Award season is in full swing, isn’t it? Coming less than two weeks after the American Music Awards and less than a week after the Soul Train Awards, and just a short time before the year-end best-of lists start raining down, the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences will announce the nominees for next January’s Grammy Awards. For the second consecutive year, there will be a prime time TV special announcing the nominees for the major categories, with scheduled […]
Posts tagged "Eminem"
Chart Stalker 11/24/10: Just Like the Old Days!!
Thanks to a very healthy slate of new releases and the Beatles’ debut on iTunes, this week’s Billboard chart almost looks like one from 5 or 6 years ago when more people were buying records and also bodes well for a fairly successful holiday season. Nine albums scan over 100,000 copies this week (actually, eight of the nine scan over 150,000). This number includes seven debuts, but…this week’s chart-topper is actually a holdover. Susan Boyle actually INCREASES her first week […]
2010 American Music Awards: Live Blog
The American Music Awards may have fallen to third place on the importance list behind the Grammy Awards and the MTV Video Music Awards, but it’s still a pretty important show where it counts…at the cash register. It’s pretty well-watched, and lots of people that see performances or award winners end up going to their local store (or to iTunes) and picking up a single or album by someone they caught on the show. The AMAs began in 1974 as […]
Chart Stalker 11/3/10: Taylor to the Rescue!!
So much for me and my prognostication skills. When Taylor Swift’s “Speak Now” album came out last week, I initially pegged the album to do a WAY more than respectable 750,000 copies in it’s first week-coming into close contention with Eminem’s “Recovery” as the biggest debut week in 2010. Well, reports immediately started flying around suggesting that Taylor would come close to the coveted million mark, and now the dust has settled for the week, and Swift scores the biggest […]
The People Speak: Eminem & Antebellum Lead the American Music Awards
Well, folks, we’re in the thick of music award show season. The MTV Video Music awards kicked things off at the beginning of September, and the season concludes at the end of January with the Grammy Award ceremony. Smack dab in the middle, we have Dick Clark’s American Music Awards: an almost 40-year old institution that prides itself on being the people’s choice. Unlike the Grammy nominees, which are chosen by a “blue-ribbon” panel of music industry professionals, AMA nominees […]
Chart Stalker 10/7/10: The Yee-Haw Edition
Guess what type of music people are still buying? Ding Ding Ding!! Country music! Kenny Chesney becomes the second straight country act to debut at #1 on the national Billboard charts. His latest effort, “Hemingway’s Whiskey”, starts with 183,000 units. It replaces Zac Brown Band’s “You Get What You Give” at the top of the chart. The Grammy winning band’s sophomore effort slides two spots to #3 this week. Guess what other type of music people are apparently still buying? […]
Chart Chat 9/23/10: Linkin Park and Trey Songz In A Photo Finish!
1,005 units separate this week’s #1 and #2 albums in one of the closest races for the top spot in history. The eventual victor? Rock giants Linkin Park score the top spot with 241,000 units sold of their fourth studio album, “A Thousand Suns”. While that sum is healthy, it is cause for alarm considering that LP’s last album, “Minutes to Midnight”, debuted with triple that sum just three short years ago. Linkin Park’s sound has gradually evolved over the […]
Chart Stalker 9/1/10: The Girls Have It
New blood at the top of the chart, y’all! The Top 2 albums both sell over 100,000 units as well (with Eminem at #3 just short of six figures). Leading the charge is Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream”, which starts off with 192,000 units. While some might think that a small number in light of “California Gurlz” being inescapable this summer, it’s also worth nothing that this is more than 4 times what Katy’s debut album started with, and “I Kissed […]
Chart Stalker 8/26/10: There’s Life!!!
Eminem #1, yada yada yada blah blah blah. However, the remainder of the Top 10 on this week’s Billboard album chart gets an almost complete makeover, by virtue of six debuts and a reentry. The only albums in this week’s Top 10 that were also in last week’s Top 10 besides Eminem are Arcade Fire’s “The Suburbs” (#7) and Justin Bieber’s “My World 2.0” (#8). This week’s Top 10 debuts come from R&B singer Kem (#2), singer-songwriters Ray LaMontagne (#3) […]
Chart Stalker! 8/18/10: Change Soon Come
I’ll stand by for a sec and let you try to guess who has this week’s #1 album. Give up? It’s Eminem!! “Recovery” scans another 133,000 units this week and spends it’s 6th non-consecutive week at the top of Billboard’s album chart. “Recovery” also spends it’s 8th consecutive week at the top of Billboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop Album chart. It’s the longest consecutive stay at the top for a rap album in 20 years. Last album to hang around that long? MC […]
Eminem’s Saving the Music Industry, But is “Recovery” His Best Work?
I have a love/hate relationship with Marshall Mathers. As a hip-hop head, I have to give the man respect for his talent. At a time when most now-school rappers can’t even freestyle properly, Eminem is almost a throwback emcee. The dude has skills that name-your-favorite-current-rapper can’t touch with a ten-foot pole. That said, there are also plenty of things that trouble me about Eminem. Like most people who were bullied as kids, he himself takes pleasure in bullying others less […]