The 9513 Last.fm Chart Update (10-18-09)

Last.fm Top Artists

The margin was a little closer this week, but Miranda Lambert is the Artist of the Week for the third straight week, with 28 listeners. Apparently, three weeks of listening to her pretty consistently required some people to take a little break and try out the rest of their music collection. George Strait takes the #2 spot with 26 listeners, with Johnny Cash and Patty Loveless right behind with 24. Carrie Underwood, with 23 listeners, comes in at #5. At the moment, Tim McGraw is at #8 with 21 listeners. His new album is out tomorrow, so we’ll see just how many in The 9513 group rush out to pick it up. The Americana side of the country world is represented by Neko Case (16 listeners), Chris Knight (15) and Rosanne Cash (14).

Last.fm Top Albums

Lambert’s Revolution holds steady at #1 with 19 listeners, but again, the rest of the field is starting to catch up to her. Taylor Swift’s Fearless is #2 with 14 listeners. That one may pick up a few extra listeners soon, as Swift is re-releasing the super mega extreme platinum version of Fearless, with a bunch of new songs, some videos, pictures, an exclusive webisode and, I don’t know, an invitation to be her Facebook friend or something. If she sells more than a million of this thing, it’s going to make a lot of artists wonder why they’re bothering to record new albums when Swift can outsell them with fancy packaging and leftover songs. Along with the other usual names, Eric Church shows up at #4 with Carolina, up 5 listeners to 12. The group at #10 is a great collection of albums, including Loveless’ Mountain Soul II, Cash’s The List, Hayes Carll’s Trouble In Mind and Martina McBride’s Greatest Hits (incorrectly attributed to her and schmalzmeister Jim Brickman).

Last.fm Top Tracks

“White Liar” is the top track for the second week in a row, with 12 listeners. Lambert holds down the #2 place too, with “Only Prettier” having 11 listeners. After that, the Lambert blockade is starting to show some cracks, as she has only eight of the top 16 songs. Swift’s “Tim McGraw” made it to #3 with 10, and Underwood’s “Cowboy Casanova” ended up at #4 with 9 (ooh, Carrie’s stuck behind Taylor Swift again). Counterbalancing those songs are a few from Cash’s The List, all of which had 8 listeners: “Take These Chains From My Heart,” “I’m Movin’ On” and “She’s Got You.” And while it’s great to see 5 people listening to songs like Gram Parsons‘ “A Song For You,” Loveless’ “Busted and Justin Townes Earle’s “They Killed John Henry,” it’s dampened by the fact that 6 played “3” by Britney Spears.

Billboard Country Songs

After having his previous singles stall out in the Top 40, Chris Young has his first #1 song with “Getting You Home (The Black Dress Song).” He’s the first Nashville Star contestant to ever have a #1 song, so maybe this will start a trend. No, I’m not talking about a Buddy Jewell comeback. Lambert’s “White Liar” moved up five places to #21, so she may be making her way up the charts to previously uncharted territory for her. “Do I” by Luke Bryan and “Runaway” by Love And Theft enter the Top 10 at #9 and #10, respectively. This is L&T’s first single, which shows that having Taylor Swift write a song about you may not be a bad introduction to the country world. The big debut for the week was “Hell On The Heart” by Church, which starts at #52. “Moo La Moo” by Steve Azar is heading the other way, dropping from #39 to #42. I liked the song better when Billy Hill called it “Too Much Month (At The End Of The Money)” and sang it about 20 years ago.

Billboard Country Albums

Three of the Top 5 albums are debuts: American Ride by Toby Keith at #1, Doin’ My Thing by Bryan at #2 and The List by Cash at #5. This knocks Revolution to #4 and Zac Brown Band’s The Foundation to #6, making it that much harder for the band to finally get a #1 album. The flip side is that the surge of new albums knocked the Hannah Montana soundtrack out of the Top 5 too, so it’s a fair tradeoff. Young couldn’t repeat the same success he had on the Singles chart, as The Man I Want To Be actually dropped three spots to #13. For whatever reason, Rascal Flatts fans went on a buying spree, as their Greatest Hits Volume One package leaped 20 spots on the chart to land at #19, and Unstoppable moved up 4 spaces to 20. They really are a f*cking amazing band, you know.

Americana Music Association Airplay

After a one-week hiatus, nothing much has changed. Delbert McClinton’s Acquired Taste retains its death grip on the #1 spot with 371 spins, and Band of Heathens is right behind with 354 for One Foot In The Ether. Robert Earl Keen has moved up to #3 with 350 spins for The Rose Hotel. The List (#6) and The Avett Brothers‘ I And Love And You (#10) are moving quickly up the ranks and will attempt to dethrone McClinton soon. Corb Lund is having a nice run, as Losin’ Lately Gambler went from #108 to #33 to #21 in the span of three weeks. The top debut of the week is Elliott Brood’s Mountain Meadows, in at #38. It’s a trio, from Canada, and apparently the album has been out for a year up north and is just making it into the U.S.

Freebie of the Week

Chatham County Line is in the gray area of American roots music, and they’ve put out a string of excellent albums on Yep Roc Records. The band looks like a bluegrass quartet, but the songs can be in the folk or Americana realm as often as they’re bluegrass tunes. The band is offering a couple of live mp3s for anyone who’s a part of their Reverb Nation fanbase. Go there to sign up and get live recordings of “Route 23/Rock Pile” and “Dark Clouds.” And if that’s not enough free music, go to New West Records’ site and sign up for its e-mail list or Twitter feed to download a free 12-song sampler from the best of its 2009 releases. Included in this lot are Corb Lund, Buddy & Julie Miller, Kris Kristofferson, Steve Earle, The Flatlanders and Delbert McClinton.

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

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