LOS ANGELES – "SpongeBob SquarePants" may be getting squeezed off of Time Warner Cable.
Media giant Viacom Inc. said its Nickelodeon, MTV, Comedy Central and 16 other channels will go dark for 13 million subscribers at 12:01 a.m. Thursday if a new carriage fee deal with Time Warner Cable is not agreed upon by then.
The impasse would mean "SpongeBob" and other popular shows like Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show" and Stephen Colbert's "The Colbert Report" will be cut off, said spokesman Alex Dudley, a vice president at Time Warner Cable. The nation's second-largest cable operator primarily serves customers in New York state, the Carolinas, Ohio, Southern California and Texas.
Viacom has asked for fee increases of between 22 percent and 36 percent per channel, an amount that could increase customers' cable bills, Dudley said. Viacom spokeswoman Kelly McAndrew said the requested increase was in the very low double-digit percentage range.
"The issue is that they have asked for an exorbitant increase in their carriage fees and their network ratings are sagging," Dudley said. "Basically we're trying to hold the line for our customer."
Viacom said the increases would cost an extra 23 cents a month per subscriber — which works out to $35.9 million more in total. It said that Americans spend a fifth of their TV time watching Viacom shows but its fees make up less than 2.5 percent of the Time Warner cable bill.
"We make this request because Time Warner Cable has so greatly undervalued our channels for so long," it said.
"Ultimately, however, if Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, MTV and the rest of our programming is discontinued — over less than a penny per day — we believe viewers will see this behavior by their cable company as outrageous," it said.
Negotiations are continuing at the highest level, Dudley said.
Viacom accused Time Warner Cable of not negotiating.
"It is our sincere hope that they will come to the table and negotiate a deal," said McAndrew.
The network operator also intends to tell viewers about the dispute in TV ads in 11 major markets.
Part of the disagreement is that most of the popular shows are rerun on Web sites where Viacom collects advertising revenue that it does not share with Time Warner, Dudley said.
"We don't think that's fair," he said. "They're trying to have their cake and eat it too online, where anybody can get it for free."
Viacom has staked much of its revenue-growth prospects on its ability to extract higher carriage rates out of its cable and satellite affiliates despite an ad slowdown and weak ratings.
In the third quarter, media network revenue, which accounts for about two-thirds of the total, grew 6 percent to $2.1 billion, despite global ad revenue falling 2 percent, largely because of double-digit percentage growth in affiliate fees and the success of its "Rock Band" video game.
Friday
DENVER - OK, Barack Obama is a celebrity. Just like Sheryl Crow, Stevie Wonder and the other stars who shared the stadium spotlight with him Thursday night.
Republicans are trying to make fame a liability for the Democratic presidential nominee and they're having some success at it. But John McCain is a celebrity too.
It's a curious twist in this presidential campaign, given that nobody gets this close to the White House without being, or becoming, famous in the process. Actually, McCain got there first, the Vietnam POW who survived and won his way to the Senate in 1986.
But in the Republican script, he's renowned for what he's done while Obama's fame is empty, not earned. McCain spokesmen were on the case, taunting the Democrats for the setting and the spectacle as he delivered his acceptance address to a roaring crowd of some 84,000 people in Denver's pro football stadium.
John F. Kennedy delivered his "New Frontiers" acceptance speech to 80,000 people in the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1960, the other time a Democratic National Convention held its finale before a massive crowd in an outdoor stadium.
Obama said he wanted his that way to show that it is a ground-up effort, with room for average Americans, not only delegates in their hall. In his speech, Obama spoke of his soldier grandfather who studied on the GI Bill, his single mother, of unemployed Chicago workers he tried to help, of the grandmother who sacrificed so that he could have a better life. "I don't know what kind of lives John McCain thinks that celebrities lead, but this has been mine," he said. "These are my heroes."
The celebrity stuff apparently has had some impact. Tom Daschle, the former Senate leader and an Obama adviser, acknowledged that Obama's poll numbers dipped a bit after McCain broadcast a campaign ad likening him to celebrities like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.
"He's the biggest celebrity in the world," the ad intoned. "But is he ready to lead?"
Obama called it baloney, and then took out an ad of his own saying that actually, McCain was "Washington's biggest celebrity."
So what. Entertainers don't have to deal with wars, recessions and energy woes. Obama or McCain will.
There's a simple way to cut through the tissue of the celebrity issue. That's to listen to the nominees, both of them, and judge them on what they say, not how many people they say it to or how artfully they deliver the speeches. When the next president faces hard questions, fame won't help him find the right answers.
___
Republicans are trying to make fame a liability for the Democratic presidential nominee and they're having some success at it. But John McCain is a celebrity too.
It's a curious twist in this presidential campaign, given that nobody gets this close to the White House without being, or becoming, famous in the process. Actually, McCain got there first, the Vietnam POW who survived and won his way to the Senate in 1986.
But in the Republican script, he's renowned for what he's done while Obama's fame is empty, not earned. McCain spokesmen were on the case, taunting the Democrats for the setting and the spectacle as he delivered his acceptance address to a roaring crowd of some 84,000 people in Denver's pro football stadium.
John F. Kennedy delivered his "New Frontiers" acceptance speech to 80,000 people in the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1960, the other time a Democratic National Convention held its finale before a massive crowd in an outdoor stadium.
Obama said he wanted his that way to show that it is a ground-up effort, with room for average Americans, not only delegates in their hall. In his speech, Obama spoke of his soldier grandfather who studied on the GI Bill, his single mother, of unemployed Chicago workers he tried to help, of the grandmother who sacrificed so that he could have a better life. "I don't know what kind of lives John McCain thinks that celebrities lead, but this has been mine," he said. "These are my heroes."
The celebrity stuff apparently has had some impact. Tom Daschle, the former Senate leader and an Obama adviser, acknowledged that Obama's poll numbers dipped a bit after McCain broadcast a campaign ad likening him to celebrities like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.
"He's the biggest celebrity in the world," the ad intoned. "But is he ready to lead?"
Obama called it baloney, and then took out an ad of his own saying that actually, McCain was "Washington's biggest celebrity."
So what. Entertainers don't have to deal with wars, recessions and energy woes. Obama or McCain will.
There's a simple way to cut through the tissue of the celebrity issue. That's to listen to the nominees, both of them, and judge them on what they say, not how many people they say it to or how artfully they deliver the speeches. When the next president faces hard questions, fame won't help him find the right answers.
___
Saturday
Countdown to Crawford: Tracking the final days of the Bush administration
News flash: Not all Hollywood stars shun White House
It's sort of a given in American politics that Hollywood tilts left.
After all, it is located on the Left Coast.
And a lot of its denizens -- Barbra Streisand and Alec Baldwin come to mind -- famously threatened to leave the country if George W. Bush was elected. Twice.
But now comes word from the White House that several actresses have agreed to serve the Bush administration, albeit in a feel-good cause on one of those commissions that any White House uses to reward its social friends.
So it is not that surprising that American Idol Jordin Sparks and Bo Derek of "10" fame have been tapped by the White House to serve on a commission that encourages volunteerism.
Called the President's Council on Service and Civic Participation, the group tries to make good on President Bush's call, just after 9/11, for Americans to give two years or 4,000 hours of their lives to volunteer service. The council members' nickname: ambassadors for service.
Looking at the list of appointees announced this week, it seems not much of a secret how one gets to be an ambassador for service. Be a philanthropist (Evern Cooper Epps of Georgia). Be a NASCAR driver (Kasey Kahne of Washington), a songwriter (Michael "I Will Be Here For You" Smith of Tennessee) or a football player (Daniel Wuerffel of Florida.)
Or be an actress who uses her given name, Janine Gauntt, of "Northern Exposure" fame, otherwise known as Janine Turner.
-- Johanna Neuman
It's sort of a given in American politics that Hollywood tilts left.
After all, it is located on the Left Coast.
And a lot of its denizens -- Barbra Streisand and Alec Baldwin come to mind -- famously threatened to leave the country if George W. Bush was elected. Twice.
But now comes word from the White House that several actresses have agreed to serve the Bush administration, albeit in a feel-good cause on one of those commissions that any White House uses to reward its social friends.
So it is not that surprising that American Idol Jordin Sparks and Bo Derek of "10" fame have been tapped by the White House to serve on a commission that encourages volunteerism.
Called the President's Council on Service and Civic Participation, the group tries to make good on President Bush's call, just after 9/11, for Americans to give two years or 4,000 hours of their lives to volunteer service. The council members' nickname: ambassadors for service.
Looking at the list of appointees announced this week, it seems not much of a secret how one gets to be an ambassador for service. Be a philanthropist (Evern Cooper Epps of Georgia). Be a NASCAR driver (Kasey Kahne of Washington), a songwriter (Michael "I Will Be Here For You" Smith of Tennessee) or a football player (Daniel Wuerffel of Florida.)
Or be an actress who uses her given name, Janine Gauntt, of "Northern Exposure" fame, otherwise known as Janine Turner.
-- Johanna Neuman
Thursday
Rihanna, Queen Of The Download
The week's other big story is Sugarland becoming the first country duo to reach #1 in the 52-year history of Billboard's weekly album chart.
We've all become accustomed to hit albums being re-released with bonus tracks, putting pressure on the act's biggest fans to buy the album again to get the new material. We've seen it, most recently, with Rihanna's Good Girl Gone Bad and its "Reloaded" edition. Sugarland took the opposite approach. The duo released a "Deluxe Fan Edition" of its new album last week and followed it this week with the regular version. (The special edition included five extra songs, an expanded booklet and access to download an exclusive music video and "behind-the-scenes" footage. It was priced $2-$3 more than the regular version.)
Did the strategy work? You might say so. Love On The Inside debuted at #2 last week and this week moves up to the top spot. With the striking success of this experiment, expect to see more albums released with a pricier expanded edition issued first, followed a week later by the no-frills regular album
.
Billboard's Geoff Mayfield thinks highly of the Sugarland model. Writing in his Over The Counter column this week, he observed, "Applause to the act and to Universal Music Nashville for putting the extra content out front, instead of releasing the enhanced package months after thousands of fans already purchased the standard offering."
Mayfield also noted that this isn't the first time that a deluxe edition of an album has preceded the regular edition by a week. U2 did this twice, albeit with retrospectives, not a new studio album. In November 1998, the band released a two-CD set, The Best Of 1980-1990/The B-Sides and followed it one week later with the basic, single-disk The Best Of 1980-1990. Four years later, the band did the same thing, releasing the two-CD set The Best Of 1990-2000 & B-Sides one week before issuing the single-disk The Best Of 1990-2000.
Love On The Inside switches places with Miley Cyrus' Break Out. It's the first time that two albums have debuted in the top two positions one week and exchanged positions the following week since Tim McGraw's Let It Go and the NOW 24 compilation flip-flopped in April 2007. There, the country album got off to a faster start and was overtaken in week two by a pop-minded collection-the opposite of what happened this time.
Brooks & Dunn's 2005 album Hillbilly Deluxe had held the record for highest-charting album by a country duo. It peaked at #3. Two other country duos, Big & Rich and Montgomery Gentry, have had top 10 albums in recent years. Van Zant climbed as high as #21 in 2005. Country duos from the era before Nielsen/SoundScan began monitoring U.S. album sales in 1991 were underrepresented on the pop album chart. Even as popular a country duo as The Judds never climbed above #51. The Bellamy Brothers, who had a #1 pop single in 1976 with "Let Your Love Flow," topped out at #69 on the album chart.
Double Platinum: Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III this week becomes the first album to top the 2 million threshold in 2008 sales activity. This is the 31st week of the year, a little late in the year to see the first album hitting the 2 million mark. But at least it's better than last year, when we were 38 weeks into the year before Daughtry's eponymous debut album finally became the first album to top the 2 million mark in 2007 sales. A little ray of good news for the beleaguered music industry!
Jonas Item of The Week: Jonas Brothers' "Tonight" enters Hot Digital Songs at #2. It's the third track from the trio's upcoming A Little Bit Longer album to debut at #2 in the past six weeks, following "Burnin' Up" and "Pushing Me Away." The album hits the chart two weeks from now. I am on record saying that if it doesn't debut at #1, I will eat my hat. I think my hat is safe.
Here's the low-down on this week's top 10 albums.
1. Sugarland, Love On The Inside, 171,000. Sugarland went from total obscurity to the #1 spot in 3-1/2 years. The act's first album, Twice The Speed Of Life, peaked at #16 in its 25th week on the chart in July 2005. Its sophomore album, Enjoy The Ride, debuted and peaked at #4 in November 2006. Two songs from the new album are listed on Hot Digital Songs, topped by "All I Want To Do" at #29.
2. Miley Cyrus, Breakout, 163,000. This is Cyrus' first album that isn't listed on Nielsen/SoundScan's chart of best-selling Children's Albums, recognition on their part that she is now in the pop mainstream. Our little girl is growing up! Six songs from the album are listed on Hot Digital Songs, topped by "7 Things" at #10.
3. Various Artists, Mamma Mia!, 138,000. The soundtrack holds at #3 for the third straight week. This is the best chart showing by a movie soundtrack since Juno logged four weeks in the top three in January and February. More than 20,000 copies of the new album were sold digitally, making this the week's #1 Digital Album. Four songs from the album are listed on Hot Digital Songs, topped by Meryl Streep's "Mamma Mia" at #58. The feel-good movie has grossed $87.5 million in its first three weeks.
4. Kid Rock, Rock N Roll Jesus, 96,000. This is the 16th consecutive week that the album has shown a sales increase compared to the previous week. This remarkable streak is due to the radio smash "All Summer Long." The album holds at #4, its highest ranking since October 21.
5. Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III, 79,000. The album holds at #5 in its eighth consecutive week in the top five. It's the first rap album to spend its first eight weeks in the top five since 50 Cent's The Massacre did it in 2005. Five songs from the album are listed on Hot Digital Songs. "A Milli" this week finally supplants "Lollipop" (featuring Static Major) as Lil Wayne's highest-ranking entry on that chart, at #22.
6. Third Day, Revelation, 75,000. This new entry is the veteran Christian rock group's highest-charting album to date. It tops Wherever You Are, which debuted and peaked at #8 in November 2005. (I bet one reason that Christian rock sells so well is that its fans believe it's a sin to illegally download. It might have something to do with the commandment "Thou shalt not steal.")
7. Coldplay, Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends, 70,000. The album dips a notch to #7 in its seventh week in the top 10. Two songs from the album are listed on Hot Digital Songs, topped by "Viva La Vida" at #7.
8. Kidz Bop Kids, Kidz Bop 14, 58,000. This new entry is the eighth consecutive album in the Kidz Bop series (excluding ancillary releases) to debut in the top 10. As you can see, the album cover features a credit for "special guest" Sean Kingston, who performs a special version of his recent hit "Take You There."
9. Various Artists, Camp Rock, 58,000. The album dips a notch to #8 in its seventh week in the top 10. Four songs from the album are listed on Hot Digital Songs, topped by "This Is Me" by Demi Lovato & Joe Jonas at #42. (This week's top 10 provides a helpful road map for a kid getting into pop music. Start out with Kidz Bop, graduate to Camp Rock, then Miley, then maybe Kid Rock and then they're on their own.)
10. Nas, untitled, 41,000. The album drops from #8 to #10 in its third week in the top 10. The rapper's most recent album, Hip Hop Is Dead, also had three weeks in the top 10 in 2006-2007. Nas' "Hero" drops to #168 on Hot Digital Songs.
Two albums drop out of the top 10 this week. NOW 28 dips from #9 to #11. Taylor Swift's Beautiful Eyes EP, a Wal-Mart exclusive, drops from #10 to #16.
Scars On Broadway's Scars On Broadway opens at #17. It's the second side project by members of System of a Down to reach the top 20. Scars On Broadway features two System members-guitarist Daron Malakian and drummer John Dolmayan. Serj Tankian, System's lead singer, opened at #4 in October with his solo debut, Elect The Dead. System landed three #1 albums from 2001 to 2005.
Rick Springfield's Venus In Overdrive bows at #28. It's Springfield's first album to crack the top 30 since Tao in 1985. Springfield, who had back-to-back top 10 albums in 1981-'82, was known as a teen idol, a TV soap opera hunk and a talented power-pop musician--unfortunately in that order. The buzz for the new album put Springfield's biggest hit, "Jessie's Girl," back on the Hot Digital Songs chart at #185. The Grammy-winning smash has sold 619,000 downloads.
Alice Cooper's Along Came A Spider opens at #53. It's his best showing since Hey Stoopid in 1991. Slash and Ozzy Osbourne appear on the album. Cooper had five straight top 10 albums from 1972-1975. Like Elton John, David Bowie, and KISS, he emphasized theatricality in a T-shirt and jeans era in pop music.
ABBA's Gold-Greatest Hits holds at #1 on the Catalog Album chart for the third straight week. It sold 24,000 copies this week and would have ranked #17 on the big chart if older, catalog albums could compete there. Two ABBA classics are listed on Hot Digital Songs, topped by "Dancing Queen" at #106.
Ups & Downs: M.I.A.'s Kala jumps from #151 to #62, with an 88% increase in sales-a bigger increase than any other non-debuting album in the top 200. On the down side, Candlebox's Into The Sun falls from #32 to #127 and U2's digital-only Live From Paris: Hippodrome De Vincennes, Pairs, 4th July, 1987 tumbles from #54 to #168. Sales of both albums declined by 64%, the biggest percentage drop in the top 200.
Heads Up: Lloyd and Hawthorne Heights made the top three with their last albums. Does either have a shot at #1 this time? We'll find out next week. Lloyd's Lessons In Love is his follow-up to Street Love, which debuted at #2 in March 2007. Hawthorne Heights' Fragile Future is the band's follow-up to If Only You Were Lonely, which bowed at #3 in March 2006. Also due: Randy Newman's Harps And Angels, Trapt's Only Through The Pain and the standard edition of Conor Oberst's eponymous set.
Shameless Plug: On Friday, look for my first Chart Watch Extra. I'll count down the 10 most downloaded "golden oldies"--that term now referring to any song released before 2000. Hey, time marches on.
We've all become accustomed to hit albums being re-released with bonus tracks, putting pressure on the act's biggest fans to buy the album again to get the new material. We've seen it, most recently, with Rihanna's Good Girl Gone Bad and its "Reloaded" edition. Sugarland took the opposite approach. The duo released a "Deluxe Fan Edition" of its new album last week and followed it this week with the regular version. (The special edition included five extra songs, an expanded booklet and access to download an exclusive music video and "behind-the-scenes" footage. It was priced $2-$3 more than the regular version.)
Did the strategy work? You might say so. Love On The Inside debuted at #2 last week and this week moves up to the top spot. With the striking success of this experiment, expect to see more albums released with a pricier expanded edition issued first, followed a week later by the no-frills regular album
.
Billboard's Geoff Mayfield thinks highly of the Sugarland model. Writing in his Over The Counter column this week, he observed, "Applause to the act and to Universal Music Nashville for putting the extra content out front, instead of releasing the enhanced package months after thousands of fans already purchased the standard offering."
Mayfield also noted that this isn't the first time that a deluxe edition of an album has preceded the regular edition by a week. U2 did this twice, albeit with retrospectives, not a new studio album. In November 1998, the band released a two-CD set, The Best Of 1980-1990/The B-Sides and followed it one week later with the basic, single-disk The Best Of 1980-1990. Four years later, the band did the same thing, releasing the two-CD set The Best Of 1990-2000 & B-Sides one week before issuing the single-disk The Best Of 1990-2000.
Love On The Inside switches places with Miley Cyrus' Break Out. It's the first time that two albums have debuted in the top two positions one week and exchanged positions the following week since Tim McGraw's Let It Go and the NOW 24 compilation flip-flopped in April 2007. There, the country album got off to a faster start and was overtaken in week two by a pop-minded collection-the opposite of what happened this time.
Brooks & Dunn's 2005 album Hillbilly Deluxe had held the record for highest-charting album by a country duo. It peaked at #3. Two other country duos, Big & Rich and Montgomery Gentry, have had top 10 albums in recent years. Van Zant climbed as high as #21 in 2005. Country duos from the era before Nielsen/SoundScan began monitoring U.S. album sales in 1991 were underrepresented on the pop album chart. Even as popular a country duo as The Judds never climbed above #51. The Bellamy Brothers, who had a #1 pop single in 1976 with "Let Your Love Flow," topped out at #69 on the album chart.
Double Platinum: Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III this week becomes the first album to top the 2 million threshold in 2008 sales activity. This is the 31st week of the year, a little late in the year to see the first album hitting the 2 million mark. But at least it's better than last year, when we were 38 weeks into the year before Daughtry's eponymous debut album finally became the first album to top the 2 million mark in 2007 sales. A little ray of good news for the beleaguered music industry!
Jonas Item of The Week: Jonas Brothers' "Tonight" enters Hot Digital Songs at #2. It's the third track from the trio's upcoming A Little Bit Longer album to debut at #2 in the past six weeks, following "Burnin' Up" and "Pushing Me Away." The album hits the chart two weeks from now. I am on record saying that if it doesn't debut at #1, I will eat my hat. I think my hat is safe.
Here's the low-down on this week's top 10 albums.
1. Sugarland, Love On The Inside, 171,000. Sugarland went from total obscurity to the #1 spot in 3-1/2 years. The act's first album, Twice The Speed Of Life, peaked at #16 in its 25th week on the chart in July 2005. Its sophomore album, Enjoy The Ride, debuted and peaked at #4 in November 2006. Two songs from the new album are listed on Hot Digital Songs, topped by "All I Want To Do" at #29.
2. Miley Cyrus, Breakout, 163,000. This is Cyrus' first album that isn't listed on Nielsen/SoundScan's chart of best-selling Children's Albums, recognition on their part that she is now in the pop mainstream. Our little girl is growing up! Six songs from the album are listed on Hot Digital Songs, topped by "7 Things" at #10.
3. Various Artists, Mamma Mia!, 138,000. The soundtrack holds at #3 for the third straight week. This is the best chart showing by a movie soundtrack since Juno logged four weeks in the top three in January and February. More than 20,000 copies of the new album were sold digitally, making this the week's #1 Digital Album. Four songs from the album are listed on Hot Digital Songs, topped by Meryl Streep's "Mamma Mia" at #58. The feel-good movie has grossed $87.5 million in its first three weeks.
4. Kid Rock, Rock N Roll Jesus, 96,000. This is the 16th consecutive week that the album has shown a sales increase compared to the previous week. This remarkable streak is due to the radio smash "All Summer Long." The album holds at #4, its highest ranking since October 21.
5. Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III, 79,000. The album holds at #5 in its eighth consecutive week in the top five. It's the first rap album to spend its first eight weeks in the top five since 50 Cent's The Massacre did it in 2005. Five songs from the album are listed on Hot Digital Songs. "A Milli" this week finally supplants "Lollipop" (featuring Static Major) as Lil Wayne's highest-ranking entry on that chart, at #22.
6. Third Day, Revelation, 75,000. This new entry is the veteran Christian rock group's highest-charting album to date. It tops Wherever You Are, which debuted and peaked at #8 in November 2005. (I bet one reason that Christian rock sells so well is that its fans believe it's a sin to illegally download. It might have something to do with the commandment "Thou shalt not steal.")
7. Coldplay, Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends, 70,000. The album dips a notch to #7 in its seventh week in the top 10. Two songs from the album are listed on Hot Digital Songs, topped by "Viva La Vida" at #7.
8. Kidz Bop Kids, Kidz Bop 14, 58,000. This new entry is the eighth consecutive album in the Kidz Bop series (excluding ancillary releases) to debut in the top 10. As you can see, the album cover features a credit for "special guest" Sean Kingston, who performs a special version of his recent hit "Take You There."
9. Various Artists, Camp Rock, 58,000. The album dips a notch to #8 in its seventh week in the top 10. Four songs from the album are listed on Hot Digital Songs, topped by "This Is Me" by Demi Lovato & Joe Jonas at #42. (This week's top 10 provides a helpful road map for a kid getting into pop music. Start out with Kidz Bop, graduate to Camp Rock, then Miley, then maybe Kid Rock and then they're on their own.)
10. Nas, untitled, 41,000. The album drops from #8 to #10 in its third week in the top 10. The rapper's most recent album, Hip Hop Is Dead, also had three weeks in the top 10 in 2006-2007. Nas' "Hero" drops to #168 on Hot Digital Songs.
Two albums drop out of the top 10 this week. NOW 28 dips from #9 to #11. Taylor Swift's Beautiful Eyes EP, a Wal-Mart exclusive, drops from #10 to #16.
Scars On Broadway's Scars On Broadway opens at #17. It's the second side project by members of System of a Down to reach the top 20. Scars On Broadway features two System members-guitarist Daron Malakian and drummer John Dolmayan. Serj Tankian, System's lead singer, opened at #4 in October with his solo debut, Elect The Dead. System landed three #1 albums from 2001 to 2005.
Rick Springfield's Venus In Overdrive bows at #28. It's Springfield's first album to crack the top 30 since Tao in 1985. Springfield, who had back-to-back top 10 albums in 1981-'82, was known as a teen idol, a TV soap opera hunk and a talented power-pop musician--unfortunately in that order. The buzz for the new album put Springfield's biggest hit, "Jessie's Girl," back on the Hot Digital Songs chart at #185. The Grammy-winning smash has sold 619,000 downloads.
Alice Cooper's Along Came A Spider opens at #53. It's his best showing since Hey Stoopid in 1991. Slash and Ozzy Osbourne appear on the album. Cooper had five straight top 10 albums from 1972-1975. Like Elton John, David Bowie, and KISS, he emphasized theatricality in a T-shirt and jeans era in pop music.
ABBA's Gold-Greatest Hits holds at #1 on the Catalog Album chart for the third straight week. It sold 24,000 copies this week and would have ranked #17 on the big chart if older, catalog albums could compete there. Two ABBA classics are listed on Hot Digital Songs, topped by "Dancing Queen" at #106.
Ups & Downs: M.I.A.'s Kala jumps from #151 to #62, with an 88% increase in sales-a bigger increase than any other non-debuting album in the top 200. On the down side, Candlebox's Into The Sun falls from #32 to #127 and U2's digital-only Live From Paris: Hippodrome De Vincennes, Pairs, 4th July, 1987 tumbles from #54 to #168. Sales of both albums declined by 64%, the biggest percentage drop in the top 200.
Heads Up: Lloyd and Hawthorne Heights made the top three with their last albums. Does either have a shot at #1 this time? We'll find out next week. Lloyd's Lessons In Love is his follow-up to Street Love, which debuted at #2 in March 2007. Hawthorne Heights' Fragile Future is the band's follow-up to If Only You Were Lonely, which bowed at #3 in March 2006. Also due: Randy Newman's Harps And Angels, Trapt's Only Through The Pain and the standard edition of Conor Oberst's eponymous set.
Shameless Plug: On Friday, look for my first Chart Watch Extra. I'll count down the 10 most downloaded "golden oldies"--that term now referring to any song released before 2000. Hey, time marches on.
Saturday
Country star stays more than busy
Country superstar Toby Keith is on tour this summer, but his mind seems to largely be on his new movie, "Beer for My Horses."
Keith is finished with the launch of his latest album, a two-disc greatest-hits collection, so now he can turn much of his attention to the film, due in theaters Aug. 8.
"It's my first screenplay, and I think everybody is going to be surprised how it turned out," says Keith, who cowrote the film with comic-singer Rodney Carrington.
This time, Keith brings a boatload of Hollywood and Nashville stars onboard, albeit some just for cameos. Musicians Willie Nelson, Ted Nugent, David Allan Coe and Mac Davis appear, as do actors Barry Corbin, Tom Skerritt and Claire Forlani.
Spun off a No. 1 hit of the same name recorded by Keith and Nelson in 2003, "Beer for My Horses" focuses on an action-packed road trip taken by two small-town deputies, played by Keith and Carrington.
"I had the story for two or three years," says Keith, who adds that he teamed with Carrington to pull together all the bits and pieces.
Keith turned to Carrington after an attempt to write with a Los Angeles screenwriter ended up "taking my dream and turning it into a nightmare."
Keith and Carrington, natives of Oklahoma and Texas, respectively, followed their blue-collar instincts as they wrote. "We didn't know what the Hollywood way of doing things was," Keith recalls. "We just wrote them (scenes) like little songs."
Keith, 47, points to television's "The Andy Griffith Show" and "Seinfeld" as character-rich productions that inspired his writing. "I didn't want it to be punch-line comedy; I wanted the humor to come from the situations the characters were in."
Keith financed the movie with $4 million of his own funds before Roadside Attractions, an independent film distributor, acquired the rights.
Although he acknowledges having worried about how his Hollywood costars would react to his acting, Keith says he relaxed once filming started. "Amazing as it is, it doesn't matter if there are three cameras rolling at once -- I somehow never see the camera. I never think about it."
Despite his focus on the film, Keith still delivers solid performances in his concerts. They feature such hits as "I Love This Bar," "I'm Just Talkin' About Tonight" and "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)."
He also found time to guest on a jazz-flavored CD by former NBA star Wayman Tisdale, a fellow Oklahoman, singing Barry White's "Never, Never Gonna Give You Up."
"I drove up to Tulsa one afternoon and got into his studio and sang, and the next thing I know, it's his current single," Keith says with a laugh.
Keith is finished with the launch of his latest album, a two-disc greatest-hits collection, so now he can turn much of his attention to the film, due in theaters Aug. 8.
"It's my first screenplay, and I think everybody is going to be surprised how it turned out," says Keith, who cowrote the film with comic-singer Rodney Carrington.
This time, Keith brings a boatload of Hollywood and Nashville stars onboard, albeit some just for cameos. Musicians Willie Nelson, Ted Nugent, David Allan Coe and Mac Davis appear, as do actors Barry Corbin, Tom Skerritt and Claire Forlani.
Spun off a No. 1 hit of the same name recorded by Keith and Nelson in 2003, "Beer for My Horses" focuses on an action-packed road trip taken by two small-town deputies, played by Keith and Carrington.
"I had the story for two or three years," says Keith, who adds that he teamed with Carrington to pull together all the bits and pieces.
Keith turned to Carrington after an attempt to write with a Los Angeles screenwriter ended up "taking my dream and turning it into a nightmare."
Keith and Carrington, natives of Oklahoma and Texas, respectively, followed their blue-collar instincts as they wrote. "We didn't know what the Hollywood way of doing things was," Keith recalls. "We just wrote them (scenes) like little songs."
Keith, 47, points to television's "The Andy Griffith Show" and "Seinfeld" as character-rich productions that inspired his writing. "I didn't want it to be punch-line comedy; I wanted the humor to come from the situations the characters were in."
Keith financed the movie with $4 million of his own funds before Roadside Attractions, an independent film distributor, acquired the rights.
Although he acknowledges having worried about how his Hollywood costars would react to his acting, Keith says he relaxed once filming started. "Amazing as it is, it doesn't matter if there are three cameras rolling at once -- I somehow never see the camera. I never think about it."
Despite his focus on the film, Keith still delivers solid performances in his concerts. They feature such hits as "I Love This Bar," "I'm Just Talkin' About Tonight" and "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)."
He also found time to guest on a jazz-flavored CD by former NBA star Wayman Tisdale, a fellow Oklahoman, singing Barry White's "Never, Never Gonna Give You Up."
"I drove up to Tulsa one afternoon and got into his studio and sang, and the next thing I know, it's his current single," Keith says with a laugh.
Thursday
Miley Cyrus, as her true self
Miley Cyrus, as her true self
T'CHA DUNLEVY
The Gazette
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Miley Cyrus
Breakout
Hollywood/Universal
- - -
The phenomenon that is Hannah Montana should not be underestimated. It is vast, all-encompassing and ongoing. But even as she signs in for another season of the smash hit TV show about a regular teenage girl who moonlights as a pop star, Miley Cyrus is looking ahead. Which means setting herself up for the post-Hannah Montana career. Hey, when you're 15 years old, you gotta think of your future.
So, after releasing two albums as her TV alter-ego (well, 11/2 albums, technically - the 2007 double CD Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus featured one disc from each of her personae), Cyrus steps out, all on her own, as a solo artist.
But she's hardly leaving it all behind. While Cyrus claims this is a more mature album, it remains generic teen pop, through and through. Even Avril Lavigne seems edgy by comparison. Fans of Hillary Duff, listen up.
Cyrus's concerns are set out from the opening title track: "Every week's the same / Stuck in school's so lame / My parents say that I'm lazy / Getting up at 8 a.m.'s crazy."
The pop-punky first single, 7 Things, is a breakup song (one of many) that scratches the surface just enough to allude to an alleged relationship ("You make me laugh you make me cry / I don't know which side to buy"), without getting into details. Power-ballad The Driveway follows suit. This is cookie-cutter, multi-format radio pop for Hannah Montana fans who are starting to look for something - but not much - more in their music.
Most won't get the reference in Cyrus's uptempo, orchestrally enhanced but spontaneity-challenged cover of Cyndi Lauper's Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.
Fly on the Wall is powered with vapid electro-pop raunch; Bottom of the Ocean is a lush, '80s-tinged tearjerker; Wake Up America tackles global warming to a cheeky riff-rock backdrop; These 4 Walls has a country twang; and the remixed See You Again is bubblegum dance-pop.
Cyrus has all the bases covered, at least in terms of providing bright-eyed ditties for wide-eyed kiddies craving a safe, squeaky-clean introduction to the pop world. For an album that actually expresses a more textured musical and emotional maturity, we may have to wait until she graduates from high school.
T'CHA DUNLEVY
The Gazette
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Miley Cyrus
Breakout
Hollywood/Universal
- - -
The phenomenon that is Hannah Montana should not be underestimated. It is vast, all-encompassing and ongoing. But even as she signs in for another season of the smash hit TV show about a regular teenage girl who moonlights as a pop star, Miley Cyrus is looking ahead. Which means setting herself up for the post-Hannah Montana career. Hey, when you're 15 years old, you gotta think of your future.
So, after releasing two albums as her TV alter-ego (well, 11/2 albums, technically - the 2007 double CD Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus featured one disc from each of her personae), Cyrus steps out, all on her own, as a solo artist.
But she's hardly leaving it all behind. While Cyrus claims this is a more mature album, it remains generic teen pop, through and through. Even Avril Lavigne seems edgy by comparison. Fans of Hillary Duff, listen up.
Cyrus's concerns are set out from the opening title track: "Every week's the same / Stuck in school's so lame / My parents say that I'm lazy / Getting up at 8 a.m.'s crazy."
The pop-punky first single, 7 Things, is a breakup song (one of many) that scratches the surface just enough to allude to an alleged relationship ("You make me laugh you make me cry / I don't know which side to buy"), without getting into details. Power-ballad The Driveway follows suit. This is cookie-cutter, multi-format radio pop for Hannah Montana fans who are starting to look for something - but not much - more in their music.
Most won't get the reference in Cyrus's uptempo, orchestrally enhanced but spontaneity-challenged cover of Cyndi Lauper's Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.
Fly on the Wall is powered with vapid electro-pop raunch; Bottom of the Ocean is a lush, '80s-tinged tearjerker; Wake Up America tackles global warming to a cheeky riff-rock backdrop; These 4 Walls has a country twang; and the remixed See You Again is bubblegum dance-pop.
Cyrus has all the bases covered, at least in terms of providing bright-eyed ditties for wide-eyed kiddies craving a safe, squeaky-clean introduction to the pop world. For an album that actually expresses a more textured musical and emotional maturity, we may have to wait until she graduates from high school.
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