Obviously, we need to talk about the new song that takes over the top of Billboard‘s Hot 100, and the mind-blowing record it sets. But before we do that, let’s talk about Hilary Swank. I find Swank’s movie career totally incomprehensible: She either wins Oscars, or she tanks. Not even Meryl Streep has won two [...] Read more

Maura and I have already taken a victory lap about our fulfilled prediction that Kelly Clarkson would vault to the top of Billboard‘s Hot 100. Clarkson’s “My Life Would Suck Without You” dominates the list again this week, thanks to commanding sales and fast-rising radio airplay. How long will she stay there? Nothing in the [...] Read more

The most interesting news on Billboard’s Hot 100 isn’t at the summit, where the entire Top Five has been static for the last couple of weeks. It’s in the basement, where a flotilla of new songs—many by established acts—debuts. We could talk about the return of Eminem to the Hot 100, for the first time [...] Read more

Over the holidays, Billboard‘s song charts were, at least on the surface, pretty sleepy. On the Hot 100, most of the songs that were hot late last fall—Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” and “If I Were a Boy,” T.I. and Rihanna’s “Live Your Life,” Kanye’s “Love Lockdown” and “Heartless,” Taylor Swift’s “Love Story,” the unkillable Katy Perry’s [...] Read more

Writing teen-oriented pop is a fairly specialized talent. Writing for a musical is an even more rarified art. Combining the two—and introducing the musical-theater art form to an entire generation that previously had little use for the stuff—is some kind of pop triple-lutz, a strange sort of accomplishment. Two songwriters behind Disney’s High School Musical [...] Read more

Late this past summer, I was thinking of making one of those CafePress T-shirts with the somewhat cryptic, post–Katie Holmes slogan “Free Estelle!” True, it wouldn’t have meant a thing to anyone except my fellow poptimists and chart geeks. And it wouldn’t have accomplished much, unless I wore it while marching in a circle in [...] Read more