1. cashbox top 100 pop singles, may 19, 1990 →

    i spent a lot of time today poring over cashbox charts because i am a self-obsessed nitwit who thinks up projects like ‘let’s see what pop chart from my youth could most accurately serve as a microcosm of my musical aesthetic’ when she is trying to work on her writer’s block. this one, from the month i turned 15, has ‘vogue’ at the top and the likes of janet jackson, faster pussycat, l.a. guns, sweet sensation, the cure, ‘all around the world,’ ‘don’t wanna fall in love,’ and ‘what it takes’ scattered throughout.

  2. More than three years after Top 40 radio took a hard right toward dance-pop, urban music has been left to founder. We’d all be better off if it snapped out of its depression.

    — Chris Molanphy does a deep dive on how R&B and hip-hop have been faring on the charts lately, and why both sales and crossover airplay have foundered for big-name artists like Beyoncé, Chris Brown, Usher, and others. 

  3. a selection of popular music from the week i turned 14. →

    Here is the chart from which this playlist is taken. You have no idea how bummed out I am that Sa-Fire isn’t on Spotify. 

  4. "But while the Ultimate Chart and Billboard are currently dominated by Rihanna and the Black Eyed Peas, MTV's chart offers a refreshing list of artists: Waka Flocka Flame, Girls, Yelawolf." →

    Well, 2 outta 3.

    Also what’s up with no love for Number Eight lady Jazmine Sullivan? Or NUMBER ONE DUDE MIKE POSNER??? In the pantheon of dudes singing about being dudes, he is way > fucking Girls. Who aren’t even in the top ten!

  5. "For the last few months I’ve been arguing with myself: there’s no reason to expect anything worthwhile to come out of this show, but at the same time, having decided to write this column every week, I felt a duty to review the records, even if, week by week, it felt more and more as if I were trying to put into words what it’s like to listen to the sounds emanating from an abyss. At the same time, I also feel a certain duty to pop music itself, its survival and further growth, which Glee seems intent on preventing, if not killing outright." →

    Robert Myers, who reviews the new entries in the Hot 100 every week, declares a moratorium on including “Glee”-related singles in his blog. And:

    So, for every week that Glee puts songs on the chart, I will dip into Billboard’s Bubbling Under chart (which lists the 75 songs below the Hot 100) and review an equal number of records that haven’t yet made the big chart.

  6. Numbers

    thediscography:

    I have to wonder if the numbers bear him out here, though—VW’s, sure, but I don’t know about DPs. 

    Hello!

    [Insert standard disclaimer about album sales being a weird indicator of anything these days, particularly when it comes to those records pitched toward the tech-happy, bandwidth-equipped “indie” sector, here]

    Bitte Orca’s last appearance on the SoundScan charts that I have access to was for the sales week ending February 28. It had sold about 65,000 copies through that date (I would guess its current tally is 1,000-1,500 copies higher than that).

    As of March 21 Contra had sold 287,000 copies; Merriweather Post Pavilion 160k; Veckatimest 170k; xx 110k; Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix 368k. (To complete the GAPDY offerings: It’s Blitz’s last appearance on the charts I get came in January. Back then it had moved slightly more than 200k copies.) 

    As far as recent releases: Frightened Rabbit’s new one (out two weeks) has sold 11k to date; Joanna Newsom’s Have One On Me (four weeks) 22k; Beach House’s Teen Dream (out eight weeks) 40k; Spoon’s Transference (nine weeks) 125k; Ted Leo’s The Brutalist Bricks (two weeks) 8k; Titus Andronicus’ The Monitor (two weeks) 6k.

    I am very interested in the relative big-box store availability of all these albums. I should call some distributors and ask!

  7. iTunes’ Best Sellers Of 2009

    TOP-SELLING SONGS
    1. “Boom Boom Pow,” Black Eyed Peas
    2. “Right Round,” Flo Rida
    3. “Poker Face,” Lady GaGa
    4. “I Gotta Feeling,” Black Eyed Peas
    5. “Gives You Hell,” The All-American Rejects
    6. “Just Dance,” Lady GaGa & Colby O’Donis
    7. “Party in the U.S.A.,” Miley Cyrus
    8. “The Climb,” Miley Cyrus
    9. “Dead and Gone (feat. Justin Timberlake),” T.I.
    10. “Use Somebody,” KIngs of Leon

    TOP-SELLING ALBUMS
    1. Kings of Leon, “Only By the Night”
    2. Various Artists, “Twilight (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)”
    3. Lady GaGa, “The Fame”
    4. Taylor Swift, “Fearless”
    5. Dave Matthews Band, “Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King”
    6. Michael Jackson, “The Essential Michael Jackson”
    7. The Fray, “The Fray”
    8. Jay-Z, “The Blueprint 3”
    9. Eminem, “Relapse”
    10. Black Eyed Peas, “The E.N.D. (The Energy Never Dies)”

    and the editors picked Michael Jackson as Artist Of The Year, which, well, sigh.