In the doldrums of January 2006, several weeks after the annual flurry of post-Christmas music-buying, the iTunes Store was livened up by the sudden appearance on its best-sellers list of a bunch of new hit songs. It’s not unheard of for the industry to drop new songs in the dead of winter by non-blockbuster, developing [...] Read more

In a week where it seems the global financial crisis is inescapable, America decides that a buck is a nice price to spend on music, and the Top 40 of Billboard‘s Hot 100 sees a wave of new best-selling singles—including two in the Top 10 and a massive leap by a new No. 1 smash. [...] Read more

In a sleepy week for Billboard‘s Hot 100, Atlanta rap king T.I. maintains his grip on the No. 1 spot, his fifth nonconsecutive week there, with “Whatever You Like.” The “jump ball” I expected to break within the Top Three turned out to be a dead ball, as the three hits hold their positions. T.I. [...] Read more

When this column launched one year ago this week, Kanye West was locked in a mortal struggle for the top of Billboard‘s Hot 100, first defeating and then retreating from a smash by Soulja Boy. Twelve months later, the smash holding down the No. 1 spot has changed—this time, it’s from a more seasoned hip-hop [...] Read more

In this week of financial horrors, created largely by formerly cocksure men, it’s perhaps apropos that a couple of ladies post the most gloat-worthy performances in the upper reaches of Billboard‘s Hot 100. That starts at the top, where Pink, a nearly decade-long veteran of the chart wars, scores her first solo No. 1 (and [...] Read more

Baseball is such a rich sport for data geeks, what with every move made by a player having a number attached to it. But the inconsistencies and outright mistakes in the sport’s long history, from the number of games in a season to the exclusion of the Negro Leagues, make the sport even moregeek-friendly–those missteps [...] Read more

Last fall and winter, chart fans noted the return to the radio of a style that, until recently, was pretty unfashionable on Billboard‘s Hot 100: pure-pop female singer-songwriters. Strummier and sunnier than their Lilith counterparts in the ’90s and closer in kinship to California’s post-Joni ladies of the ’70s, two gals with hard-to-spell names led [...] Read more

Atlanta hip-hop king T.I. vaults 70 places into the No. 1 spot on Billboard‘s Hot 100 this week with “Whatever You Like,” a sing-songy, smudgy Xerox of his classic 2006 hit “What You Know.” With this move, Clifford Joseph Harris Jr. scores his first No. 1 as a lead artist (he was credited two years [...] Read more