The 9513 Last.fm Chart Update (10-11-09)

Welcome to our new members, as The 9513’s group has shot past the 120-member mark. The more the merrier, so if you want to add your music collection to our data, please join up. All the cool people are doing it. One quick note: There is no Americana Music chart this week since the information hasn’t been updated from last week. We’ll check back with it next week.

Last.fm Top Artists

The slaughter continues unabated, as the distance between the #1 artist (Miranda Lambert) and the #2 artists (Brad Paisley, George Strait) actually widened this week, with Lambert winning 36 listeners to 25. While we’ve seen artists do well when an album is released, this is the first time that there was no drop-off from Week One to Week Two. Actually, as you’ll see below, the number of listeners increased. The same could be said of Patty Loveless, who gained one listener from last week to move up to #4 with 24. A couple of legends make a reappearance into the Top 10, and it’s always nice to see Johnny Cash (23) and Willie Nelson (20) showing up among the likes of Alan Jackson (also 23) and Martina McBride (also 20). Garth Brooks, who may become Las Vegas’ next headliner if reports are true, landed just shy of the Top 10 with 19 listeners. If his next album involves a duet with Celine Dion or Cher, I will lose all hope. On the Americana side, Steve Earle and his son Justin Townes Earle had 13 listeners each, and Corb Lund managed an impressive 11 listeners. Hopefully he’ll continue to catch on in the U.S., because we need more songs about gamblers and horse tranquilizer abusers.

Last.fm Top Albums

I think we may be seeing Revolution on top for awhile. Not only was it #1 for the second week in a row, there wasn’t any other album that got even close to the same amount of plays. It had 24 listeners, nearly double the #2 album, the Dixie Chicks‘ Home. Lambert’s two others albums had 11 listeners each, putting them both in a tie for #3 with five others, including Jason Aldean’s Wide Open and Taylor Swift’s Fearless. Lambert may represent the perfect storm of an artist who appeals to both the mainstream country fans and the folks in the Americana world. Only a few others – Cash, Jamey Johnson – can boast that, so it will be interesting to see who dethrones Lambert and when that will happen. Along with the fairly well-established albums in and near the Top 10, we also had 9 people listen to Luke Bryan’s Doin’ My Thing, which came out this month. I don’t know if he’ll pick up enough of a fan base to become a Top 10 staple, but I’ll give him bonus points for using “Thing” instead of “Thang” in the album title.

Last.fm Top Tracks

Aside from Reba McEntire’s “Consider Me Gone” sneaking in with 11 listeners, the top 13 songs were all from Revolution. “White Liar” was the #1 song with 17 listeners, with “Maintain The Pain” (16) and “Time To Get A Gun” (15) also doing well. She would have had 14 songs in a row, but 5 people missed the “That” in “That’s The Way That The World Goes ‘Round.” Fix your song titles, folks. Bryan is once again just outside the Top 10, with 9 listeners putting “Do I” at #16, along with Josh Turner’s “Why Don’t We Just Dance.” From the other new releases, the top Loveless track is “Half Over You” with 7 listeners, and “Horse Doctor, Come Quick” leads the way from Lund’s album with 6 listeners. Again, why have we not had more country songs about people turning to horse vets for their drug fix?

Billboard Country Songs

For the second week in a row, Toby Keith holds down the #1 spot with “American Ride.” Chris Young’s “Getting You Home (The Black Dress Song)” and Keith Urban’s “Only You Can Love Me This Way” both move up a spot to #2 and #3 respectively, but they have the disadvantage about not being about how great America is and love it or leave it, so they might not rise any further on the charts. There’s a few new entries in the Top 10, including “Cowboy Casanova” by Carrie Underwood (#8), “I’m Alive” by Kenny Chesney and Dave Matthews (#9) and “Need You Now” by Lady Antebellum. If you ever wondered when a country song with Dave Matthews was not the least country song in the Top 10, here you go. “Why” from Rascal Flatts jumped from #44 to #28, which is an Underwood-esque sized leap. Lambert entered the Top 30 (finally) with “White Liar” showing up at 26. Unfortunately, Blaine Larson’s “It Did” didn’t, as it slid back a spot to #54.

Billboard Country Albums

The mirandominance that was on Last.fm continued here, as Revolution was not only the #1 album on the country charts in its debut week, but it made it to #8 on the Billboard 200. It was a great week for debuts, as Robert Earl Keen’s The Rose Hotel was #17, Loveless’ Mountain Soul II was #19 and Kris Kristofferson’s Closer To The Bone was #29. Also, Big & Rich’s Greatest Hits debuted at #27, and it’s a pretty neat trick for a CD single to do so well on the albums chart. One of the biggest gainers was Sugarland’s Love On The Inside, which rose two places to #12, an interesting development for an albums that’s been on the charts for more than a year. Also worth noting is that I And Love And You by The Avett Brothers debuted at #16 on the Billboard 200. While it’s more Americana than country, that would have been good enough for #2 on the country charts.

Freebie of the Week

Early on in the year, I recommended a couple of songs by Cory Branan, who had some available on his Last.fm page. A few new songs have been added, and they’re worth your while as well. “A Girl Named GO” sounds like a cross between Eddie Cochran and The Ramones, and it’s always nice to hear an organ being played in a song these days. “Miss Ferguson” and “The Prettiest Waitress In Memphis” are solid rockers, maybe a little too alt for alt-country but still worth checking out. “Tame” is probably the closest thing to a country song in the batch of you want something, well, tamer.

To see this week’s charts and join our group, head to http://www.last.fm/group/The+9513.

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