Rihanna Reaches for the top...

Week Ending Aug. 3, 2008: Rihanna, Queen Of The Download
Posted Wed Aug 6, 2008 11:36am PDT by Paul Grein in Chart Watch
Rihanna's "Disturbia" jumps to #1 on Hot Digital Songs, ending a six-week run in the top spot by Katy Perry's cheeky "I Kissed A Girl." This is Rihanna's fifth #1 on the digital chart, which is more than any other artist has amassed since the chart was introduced in October 2004 (which is when downloading took off). Rihanna, 20, first topped the chart in 2005 with "Pon De Replay" and has returned to the top spot with "SOS," "Umbrella" (featuring Jay-Z), "Take A Bow" and now this hit.
Rihanna is also the only artist with eight songs on Nielsen/SoundScan's running, all-time list of the top 200 songs with the most paid downloads. Fergie, Nickelback and Chris Brown are tied for second place with five each.

Rihanna is listed on that chart with "Umbrella," "Don't Stop The Music," "SOS," "Take A Bow," "Pon De Replay," "Shut Up And Drive," "Unfaithful," and "Hate That I Love You" (featuring Ne-Yo). These eight hits have sold a combined total of 13,155,000 downloads. Fergie's five hits, all from The Dutchess, have sold a combined total of 11,830,000 downloads.

One reason for Rihanna's success is her adaptability. She can move from a sexy R&B smash like "Umbrella" to a creamy pop confection like "Hate That I Love You"; from a striking and soulful kiss-off like "Take A Bow" to the hard-charging dance/pop of "Disturbia."

The week's other big story is Sugarland becoming the first country duo to reach #1 in the 52-year history of Billboard's weekly album chart.

We've all become accustomed to hit albums being re-released with bonus tracks, putting pressure on the act's biggest fans to buy the album again to get the new material. We've seen it, most recently, with Rihanna's Good Girl Gone Bad and its "Reloaded" edition. Sugarland took the opposite approach. The duo released a "Deluxe Fan Edition" of its new album last week and followed it this week with the regular version. (The special edition included five extra songs, an expanded booklet and access to download an exclusive music video and "behind-the-scenes" footage. It was priced $2-$3 more than the regular version.)

Did the strategy work? You might say so. Love On The Inside debuted at #2 last week and this week moves up to the top spot. With the striking success of this experiment, expect to see more albums released with a pricier expanded edition issued first, followed a week later by the no-frills regular album.

Billboard's Geoff Mayfield thinks highly of the Sugarland model. Writing in his Over The Counter column this week, he observed, "Applause to the act and to Universal Music Nashville for putting the extra content out front, instead of releasing the enhanced package months after thousands of fans already purchased the standard offering."

Mayfield also noted that this isn't the first time that a deluxe edition of an album has preceded the regular edition by a week. U2 did this twice, albeit with retrospectives, not a new studio album. In November 1998, the band released a two-CD set, The Best Of 1980-1990/The B-Sides and followed it one week later with the basic, single-disk The Best Of 1980-1990. Four years later, the band did the same thing, releasing the two-CD set The Best Of 1990-2000 & B-Sides one week before issuing the single-disk The Best Of 1990-2000.

Love On The Inside switches places with Miley Cyrus' Break Out. It's the first time that two albums have debuted in the top two positions one week and exchanged positions the following week since Tim McGraw's Let It Go and the NOW 24 compilation flip-flopped in April 2007. There, the country album got off to a faster start and was overtaken in week two by a pop-minded collection-the opposite of what happened this time.

Brooks & Dunn's 2005 album Hillbilly Deluxe had held the record for highest-charting album by a country duo. It peaked at #3. Two other country duos, Big & Rich and Montgomery Gentry, have had top 10 albums in recent years. Van Zant climbed as high as #21 in 2005. Country duos from the era before Nielsen/SoundScan began monitoring U.S. album sales in 1991 were underrepresented on the pop album chart. Even as popular a country duo as The Judds never climbed above #51. The Bellamy Brothers, who had a #1 pop single in 1976 with "Let Your Love Flow," topped out at #69 on the album chart.

Double Platinum: Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III this week becomes the first album to top the 2 million threshold in 2008 sales activity. This is the 31st week of the year, a little late in the year to see the first album hitting the 2 million mark. But at least it's better than last year, when we were 38 weeks into the year before Daughtry's eponymous debut album finally became the first album to top the 2 million mark in 2007 sales. A little ray of good news for the beleaguered music industry!

Jonas Item of The Week: Jonas Brothers' "Tonight" enters Hot Digital Songs at #2. It's the third track from the trio's upcoming A Little Bit Longer album to debut at #2 in the past six weeks, following "Burnin' Up" and "Pushing Me Away." The album hits the chart two weeks from now. I am on record saying that if it doesn't debut at #1, I will eat my hat. I think my hat is safe.