1. Coldplay "X& Y"
Capitol
Sales this week: 740,331
Debut

Enough with the circle jerk.  This is what’s WRONG with the music business today.  When cocktail music made for people whose hormones are no longer raging is trumpeted as quality reincarnate.  There’s nothing wrong with Coldplay, hell, I can even tolerate Chris Martin’s whining…it’s just that there’s not a whole hell of a lot RIGHT!  "X & Y" is so boring that even the fans on AMAZON are complaining, and that’s a fawning bunch.  Rather than break the mold and surprise us, do something DIFFERENT, Coldplay has just released 12 new tracks cut from the OLD mold.  This is not artistry, it’s COMMERCE!  Oh, I’m sure that the band would disagree with me, but WHO CARES!!!  These navel-gazers have NO IDEA what great art/genius is.  Bottom line: A casual music fan, the one the business needs to get reinvested in order for the numbers to work, hears this, sees it being trumpeted as the best music out there and rolls over and watches television for another year, discounting music completely.  The scene is vibrant, SALES are vibrant, when music is cutting edge, when it’s new, and different, even CHALLENGING!  Movie ticket sales have tanked because they’re turning out pabulum.  It’s the same deal with the record business.  Rather than using the film paradigm of hyping bland crap to high hell labels would be better off signing something adventurous, letting it percolate, have the casual fans find out about it from FRIENDS instead of the media.  But labels don’t have that kind of patience…didn’t EMI’s stock price tank when "X&Y"’s release date slipped??

2. The Black Eyed Peas "Monkey Business"
A&M Interscope
Sales this week: 295,036
Debut

Hip-hop for Republicans.  The rap equivalent of Up With People.  This music is so meaningless and inoffensive as to be safe for three year olds.  And will be completely forgotten before the fans of this record graduate from middle school.

3. The White Stripes "Get Behind Me Satan"
Third Man/V2
Sales this week: 171,348
Debut

Even the BEATLES ditched the suits.  ENOUGH WITH THE OUTFITS already Jack.  And while you’re at it, can you stop dating actress/models too?  Only distracts from your music…then again, maybe that’s the point.

Yes, he’s got a good sound.  And he’s trying to make cutting edge music, with one foot in the future and one foot in the past.  And I laud him for this.  But could he write some memorable TUNES???

Just because you jaded fucks over forty still wearing black need something to believe in that doesn’t make this album good.

5. Mariah Carey "The Emancipation Of Mimi"
Island/IDJ
Sales this week: 151,492
Percentage change: -8%

I guess Mimi’s lucky, Tom Cruise is now the national joke.  Still, couldn’t ANYBODY in the mainstream press beat her up for the title of this album and her permanently stuck in adolescence mentality?

Still, one has to give credit to L.A. Reid.

Think about it, BMG squeezes this guy out.  I mean if someone’s spending too much, you bring in ACCOUNTANT, you don’t FIRE HIM if he’s selling records.  And EMI…you really have that much confidence in your A&R staff, that you couldn’t turn this woman’s career around?

Still, if I’m on the sidelines, and Mariah Carey has a hit in 2005, with the same kind of meaningless crap she was singing in 1990, I’m keeping my fingers on the Xbox controller, even if she takes off her clothes in her next video, makes a porn tape, I DON’T CARE!!!

6. System Of A Down "Mezmerize"
American/Columbia
Sales this week: 86,415
Percentage change: -26%

Love their politics.  Love that they’re into it.  Love that it has meaning.  Love that they developed over years.  Just don’t love the music.  Not a mainstream band.  Oh, mainstream sales, here at number 6 on the chart, but that is just indicative of how the mainstream audience has TUNED OUT!

7. Gwen Stefani "Love, Angel, Music, Baby"
Interscope
Sales this week: 70,267
Percentage change: -15%

Will somebody please hollaback that she’s not that good-looking, that she doesn’t have that great a voice, and that her music isn’t that memorable?  God, any given Top Ten hit of the sixties was better than ANYTHING she’s ever done solo or with No Doubt save maybe "Don’t Speak".

Really, the emperor has no clothes here.  One could believe in Diana Ross and I can make an argument that even the hated MELANIE made better music, so to hold up Gwen Stefani as the poster girl of a successful music industry is just laughable.

9. Audioslave "Out Of Exile"
Interscope/Epic
Sales this week: 65,737
Percentage change: -33%

Change the fucking name.

Some of my peeps tell me this record is actually good.  But I can only see this band as less than the sum of its parts.  You take a cutting edge band, Rage Against The Machine, and extract the lyrical edge, and you take the lead singer of an adventurous grunge metal band, Soundgarden, and excise all the musical limit-testing, and you end up with just another bland rock band?  I don’t get it.  I don’t care what ANYBODY says, this is about banking, not music.  Tom Morello was done without Zach de la Rocha, and Chris Cornell truly WAS done.  The reason we believe in bands is THEY’RE NOT LIKE US, they’re not playing it SAFE, they’re RISKING!  There’s no risk involved here.

12. Dave Matthews Band "Stand Up"
RCA/RMG
Sales this week: 60,599
Percentage change: -19%

Makes you wish they’d work with Glen Ballard again.  This album isn’t quite unlistenable, but you never want to hear it again.  They should AT LEAST make peace with Steve Lillywhite and work with him again.  I mean if Roger Waters and Dave Gilmour can make up…

16. Keith Urban "Be Here"
Capitol Nashville
Sales this week: 44,410
Percentage change: +13%

The business got fucked up when the power shifted from the managers to the labels.  Used to be the manager was the quarterback, he devised the plan, and he worked with the label to EXECUTE it.

Today the label thinks the manager is superfluous, a pain in the ass they must take the phone calls of and say no to.

To tell you the truth, I had no idea who Keith Urban was.  Oh, I was aware of the NAME, but just laughed on the inside that a country guy had a hip-hop moniker.  Little did I know that he was an AUSTRALIAN country artist!

But then I went to lunch with Gary Borman who not only told me the BACK STORY, but the plan.

Now this isn’t the first time I’ve been hyped by a manager.  Not that Gary’s a hypester.  It’s just that it’s the BUSINESS of managers to be excited and sell.  But, after our conversation, I started to notice, Keith’s name began cropping up everywhere, everything Gary told me happened.

These acts are not built on luck.  They’re built on hard work and VISION!  Nurture and you get results.

21. Weezer "Make Believe"
Geffen
Sales this week: 39,518
Percentage change: -13%

If only Jordan Schur paid as much attention to THIS band instead of Ashlee Simpson, maybe the record would be a bit better.

Then again, can you tell Rivers Cuomo what to do?

This guy is not likable.  And it’s only when his music is great that we grant him a pass.  This is not a great album, nobody wants to help him out, it’s gonna sink.

22. Gorillaz "Demon Days"
Virgin
Sales this week: 39,179
Percentage change: -27%

And now you know why you should never believe the mainstream press when it comes to music reporting.  Not a fucking thing, not their take on P2P, not their take on sales, because you see major media just doesn’t give a fuck about the music business, and as a result will print any lame crap the labels feed them.  If I were writing for the "New York Times" or "Wall Street Journal" I would have EXPLODED when EMI said it missed its numbers because of the Gorillaz album (they cited this and the Coldplay record).  If you don’t look critically at the MUSIC then you’re just not paying attention.  The Gorillaz have no fans, hell, they only made one album and they’re a cartoon!!!  Great music can triumph, but there’s no momentum anymore, with the audience being sold too much crap and able to preview new records on the Web.

23. Green Day "American Idiot"
Reprise
Sales this week: 38,179
Percentage change: -6%

Quite possibly the only real record on this chart.

Interesting…it’s a band that’s been around in excess of ten years.  How long did the Spice Girls last?  Isn’t Britney basically retired?

Rather than play it safe to extend its career, the band threw the long ball into uncharted territory, BEYOND the end zone, and it’s THIS that the audience is resonating with.  Green Day are like the musicians of yore. They say what they want and do what they want.  We call these people ROCK STARS!

Gwen Stefani’s not a rock star.  And neither is Chris Martin.

Charisma is something that’s innate.  You can feel it in a person’s presence.  They march to the beat of a different drummer.  They don’t want to get along, they want to FUCK THINGS UP!  "Safe" is not in their vocabulary.  They’re willing to risk IT ALL, based on what their heart tells them to do.

Green Day is a real band.  If there were more Green Days, the music business would be too busy reaping revenues to complain about piracy.

And evidence is not solely album sales, it’s the hottest ticket out there.  Being sold on TODAY, not nostalgia, like U2.  (AND, at an affordable/non-rip-off price!)

Kudos to the band, the label, EVERYBODY INVOLVED!!!

NOT ON THE CHART

U2 "How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb"

Great music sells forever.  Just ask Pink Floyd.  "How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb" is overhyped overheated mediocrity.  Just one element in a giant campaign to solidify the band’s title as the world’s greatest living rock band (forget it Stones, you relinquished the title LONG ago).  If only the band had experimented, not even booked a tour, not made a deal with Steve Jobs, played the role of MUSICIANS rather than STARS, I’d care.  And other people would too.  Just because you sell a lot of records up front on MANIA that doesn’t mean a record is good.  Hell, if "How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb" were really great, like Green Day, urban-oriented Top Forty radio would have played it.  But they didn’t.  BECAUSE IT JUST WASN’T GOOD ENOUGH!!!

CONCLUSION

Yes, I’m negative.  DON’T tell me to be positive.  That’s what’s wrong with our country, everybody’s an unquestioning beaming idiot, more concerned with the inane life of an accused pedophile than life and death not only in Iraq, but Africa.  If you don’t question, if you don’t investigate before you believe, then you got a bad education.  Education isn’t about learning facts, but acquiring the ability to ANALYZE!

Bottom line, the mainstream music business is in the shitter.  If you look at the Top Fifty chart from fifteen years ago, never mind twenty or THIRTY years ago, you’d see albums that still sell today, made by acts that you’d STILL pay good money to see.  Most of the acts on today’s chart are truly evanescent, they’re here today and will be gone tomorrow.  They’re meaningless, they’re marketing exercises, they’ve got no soul.  When the media hype of the week, Coldplay, can’t even sell out two Verizon Wireless Amphitheatres in Irvine, and is doing less than sell-out business everywhere but the coasts, you KNOW there’s something wrong with the paradigm.  Hell, even STEVE MILLER, who hasn’t even RELEASED a record in over a decade, never mind had a hit, can do strong business throughout the country.

It’s an indie business.  Because that’s the only place where there are acts people can believe in.  Because these acts are doing it from their hearts, worried about their fans, not the record company, REFUSING to sell out at any cost.  The Arcade Fire has been trumpeted again and again, but their story is important.  By not chasing every last dollar by smiling at Katie Couric and doing their own reality show, they’ve retained their DIGNITY, they’re seen as MUSICIANS, not stars.  And there’s a difference.  You earn the first, the second is a coronation after the fact.  Just because you can get news coverage that doesn’t mean you’re gonna have a career, your record is gonna stick.  Last time I checked, Tonya Harding wasn’t in the news and CERTAINLY wasn’t raking in the dough.  In today’s global village all publicity IS NOT good publicity, it’s very easy to burn the franchise out, acts must be MANAGED!  Then again, as stated earlier, this does not comport with the major label short term mentality.

Music is healthy.  Fans know it.  Small shows sell out.  It’s just the big time business that is dying.  And it’s not about P2P, it’s about lame music performed by soulless acts.  You may not want to admit it, but it’s just that simple.