Last Friday, one of the regular commenters on my “100 and Single” column poured cold water all over my prediction that Estelle’s “American Boy” might finally creep into the U.S. Top 10. Noted regular reader ukidol, “Estelle’s song has been removed from iTunes since the start of the week, so she’ll drop sharply in the [...] Read more

During the two weeks I was vacationing, Billboard reported changes atop all three of its flagship charts–including the blessed end of Katy Perry’s No. 1 reign on the Hot 100, which was displaced by a Rihanna song I like a lot. Even more amazingly, a song that may be the most left-field hit of the [...] Read more

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

Ed. note: Chris “dennisobell” Molanphy, our resident chart guru, looks at the upward, downward, and lack of movement on this week’s Billboard charts: In the last two years, we’ve seen several impressive feats on Billboard‘s Hot 100 by Disney Channel-groomed pop acts, and this week, we see another. Four songs from the Jonas Brothers vehicle [...] 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: EMI is the Bear Stearns of the music industry–once mighty, now declining rapidly and ripe for takeover and obliteration. But you’d never know it looking at the new Billboard Hot 100: two [...] 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: Lil Wayne is expected to triumph on next week’s album chart, but this week, he has locked up a remarkable percentage of the Hot 100 singles chart: seven songs, starting with his [...] Read more