Jack Johnson topped the sales charts last week, selling 180,000 copies of Sleep Through The Static, but the rest of the top sellers had Grammys written all over them, with Herbie Hancock’s Album Of The Year winner River: The Joni Letters skyrocketing from No. 159 to No. 5 and nearly doubling its total sales in the space of seven days. (It sold 54,000 copies and has moved 114,000 to date.) People were so overtaken by Grammy fever, the dumb compilation of Grammy-nominated songs even saw a 40% sales gain!
Idolator readers may still be arguing about whether or not Herbie Hancock’s low-selling Joni Mitchell tribute should have trumped the better-selling young pop things for Album Of The Year at the Grammys, but Ben Ratliff of the New York Times knows why jazz fans shouldn’t be so hyped about what the… More »
Judging by the reactions from my living room, my instant-messenger conversations, and the comments section on our Grammy liveblog, people were more than a little surprised when the Album Of The Year winner was announced… and said winner wasn’t Kanye West or Amy Winehouse, but Herbie Hancock, whose Joni Mitchell homage River: The Joni Letters took home the night’s final prize. I actually wasn’t too surprised by Hancock’s victory–to quote myself, “if you didn’t at least think that Herbie Hancock paying tribute to Joni Mitchell would sway at least half the people who voted for Steely Dan over Eminem a few years back you haven’t been paying attention”–but apparently a lot of people were! (Perhaps they forgot that Norah Jones and Corinne Bailey Rae and Tina Turner and Leonard Cohen were also on the album.) So let’s put it to all of you: If you had a vote in the Grammy balloting, what would you have chosen as this Grammy year’s Album Of The Year? Poll after the jump.
