Kanye Brings Big "Love"; Next Up a Speedy Heartbreak
When it comes to "Love," Kanye West is a giver.
His new single, "Love Lockdown," just scored the rapper a career-high No. 3 opening on the Billboard Hot 100 Thursday, a day after it debuted at No. 2 on the Digital Tracks chart with nearly 213,000 paid downloads, and shot to No. 1 on iTunes within just hours of release.
With this much heat, it's no surprise Kanye also upped the release of his new album 808 Heartbreak.
"I changed my album to November something cause I finished the album and I felt like it," wrote Kanye in an all-caps post on his blog yesterday. "I want y'all to hear it as soon as possible."
Ne-Yo, Nelly Can't Melt Metallica on Charts
Death doesn't die that easily.
Metallica's Death Magnetic staved off the Reaper this week, holding onto the No. 1 slot despite challenges from Ne-Yo's Year of the Gentleman, Nelly's Brass Knuckles and Darius Rucker's Learn to Live.
Pink Powered by Anti-Palin Bounce?
"So What" has just turned lemons into pink lemonade.
Pink started the year by splitting with motocross hubby Carey Hart, but she's rebounded like a rock star with "So What" becoming her first solo No. 1 on Billboard's Hot 100. Though she's been insistent that the track's not entirely biographical, the defiant song and video seem to make several allusions to the split, including the opening line "I guess I just lost my husband."
Sales of the single apparently weren't hampered by Pink's scathing assessment of GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Like her 2006 Bush-bashing single "Dear Mr. President," the singer has a series of questions she'd like Gov. Palin to answer, such as whether she can find Iraq on a map.
"She's not of this time," Pink said in an interview last week. "The woman terrifies me."
Metallica Deathly for Jessica Simpson
There's no doubt that Death becomes Metallica, much to the chagrin of Jessica Simpson.
Metallica's first new album in half a decade, Death Magnetic, shot straight to No. 1, despite only being on sale for three days. The powerhouse band finished the week ended Sunday selling 490,000 copies, per Nielsen SoundScan, making it the third largest rock debut of the year.
Simpson, meanwhile, saw her foray into country, Do You Know, only lasso a No. 4 debut with sales of 65,000 (and that was in a full week), a significant sales drop from her last pop album, 2006's A Public Affair, which sold 101,000 in its open.
New Kids Can't Block the Jeezy
Thanks to Young Jeezy, the New Kids on the Block have encounted a recession more frightening than the one claiming their hairlines.
The comeback-minded quintet was thwarted in its attempt to reclaim pop glory by Jeezy's The Recession. The latter made its way around the block to No. 1, selling more than 260,000 copies for the week ended Sunday, per Nielsen SoundScan.
Meanwhile, NKOTB sold 95,000 copies of The Block, the band's first new album in 14 years, to open at No. 2.
Slipknot Strangles Game's Shot at No. 1
Who knew The Game and Al Gore had so much in common?
Sadly for them, both have now wound up on the wrong end of a recount.
This morning, the rapper appeared to have a Phelpsian tip-of-the-finger win on the album charts as initial figures showed his LAX topping Slipknot's All Hope Is Gone by 13 copies—238,285 to 238,272—prompting sites such as RollingStone.com to declare the Game the biggest seller of the week.
But before you could say hanging chad, the tallies were rerun, resulting in a stunning reversal of fortunes.
Slipknot ended up with its first ever No. 1 album, selling a revised 239,516 copies, per what we hope are the final, official numbers from Nielsen SoundScan. The Game, who hoped to go 3-for-3 with chart-topping albums, instead got downgraded to No. 2 with sales of 238,382.
The SoundScan folks do realize this guy's got felony weapons charges on his rap sheet, don't they?
T.I. "Likes" Making Hot 100 History
House arrest has paid off big time for T.I.
The rapper, who recorded his forthcoming Paper Trail while confined to his Atlanta-area home, made chart history as his album single "Whatever You Like" rocketed 70 spots to No. 1 on Billboard's Hot 100. This sets a new record for the biggest jump to the top slot, besting Maroon 5's record-setting 63-spot jump for "Makes Me Wonder" back in May 2007.
T.I.'s track rocketed to No. 1 thanks to downloads, selling 205,000 copies in its first week in online stores. That gives "Whatever You Like" the biggest digital sales debut by a rap artist since Nielsen SoundScan started tracking downloads five years ago.
Jonas Brothers Wipe Out Staind
Forget OxyClean, it's the Jonas Brothers who have the real Staind-fighting power.
Staind was making a play to top the charts with The Progress of Illusion, thereby joining U2, Metallica and the Dave Matthews Band as the only modern rock bands to land four consecutive No. 1 albums. Instead, Staind got wiped out by the clean-cut Jonases.
The siblings' A Little Bit Longer sold 147,000 copies for the week ended Sunday, per Nielsen SoundScan, to hold their place at the top of the Billboard 200. In contrast, The Illusion of Progress sold just 92,000 copies at No. 3, trailing Kid Rock's Rock N Roll Jesus at No. 2 with 101,000 discs.
Idol Wild: Archuleta "Crushes" Cook on Charts
David Cook topped David Archuleta in their American Idol showdown, but now the little D has gotten some extra-large revenge.
The 17-year-old Archuleta's "Crush" has debuted at No. 2 on the Hot 100 singles chart, besting the No. 3 opening of Cook's "The Time of My Life" in June.
In fact, Archuleta just netted the biggest bow since Fall Out Boy's "This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arms Race" also debuted at No. 2 back in January 2007.
Archuleta is the first runner-up to outperform the reigning champ since the head-to-head matchup between Clay Aiken's "This Is the Night" and season-two victor Ruben Studdard's "Flying Without Wings." Aiken topped Studdard with what became the best-selling single of 2003.
O Jonas Brothers, Where Art Thou? No. 1
Keeping up with the Joneses is nothing compared to keeping up with the Jonases.
The Jonas Brothers—Joe, Kevin and Nick—just landed the third-biggest opening week of the year. Their latest album sold a whopping 525,000 copies to debut at No. 1, one of three Jonas-powered joints in the top 10.
A Little Bit Longer, which sold north of 200,000 on its first day in stores last week, trails only Lil Wayne's million-plus Tha Carter III and Coldplay's 721,000-copy Viva la Vida as the year's biggest debuts, per Nielsen SoundScan.
If that weren't enough, the Jonas boys are just the second sibling act to top the charts since the Bee Gees reigned supreme in the 1970s. (The Isley Brothers' Body Kiss accomplished the feat in 2003.)
The Jonases were all over the place. The Disneyfied band's eponymous sophomore album, released just over a year ago, inched its way back up the charts to No. 10, selling 31,000 copies. This marks the first time in nearly a decade that a group simultaneously claimed two top 10 spots. ('N Sync did it last in January 1999.)
Rihanna Gives Katy Perry the Kiss-Off
This week Rihanna's a bad girl gone good.
Her new single "Disturbia" just gave the singer a third No. 1 hit from Good Girl Gone Bad and ended Katy Perry's seven-week chart-topping streak for "I Kissed a Girl."
Perry was the first female artist to hold the top spot for seven straight weeks since, ironically, Rihanna did it last summer with "Umbrella."
Rihanna's latest single made the two-spot jump to No. 1 after selling a week-best 148,000 digital downloads. Impressively, her previous chart-topper "Take a Bow" remains atop the Hot 100 Airplay chart, making this one of the rare times in which an artist simultaneously dominates the regular Hot 100 and the Hot 100 Airplay chart with different songs.
Charts: Mamma Mia Said Knock You Out
It's big Mamma's house on the charts.
With no monster debuts this week, it became a battle of the holdovers, and the Mamma Mia! soundtrack rose to the top by actually losing the least. Miley Cyrus and Sugarland sales skidded 37 and 47 percent respectively between weeks, but the ABBA-charged Mamma Mia! dipped just 5 percent on its way to its first chart crown.
Mamma Mia! ruled the week ended Sunday by selling another 131,000 copies, per Nielsen SoundScan. The five-week-old soundtrack has sold 576,000 total copies to date, and as of Monday, the film topped $104 million at the box office after originally scoring the biggest opening weekend ever for a musical.




















