The #1 Hot 100 Song and other #1’s on Billboard for the week of November 22, 2008
As I predicted, people want to “Live Your Life” again. The T.I. featuring Rihanna track spends a third non-consecutive week at #1 with a bullet on the Billboard Hot 100, and it remains the Airplay Gainer of the week. I’m making a bold prediction that it will stay at #1 next week. Katy Perry’s “Hot N Cold” is still a threat (having moved up one spot to #3), but they are also being threatened by Kanye West’s “Heartless,” which is the Hot Shot Debut for the week at #4 (his third top 10 Hot Shot debut in 2008, following “Swagga Like Us” with Jay-Z and T.I. featuring Lil Wayne, and “Love Lockdown.”) Pink’s “So What” is no longer in play, having dropped from #3 to #6 and having lost its bullet.
I keep forgetting about soundtracks, because the #1 album on the Top 200 Albums chart is the Twilight soundtrack. Spurned by the #34 (so far) charting track “Decode” by the pop punk band Paramore, the soundtrack for the upcoming vampire-human love story (opening in theaters on November 21) debuts on the chart with sales of 165,000 copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan, 29% of which (48,000) were digital downloads, the second biggest digital week for a soundtrack since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking album download sales in 2004 (the “High School Musical 2” soundtrack debuted with 62,000 downloads in August 2007.) It is going to be short-lived though…because we yet again have several heavy-hitters challenging the top spot next week. I think that it is going to be Taylor Swift’s sophomore album Fearless, but it could also be “American Idol 7” runner-up David Archuleta’s self-titled album, T-Pain’s Thr33 Ringz, Christina Aguilera’s Target-exclusive only greatest hits album Keeps Gettin’ Better: A Decade of Hits, or the Now That’s What I Call Music! 29 collection (pushed back a week.) As for last week’s predictions…I was way off. Unk’s 2econd Season came in #104, Brad Paisley’s Play came in #9, Andrea Bocelli’s Incanto came in #8, and Sarah Brightman’s A Winter Symphony came in #38.
Next week Swift can celebrate her potential #1 album, but this week she can celebrate her third #1 song on the Hot Country Songs chart with “Love Story” making a jump from #2 to #1. Ne-Yo’s “Miss Independent” is #1 on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart for a third week. Billboard’s rock charts ain’t changin’ yet again, because Metallica’s “The Day That Never Comes” is #1 on the Mainstream Rock chart for a ninth non-consecutive week, while The Offspring’s “You’re Gonna Go Far, Kid” is #1 on Modern Rock chart for an eighth week. All chart information was found on Billboard.com.
So far, Kanye West’s first two singles from his album 808s & Heartbreak, “Love Lockdown” and “Heartless,” do not impress me because they use the annoying Auto-Tune-processed vocals that are a feature in almost every rap and R&B song out today (curse you, Cher, for introducing it to the mainstream with her 1999 #1 hit “Believe!”) I’m hoping that it won’t knock “Live Your Life” out of #1, and like I said above…I don’t think that it will. “Love Lockdown” stalled at #3 a few weeks ago, so I’m not too worried about “Heartless” being a big threat.