot-in-Yer-Ass has topped the chart 14 times (out of 17 times total in his career). That beats 12 post-millennial No. 1s each for two other fellas: Phillies scion and Obama supporter Tim McGraw, and weeping lonelyheart Kenny Chesney, who topped last week’s chart and gets evicted by Keith this week.

• Speaking of Chesney, he appears to be soothing his woman troubles by dueting with an array of different men. Our own Michaelangelo Matos wrote me this morning to point out that he’s got three duets in the lower 50s of the Country chart: “I'm Alive” by Kenny Chesney with Dave Matthews is at No. 55; “That Lucky Old Sun (Just Rolls Around Heaven All Day)” credited to Kenny Chesney with Willie Nelson is at No. 56; and “Down the Road” by Kenny Chesney with Mac McAnally checks in at No. 59. All come from Chesney’s new chart-topping album Lucky Old Sun, which generates no less than one-tenth of this week’s 60-position Country chart: six new Chesney songs are being spun enough by radio stations to make the list.

• Don’t look now, but Kings of Leon, the so-called “Southern Strokes,” are charting at least as well as the actual Strokes. “Sex on Fire,” already a No. 1 pop hit in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia, is now a Top Five Modern Rock hit here. Its No. 5 peak matches that of the Strokes’ highest-charting rock song, 2002’s “Last Nite.” Does the Christina Aguilera mashup come next?

Top 10s
Last week's position and total weeks charted in parentheses (Digital Songs chart includes total downloads/percentage change in parentheses):

Hot 100
1. T.I., "Whatever You Like" (LW No. 2, 11 weeks)
2. T.I. feat. Rihanna, "Live Your Life" (LW No. 3, 4 weeks)
3. Pink, "So What" (LW No. 4, 9 weeks)
4. Britney Spears, "Womanizer" (LW No. 1, 3 weeks)
5. Katy Perry, "Hot N Cold" (LW No. 5, 12 weeks)
6. Rihanna, "Disturbia" (LW No. 6, 18 weeks)
7. Kevin Rudolf feat. Lil Wayne, "Let It Rock" (LW No. 7, 8 weeks)
8. Ne-Yo, "Miss Independent" (LW No. 9, 9 weeks)
9. Taylor Swift, "Fearless" (CHART DEBUT)
10. T-Pain feat. Lil Wayne, "Can't Believe It" (LW No. 8, 12 weeks)

Hot Digital Songs
1. Britney Spears, "Womanizer" (LW No. 1, 201,000 downloads)
2. T.I. feat. Rihanna, "Live Your Life" (LW No. 2, 198,000 downloads)
3. Taylor Swift, "Fearless" (CHART DEBUT, 162,000 downloads)
4. T.I., "Whatever You Like" (LW No. 3, 154,000 downloads)
5. Pink, "So What" (LW No. 4, 147,000 downloads)
6. Katy Perry, "Hot N Cold" (LW No. 7, 141,000 downloads)
7. Kevin Rudolf feat. Lil Wayne, "Let It Rock" (LW No. 5, 139,000 downloads)
8. Kanye West, "Love Lockdown" (LW No. 7, 95,000 downloads)
9. Taylor Swift, "Love Story" (LW No. 9, 94,000 downloads)
10. Rihanna, "Disturbia" (LW No. 11, 87,000 downloads)

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
1. Jennifer Hudson, "Spotlight" (LW No. 1, 23 weeks)
2. Ne-Yo, "Miss Independent" (LW No. 3, 13 weeks)
3. T.I., "Whatever You Like" (LW No. 2, 14 weeks)
4. T-Pain feat. Lil Wayne, "Can't Believe It," (LW No. 4, 15 weeks)
5. Jazmine Sullivan, "Need U Bad" (LW No. 5, 25 weeks)
6. Lil Wayne feat. Bobby Valentino, "Mrs. Officer" (LW No. 6, 16 weeks)
7. T.I. feat. Rihanna, "Live Your Life" (LW No. 7, 6 weeks)
8. Jazmine Sullivan, "Bust Your Windows" (LW No. 11, 6 weeks)
9. Slim feat. Yung Joc, "So Fly" (LW No. 8, 20 weeks)
10. Beyoncé, "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" (LW No. 20, 2 weeks)

Hot Country Songs
1. Toby Keith, "She Never Cried in Front of Me" (LW No. 2, 17 weeks)
2. Kenny Chesney, "Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven" (LW No. 1, 12 weeks)
3. Carrie Underwood, "Just a Dream" (LW No. 3, 15 weeks)
4. Taylor Swift, "Love Story" (LW No. 7, 6 weeks)
5. Darius Rucker, "Don't Think I Don't Think About It" (LW No. 4, 27 weeks)
6. Tim McGraw, "Let It Go" (LW No. 6, 14 weeks)
7. Zac Brown Band, "Chicken Fried" (LW No. 11, 18 weeks)
8. Sugarland, "Already Gone" (LW No. 9, 8 weeks)
9. Montgomery Gentry, "Roll with Me" (LW No. 10, 13 weeks)
10. Brad Paisley, "Waitin' on a Woman" (LW No. 8, 19 weeks)

Hot Modern Rock Tracks
1. The Offspring, "You're Gonna Go Far, Kid" (LW No. 1, 13 weeks)
2. Weezer, "Troublemaker" (LW No. 2, 15 weeks)
3. Rise Against, "Re-Education (Through Labor)" (LW No. 4, 9 weeks)
4. Apocalyptica feat. Adam Gontier, "I Don't Care" (LW No. 3, 16 weeks)
5. Kings of Leon, "Sex on Fire" (LW No. 8, 9 weeks)
6. The Killers, "Human" (LW No. 6, 4 weeks)
7. Staind, "Believe" (LW No. 5, 17 weeks)
8. Metallica, "The Day That Never Comes" (LW No. 7, 9 weeks)
9. Theory of a Deadman, "Bad Girlfriend" (LW No. 9, 18 weeks)
10. Nickelback, "Gotta Be Somebody" (LW No. 15, 3 weeks)

It was also the last time former Mouseketeer, aspiring starlet and pop fetish object Britney Spears would top the premier U.S. singles chart—until this week, when Spears (as predicted) shoots from the chart’s bottom rungs to the penthouse with “Womanizer.” In the process, she ousts rap king T.I. and duet partner Rihanna; defeats a record he set twice in the last two months for the biggest leap to the top in Billboard history; beats Mariah Carey’s record for one-week digital sales by a female act; and consummates a year-long effort to rehabilitate her career.

When I speak about Britney’s rehabilitation, I’m not just referring to her well-publicized efforts to turn around a half-decade of tabloid-level personal breakdown. I’m also referring to her surprisingly checkered U.S. chart history. Indeed, the first question some of you might be asking yourselves is, How is this only her second No. 1 hit?

The short answer: she’s arguably gotten screwed by the refs. To a chart geek like me, Spears comes off as a victim of a decade of erratic industry practices and radical shifts in Hot 100 chart rules.

By the same token, the industry practices and chart rules that have hurt her all these years help her disproportionately this week. Last week, a solid showing at radio brought “Womanizer” to the Hot 100 a bit earlier than expected, and it debuted at No. 96. This week, sales of 286,000 make radio almost irrelevant, and the song shoots to No. 1. Over the past four years, the Hot 100 has become a chart where radio airplay is pretty important but digital sales are massively important—and the first two chart weeks of “Womanizer” show it.

In 1998–99, when Spears scored her first hit, the Hot 100 was in transition. Back then, the digital market was essentially nonexistent, the physical single was disappearing, and Billboard was about to make a move that would give radio even greater sway over chart performance than it already had. In December 1998, the Hot 100 was converted from a singles chart to a songs chart, making album cuts and promotional tracks not available for sale to the public eligible to chart for the first time. So began a half-decade of total radio dominance, with singles sales an afterthought.

Mind you, “…Baby One More Time” was released as a retail single, and it benefited mightily, reaching No. 1 on the Hot 100 thanks largely to the platinum sales it racked up in the weeks before Spears’ similarly-titled album dropped in 1999. But as Jive elected to release fewer of her subsequent hits as singles, and as radio came to dominate the Hot 100, “…Baby” was the last Spears single to benefit so greatly from sales for years.

Here’s the complete list of her Hot 100 hits—I have bolded her Top 10s:

“...Baby One More Time” (No. 1, 1999)
“Sometimes” (No. 21, 1999)
“(You Drive Me) Crazy” (No. 10, 1999)
“From the Bottom of My Broken Heart” (No. 14, 2000)
“Oops!...I Did It Again” (No. 9, 2000)
“Lucky” (No. 23, 2000)
“Stronger” (No. 11, 2000)
“I'm a Slave 4 U” (No. 27, 2001)
“Overprotected” (No. 86, 2002)
“Me Against the Music” (feat. Madonna) (No. 35, 2003)
“Toxic” (No. 9, 2004)
“Everytime” (No. 15, 2004)
“Outrageous” (No. 79, 2004)
“Do Somethin'“ (No. 100, 2005)
“Gimme More” (No. 3, 2007)
“Piece of Me” (No. 18, 2007)
“Break the Ice” (No. 43, 2008)
“Womanizer” (No. 1, 2008)

That’s six Top 10s out of 18 hits, or one out of three. (I’m not even including songs Jive promoted that didn’t make the Hot 100.) It’s a respectable yield over a decade for the average pop star, but Spears isn’t average—she has been, for better or worse, the defining female pop star of her time. Madonna’s or Mariah Carey’s people wouldn’t tolerate this kind of performance; how did Spears end up with such a mixed record?

(You can quip here if you like about the quality of Spears’ oeuvre, and I’m not her biggest fan either—I waver from song to song. But (a) since when have the charts been entirely about artistic merit? And (b) it’s arguable that the sheer volume of media attention and label promotion Spears has received should produce better results than this.)

Here’s what you don’t see glancing at the above list:

• Four of those hits (“Sometimes,” “Oops,” “Lucky,” “Overprotected”) were airplay-only in the United States.

• Four more (“Crazy,” “Slave,” “Everytime,” “Outrageous”) were released in the States only on 12-inch vinyl. The last two of those vinyl singles were also available on iTunes—but in 2004, at a time when digital sales weren’t included on the Hot 100.

• Also in 2004, the masterful “Toxic” was a huge seller at iTunes, but again, at that time it didn’t count; the song only squeaked into the Top 10 by ranking No. 1 at Top 40 radio.

• Two of her earlier hits, “…Broken Heart” and “Stronger,” were released as normal CD singles and sold superbly (platinum and gold, respectively); but by then, airplay was so critical to chart position that the songs’ underperformance at radio prevented either one from making the Top 10.

• The last five songs on the list charted in an era when iTunes sales counted toward the Hot 100, and all of them—even the unpromoted, No. 100–peaking “Do Somethin’”—probably charted better than they otherwise would have, thanks entirely to digital sales.

In short, after “…Baby,” there’s some kind of caveat on practically every hit Spears ever had, related to format, chart quirks and the development of the digital economy, rather than the relative quality or fan-friendliness of any of the songs. If Spears had been a pop star in an earlier era, when singles availability was predictable and airplay had a normal influence over the charts, she might not have gone Top 10 every time, but she likely would have had a more consistent chart presence.

Judging both on quality and on cultural resonance, the thumping “Womanizer” isn’t half as great a song as, say, the lower-charting “Toxic.” But let’s give Britney her due. Radio wouldn’t have jumped on “Womanizer” two weeks ago if the song weren’t catchy, and if she weren’t perceived as “back” in a pop-star sense. The solid hits she scored off last year’s Blackout went a long way toward reestablishing her hitmaking credibility.

And the public wouldn’t have snapped up nearly 300,000 copies of the song if she weren’t an object of fascination again, one worthy of 99 cents and about four minutes of their time.

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

• I can’t begin to predict who’ll be No. 1 on the big chart next week, because the contenders are all over the place in terms of sales and airplay. “Womanizer” continues to sell strongly, ranked second at iTunes at this writing; with continued airplay growth, it could hold onto the top slot, but I wouldn’t count on it.

That’s because T.I. is hot-hot-hot and could make a comeback at No. 1, but it’s hard to guess which song will do it: amazingly, both of his simultaneous hits earn bullets this week. That includes the Rihanna duet, “Live Your Life,” which drops to No. 3 but continues to explode in radio airplay; and the Weird Al–parodied “Whatever You Like,” which is the most-played song at radio and holds at No. 2. Not since OutKast’s dual smashes in late 2003, “Hey Ya!” and “The Way You Move,” has one act kept two hits aloft on the charts with seemingly equal strength.

Finally, there’s an outside chance country ingénue Taylor Swift could score her first pop No. 1, with a song that’s not even on the chart right now. “Fearless,” the third advance single and the title track from her why-don’t-they-just-release-it-already sophomore album, is currently outselling both Spears and T.I. at iTunes. With a total dearth of airplay at either pop or country radio so far, I’ll bet she debuts somewhere in the Top Five next week. But No. 1 is a long shot—yes, T.I. and Britney shot to the top thanks to blockbuster iTunes sales, but early airplay gave them the edge as well.

• Remember that quip I made last week, that the leap-to–No. 1 record couldn’t be set too many more times, because we’re running out of Hot 100 positions for songs to leap from? Ha ha! The record could have been beaten yet again, if Beyoncé’s people had released her new single this week.

“If I Were a Boy” debuts on the Hot 100 at, no kidding, No. 100. As Fred Bronson points out in his Billboard column, if “Boy” had landed at iTunes this Tuesday and sold in numbers similar to Britney’s last week and T.I.’s the week before, it likely would have vaulted from bottom to top, No. 100 to No. 1, on next week’s chart. But with no digital single announced by Sony for “Boy,” the biggest-leap record—which I hope I won’t have to discuss for at least the rest of 2008—will remain with Britney for a while.

In the meantime, expect “Boy” to rise modestly on the Hot 100 for a few weeks, then explode when B’s new double album I Am… drops in mid-November and its songs are all on-sale at iTunes. Pop radio airplay for “Boy” is just starting, but on black radio, Beyoncé’s return is greeted more warmly. Not only does “Boy” debut on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs at No. 61, the accompanying leadoff track, “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It),” explodes onto that chart all the way up at No. 20.

• Jennifer Hudson’s breakthrough performance as a singer came with a song made famous in the early ’80s by Jennifer Holliday: the whooping, stand-back-sister smash “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going,” which was a No. 1 R&B hit for Holliday in 1982 taken from the original Broadway Dreamgirls. It’s probably just as well that Hudson’s remake from Dreamgirls, the movie, didn’t equal Holliday’s, peaking in 2007 at No. 14 on the R&B/Hip-Hop chart. But it’s equally poetic that Hudson has now scored her own No. 1 hit on this chart, with her first non-soundtrack single, “Spotlight.” For diva-lovers and catfight-haters everywhere, it’s a win-win, really.

(Personally, I still prefer the Jake Gyllenhaal version of the Dreamgirls song, but maybe that’s just me.)

Top 10s
Last week's position and total weeks charted in parentheses (Digital Songs chart includes total downloads/percentage change in parentheses):

Hot 100
1. Britney Spears, "Womanizer" (LW No. 96, 2 weeks)
2. T.I., "Whatever You Like" (LW No. 2, 10 weeks)
3. T.I. feat. Rihanna, "Live Your Life" (LW No. 1, 3 weeks)
4. Pink, "So What" (LW No. 3, 8 weeks)
5. Katy Perry, "Hot N Cold" (LW No. 6, 11 weeks)
6. Rihanna, "Disturbia" (LW No. 4, 17 weeks)
7. Kevin Rudolf feat. Lil Wayne, "Let It Rock" (LW No. 5, 7 weeks)
8. T-Pain feat. Lil Wayne, "Can't Believe It" (LW No. 8, 11 weeks)
9. Ne-Yo, "Miss Independent" (LW No. 11, 8 weeks)
10. M.I.A., "Paper Planes" (LW No. 9, 13 weeks)

Hot Digital Songs
1. Britney Spears, "Womanizer" (CHART DEBUT, 286,000 downloads)
2. T.I. feat. Rihanna, "Live Your Life" (LW No. 1, 226,000 downloads)
3. T.I., "Whatever You Like" (LW No. 4, 162,000 downloads)
4. Pink, "So What" (LW No. 2, 157,000 downloads)
5. Kevin Rudolf feat. Lil Wayne, "Let It Rock" (LW No. 3, 146,000 downloads)
6. Katy Perry, "Hot N Cold" (LW No. 7, 134,000 downloads)
7. Kanye West, "Love Lockdown" (LW No. 12, 94,000 downloads)
8. Nickelback, "Gotta Be Somebody" (LW No. 6, 93,000 downloads)
9. Taylor Swift, "Love Story" (LW No. 9, 93,000 downloads)
10. Christina Aguilera, "Keeps Gettin' Better" (LW No. 5, 88,000 downloads)

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
1. Jennifer Hudson, "Spotlight" (LW No. 2, 22 weeks)
2. T.I., "Whatever You Like" (LW No. 1, 13 weeks)
3. Ne-Yo, "Miss Independent" (LW No. 5, 12 weeks)
4. T-Pain feat. Lil Wayne, "Can't Believe It," (LW No. 3, 14 weeks)
5. Jazmine Sullivan, "Need U Bad" (LW No. 4, 24 weeks)
6. Lil Wayne feat. Bobby Valentino, "Mrs. Officer" (LW No. 6, 15 weeks)
7. T.I. feat. Rihanna, "Live Your Life" (LW No. 8, 5 weeks)
8. Slim feat. Yung Joc, "So Fly" (LW No. 13, 19 weeks)
9. Keyshia Cole, "Heaven Sent" (LW No. 9, 29 weeks)
10. Lil Wayne feat. T-Pain, "Got Money" (LW No. 7, 22 weeks)

Hot Country Songs
1. Kenny Chesney, "Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven" (LW No. 1, 11 weeks)
2. Toby Keith, "She Never Cried in Front of Me" (LW No. 3, 16 weeks)
3. Carrie Underwood, "Just a Dream" (LW No. 4, 14 weeks)
4. Darius Rucker, "Don't Think I Don't Think About It" (LW No. 2, 26 weeks)
5. Kid Rock, "All Summer Long" (LW No. 5, 22 weeks)
6. Tim McGraw, "Let It Go" (LW No. 8, 13 weeks)
7. Taylor Swift, "Love Story" (LW No. 9, 5 weeks)
8. Brad Paisley, "Waitin' on a Woman" (LW No. 6, 18 weeks)
9. Sugarland, "Already Gone" (LW No. 11, 7 weeks)
10. Montgomery Gentry, "Roll with Me" (LW No. 12, 12 weeks)

Hot Modern Rock Tracks
1. The Offspring, "You're Gonna Go Far, Kid" (LW No. 1, 12 weeks)
2. Weezer, "Troublemaker" (LW No. 2, 14 weeks)
3. Apocalyptica feat. Adam Gontier, "I Don't Care" (LW No. 4, 15 weeks)
4. Rise Against, "Re-Education (Through Labor)" (LW No. 5, 8 weeks)
5. Staind, "Believe" (LW No. 3, 16 weeks)
6. The Killers, "Human" (LW No. 8, 3 weeks)
7. Metallica, "The Day That Never Comes" (LW No. 6, 8 weeks)
8. Kings of Leon, "Sex on Fire" (LW No. 10, 8 weeks)
9. Theory of a Deadman, "Bad Girlfriend" (LW No. 9, 17 weeks)
10. Carolina Liar, "I’m Not Over" (LW No. 7, 24 weeks)

With that 79-place jump (which, ahem…I called last week), T.I. accomplishes two major chart feats. New No. 1 “Live Your Life” featuring Rihanna sets the record for the biggest leap to the top in history—which would be unremarkable, given the frequency with which this record has been broken recently, if not for the fact that T.I. is beating himself, having reset the mark just six weeks ago.

More impressively, by ousting his own “Whatever You Like,” T.I. joins a very elite club: acts that succeeded themselves at No. 1. During the Hot 100’s entire 50-year history, there have only been eight, and if you ignore featuring-artist credits, the number is six.

Besides these chart feats, T.I.’s hit also sets a record for the biggest debut sales week for a digital single. But we might want to get used to that happening. Already, iTunes is reporting a wave of new best-sellers as the music industry’s last blockbuster holiday hits full swing.

Let’s hold off on discussing T.I.’s record-setting leap (yawn) and talk about how the firehose of digital sales affects his single and several others.

Since Apple’s iTunes Store opened for business five years ago, the week just after Christmas has set a new record for digital sales volume, as millions of new iPod owners rush to their computers to fill the devices. By early January, Apple has crowned a new song the all-time one-week best-seller. The most recent beneficiary and current record-holder is Flo Rida, whose pop-rap smash (and likely No. 1 hit for all of 2008) “Low” sold nearly half a million downloads in the week between Christmas and New Year’s.

Just to give you an idea of scale, in a typical week, maybe five songs sell more than 100,000 copies. During that most recent late-December week, the top 24 songs all sold that well, and the 10 best-sellers moved more than 200,000 each.

That’s what makes this otherwise ordinary early-October sales week notable: almost the entire Top 10 of Billboard’s Digital Songs chart sold in the six-figure range, and each song in the Top Five moved more than 140,000. That’s not Christmas-big, but it’s impressive at a time that doesn’t seem to have any specific holiday or special-event-related trigger. If the forthcoming (inevitably dreadful) holiday season has any effect at all, it’s the fact that all of the blockbuster albums on which the industry has pinned its fourth-quarter hopes have leadoff singles, and they’re all dropping now.

These include new tracks by Christina Aguilera, Nickelback and David Cook, all of which we discussed in this column last week. Two of those three records make even more impressive Hot 100 debuts than I expected, and a fourth one I didn’t mention last week outperforms expectations as well.

Aguilera’s “Keeps Gettin’ Better” and Nickelback’s “Gotta Be Somebody” both debut within the big chart’s Top 10—at Nos. 7 and 10, respectively. Each is fueled by a decent amount of airplay and a whole lot of sales: 144,000 downloads for Xtina, 127,000 for the Canuck post-grungers.

The Cook single, by contrast, is a bit of an underperformer. With 109,000 downloads, Cook’s “Light On” makes a respectable Hot 100 showing at No. 17. But compared with fellow American Idol finalist David Archuleta, whose “Crush” debuted at No. 2 in August with 166,000 downloads in its first week, those numbers look a little… um, light. (Sorry.) Where Cook’s hit goes from here will depend on radio’s embrace, and so far things don’t look good: “Light On” is totally absent not only from the all-genre Hot 100 Airplay list but from both the Mainstream and Modern Rock charts, despite Cook’s status as the first Idol “rocker” winner and the presence of co-writer Chris Cornell.

Finally, the Killers' catchiest song (and weirdest chorus lyric) in years results in their second-biggest Hot 100 debut: “Human” sells 70,000 copies and enters the big chart at No. 32. Only 2006’s “When You Were Young” did better, debuting at No. 29. Credit their promotional team with good timing: the band’s appearance on Saturday Night Live last weekend, in the last 24 hours of the tracking week for the chart, probably accounts for many thousands of those downloads.

All of these songs’ sales totals are impressive, but they’re dwarfed by the song at No. 1.

“Live Your Life” isn’t the lead single of T.I.’s Paper Trail, which debuts atop the album chart this week. Technically, “Life” isn’t even a single at all—despite previewing it at MTV’s Video Music Awards in early September and giving radio stations advance copies, Atlantic Records (and Island Def Jam, Rihanna’s label, which is co-promoting the song) never made it available at iTunes in advance of the album, Weezy-style. But the instant T.I.’s album dropped at iTunes, with all of its tracks simultaneously on sale at 99 cents, an army of fans swept in to buy the song.

To be exact, 335,000 fans bought it, making “Life” the second-biggest one-week seller of all time behind Flo Rida’s “Low,” and the biggest-selling digital song (a) in a non-holiday week and (b) in its debut week. The previous record-holder for that last distinction was Mariah Carey, who moved 286,000 copies of “Touch My Body” in its debut week last spring.

The first-week sales of “Life” are more than double those for this week’s second-biggest seller, Pink’s “So What.” In terms of the Hot 100, sales like that made the leap to No. 1 by the T.I./Rihanna song inevitable, regardless of how much airplay the song was receiving. But hey, airplay ain’t shabby: “Life” is already the 22nd most-played song at radio nationwide. On the airplay-heavy Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, “Life” is already in the Top 10.

As for the records T.I. sets, succeeding himself at No. 1 is the real mind-blower, because so few acts have done it. And when they do, it’s usually a sign that they’re at a peak of culture-dominating popularity: think the Beatles in 1964, Boyz II Men in 1994, or Usher in 2004.

In his column this week, Fred Bronson at Billboard has the complete list of acts that have done it, and he counts nine. But that includes an Elvis Presley twofer that precedes the existence of the Hot 100 (back in the days when Billboard reported multiple big singles charts), and two acts that scored with a featured-artist credit: Puff Daddy in 1997 (his “I’ll Be Missing You” was succeeded by the Notorious B.I.G.–fronted “Mo Money Mo Problems”), and Ja Rule in 2002 (his “Always on Time” was followed by Jennifer Lopez’s “Ain’t It Funny”). I’d argue to put those acts on a lower tier, leaving a half-dozen who did it on the Hot 100, with tracks they fronted: the Beatles, Boyz, Nelly, OutKast (a bit of a cheat to those of us who regard “Hey Ya!” as an André 3000 single and “The Way You Move” as a Big Boi single, but never mind), Usher, and now Clifford “T.I.” Harris Jr.

When T.I. soared from No. 71 to No. 1 with “Whatever You Like” in late August, I sniffed that this chart feat was becoming less amazing all the time, as several current acts like Usher and Maroon 5 had leapt to the top from outside the Top 40 (or, in Rihanna’s case, routinely: she’s done it three times).

Indeed, by beating his own record this week with the 80–1 leap of “Live Your Life,” the Atlanta rap king shrinks the time between record-breaking instances almost as low as it can go. It took 38 years for the Beatles (“Can’t Buy Me Love,” 1964, 26–1) to lose the record to Kelly Clarkson (“A Moment Like This,” 2002, 52–1); four and a half years for her to lose it to Maroon 5 (“Makes Me Wonder,” 2007, 64–1); 16 months for them to lose it to T.I.’s “Whatever”; and a month and a half for him to beat it himself.

Let me reiterate one word in the prior paragraph: almost. The smallest possible gap between record-setting instances, of course, would be one week, and it’s possible that that’s about to happen.

This week, Britney Spears debuts on the Hot 100 at No. 96 with “Womanizer,” entirely thanks to radio points. The song was until recently not available for purchase. Like T.I. a week ago, Spears has garnered remarkable out-of-the-box airplay, as “Womanizer” already ranks 55th among all songs spun, just a couple of weeks after going to radio. Which means the formula that sent T.I.’s last two hits to No. 1—first, early airplay, then an instant explosion of sales—is working for Spears as well: “Womanizer” was put on sale at iTunes three days ago, and lo and behold, at this writing it’s Apple’s top-seller, beating “Live Your Life.”

Should Britney pull a one-week sales total on the scale of T.I.’s—over 300,000, or even just the low 200’s—next week she could leap from No. 96 to No. 1, defeating his record after just seven days and possibly setting it for all time. That is, unless one day the stars align and a song debuts at Nos. 97, 98, 99 or 100 before shooting to the top. And then, once we’ve run out of Hot 100 positions, we’d never have to talk about this increasingly dubious chart record again.

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

• A couple more tidbits about the Killers: “Human,” with its New Order–esque synth sound, is being received warmly at the band’s “home format.” Last week, the song entered the Modern Rock chart at No. 13. That’s by far their best debut there—“When You Were Young” debuted at No. 27 on that list in the summer of 2006. And this week, “Human” becomes the band’s fastest Top 10 Modern Rock hit, rising to No. 8; “Young,” by contrast, took three weeks to move into the winners’ circle.

• When Billboard publishes its year-end charts, I’ll be a bit surprised if the person with the No. 1 R&B/Hip-Hop song of the year isn’t Keyshia Cole. She’ll either do it with her seven-week chart-topper from last winter/spring, “I Remember”; or her even bigger nine-week chart-topper from last spring/summer, “Heaven Sent.” I mention this because the latter just won’t die: a week after “Heaven” dropped out of the R&B/Hip-Hop Top 10 after a four-month run there, it jumps back to No. 9, for reasons known only to urban radio programmers. Interesting tidbit: because “Heaven” moved into the Top 10 last May the week after “Remember” dropped out, last week’s chart was the first week since early January that Cole hasn’t been somewhere inside the R&B Top 10. Even Alicia Keys (the other likely year-end winner) has been out of the winners’ circle more weeks than Cole.

• Some quick notes on struggling hits: Sony’s quest to give Leona Lewis a second Top 10 hit on the Hot 100 hasn’t died yet, as “Better in Time” creeps up four spaces to No. 14. "Better" might still make it, but Lewis’ team is really sweating it—the song is now in its 13th week on the Hot 100, and the label was pushing it to radio a couple of months before that. Just for perspective, “Bleeding Love,” best-selling single of this calendar year, made the Top 10 in its fifth chart week last March.

Right next to Lewis, at No. 15, is a song that just two weeks ago I thought stood a chance of reaching No. 1: Kanye West’s “Love Lockdown.” The collapse in his digital sales, in a week where iTunes buyers have other shiny new songs to distract them, is the culprit; “Lockdown” now ranks 12th on the Digital Songs chart. On the big chart, “Lockdown” has probably peaked overall, but continued growth at radio—it now ranks 48th there, up from 69th a week ago—could bring it back to the Top 10 by the time ’Ye’s 808 and Heartbreak drops in November.

Top 10s
Last week's position and total weeks charted in parentheses (Digital Songs chart includes total downloads/percentage change in parentheses):

Hot 100
1. T.I. feat. Rihanna, "Live Your Life" (LW No. 80, 2 weeks)
2. T.I., "Whatever You Like" (LW No. 1, 9 weeks)
3. Pink, "So What" (LW No. 2, 7 weeks)
4. Rihanna, "Disturbia" (LW No. 4, 16 weeks)
5. Kevin Rudolf feat. Lil Wayne, "Let It Rock" (LW No. 15, 6 weeks)
6. Katy Perry, "Hot N Cold" (LW No. 6, 10 weeks)
7. Christina Aguilera, "Keeps Gettin' Better" (CHART DEBUT)
8. T-Pain feat. Lil Wayne, "Can't Believe It" (LW No. 7, 10 weeks)
9. M.I.A., "Paper Planes" (LW No. 5, 12 weeks)
10. Nickelback, "Gotta Be Somebody" (CHART DEBUT)

Hot Digital Songs
1. T.I. feat. Rihanna, "Live Your Life" (CHART DEBUT, 335,000 downloads)
2. Pink, "So What" (LW No. 2, 165,000 downloads)
3. Kevin Rudolf feat. Lil Wayne, "Let It Rock" (LW No. 10, 148,000 downloads)
4. T.I., "Whatever You Like" (LW No. 1)
5. Christina Aguilera, "Keeps Gettin' Better" (CHART DEBUT, 144,000 downloads)
6. Nickelback, "Gotta Be Somebody" (CHART DEBUT, 127,000 downloads)
7. Katy Perry, "Hot N Cold" (LW No. 4)
8. David Cook, "Light On" (CHART DEBUT, 109,000 downloads)
9. Taylor Swift, "Love Story" (LW No. 5)
10. Rihanna, "Disturbia" (LW No. 7)

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
1. T.I., "Whatever You Like" (LW No. 1, 12 weeks)
2. Jennifer Hudson, "Spotlight" (LW No. 3, 21 weeks)
3. T-Pain feat. Lil Wayne, "Can't Believe It," (LW No. 2, 13 weeks)
4. Jazmine Sullivan, "Need U Bad" (LW No. 4, 23 weeks)
5. Ne-Yo, "Miss Independent" (LW No. 6, 11 weeks)
6. Lil Wayne feat. Bobby Valentino, "Mrs. Officer" (LW No. 5, 14 weeks)
7. Lil Wayne feat. T-Pain, "Got Money" (LW No. 7, 21 weeks)
8. T.I. feat. Rihanna, "Live Your Life" (LW No. 16, 4 weeks)
9. Keyshia Cole, "Heaven Sent" (LW No. 13, 28 weeks)
10. Robin Thicke, "Magic" (LW No. 9, 20 weeks)

Hot Country Songs
1. Kenny Chesney, "Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven" (LW No. 2, 10 weeks)
2. Darius Rucker, "Don't Think I Don't Think About It" (LW No. 1, 25 weeks)
3. Toby Keith, "She Never Cried in Front of Me" (LW No. 3, 15 weeks)
4. Carrie Underwood, "Just a Dream" (LW No. 6, 13 weeks)
5. Kid Rock, "All Summer Long" (LW No. 4, 21 weeks)
6. Brad Paisley, "Waitin' on a Woman" (LW No. 8, 17 weeks)
7. Jimmy Wayne, "Do You Believe Me Now" (LW No. 5, 28 weeks)
8. Tim McGraw, "Let It Go" (LW No. 9, 12 weeks)
9. Taylor Swift, "Love Story" (LW No. 11, 4 weeks)
10. George Strait, "Troubadour" (LW No. 7, 19 weeks)

Hot Modern Rock Tracks
1. The Offspring, "You're Gonna Go Far, Kid" (LW No. 1, 11 weeks)
2. Weezer, "Troublemaker" (LW No. 2, 13 weeks)
3. Staind, "Believe" (LW No. 3, 15 weeks)
4. Apocalyptica feat. Adam Gontier, "I Don't Care" (LW No. 6, 14 weeks)
5. Rise Against, "Re-Education (Through Labor)" (LW No. 4, 7 weeks)
6. Metallica, "The Day That Never Comes" (LW No. 5, 7 weeks)
7. Carolina Liar, "I’m Not Over" (LW No. 7, 23 weeks)
8. The Killers, "Human" (LW No. 13, 2 weeks)
9. Theory of a Deadman, "Bad Girlfriend" (LW No. 10, 16 weeks)
10. Kings of Leon, "Sex on Fire" (LW No. 17, 7 weeks)

Big thanks go out to T.I and his manager for their support—not only was he nice enough to give me his permission and blessing for this parody, but he responded so quickly that I was able to make everything happen insanely fast. In less than a two week period—seriously—I was able to come up with an idea for the song, get legal permission for the song, write the song, record the song, mix the song, master the song, upload the song to my label and deliver the song to iTunes. Talk about instant gratification! One of the other cool things about putting out music this way is, there's not really enough time for Internet leaks to happen. I try to maintain a certain amount of secrecy around my projects for obvious reasons… and this time, as far as I can tell, the only person leaking information to the Internet has been ME!"

Ah, God bless you, Al. Now if you could start a YouTube channel for those moments when you're inspired to create new AL TV segments, maybe this here Internet experiment would seem like a little bit less of a wash.

WYL ["Weird Al" Yankovic's MySpace Blog]

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.

All the action this week isn’t on the Hot 100: It’s at iTunes, where a handful of highly anticipated pre-album song releases are selling like gangbusters. Let’s run them down, because the sales they’re ringing up now will shake up the big chart next week:

T.I. featuring Rihanna, “Live Your Life”: Also known as “The Numa Numa Song, Redux.” This irresistible melding of T.I.’s flow with one of the biggest Internet memes of all time, vocalized by the Barbadian chart goddess, has been iTunes’ top seller since midweek. That’s because it appeared there as a 99-cent download on Tuesday, the same day T.I.’s new album Paper Trail dropped. Clearly, tens of thousands of pop fans had been anticipating the download availability of “Live Your Life” since the VMA performance, and I can understand why: it’s a better song than “Whatever You Like,” with a more interesting T.I. rap, and the “Numa” hook is remarkably suited to Rihanna’s voice. Moreover, for all its millions of YouTube views, O-Zone’s “Dragostea din tei” (the song soundtracking “Numa Numa”) never had a breakout moment as a digital song in America, and T.I.’s hit will serve as its proxy.

“Live Your Life” is already on the Hot 100, debuting this week at No. 80 not because of sales but because it’s already the 45th most-played song in the country. That’s a staggering airplay ranking for a song that’s only been available to radio programmers for a couple of weeks. Expect “Life” to positively explode on next week’s chart—possibly shooting all the way to No. 1, which would set a new chart record. There have been countless examples in chart history where a superstar act releases a just-okay song as his album’s first single, gets a big hit with it, and then drops the monster, which becomes the massive, memorable hit. Long story short, I suspect “Life” will be the “Billie Jean” to “Whatever You Like”’s “The Girl Is Mine.”

Christina Aguilera, “Keeps Gettin’ Better”: Also debuted to the world at the VMAs, Xtina’s lead single for her forthcoming greatest-hits disc was released to the U.S. iTunes Store on Tuesday. It’s already selling phenomenally there, which might surprise some of us here who were kinda “meh” on her and co-writer Linda Perry’s thin Goldfrapp ripoff. But homegirl has fans, and it doesn’t hurt that “Keeps” is garnering solid radio attention already, debuting this week on the Hot 100 Airplay list at a respectable No. 71. Expect a Top 40, probably Top 20 and possibly Top 10 debut on the Hot 100 next week.

Nickelback, “Gotta Be Somebody”: Previewing the followup to the longest-charting hit album of the 2000s (sigh), the Canuck radio-dominators offer this synthy prom anthem, already iTunes’ third-biggest seller after four days on-sale. Which is fairly remarkable, considering hardcore Nickelback fans were able to download the MP3 free for 24 hours this past Monday. No measurable Top 40 airplay yet, but expect a massive debut on the rock charts shortly and a probable Top 20 debut on the big chart.

David Cook, “Light On”: Message to David Archuleta: it’s on! The leadoff single to the 2008 American Idol winner’s debut album comes freighted with oddly fey cover art and huge expectations. One month after the runner-up moved 166,000 downloads in a week and crashed onto the chart at No. 2, Cook’s grunge-schlock single is looking like a somewhat milder performer; iTunes currently has it ranked fourth. The interesting thing to watch next week won’t necessarily be the debut of “Light On” on the Hot 100—it’ll be whether the song, cowritten by Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell, musters enough cred to make an appearance on any of the rock charts. As Idol’s first “rock” winner, Cook and his handlers clearly see the young-white-male formats as keys to his success when his album drops in November—reportedly the same week Nickelback’s album debuts.

(For the record, both Davids have outperformed expectations at radio this year. Cook’s single from the Idol finale, “The Time of My Life,” held on long after its explosive chart debut in May. It ended up riding the Top 40 all summer long, eventually also topping the Adult Contemporary chart—the slow-as-molasses, dull-as-dirt format that nonetheless represents thousands of radio stations and millions of listeners. And Archuleta’s hit, after its big August debut, has emerged as a solid radio hit, now among the 50 most-played songs nationwide and hanging onto the Hot 100’s Top 20.)

With these four singles all storming iTunes’ Top Five in the same week, it’s fair to say the holiday sales race is on, and next week’s Hot 100 will be the first scorecard.

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

• There’s one more digital single making waves on iTunes, but it’s not new and has been rising on the Hot 100, quietly and steadily, for a little over a month now: “Let It Rock,” by Kevin Rudolf, featuring his label boss Lil Wayne. Kevin who? We’ve seen so many hits by Wayne this year, teaming him with virtually every luminary in hip-hop and R&B, but this one is the opposite of those singles: it’s a pop/rock record from a Miami-based singer who’s about to drop his debut album on the New Orleans–based Cash Money label, Weezy’s career home. Rudolf is his newest protégé and a branch-out into a different genre, kind of like what OneRepublic was to Timbaland last year with “Apologize.” (Except “Rock” doesn’t make you want to tear your hair out.) As such, “Rock,” which moves up six spots to No. 15 on the Hot 100, is the only hit song Weezy’s name has appeared on all year that isn’t on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop list. It’s already among the 10 biggest-selling digital songs this week, and with radio growth solid (it now ranks 43rd on Hot 100 Airplay), it should make the big chart’s Top 10 within a week or two.

• Speaking of hits with limited name recognition, Raheem DeVaughn, an R&B singer who’s never made the R&B/Hip-Hop chart’s Top 10, is a week away from making a different kind of Top 10: the list of longest-charting R&B hits. At 56 weeks, DeVaughn’s “Woman” will be among the 10 longevity champs next week, as Billboard chart guru Fred Bronson notes in his column this week.

All I’ll add to Fred’s post is that, with this feat, DeVaughn becomes the Duncan Sheik of the R&B/Hip-Hop chart. Having peaked at a lowly No. 17 last April, “Woman” is by far the lowest-charting of the R&B list’s longevity champs, including such undeniable smashes as Mary J. Blige’s “Be Without You” (the all-time leader, with a staggering 75 weeks on the chart in 2005–07), Usher’s “You Make Me Wanna” and R. Kelly’s “Step in the Name of Love.” All of DeVaughn’s fellow hangers-on peaked in the Top Five or thereabouts. On the Hot 100’s list of all-time longevity champs, there are several songs that didn’t make the Top 10, such as Paula Cole’s “I Don’t Want to Wait.” But for a brief time in 1996, Duncan Sheik held the longevity title with “Barely Breathing,” a mellow-radio favorite that hung around the Hot 100 for 55 weeks despite only peaking at No. 15.

(Sheik’s record was beaten within a few months, first by Los Del Rio’s 60-week-charting No. 1 smash “Macarena,” and then again a year later by what are now the two all-time champs: Jewel’s 65-week double-sided hit “You Were Meant for Me”/”Foolish Games” and LeAnn Rimes’s 69-week monster “How Do I Live.”)

So: congrats, Raheem. And maybe you can browbeat your label into working the phones a little more assiduously for the next single?

Top 10s
Last week's position and total weeks charted in parentheses (Digital Songs chart includes total downloads/percentage change in parentheses):

Hot 100
1. T.I., "Whatever You Like" (LW No. 1, 8 weeks)
2. Pink, "So What" (LW No. 2, 6 weeks)
3. Kanye West, "Love Lockdown" (LW No. 3, 2 weeks)
4. Rihanna, "Disturbia" (LW No. 4, 15 weeks)
5. M.I.A., "Paper Planes" (LW No. 6, 11 weeks)
6. Katy Perry, "Hot N Cold" (LW No. 9, 9 weeks)
7. T-Pain feat. Lil Wayne, "Can't Believe It" (LW No. 8, 9 weeks)
8. Ne-Yo, "Closer" (LW No. 7, 24 weeks)
9. Taylor Swift, "Love Story" (LW No. 5, 3 weeks)
10. Estelle feat. Kanye West, "American Boy" (LW No. 10, 24 weeks)

Hot Digital Songs
1. T.I., "Whatever You Like" (LW No. 3)
2. Pink, "So What" (LW No. 1)
3. Kanye West, "Love Lockdown" (LW No. 2)
4. Katy Perry, "Hot N Cold" (LW No. 7)
5. Taylor Swift, "Love Story" (LW No. 4)
6. M.I.A., "Paper Planes" (LW No. 6)
7. Rihanna, "Disturbia" (LW No. 5)
8. Jason Mraz, "I’m Yours" (LW No. 8)
9. Akon, "Right Now (Na Na Na)" (CHART DEBUT)
10. Kevin Rudolf feat. Lil Wayne, "Let It Rock" (LW No. 12)

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
1. T.I., "Whatever You Like" (LW No. 1, 11 weeks)
2. T-Pain feat. Lil Wayne, "Can't Believe It," (LW No. 2, 12 weeks)
3. Jennifer Hudson, "Spotlight" (LW No. 4, 20 weeks)
4. Jazmine Sullivan, "Need U Bad" (LW No. 3, 22 weeks)
5. Lil Wayne feat. Bobby Valentino, "Mrs. Officer" (LW No. 5, 13 weeks)
6. Ne-Yo, "Miss Independent" (LW No. 6, 10 weeks)
7. Lil Wayne feat. T-Pain, "Got Money" (LW No. 9, 20 weeks)
8. Plies feat. Jamie Foxx & The-Dream, "Please Excuse My Hands" (LW No. 11, 16 weeks)
9. Robin Thicke, "Magic" (LW No. 8, 19 weeks)
10. Young Jeezy feat. Kanye West, "Put On" (LW No. 7, 21 weeks)

Hot Country Songs
1. Darius Rucker, "Don't Think I Don't Think About It" (LW No. 1, 24 weeks)
2. Kenny Chesney, "Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven" (LW No. 2, 9 weeks)
3. Toby Keith, "She Never Cried in Front of Me" (LW No. 5, 14 weeks)
4. Kid Rock, "All Summer Long" (LW No. 4, 20 weeks)
5. Jimmy Wayne, "Do You Believe Me Now" (LW No. 3, 27 weeks)
6. Carrie Underwood, "Just a Dream" (LW No. 7, 12 weeks)
7. George Strait, "Troubadour" (LW No. 8, 18 weeks)
8. Brad Paisley, "Waitin' on a Woman" (LW No. 6, 16 weeks)
9. Tim McGraw, "Let It Go" (LW No. 11, 11 weeks)
10. Luke Bryan, "Country Man" (LW No. 12, 30 weeks)

Hot Modern Rock Tracks
1. The Offspring, "You're Gonna Go Far, Kid" (LW No. 1, 10 weeks)
2. Weezer, "Troublemaker" (LW No. 3, 12 weeks)
3. Staind, "Believe" (LW No. 2, 14 weeks)
4. Rise Against, "Re-Education (Through Labor)" (LW No. 5, 6 weeks)
5. Metallica, "The Day That Never Comes" (LW No. 6, 6 weeks)
6. Apocalyptica feat. Adam Gontier, "I Don't Care" (LW No. 8, 13 weeks)
7. Carolina Liar, "I’m Not Over" (LW No. 4, 22 weeks)
8. Foo Fighters, "Let It Die" (LW No. 7, 26 weeks)
9. Coldplay, "Viva la Vida" (LW No. 9, 17 weeks)
10. Theory of a Deadman, "Bad Girlfriend" (LW No. 11, 15 weeks)

• "You get the impression that as much as he says he hates the fame, he's living a Spike Lee movie. Only instead of growing less angry with the world and more upset with himself the way Norton does, T.I. essentially blames his circumstances, his enemies, and his own paranoia." [Boston Globe]

• "As if it weren't already thrilling enough, West's goose-bump-producing beat features a hook sampled from M.I.A.'s sleeper-hit 'Paper Planes.' Hear it once, and you'll feel a permanent wrinkle puckering in your brain tissue. That's good news for T.I. No genre moves faster than here-today/gone-tomorrow hip-hop. His jail sentence might feel like an ice age in rap years, but Paper Trail makes an indelible forget-me-not." [Washington Post]

• "T.I. is still a bit too keen to remake his signature hit 'What You Know,' but songs like the clever 'I'm Illy' and the Just Blaze-produced stomper 'Live Your Life' find T.I. reconciling himself to his lot in life: he's a well-oiled hit machine who's more fun than deep." [RS]

• "Paper Trail does succeed at banking enough strong singles, including 'Swagga Like Us,' with Jay-Z and Kanye West, and 'Swing Ya Rag,' with Swizz Beatz, to keep T.I. on the charts during his upcoming incarceration. Maybe he can use all that time to decide which side of his personality he plans to cultivate permanently. Going back and forth only hurts both sides." [Newsday]

1. Pink, "So What"
Streamable from Pink's MySpace page; not available for purchase via MySpace Music widget, despite presence on Amazon.

2. Kanye West, "Love Lockdown"
First 1:30 streamable from West's MySpace page; not available for purchase via MySpace Music widget, despite presence on Amazon.

3. T.I., "Whatever You Like"
Streamable from T.I.'s MySpace page; not available for purchase via widget, despite presence on Amazon.

4. Taylor Swift, "Love Story"
Seems to be bypassing MySpace Music's official player/commerce widget, opting instead to pre-sell her forthcoming album on MySpace (with the option to buy a $75 box set!) and give people the download for "Love Story" instantly.

5. Rihanna, "Disturbia"
Streamable from Rihanna's site; official version available for purchase if the user uses the album pull-down menu and selects Good Girl Gone Bad.

6. M.I.A., "Paper Planes"
Streamable from M.I.A.'s MySpace page; official version available for purchase if the user uses the album pull-down menu and selects either Kala or the "Planes" remix EP.

7. Katy Perry, "Hot N Cold"
Streamable from Perry's MySpace page; not available for purchase via widget, despite presence on Amazon. (On the bright side, the awfulness of having to visit Perry's page was mitigated slightly by a pop-up ad for Ted Leo & The Pharmacists. Teach the children, Ted!)

8. Jason Mraz, "I'm Yours"
Streamable from Mraz's MySpace page; official version available for purchase if the user uses the album pull-down menu and selects the right version of the "I'm Yours" digital single.

9. Estelle feat. Kanye West, "American Boy"
Streamable from Estelle's MySpace page; not available for purchase via widget, despite presence on Amazon. (It would appear that the Estelle insta-tribute band the Studio All-Stars don't have a MySpace page.)

10. David Archuleta, "Crush"
Streamable from Archuleta's MySpace page; available for purchase if you select "Crush" from the pull-down menu in the widget.

So, out of the ten most saleable songs in the U.S. right now, MySpace Music is letting its users purchase four of them—and all four have to be navigated to, instead of them being presented to the user straight off. Can someone tell me why Tom & Co. felt like they had to launch this thing today, before it was ready for prime-time at all? I know that the site's supposed to be "iterative," but not having six of the top ten singles for purchase on what is being pitched as a track-by-track marketplace is not unlike trying to open an outlet of The Gap that's missing jeans.

Earlier: MySpace Music Gets Ready For A Big Amazon Affiliate Check

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.

Prior to this week, "Whatever You Like" was performing so modestly on the chart that I'd barely even noticed it. The song debuted a couple of weeks ago, way down at No. 99. Then it made a solid 28-spot move last week—but that still left it in the bottom third of the chart.

The August 19 digital release of "Whatever" provided the rocket fuel: the song sold more than 200,000 copies in its first week at iTunes and elsewhere. Radio airplay is growing quickly, too, as it leaps into the top 20 of the Hot 100 Airplay chart and the Top 10 of the radio-centric Hot R&B/Hip-Hop chart. But T.I.'s airplay growth is dwarfed by his explosion in sales.

As I've said here often, in the modern, iTunes-fueled music economy, the mismatch between sales and airplay—particularly on new records by established artists—produces weird chart moves. The only reason T.I. is setting the leap-to-No. 1 record this week is that he had a fairly serious misalignment between radio and pent-up fan demand.

Let me offer a hypothetical: If "Whatever," which was sent to radio back in mid-July, had been embraced by radio programmers sooner, as of last week the song would have been further up the Hot 100 thanks to airplay points—say, the Top 50. Then, when those 200,000 in sales came crashing in, the song still would have made an impressive moon-shot to No. 1, but it wouldn't have beaten Maroon 5's record. (The same goes for Maroon 5 in 2007, with a song radio eventually played to death but not right away; and especially Clarkson in 2002, with a song that American Idol fans bought in droves but radio embraced only half-heartedly.)

The fact is, chart feats like T.I's are becoming more yawn-inducing all the time. This year alone, we've seen numerous massive Hot 100 leaps, all fueled by sudden digital sales bursts on songs that were a little too new for radio.

Two of them shot to No. 1 with leaps that didn't quite beat Maroon 5's record: Usher in early March, with a 50-spot jump by "Love in this Club"; and Rihanna in mid-May, with a 52-space move by "Take a Bow." Other big chart moves this year included two back-to-back jumps of more than 70 spaces each, by Lil Mama, with the short-lived Top 10 hit "Shawty Get Loose," and Lil Wayne, with the chart-topper-to-be "Lollipop."

In three of the above four cases, radio eventually caught on and made the songs not just chart smashes but radio ubiquities. (Poor Lil Mama.) But what all four songs had in common was an aberrant week of massive digital sales, fueled by a carefully timed iTunes release designed to maximize the acts' impatient fans—the kind you can count on to buy anything you release the instant it's available. We saw something similar just last week, when Idol runner-up David Archuleta dropped his official post-show single, and rabid fans bought enough copies to give the song a big debut at No. 2 on the Hot 100. Nice, but who knows—if Archie had scored slightly better airplay the week before, the song might've spent a week at No. 99 or so before pole-vaulting to the runner-up slot, and we'd be talking about him setting a different record.

In short, I advise chart-watchers not to be too amazed anymore by big leaps into the upper reaches or seemingly out-of-nowhere debuts. It's an event to be savored by screaming fans or savvy label promotional teams—but the true measure of a song's reception by the general public is what it's doing a week later.

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

• Speaking of week two, and big debuts, let's talk about the two aberrant debuts from last week, and one more from this week. Archuelta's single makes a predictable second-week plummet, falling 13 spots to No. 15. Digital sales fell by nearly half after Archie's big iTunes debut, and the song's airplay remains too weak (it's still nowhere to be found on Hot 100 Airplay) to offset that fall-off. Falling even faster is Taylor Swift's "Change," which drops 29 spots after its No. 10 debut last week. Her sales go down by 56%, and country radio still isn't focused enough on the song to give it an airplay boost.

This week, the eye-popping debut comes from Pink's "So What." Sales of more than 100K out of the box splash her onto the chart at No. 9—the exact position her last two hits peaked after much longer, more deliberate chart runs. (Something tells me, a year from now, we'll still be hearing those two very good hits, "U + Ur Hand" and "Who Knew," on the radio a lot more than we'll be hearing "So What.")

• Following up on my Thursday report, on Atlantic's campaign to sell more Estelle albums by pulling her from iTunes, the near-Top 10 hit "American Boy" makes (sigh) an expected massive drop this week. Falling 26 spots to No. 37, it's barely clinging onto the Top 40. It's a bad week for Estelle all around: not only does Atlantic's gambit not produce growth in her corresponding album sales, but radio is cooling on the song, too. "Boy" loses its bullet and falls back a bit on the Hot 100 Airplay list; it's now the 25th-most-played song at radio nationwide.

• Meanwhile, Estelle's label-mate and fellow iTunes boycotter Kid Rock is still seeing airplay growth and a Hot 100 bullet—but the highest-charting version of "All Summer Long" is no longer his! The cheesy insta-cover by Hit Masters vaults 46 notches to No. 19, outdistancing the Kid, who holds at No. 25. Meanwhile, as I noted in a comment yesterday, there's now a cheesy insta-cover of the Estelle song, too, by a group calling itself the Studio All-Stars. According to iTunes, this cover has been on sale since mid-July, but unsurprisingly it only sold enough copies to register on the charts the week Estelle's original version got pulled. With more than 30,000 downloads sold last week, the "Boy" cover debuts on the Hot 100 at No. 85—and you can expect it to make a big leap next week.

(A quick public service to loyal readers and pop fans: I actually spent $1.98 to hear these two covers, and... oy! The Hit Masters' "Summer" is actually passable and surprisingly listenable, if you can ignore the obvious replacement of the original Warren Zevon and Lynyrd Skynyrd samples. But the Studio All-Stars' "Boy" is nigh-unlistenable, with the worst Kanye West impersonation imaginable. Avoid at all costs.)

• Even if you know little or nothing about country, you'll probably recognize two names in its Top 10 this week: Kid Rock, whose crossover smash "All Summer Long" makes its inevitable rise into the red-state winner's circle; and Darius Rucker, whom a couple of my sharp-eyed commenters noticed entering the Country Top 10 last week. "Don't Think I Don't Think About It," the debut country-crossover single by The Artist Formerly Known As Hootie, moves up to No. 7 this week.

One of my favorite throwaway gags in Airplane! is the bit where the little old lady asks Julie Hagerty's flight attendant for "something light" to read, and Hagerty replies, "How about this leaflet, Famous Jewish Sports Legends?" A list of Famous African-American Country Stars would fill a similar-sized document. When this Guardian article was written two years ago, Grand Ole Opry-inducted legend Charley Pride was the only black country star signed to a major label's Nashville imprint. It's impossible to search Billboard chart records by race—so if anyone has some decent research on this, help me out. But best as I can tell, Rucker's Top 10 hit is the first on country radio by a black artist in a long, long while. Pride's last Top 10 hit was 20 years ago, and in the '80s only Lionel Richie and Ray Charles—both with duets—made inroads on this chart.

• The R&B/Hip-Hop chart continues to be August's most interesting list, with constant shake-ups at the top. There's yet another new No. 1 this week—the fourth chart-topper in four weeks—this time from newcomer and Missy Elliott protégée Jazmine Sullivan, with the growling ballad "Need U Bad." (Interestingly, she's probably getting an airplay boost from the guy at No. 1 on the Hot 100—T.I. joins Missy on the song's official remix.) The one constant in all this change at the top: Keyshia Cole can't be stopped. Her former No. 1, "Heaven Sent," which was evicted by Lil Wayne three weeks ago, has been quietly holding down No. 2 ever since while the songs that succeeded her at No. 1 (Weezy's, and Rihanna's "Take a Bow") have both dropped past her.

A little lower down, two songs move into the Top 10: the aforementioned T.I. track, and "Spotlight," the surprisingly excellent post-Dreamgirls debut by Oscar-winner Jennifer Hudson.

• On the flip side, Modern Rock continues to be the most boring chart of the summer, with the entire Top Eight staying the same from last week. Hilariously, last week's No. 9 track, Offspring's "Hammerhead," is this week replaced at No. 9 by a newer song from the same band. Oh, and Weezer now has two songs in the Top 10. (Zzzzz.)

• The most notable rock debut of the week is by Metallica, whose "The Day That Never Comes" materializes on three charts. The song is the week's highest Modern Rock debut at No. 25. But at Mainstream Rock, the band's more natural home, "Day" debuts all the way up at No. 7. Finally, thanks to nearly 58,000 digital sales, the song debuts on the Hot 100, at a solid No. 31—for the record, that's Lars & co.'s sixth career Top 40 hit, dating back to their first (still their best!), "One," in 1989.

Top 10s
Last week's position and total weeks charted in parentheses (Digital Songs chart includes total downloads/percentage change in parentheses):

Hot 100
1. T.I., "Whatever You Like" (LW No. 71, 3 weeks)
2. Rihanna, "Disturbia" (LW No. 1, 10 weeks)
3. Chris Brown, "Forever" (LW No. 3, 18 weeks)
4. Katy Perry, "I Kissed a Girl" (LW No. 4, 16 weeks)
5. Kardinal Offishall feat. Akon, "Dangerous" (LW No. 7, 16 weeks)
6. M.I.A., "Paper Planes" (LW No. 6, 6 weeks)
7. Coldplay, "Viva la Vida" (LW No. 5, 16 weeks)
8. Ne-Yo, "Closer" (LW No. 8, 19 weeks)
9. Pink, "So What" (CHART DEBUT)
10. Rihanna, "Take a Bow" (LW No. 8, 20 weeks)

Hot Digital Songs
1. T.I., "Whatever You Like" (CHART DEBUT, 186,000 downloads)
2. Rihanna, "Disturbia" (LW No. 2, 144,000 downloads)
3. M.I.A., "Paper Planes" (LW No. 4, 116,000 downloads)
4. Pink, "So What" (CHART DEBUT, 116,000 downloads)
5. Hit Masters, "All Summer Long" (LW No. 32, 95,000 downloads)
6. David Archuleta, "Crush" (LW No. 1, 89,000 downloads)
7. Coldplay, "Viva la Vida" (LW No. 7, 79,000 downloads)
8. Katy Perry, "I Kissed a Girl" (LW No. 8, 78,000 downloads)
9. The Pussycat Dolls, "When I Grow Up" (LW No. 12, 76,000 downloads)
10. Jason Mraz, "I'm Yours" (LW No. 13, 73,000 downloads)

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
1. Jazmine Sullivan, "Need U Bad" (LW No. 4, 17 weeks)
2. Keyshia Cole, "Heaven Sent" (LW No. 2, 22 weeks)
3. Rihanna, "Take a Bow" (LW No. 1, 18 weeks)
4. Lil Wayne, "A Milli" (LW No. 3, 18 weeks)
5. Young Jeezy feat. Kanye West, "Put On" (LW No. 5, 16 weeks)
6. Yung Berg feat. Casha, "The Business" (LW No. 9, 14 weeks)
7. Robin Thicke, "Magic" (LW No. 6, 14 weeks)
8. T.I., "Whatever You Like" (LW No. 13, 6 weeks)
9. David Banner feat. Chris Brown, "Get Like Me" (LW No. 7, 26 weeks)
10. Jennifer Hudson, "Spotlight" (LW No. 12, 15 weeks)

Hot Country Songs
1. Keith Urban, "You Look Good in My Shirt" (LW No. 2, 14 weeks)
2. Keith Anderson, "I Still Miss You" (LW No. 3, 30 weeks)
3. Brad Paisley, "Waitin' on a Woman" (LW No. 5, 11 weeks)
4. Jimmy Wayne, "Do You Believe Me Now" (LW No. 4, 22 weeks)
5. Taylor Swift, "Should've Said No" (LW No. 1, 15 weeks)
6. Kenny Chesney, "Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven" (LW No. 13, 4 weeks)
7. Darius Rucker, "Don't Think I Don't Think About It" (LW No. 10, 19 weeks)
8. George Strait, "Troubadour" (LW No. 9, 13 weeks)
9. Toby Keith, "She Never Cried in Front of Me" (LW No. 11, 9 weeks)
10. Kid Rock, "All Summer Long" (LW No. 14, 15 weeks)

Hot Modern Rock Tracks
1. Coldplay, "Viva la Vida" (LW No. 1, 12 weeks)
2. Foo Fighters, "Let It Die" (LW No. 2, 21 weeks)
3. Staind, "Believe" (LW No. 3, 9 weeks)
4. Weezer, "Pork & Beans" (LW No. 4, 19 weeks)
5. Disturbed, "Inside the Fire" (LW No. 5, 22 weeks)
6. Carolina Liar, "I'm Not Over" (LW No. 6, 17 weeks)
7. Saving Abel, " Addicted" (LW No. 7, 23 weeks)
8. Ludo, "Love Me Dead" (LW No. 8, 23 weeks)
9. The Offspring, "You're Gonna Go Far, Kid" (LW No. 19, 5 weeks)
10. Weezer, "Troublemaker" (LW No. 16, 7 weeks)