The 9513 Last.fm Chart Update (6-07-09)

Ah, there’s the George Strait push that I was expecting last week. Twenty-six people in The 9513 group decided to give King George a listen, making him the top artist of the week by a pretty large margin. Johnny Cash and Dwight Yoakam were the closest, with 21 listeners apiece.

Kenny Chesney, who’d been largely absent from the Top 10 for the last month or so, showed up as the #5 artist with 19 listeners, along with Carrie Underwood. With this being June, perhaps people decided they needed to hear some tropical country songs about drinking on the beach and having fun in the summer sun. Personally, I’ll throw in with the 11 people who listened to Jimmy Buffett (putting him at #40 along with Faith Hill, Joey + Rory, Big & Rich and Pat Green), but I’ve never understood why people needed a pseudo-Buffett when the original one is still touring and releasing pretty good music. Maybe Chesney’s “Margaritaville” is still somewhere ahead in his career, and maybe he’ll eventually write novels that will top the best-seller lists, create a line of snack foods and develop a chain of restaurants. It’s pretty tough to capture the magic that allows Buffett to have a wildly successful, multi-faceted career despite having a grand total of three Top 10 songs in more than 35 years of making music. All things considered though, if we’re given the choice of Kenny the Beach Bum or Kenny With the Sexy Tractor, I’ll raise my margarita to the beach bum and wish him the best of luck.

Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift dominated the Top Albums chart, with Underwood’s Some Hearts and Carnival Ride joining Swift’s Fearless with 12 listeners apiece. In other news, the takeover of our group by teenaged girls is complete, and I’ll be doing an extended feature on which Jonas Brother is cuter for my next update. Those of us with valid driver’s licenses did contribute heavily to the rest of the Top 10, with two albums from Sugarland, two from Lee Ann Womack and one each from Dixie Chicks, Trisha Yearwood and Martina McBride. Fourteen albums had 8 listeners to tie for #12, including ones from Sara Evans, Julie Roberts, Kasey Chambers & Shane Nicholson, Lady Antebellum and Dierks Bentley. The Julie Roberts one seems awfully random, considering it was her 5-year-old debut album that charted. Did a bunch of people really need to listen to “Break Down Here,” or is the iTunes shuffle feature starting to assert its own preferences?

The Top Tracks chart saw a couple of very familiar faces at the top with 8 listeners each, Sugarland with “It Happens” and Swift with “You Belong With Me.” They were joined by newcomer David Nail and his single, “Red Light.” It was the iTunes free download of the week, and one of the few instances where they deign to include a country artist in the program. We’ll see how well it works for him. The last country freebie I remember is Gloriana’s “Wild At Heart,” and that’s still on The 9513 charts, not to mention the Top 20 on the Billboard Charts. Also breaking up the SugarSwift monotony in the Top 5 was Reba McEntire’s “Strange.” The new album’s coming out in 69 days, and I have a hunch about who’s going to be dominating the charts for that week. The Top 10 also includes “Wagon Wheel” from the Old Crow Medicine Show in between all the TaylorLand songs, so kudos to the 6 people who gave that song a play.

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

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