Last week Madonna’s latest album, MDNA, conquered the Billboard albums chart by selling 359,000 copies in its first week. Those sales figures were goosed quite a bit by CDs being bundled with concert tickets for Madonna’s upcoming tour, a practice that allowed Prince’s Musicology to go platinum back in 2004. About half of Madonna’s first-week sales, or 185,000 records, came from being sold as part of a ticket package.
As MDNA heads into its second week, the album appears headed for a major tumble, with Forbes reporting that sales dropped a whopping 88 percent, down to 46,000 copies. That’s the biggest second-week drop ever, a tumble that’s been attributed to the album’s lack of successful singles and Madonna’s limited promotion via TV appearances and live shows. [via Rolling Stone]
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Not a big fan of manipulating chart and sales performance with gimmicks such as bundling album sales with concert tickets. It muddies the waters forever after in terms of determining what was truly the most popular music of a given time. Madonna’s concert tickets are still a hot item, so there is still demand for her live performance. The precipitous drop of the second, unbundled week’s album sales, however, suggests fans are buying the tickets to see her perform older material, and the public have responded to her latest work with disinterest. As much as she tries to fight slipping into irrelevance (she seems, pathetically, to be going for a younger image with every new photo and video I see) she’s slowly becoming an oldies act. She ain’t the Beach Boys just yet, but neither is she any threat to Rihanna or Ke$ha at this point, either.
The Republic Tigers: “Buildings & Mountains” (2008)
Kansas City indie band Republic Tigers are one to watch. Like the Shins they make atmospheric and melodic pop with fairly complex arrangements and interesting textures. Their melodies are consistently inventive enough to grow on you over repeated listens–this isn’t throwaway pop.
Their music has been featured on several prime time network TV series including Grey’s Anatomy. Their second full-length release is expected in 2012 and I expect a captivating listen.
How many of your favorite singers or bands passed on or broke up without giving you closure? How many chances have you had to see an artist knowing with certainty it would be for the last time?
I know performers can be pretty Brett Favre about these things. Ozzie did a farewell tour years ago, then returned almost immediately with the “Retirement Sucks Tour”.
But of all your favorite artists from the past, who would you most like to see again if they offered “The Goodbye Tour”?
I know I’ll be there May 20th, and will take along my father too, in spirit–to thank Glen Campbell for a lifetime of great songs and performances. Grateful for the chance to say goodbye.
Sometime around 1989 I went into Eide’s Records in Pittsburgh with money in hand and no clue what to buy. In the days, you see, before Amazon.com and Pandora there were limited ways to sample music before you bought. Maybe a friend would tell you about a record, or maybe you’d read a review. Or once in a while in desperation you might just take a flyer on a record based solely on its cover.
That’s what I did that day at Eides. Flipping through rows of records by artists I mostly didn’t know (theirs was a fairly Metal-centric selection) Lucinda Williams’ modestly adorned (to be charitable) album cover seemed to dare me not to give a shit about it; there was an indifference to it that intrigued me. Never had an album seemed to care so little if I found it interesting or not. My first thought was: “Eff you, Lucinda whoever-you-are. You don’t even care about your album cover–your music must really suck”.
But my next thought was: maybe this isn’t indifference or arrogance, but confidence. An album that does so little to pull you in with packaging must be all about substance, about what’s inside.
Was it ever.
Lucinda’s voice and songwriting amazed me from the first listen. My brother was quickly converted as well, and for a short time Lucinda seemed to belong to us alone. I named my dog Cinda…now there were three of us.
This wasn’t Lucinda Williams’ first album, but it was the first one that mattered, the one that created the template for what you still hear her doing today. And it’s still her finest album, despite what any Rolling Stone critic might have given more stars to. And I find it strange indeed that her best collection of songs remains out of print as of this writing while her more recent work is so highly praised.
I don’t think any subsequent album spawned more covers than Lucinda Williams. “The Night’s Too Long” was a country hit for Patty Loveless. Mary Chapin Carpenter’s take on “Passionate Kisses” was a smash single. And Tom Petty covered “Changed the Locks” for the soundtrack of She’s the One. Lucinda’s versions were superior in every case. She was, essentially, the female John Hiatt.
In the interest of full disclosure, I somewhat soured on Lucinda a couple of albums down the road from this one. The formula here, and on her next album (1992’s Sweet Old World) worked beautifully, and owed a lot to the production, lead guitar and vocal harmonies of Gurf Morlix, who seemed to be Williams’ perfect foil.
Perhaps Lucinda eventually feared that Gurf’s myriad contributions would suppress perception of her as an independent artist. But like a band member who think’s he’s outgrown his band and has to go solo, Lucinda broke up the musical partnership in search of something grittier, and more like that defiant album cover of ’88. She’s written many fine songs since, but her voice seems a little more of an affectation to me now, the voice of a singer who’s read too many reviews about how distinctively “authentic” or “world-weary” or “tough-but-vulnerable” her singing is. It could just be me–but beginning with 1998’s Car Wheels On a Gravel Road she seemed to be trying to be those things, where she’d just let it come out naturally in 1988.
It’s a hard record to find, but worth seeking out. It’s been reissued once; maybe some label will see the value in doing so again. Lucinda Williams is one of the best albums of its era. Before she went “a bit up herself”, a less contrived singing style, her best batch of songs, and the Gurf Morlix touch made this the best work of Lucinda’s career.
Every Moment Has A Song 