Today’s thread is brought to you by the numbers 2, 6, 8 and 34.
Let’s talk about Kelly. Her momentous “Piece by Piece” performance on Idol went totally viral. The song raced to number one on the download chart and stayed there all weekend. Now, it’s at number 2, but that is not the entire story. She also raced into the studio and recorded an acoustic version of the song similar to her Idol performance. That was released yesterday and wasted absolutely no time climbing the charts either. That version is sitting at 8th (soon to be even higher). Two versions of a song in the top 10. That’s called traction. Woo!
Billboard reports that Rihanna’s “Work” featuring Drake tops the Hot 100 chart for a second week. It is being driven by strong sales (169K) and even stronger streaming numbers driven largely by the release of the video. 46.5M streams is the third best in the history of tracking – only “Harlem Shakes” and Adele’s “Hello” have ever exceeded that. The top 6 on the Hot 100 are stagnant with Bieber’s “Love Yourself”, twenty one pilots “Stressed Out”, Bieber’s “Sorry”, Flo Rida’s “My House” and X-Factor’s ZAYN’s “Pillowtalk” all holding their spots. G-Eazy’s “Me, Myself and I” switches spots with Adele’s “Hello” keeping her 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8 streak going. DNCE’s “Cake” is 9th and The Chainsmoker’s “Roses” is 10th.
“Work” also extends the length of time Americans have been kept off the top of the Hot 100 to 34 weeks. A string of 9 songs have topped the charts since July and all have been from foreigners (the last American sung song to top the Hot 100 was “See You Again” by Charlie Puth and Wiz Khalif and it got snubbed for an Oscar nomination after topping the chart for 12 (twelve!) weeks). On July 25th, OMI (Jamaica) took over the chart with “Cheerleader” and that spent 6 weeks at number one. Then it was The Weeknd (Canada) with “Can’t Feel My Face” for 3 weeks, Justin Bieber (Canada) with “What Do You Mean” for one week, The Weeknd (Canada) with “The Hills” for six weeks, Adele (England) with “Hello” for 10 (ten!) weeks, Justin Bieber (Canada) with “Sorry” for three weeks, Justin Bieber (Canada) with “Love Yourself” for a total of two weeks, ZAYN (England) with “Pillowtalk” for one week and Rihanna/Drake (Barbados/Canada) with “Work” for two weeks. Canada, England and the Caribbean are getting all grabby. I hear Shaggy, Nickelback and Harry Styles are going to release a new single together next week just to really drive home the point….
