For more than three years now, Interscope has tried a range of well-worn tactics to make singer/rapper/agitprop icon M.I.A. a best-seller in America: single releases with high-profile remixes; ads proclaiming her across-the-board rock-critic and blogger love; mixtape tracks; eye-catching and at times controversial music videos; and teaming her up with Timbaland for what turned out [...] Read more

The singles charts have settled into what we hope will be a momentary midsummer slumber. And that starts with the song in its fourth week at No. 1 on Billboard‘s Hot 100. Idolator’s distaste for Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” is well-documented, but I nonetheless have to acknowledge that this blandly titillating dance-pop smash [...] Read more

A front-line act with a months-old album decides to push his most obvious hit-bound song to radio–a song heavily reliant on a prominent sample of a deathless pop hit. But, bucking the day’s prevalent trend, he decides not to release the song on the most popular singles medium, forcing most customers to buy his album. [...] Read more

Ed. note: Chris “dennisobell” Molanphy, our resident chart guru, looks at the upward, downward, and lack of movement on this week’s Billboard charts: If you’re trying to guess what might end up as Billboard‘s top song of 2008, you might take a gander at this week’s Hot 100, where a prime contender is still sitting [...] Read more