Tagged: chrismolanphy

Photos : holeymooon Today, pop enthusiast and former Idolator scribe Chris Molanphy finishes Tweeting down his "Top 75 Singles of The Noughts". -ed. 10. OutKast, "B.O.B." Prophetic—Baghdad matters again? in 2000?—and singular in all of hip-hop. 9. Amerie, "1 Thing." Best use of a sample in the Noughts, on a song capturing how new love feels: jumpy but electrifying. 8. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, "Maps." This is less a song than a poem, leaving ample space [...]

Photos : holeymooon nought n also naught ought aught (Mathematics) another name for zero: used esp in counting or numbering. Let's give a warm bumpershine welcome to guest contributor Chris Molanphy , former Idolator scribe, and self-described, "mild-mannered communications consultant by day, pop geek by night". For the month of December he's tweeting down his favorite songs of the decade and he's been kind enough to share them here as well. You can follow Chris on Twitter [...]

Our resident chart guru Chris Molanphy was on WNYC's On The Media this weekend, where he shared his thoughts on the meaning of the pop charts in an age where music is so atomized. The transcript isn't up yet, but you can listen to his package-and the rest of the show, which is all about Where Music Is Now-at the link. [ On The Media ]

The most notable move on any of Billboard 's flagship singles charts this week isn't on the Hot 100 , where the Black Eyed Peas make it a month at No. 1 with the tiresome "Boom Boom Pow." Instead, over on the normally snoozy Modern Rock chart, a veteran band makes the second-biggest leap to No. 1 in a decade and a half, and in the process breaks out of a tie with U2 for the second-biggest roster of penthouse-dwellers in this chart's history. I'm speaking of Green [...]

As you might have noticed, this is a bittersweet week around here; because of budget cuts, we've had to say goodbye to pretty much all the Idolator contributing writers, from columnists to daily bloggers. The site is going to go on as a solo project of sorts, although the news cycle might run at a slightly slower pace. I just wanted to take a moment on this crappy day to thank everyone who's contributed to the site during my tenure, from the people who helped me sift through the news cycle every day to the columnists, each of whom expanded [...]

" Lady GaGa Scores Hot 100 Milestone," a Billboard headline trumpeted yesterday upon the release of the new Hot 100 . What could this milestone be? you might ask yourself. Biggest self-aggrandizer since 50 Cent to reach the top slot? Most similar-sounding pair of hits since Rick Astley? Most successful pantsless act? As it happens, GaGa's achievement has to do with her Billboard batting average: two chart hits, two No. 1's. This week, "Poker Face" follows January's smash "Just Dance" into the top [...]

Lately, when I look at images of teen-pop dominator Miley Cyrus , she's looking less and less like a typical starlet. The big hair, the husky voice, that Bubba smile: Does this girl look like a future Viper Room denizen to you? 'Cause to me, she's all Opry. Maybe it's her Nashville lineage finally asserting itself on her face, but as Miley nears voting age, she's starting to look, not so much like the next Britney, but as a pint-size version of country queens like Tanya Tucker or Reba McEntire. Maybe her management feels the same way. [...]

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 Best Actress statues, yet in under a decade Swank has gone to that podium twice , like some kind of modern-day Katharine Hepburn. You'd think that would make her one of [...]

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 Top 10 looks like a threat. The few songs that are on the rise, including Kanye West's "Heartless" and All-American Rejects' "Gives You Hell," appear to be losing momentum. The Fray's "You Found Me" will [...]

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 in nearly three years, with his 50 and Dre-supported “Crack the Bottle,” at No. 76. Or the third single and first ballad from the omnipresent Katy Perry, one notch below. (More on her in a minute.) [...]

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 “Hot N Cold”—continued bumping around the Top 10 like lazy molecules. But below the surface, a ton of music was being consumed. In particular, one song benefited massively from the annual iPod-filling digital megasale that hits iTunes every Christmas—and [...]

The release today of Billboard ’s tallies for the year’s biggest U.S. singles and albums produce few jaw-dropping surprises. The top eight songs of the year, according to the Hot 100, come directly from the list of 10 songs in my predictions post last week. So what about those two songs I called wrong? I’ll get to my bad calls later, but let’s focus for a moment on the act who surprised me by bum-rushing the year-end winner’s circle and taking Nos. 9 and 10. That would be Chris Brown, who quietly dominates [...]

When Billboard closes out 2008 next week by charting the year’s biggest hits, you can expect several songs from late 2007 to loom large on the year-end Hot 100 . But I doubt any will surpass the song that made an unrecognizable Tom Cruise shake his groove thing this past summer. If there’s any chance that something will upset Flo Rida’s pop-rap smash, it’ll be by another newcomer whose big hit proved tough to follow: Leona Lewis. But I wouldn’t count on it. [...]

In the annals of popular music, certain albums stand out for their sheer percentage of hit-bound material. Michael Jackson’s Thriller is the most famous, not just because it spun off seven Top 10 singles—the first album to do so—but because the whole disc had only nine tracks. That’s a stunning 78% hit ratio. Shania Twain’s Come on Over , roughly 70% of which charted on the country and pop charts over the course of two years, is nearly as legendary. More recently, Rihanna has mined just over half of Good Girl Gone Bad for a [...]

A band with a charismatic frontwoman attracts a passionate young following, briefly with Contemporary Christian fans and then with a mass audience bewitched by their alternative-but-accessible vibe. While the group attracts certain emo elements and the tattooed-and-pierced set, their straight-up-the-middle pop sensibilities win over radio programmers looking for some femme-friendly rock content. Finally, after a steady build, the attachment of a key single to a preordained hit movie brings them into the Top 40 in a big way. I’m not the first person to make the connection between Evanescence and Paramore, but the No. 34 [...]

Maybe the country has been a little too distracted to listen to the radio recently, but for whatever reason, there’s a paucity of big moves on Billboard 's Hot 100 this week: no skyrocketing songs moving up on account of an iTunes surge, as we’ve seen continually all during the fall. Amid the stasis, the steady performance of T.I.’s two simultaneous hits wins the day, as his Rihanna duet “Live Your Life” finally does something I’d been expecting for weeks now: it returns to No. 1, knocking out his other chart-topper, “Whatever You Like.” It’s [...]

We knew last week that Beyoncé’s “If I Were a Boy” was poised to make a big leap on Billboard 's Hot 100 . The only question was, how big? Just a year ago, a 65-space jump to No. 3 would have been enough to make our eyes pop. When Britney Spears did it in early October 2007 with “Gimme More,” it was considered something of a triumph—especially as she was at the height of her meltdown phase and coming off a tragic performance at the 2007 Video Music Awards. Now, we’re [...]

“Okay, it's official,” I wrote to Maura midday on Thursday, when Billboard released the new Hot 100 . “I have seriously underestimated ‘Whatever You Like.’” That durable smash by Atlanta rap deity T.I. moves into the penthouse for the third time since late August. Directly behind it is T.I.’s simultaneous hit, the Rihanna duet “Live Your Life,” which moves up to No. 2 two weeks after it spent a sole week in the top spot. After I bravely predicted a few weeks ago that the irresistible “Life” would dominate the [...]

“Okay, it's official,” I wrote to Maura midday on Thursday, when Billboard released the new Hot 100 . “I have seriously underestimated ‘Whatever You Like.’” That durable smash by Atlanta rap deity T.I. moves into the penthouse for the third time since late August. Directly behind it is T.I.’s simultaneous hit, the Rihanna duet “Live Your Life,” which moves up to No. 2 two weeks after it spent a sole week in the top spot. After I bravely predicted a few weeks ago that the irresistible “Life” would dominate the [...]

For all you vinyl fetishists out there, here are a couple of catalog numbers to look up in your collection of vintage 45s: Atlantic 3761, and Atlantic 3787. From what classic, hit-single-producing Atlantic act could those be? Aretha Franklin, you’re thinking? Maybe Crosby, Stills and Nash? Phil Collins? Try AC/DC—those are the U.S. release numbers for the 7-inch singles of “You Shook Me All Night Long” and “Back in Black.” Both were relased in 1980; both charted on the Billboard Hot 100. Which is proof that they were, in fact, released as singles—songs weren’t [...]