199. White Stripes "Icky Thump"

Sales this week: 8,109
Cume: 664,573

If we didn’t have to read so much about Jack White, if he wasn’t such a media darling in a media saturated world, we wouldn’t see this number as a disappointment, but as the number of an up and comer.

Before Meg had her anxiety attack, the White Stripes were doing some very innovative marketing in Canada…surprise shows, etc. Still, I don’t believe going on the road gooses record sales much anymore. I don’t think this number would be substantially higher if the band had toured. Like there’s gonna be a station that promotes the show and delivers airplay that people are LISTENING TO? Are you still living in the EIGHTIES!

197. Aly & AJ "Insomniatic"

Sales this week: 8,301
Cume: 229,748

In the words of the Eagles, ALREADY GONE! Disney can move records, but it can’t establish careers.

195. Annie Lennox "Songs Of Mass Destruction"

Sales this week: 8,346
Cume: 214,470

She’s niche! But not as niche as her old bandmate Dave Stewart. He needs to stay behind the board, that TV thing with Kara DioGuardi…who approved that?

191. KT Tunstall "Drastic Fantastic"

Sales this week: 8,487
Cume: 161,690

More commonly known as "Piece Of Shit" by those who used to care.

Don’t put out a record because the market cycle demands it, only release music if it’s GOOD!

177. Levon Helm "Dirt Farmer"

Sales this week: 9,503
Cume: 41,386

The reformed Band did one great track, a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s "Atlantic City"… But truly, listening to those albums was painful. THIS record got good reviews. But I haven’t listened yet because I don’t want my memories tainted. Have you ever heard "King Harvest (Has Surely Come)"? Check it out if you haven’t, you’ll get the magic. Of a group that existed seemingly in the ether. That didn’t worry about the audience, and therefore was so great. Listening to the Band albums was like stumbling into a village in Tennessee and finding out the act playing in the bar is better than anything on the radio.

And, the Band is better than anything on the radio now. Is Levon’s work as good? I certainly hope so, but Robbie Robertson wrote those songs. He was the genius. Yet, he needed the voices. Fuck "The Last Waltz"… What has Robbie done since other than "Broken Arrow"? What a waste of talent. Families fight, yet stay together. Why can’t bands?

When I’m in a good mood, when nothing can bring me down, I’m gonna spin this disc. But I’m not taking a chance of being depressed. I’ve been holding off. This is a respectable number, but once upon a time the Band was BEYOND respectable.

175. Angels & Airwaves "I-Empire"

Sales this week: 9,577
Cume: 126,546

Is this the guy with the ring in his lip or the one who appears normal? You might know, but the public has no idea. They remember Blink-182, they’re not experts on the members of this spin-off band. A horrifying sales number if you’re the conglomerate that used to release Blink-182.

171. Jars Of Clay "Christmas Songs"

Sales this week: 9,692
Cume: 31,604

Guess Christian acts don’t do such a great job of selling Christmas records. Probably because they’re Christian 24/7, 365 days a year!

170. Joni Mitchell "Shine"

Sales this week: 9,760
Cume: 167,952

Anybody who says this album is good is not a Joni Mitchell fan.

You’re better off listening to the Herbie Hancock covers record. (And what kind of fucked up world do we live in where a covers record is competing for Album of the Year?)

As for the Starbucks imprimatur… The value of that expired sometime in July.

169. Plain White T’s "Every Second Counts"

Sales this week: 9,784
Cume: 617,054

At least they named their album appropriately. Since their minutes of fame are going to last even less than Sugar Ray’s.

It’s a single, not an act. It’s record, not a career. It’s a business deal, there’s no soul. We used to invest in bands, knowing they had a future. Lose money on this record, make it up in the future. The Plain White T’s have no future.

161. Aretha Franklin "Jewels In The Crown: Duets With The Queen Of Soul"

Sales this week: 10,634
Cume: 62,204

Would this record have stiffed if she’d re-upped with Clive Davis?

Despite that, can the stunting end? Two famous people singing a lame song is not an important event, the public is burned out, people don’t care.

152. Buckcherry "15"

Sales this week: 11,635
Cume: 907,830

Sign and promote rock and roll. I view them as a cartoon, but the single was good. They’ve got some of the OLD Motley Crue danger. You can go to the gig, get your ears blown out, and act ridiculous in your fucked up fashion. You can have fun, as mainstream media pays no attention. That’s when music was great, when the mainstream was clueless. Now, with television and the "New York Times" promoting and pontificating, kids have moved on to the Web, where their parents, THE MAN, is paying no attention. If your act has no underground element, you’ve got a brief career (unless you’re SELLING mainstream stuff like Groban and Buble).

All publicity is not good publicity. Hype kills acts.

144. Eddie Vedder "Music For The Motion Picture ‘Into The Wild’"

Sales this week: 12,072
Cume: 176,337

Don’t tie up your new music with a motion picture. I’d tell you to look to Outkast for example, but really, go all the way back to "To Live And Die In L.A." Wang Chung did a great soundtrack to a stiff picture and it killed their career momentum.

This number would have been much higher if Eddie Vedder was selling a solo album, sans the movie tie-in. The film is pretentious, read the book. The music stands alone, but it can’t stand alone, because it’s tied to the fucking movie!

129. Taylor Swift "Sounds Of The Season"

Sales this week: 13,428
Cume: 66,664

I’m waiting for acts to put out Christmas records BEFORE their first release! Why bother trying to build the career, why not sell out and cash in IMMEDIATELY!

I like Taylor Swift. But her manager and label should be shot. This is not a Disney act, she writes the songs, she’s got a career, her music is even crossing over pop. Why do this? It’s not like they’re selling a shitload of records. Can’t they leave some money on the table?

89. Finger Eleven "Them Vs. You Vs. Me"

Sales this week: 20,832
Cume: 349,880

Mediocre band proves that Wind-Up still has it.

85. Feist "Reminder"

Sales this week: 21,791
Cume: 410,668

Commercials can get everybody to notice, but they can’t give you a career. She’ll be known as the Apple girl forever more.

Do you want that?

Interscope wants that. They want ANYTHING that moves product. Shit, did you see how many people they just canned? Major labels are in the business of saying yes, managers should be in the business of saying no.

I’m not saying the Apple commercial was terminal, but it did come with a price. You’ve got to weigh the pluses and minuses of your choices…

Did she get new fans? NOT MANY! Just grazers who liked a catchy single who’ve already moved on to something else.

78. Rihanna "Good Girl Gone Bad"

Sales this week: 23,125
Cume: 897,115

Single of the summer doesn’t make you a legend. You’re about as forgettable as the local lifeguard you had a crush on and talked to once.

Big radio single leaves the act playing clubs and not even going platinum. If you need proof the old model is dead, here it is.

53. Britney Spears "Blackout"

Sales this week: 34,120
Cume: 558,369

So, do you think her career was hurt by Jamie Lynn’s pregnancy?

I’d say yes. It confirms the whole FAMILY is white trash.

And to think "Vanity Fair" said Lynne Spears was the most sane of the celebrity mothers…

Pregnant at sixteen shouldn’t be on the cover of "OK!", it should be on the most wanted list at the post office. A constant warning to take the other direction.

You fuck without protection you risk getting pregnant. Like if you eat nothing, you starve to death. This isn’t a difficult equation to comprehend.

Do you think Nickelodeon will renew her deal? Are you kidding me! But they’ll give some lame excuse about creative differences or something. You’ve got a responsibility to your gig, to act REASONABLY!

Having a baby at sixteen is hurting yourself and your child. This is what abortion was invented for. And we can debate that all day long, but all I’ll say is teenage pregnancy ruins lives. And the fact that these idiots are revered by society freaks me out.

Actually, they’re not. The media thinks they are. But kids would much rather be Mark Zuckerberg. But what kind of capitalist fool is he, with the Facebook Beacon initiative. If you don’t value your users over your advertisers, you’re whacked. We used to look to bands to reveal this truth, to be inviolate, to be unsullied, to do only what they wanted to. But now the acts are in bed with the advertisers too. Everybody’s beholden to some rich guy in a white robe sitting on a throne in the sky. But that guy doesn’t even exist. Everybody does things because everybody else says they’re okay. Like my dad used to say, "If everybody jumped off a bridge, would YOU?" Independent thinking has been supplanted by groupthink, being a member of the crowd. We used to revere our iconoclasts. Now everybody’s sold out. Which is why I hate Justin Timberlake. You couldn’t even give the middle finger to the NFL? Like you were gonna be on the Super Bowl again ANYWAY? If Justin had said FUCK YOU his career would have grown legs. Now people only care if he’s got a hit song. We used to care about acts even WITHOUT hit songs. We were fans of THEM! You can’t be a fan of anybody anymore. And the execs want you to be a fan of them. Like I wanna be Jimmy Iovine or Clive Davis. Ain’t that a joke. When businessmen trump artists, we’ve got a sick society.

47. Linkin Park "Minutes To Midnight"

Sales this week: 38,658
Cume: 1,983,729

Brand names count. And Rick Rubin is a very good record producer.

But Rick’s a lousy record exec. He hasn’t been to the east coast office and he’s impossible to get ahold of. And, have you heard about the new Columbia POD system? Ridiculous. And to think that Rick can still produce outside the label. What, did Rob Stringer miss the Matt Serletic memo?

45. Bruce Springsteen "Magic"

Sales this week: 39,702
Cume: 811,996

You had to put tickets on sale for JULY? What’s the reason? I don’t even know what I’m doing in FEBRUARY, never mind JULY! But you had to take all that money out of the marketplace, you had to earn all that interest. And to think you built your reputation as a man of the people… Bruce, when you were growing up in Asbury Park did you buy tickets for a gig SEVEN MONTHS AWAY? Did you even have the MONEY FOR IT!

32. Blake Lewis "Audio Day Dream"

Sales this week: 57,900
Cume: 155,591

Even the mainstream media knows that "American Idol" no longer sells records. Another formula bites the dust.

17. Colbie Caillat "Coco"

Sales this week: 86,018
Cume: 883,981

A good deal is one that benefits both parties. Universal got its pound of flesh from imeem, but imeem’s economics don’t work.

What’s this all about? Universal is shooting itself in the foot, avoiding the big kahuna, MySpace, and funding a startup. Kind of like investing in the Zune instead of Apple/iTunes. You’ve got to go with a WINNER! Everybody goes to MySpace to hear bands’ music. You might not be getting paid right now, but by just having excerpts available, you kill the possibility of having another breakout record like Colbie Caillat’s.

14. Led Zeppelin "Mothership"

Sales this week: 95,281
Cume: 438,498

This hits package and the iTunes deal had nothing to do with the O2 show.

And if you believe that, you probably think Rick Rubin produced the Black Crowes’ debut, you believe Lyor Cohen is 48, you believe the Spice Girls ticket sales weren’t driven by resalemania, you believe Peter Grant was a good guy…

If you just fell off the turnip truck it’s a wonder you can even make it through the day, feed yourself.

It’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock and roll. Isn’t that what AC/DC said? Getting ripped off, underpaid? This is a lying stinking business. But those Led Zeppelin albums didn’t lie, the music was inviolate, to the point where we still care about it today. Will we care about today’s music tomorrow? ARE YOU KIDDING ME!

13. Rascal Flatts "Still Feels Good"

Sales this week: 96,096
Cume: 1,390,003

Country records. Don’t enter at number one and fall off the chart like those of every other genre.

3. Eagles "Long Road Out Of Eden"

Sales this week: 241,104
Cume: 2,210,207

There’s not a single soul in the business who believes these numbers.

No, SoundScan is not counting the package as two discs. But there’s a palette of albums at each store. And you get two discs for $11.88. Is Irving lying here?

Well then, is he rigging the European numbers too?

Everybody’s sour grapes. And, if there is some manipulation here, I say more power to those involved. This is a business of perception, and the perception is the Eagles did something innovative, gave the middle finger to the industry and not only survived, but triumphed.

1. Josh Groban "Noel"

Sales this week: 669,161
Cume: 2,772,879

Has outsold Kanye, never mind Fitty.

And he’s NOT Jewish. But the guy who runs his record company is.

They say this is the power of Oprah. We’ve got no Oprah for credible acts, I’m not sure one can EVER exist. Especially since Tony Wilson is not only no longer on television, but deceased. If you want to sell middle of the road stuff, go to Oprah. If you want to promote cutting edge music that will pay dividends for DECADES, there’s no TV outlet that’ll touch you. TV won’t understand it. And radio probably won’t either. It’s going to be rough going. But if you’re good, and you survive, dollars are going to rain down on you FOREVER!