1. Keith Urban "Defying Gravity"

Sales this week: 171,525
Debut

I find a play count of 74 for "Stupid Boy" in my iTunes library.  His show two years ago was the best I saw in 2007.  But this album is a disappointment.  The sound of the record can sometimes be great, especially the guitars, but the material is so safe and second-rate, it’s disheartening.

You can’t always play to the audience.  That kills careers, it doesn’t make them.  Sure, "Love, Pain & The Whole Crazy Thing" wasn’t as successful as the previous two albums, but he was in rehab and…it wasn’t as consistently great.  But rather than turn around, Keith should have soldiered on.  I can’t tell you how many people I e-mailed "Stupid Boy" to.  If you’re a rock fan, if you loved that early seventies country rock sound, everybody from CSN to Y, you can’t help but love "Stupid Boy".  It’s heartfelt, Keith sings the track like he wrote it, even though he didn’t.  He’s pulling a Bonnie Raitt here.  And the guitar solo, whew!

But I won’t be sending anybody any tracks off the new album.

Maybe producer Dann Huff’s "I’m A Believer" from his old band Giant, but nothing from "Defying Gravity".

2. Prince "Lotus Flower"

Sales this week: 168,420
Debut

Who cares.  I’ve had this album sitting on my hard drive for weeks and haven’t played a lick.  Where do you start with three CDs from a guy who hasn’t put out anything decent in eons?  Prince has got to regain our trust.  This looks like a giant number until you compare it with those of AC/DC or the Eagles, who did exclusives with Wal-Mart.  These sales are about money, not music.

3. Diana Krall "Quiet Nights"

Sales this week: 104,023
Debut

Trying to resuscitate her career after her hubby Elvis Costello ground it to a halt by producing her last one.  I keep reading about the bossa-nova influence.  From a girl from Vancouver?  Used to be Diana Krall albums stayed on the chart forever, and you could wait to get into them. Will this one sustain?

5. Hannah Montana  "Soundtrack"

Sales this week: 86,501
Weeks on: 2
Percentage change: -38
Cume: 225,281

Past her peak.  The mania’s gone.  You’d be better off investing in Widespread Panic.  They’ll be playing big rooms while Miley’s doing guest shots on TV in between having babies.

Turns out the kids are not as stupid as the mainstream media.  Trends are incredibly brief now.  Don’t expect the Jonas Brothers to burn up the chart.

8. Flo Rida "R.O.O.T.S. (Root Of Overcoming"

Sales this week: 55,285
Debut

Wanted Dead Or Alive?

Not.

You don’t spin records ’round and ’round anymore.  His single was a confection that you download and delete.

Next!

9. Lady GaGa  "Fame"

Sales this week: 51,139
Weeks on: 23
Percentage change: +13
Cume: 602,694

Have you seen the video where she plays live? 

Lady GaGa – "Poker Face" – Acoustic LIVE

Nothing helps your career more than appearing to be a musician, playing your instrument, demonstrating chops.  Which Miley Cyrus has none of.

Lady GaGa could actually last!

10. Taylor Swift "Fearless"

Sales this week: 41,557
Weeks on: 21
Percentage change: +5
Cume: 2,977,444

Did you see her open the ACM Awards?  To say she was awful would be charitable.  She sang weakly and played the guitar worse than a Rock Band aficionado.  What is it with these women, from Madonna to Taylor Swift, who think they can only have cred if they strap on a Les Paul and shake their hips?  Ms. Swift redeemed herself with her piano-based solo slot later in the show, but for a minute there, I was ready to stick a fork in her.

12. U2 "No Line On The Horizon"

Sales this week: 35,989
Weeks on: 5
Percentage change: -30
Cume: 780,478

I don’t get it.  I don’t understand why Paul McGuinness is so busy beating up the ISPs.  The future of U2 is on the road.  Have you seen those ticket counts?  I’d be more worried about making sure each and every attendee knew the new music than whether people are paying for it. The more people who know your music, the longer your career.  Clamping down on file-traders via ISPs will only hurt the spread of the arts. We live in a sampling community.  The more sampling that can be done, the greater the chance that something can rise above the fray.  You mean you want me to buy something first, to check it out?  Do you want me to buy a piece of shit Chrysler without taking a test drive?

I believe people should pay for music, but let’s not cling to archaic distribution schemes, let’s not fight battles that can’t be won.  Bottom line, people will still find a way to trade music and any slow-down in P2P activity will actually HURT bands.

14. Kelly Clarkson "All I Ever Wanted"

Sales this week: 33,897
Weeks on: 4
Percentage change: -34
Cume: 431,129

How smart does Narvel look now?

They built buzz around one single, then sales faltered.  It’s about a long term play these days.  Kelly Clarkson is so yesterday.

17. Nickelback "Dark Horse"

Sales this week: 29,074
Weeks on: 20
Percentage change: -4
Cume: 1,770,067

Don’t you get it?  The mainstream media, the gossip blogs want pop.  The audience wants rock.

22. Yeah Yeah Yeahs "It’s Blitz!"

Sales this week: 21,763
Weeks on: 4
Percentage change: +523
Cume: 42,941

Never was so much press piled on such an inconsequential act.

Oh, that’s not true.  We’ve seen this movie many times before.  But that was when there was limited product, when some ignorant fucks would buy what was hyped.  Now, only the core cares.

I’m not convinced.

54. Decemberists ""Hazards Of Love"

Sales this week: 11,392
Weeks on: 3
Percentage change: -60
Cume: 58,876

They’re on a major label why?

They’ve got a hard core who love them, they e-mail me every day.

The rest of us…  Just don’t care.

The major specializes in breaking you big.  But nobody breaks big anymore, and anything that does is sanitized pop, not art rock.

They should pull an Amanda Palmer, get off their label.  Since the first week’s sales were all digital, imagine how much money they’d have made if they were distributed through Tunecore as opposed to Capitol!

72. Dolly Parton "Backwoods Barbie"

Sales this week: 9,555
Weeks on: 2
Percentage change: -22
Cume: 159,837

So THAT’S why she was on "60 Minutes", she was hyping a new album.

That’s the problem with plastic surgery, once you start, you can’t give up.  She’s a train-wreck who is painful to look at.  I liked it when she went back to bluegrass…  Even the tabloids gave up on covering her.  If there’s a way out of her mess, it may only be by writing a book coming clean about her plastic surgeries and her faux marriage.  She’s burnt us out.

76. Leonard Cohen "Live In London"

Sales this week: 8,979
Debut

They want to go to the show, they don’t need the record, if they even know the record is out.

Columbia is not a player here.  It’s about the promoter.  The record doesn’t lead, it follows.  The record is a souvenir, an extra in the goodie bag.  And no amount of ranting by the RIAA is going to change this.

84. Bruce Springsteen "Working On A Dream"

Sales this week: 8,030
Weeks on: 10
Percentage change: -20
Cume: 501,910

Yeah, it finally went gold!

So, what we’ve learned here is the Super Bowl may sell tickets, but it certainly doesn’t sell product.

Bruce is beholden to Sony in a new paradigm.  He needs one great topical song, right now.  Write off this pop-based confection and move on.

98. Neko Case "Middle Cyclone"

Sales this week: 6,620
Weeks on: 5
Percentage change: -40
Cume: 96,832

The new paradigm.  Almost no one knows who she is, but her fans do.  She’s built a career, that’s got life in it, her audience is supporting her, she’s doing it her way, she doesn’t have to sell out to ANYBODY!

__________________________________

In other words, it’s about your tour gross, not your SoundScan.  And no amount of bloviating by the old guard is going to change this.  People will overpay to be up close and personal, but very few want to pay a lot for your record.  Better to sell a boxed set at a high price to those who truly care than to try to flog an album with ten tracks to everybody.

And if you’re fighting for attention, you’re gonna find fewer and fewer people care.  Everybody’s got a different homepage, there are 500 channels, and infinite choice of what to listen to online.

The future is coming despite everybody’s protestations.  Just like the audience has shrugged its shoulders and said it doesn’t care about Miley Cyrus, they don’t care about the value of music and copyrights and…  Rather than fight the tide, jump into the water and float downstream.  Isn’t that what John Lennon implored you to do?  To relax your mind and float downstream?

Tomorrow never knows.  I can’t tell you exactly how the future plays out.  But I’ll guarantee you it’s never going to be the way it used to be again.  Never.

Or maybe when we’ve got three television networks, a flourishing newspaper industry and Japanese cars are seen as a joke.  What was that, forty years ago?

Samsung is the new Sony.  Lexus is the new Cadillac.  iPod is the new Walkman.  The public knows this, do you?