Top 5 Billboard Albums
Taylor Swift has to be pinching herself as she rounds out her seventh week at No. 1 on The Billboard 200, something that hasn't happened in five years (Usher was the last to pull it off). Fearless sold 63,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. There are still a LOT of people out there who like country music, evidently.
Meanwhile, Beyonce's I Am ... Sasha Fierce hopped up to #2 with 49,000 sold, roughly the same numbers she moved last week. Nickelback tricked 46,000 sad saps into buying their latest, but it wasn't enough to keep them from slipping a spot to #3.
The Bad Boy soundtrack to Notorious, the Notorious B.I.G. biopic, debuts at #4 with 43,000. The album includes some of the rapper's best-known work, as well as his first demo tape, two new tracks from Jay-Z, songs from Santogold, Jadakiss, Faith Evans and a "One More Chance" remix featuring B.I.G.'s son, CJ Wallace.
To round out the top 5, Kanye West's 808s and Heartbreak drops two spots to #5.
Billboard Hot 100 Update
Lady GaGa rocks the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for a third week with "Just Dance" after selling 192,000 downloads in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Mirroring last week's charts, Beyonce's "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)," Kanye West's "Heartless," T.I.'s "Live Your Life" featuring Rihanna and Taylor Swift's "Love Story" all stay in their respective spots at numbers 2-5.
The Parents Television Council has issued a warning to parents and urged radio stations not to broadcast Britney Spears' "If U Seek Amy" because... well, because the song has nothing to do with a girl named Amy. In fact, it's a clever little wordplay, thinly veiling a direct request for sexual penetration pleasure. And for some reason, the PTC thinks it's a bad idea for the ten year-olds to sing along.
The title phrase of the third single from Spears' latest album Circus, when said quickly out loud, produces a sound quite similar to spelling out the F-word.
PTC president Tim Winter thinks the song should be pulled from radio. "It's one thing for a song with these lyrics to be included on a CD so that fans who wish to hear it can do so," he said," but it's an entirely different matter when this song is played over the publicly-owned airwaves, especially at a time when children are likely to be in the listening audience."
Get out your Birkenstocks: The Dave Matthews Band, Wilco and Widespread Panic are set to headline the seventh 10,000 Lakes Festival, to be held July 22-25 at Soo Pass Ranch in Detroit Lakes, MN. Also included on the bill are Umphrey's McGee, Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings, Railroad Earth, Tea Leaf Green, Junior Brown, WookieFoot, Trampled By Turtles, Cloud Cult, Everyone Orchestra, Kathleen Edwards, Pretty Lights, BoomBox and William Elliott Whitmore.
Tickets are on sale now. VIP packages are also available, which include meals, drinks and exclusive main stage seating and camping. For details, visit the festival's Web site: 10klf.com/
While U2's new single, "Get on Your Boots," came and went like clouds in the night on U.S. airwaves with a total of 529 spins this week, it became an instant smash throughout Europe and the United Kingdom the day it debuted on radio (Jan. 19), according to Nielsen Music Control. The song also shot straight to #1 on Ireland's airplay chart and No. 4 in the U.K., with total audiences of two million and 12.5 million, respectively.
U2's next album, No Line on the Horizon will be released March 2 through Mercury/Universal in the U.K. and the following day in North America through Interscope/Universal.
Heath Ledger, Eddie Vedder, Dave Grohl, Norah Jones and Jack Johnson are among the names lined up for a Nick Drake tribute album, set to be released by Johnson's Brushfire Records.
Heath Ledger's contribution arrives in the form of his version of "Black Eyed Dog," filmed in late 2007 for a multimedia installation about Drake but never officially released.
Drake was an English singer/songwriter who died of a drug overdose at age 26 back in 1974. He was little known at the time, but his influence has reached far and wide since his death.
While thousands of Bruce Springsteen fans expecting "The Wrestler” to get a Best Song Oscar nod are plotting their revenge against the Academy, a very pregnant M.I.A. was thrilled to receive a nomination for “O… Saya,” the song she and Slumdog Millionaire score composer A.R. Rahman wrote for the Danny Boyle-directed film.
“This is a great honor. Thank you to all the people who are supporting us and the making of a real story of a slumdog millionaire,” M.I.A. says. “Maybe I can afford to book Dave Chappelle at the baby shower now. Thank you again; My mum wants everyone to know what wonderful news this is for her.”
M.I.A. is due to give birth the night of the Grammys (February 8th), where she's up for record of the year.
And The Floodgates Open: Pandora, the four-year-old internet radio station and “music genome project” with 21 million registered users and 2 million daily visitors, is about to begin adding commercials to their free service. The $36 per year premium membership will remain ad-free, however. Pandora uses a listener’s music preferences to format a radio station based on their individual tastes. It’s similar in style to iTunes’ Genius, only it doesn’t just use music in your catalog.
Talk about low impact: as for the advertisements themselves, it's a slight pin prick at worst, at least for now - one 15-second ad will play once every few hours. The company’s Twitter made the following announcement: “So you know, we did not take on audio ads lightly. We try to be extremely respectful of your listening experience, & promise to be prudent.”
You may have heard the Perfect Circle reunion rumors, or word that Tool is working on a new album, but frontman Maynard James Keenan has his hands full with very non-musical things. The enigmatic singer recently announced plans to open an organic market in Cornville, Arizona, that will include a commercial kitchen and a tasting room for the wines he produces nearby in Sedona.
Keenan explainins: "I've been working with a few chefs around the Southwest, learning how to make spaghettis and pastas and gnocchis and various soup stocks. We're going to be packaging our own stuff right there and serving it fresh with the tastings."
Keenan already owns a small store in Jerome, Arizona, that he has turned into a retail outlet based around his solo project/side band Puscifer. "It's basically our little retail outlet," he said. "Downloading has crushed the idea of making CDs on a larger scale, so we're gonna fund our recording and fun projects by attempting to sell you T-shirts and dog toys and dildos and things. We have a tool for every job."
Keenan and his winemaking partner, Eric Glomski, will hit Whole Foods outlets in Northern California next month for bottle-signing events, just as he did down here in SoCal in December. The pair will sign bottles from both Keenan's Caduceus Cellars and Glomski's Page Spring Cellars. Both men have their own cellars and vineyards in the Sedona region, and are also partners in Arizona Stronghold Vineyards.
Meanwhile, Puscifer plans to make its live debut with three sold-out shows in Las Vegas on February 13, 14, and 15.
The End Is Near: Sirius XM will reportedly impose a rate increase on March 11th, adding an extra $2 for each additional subscription per user, plus charging an added $2.99 to stream Sirius XM online. Thankfully, the latter fee comes with an upside: all Internet subscriptions will stream with a 128k “premium” feed.
Whether the price hikes have any effect on programming remains to be seen, but things are not looking good for Sirius XM; its shares of stock are worth little more than a dime. Many listeners were put off when their favorite channels and genres became causalities of the station-merge in November of 2008, and customers complained of too much song repetition and DJ bantering. In other words, satellite's getting what it deserves. If we wanted typical radio programming, we'd turn on the good ol' FREE radio.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: satellite radio will not survive the retirement of Howard Stern.
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