Mumford Revisited

17 Oct 2012 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags: ,

Following up on my post of Oct. 8th: https://edcyphers.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/mumford-sons-in-a-league-with-the-beatles-um-no/

(taking issue with an item in Paste which hyped Mumford & Sons’ latest album by comparing the sales of its singles to the Beatles’ chart successes)

The following is from the today’s Rolling Stone online feed:

Folk-rockers continue their slow decline

LOSER OF THE WEEK: Mumford & Sons. Look at the numbers:  600,000, 169,000, 96,000. Not an impressive trajectory for a smash album. Babel had a fantastic debut two weeks ago, but its sales plunged 72  percent last week and another 43 percent this week. And the band’s single “I  Will Wait,” despite a respectable 6.6 million YouTube views, seems to be  petering out as well – it’s down 14 slots on BigChampagne’s Ultimate Chart  (which tracks Internet criteria) from Number 16 to Number 30. It’s still  possible for Mumford to maintain its positioning with a slow-burning, Lady  Antebellum-style, release-great-singles-over-time strategy, but for now, its  chart run appears to be declining.

And just to be clear, the BigChampagne chart didn’t exist in the Beatles’ day (and they’d have owned it if it did) so the Billboard singles chart makes for the best apples-to-apples comparison. Billboard’s chart shows “I Will Wait” at #32 this week, down from its peak of #23. So the statement still holds true: Mumford & Sons still haven’t cracked the top twenty with a single. And the drop from 600,000 in album sales to 169,000 the following week is quite spectacular.

And as for a “release-great-singles-over-time strategy”, there were already (as Paste correctly pointed out) six Mumford singles on the chart simultaneously as of two weeks ago. So much for doing that.

Not saying they aren’t great. Just saying it takes more than a single great week on the chart to earn anyone a comparison to any all-time great. Especially the Beatles.

Hmph.

New Book Reveals John Lennon’s Bitterness Toward George Martin As Well as McCartney

09 Oct 2012 1 Comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags: ,

New book The John Lennon Letters has some interesting revelations. Most surprising to me is that Lennon and George Martin disputed who deserved more “credit” for “Revolution 9”.

Read the article at Yahoo:

http://music.yahoo.com/blogs/stop-the-presses/john-lennon-letters-reveal-bitterness-toward-george-martin-192300104.html

Mumford & Sons “In a League With the Beatles”? Um, No.

08 Oct 2012 7 Comments

by Ed Cyphers in Articles, Best of the Blog, General Posts Tags: ,

Image of Mumford & Sons beatles

Fact: Mumford & Sons have six songs on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart this week.

Wild, misleading hyperbole, courtesy of Paste magazine:

Mumford & Sons Tie The Beatles for Most Hot 100 Hits in a Week

…The quartet is now in a league with The Beatles as the band with the most Hot 100 hits in a week. Lead single “I Will Wait” moves up to No. 57, and joining it are the debuts of five others including the title track (No. 60), “Lover’s Eyes” (No. 85), “Whispers in the Dark” (No. 86), “Holland Road” (No. 92) and “Ghosts That We Knew” (No. 94). (http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2012/10/mumford-sons-beat-the-beatles-for-most-hot-100-hit.html )

Reality check:

During the week of April 4, 1964 the Beatles not only occupied the top five slots on the Billboard Hot 100 chart (#1 “Can’t Buy Me Love”, #2 “Twist and Shout”, #3 “She Loves You”, #4 “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and #5 “Please Please Me”) but held twelve positions overall. Twelve. Twice as many as six.

Oh, and of the twelve songs the Beatles charted simultaneously, three topped the chart at some point. And others didn’t only because they were crowded out of the number one slot by other Beatles songs. (“Twist and Shout” and “Do You Want to Know a Secret” were #2’s and “Please Please Me” peaked at #3)

Oh, and that same week’s chart also included two singles that were tributes to the Beatles (“We Love You Beatles” by the Carefrees and “A Letter to the Beatles” by the Four Preps). Oh, and two more Beatle tribute songs charted just two weeks previous (“My Boyfriend Got a Beatle Haircut” by Donna Lynn and “The Boy With the Beatle Hair” by the Swans).

Oh, and the following week another Beatles number 1 , “Love Me Do” would debut on the American charts.

Also beginning the same month Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas would chart three hits written and given to them by the Beatles, including top ten “Bad to Me”. Then starting in May a string of three Beatle-penned top twenty hits came from Peter & Gordon, including number 1 “A World Without Love”.

You see, the Beatles weren’t a flavor-of-the-month iTunes wonder–you know, like Kings of Leon, the last Next Big Thing? They were, and are, a cultural phenomenon. They owned not only the decade of the sixties but (let’s be honest) every decade since. In the less than seven years between their first chart hit and their breakup they established a record for most number 1 singles (20) that still stands. The great Rolling Stones, who made their chart debut within nine months of the Beatles and are still at it, remain at number fourteen on that list with 8.

The Beatles had 15 American million-selling records in 1964 alone. Their total worldwide record sales are in excess of 1 billion units.

Every conversation about the greatest rock and roll album of all time starts with one or another of their LPs.

The Beatles’ drummer has had seven more top ten singles as a solo artist than Mumford & Sons. In fact, Mumford & Sons have never had a top ten single. Or a top twenty single.

I could go on. The point is that calling a band like Mumford & Sons “in a league with the Beatles” is irresponsible hype. And saying they’ve tied them for the most chart hits in one week is factually incorrect. Correct your post, Paste. Post haste.

TODAY Cast Recreate Abbey Road Album Cover

04 Oct 2012 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags: ,

The cast of the TODAY show created an amazingly accurate homage to the Beatles’ iconic Abbey Road cover, considering they did it with two females (not counting Matt Lauer) and a black man.

Video of the shoot:

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/48658219#48658219

Katy Perry: Cheating Her Way to the Record

13 Sep 2012 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in Articles, General Posts Tags: , , , , ,

Teenage DreamTeenage Dream: The Complete Confection

I was rereading the previous post (just to experience the nausea one more time) and the claim that “Katy Perry holds the same record as Michael Jackson for most number one singles from an album” caught my attention. I think it’s only fair to point out Katy’s tally of number ones is manipulated, shall we say, by some unconventional tactics.

After her Teenage Dream album had peaked and was nearing the end of its run Katy recorded new material, including eventual number one single “Part of Me” and, instead of releasing it as an EP or part of a new album, she released Teenage Dream: The Complete Confection, a sort-of “deluxe edition” of the album with the additional material included.

So what was the original version of Teenage Dream–the “incomplete collection”?

Lady Gaga used the same strategy when her The Fame album was later expanded into The Fame Monster, which included additional hits “Bad Romance”, “Telephone” and “Alejandro”.

Are these ladies competing on a level playing field with the Michael Jacksons and Beatles of the world when using previously unknown record release methods to jack up the sales statistics of their records? When Madonna’s new album is offered by a major online retailer for 99 cents during the first week of its release and it shoots to the top of the pops, is its resulting number one status legit? In fact, in Madonna’s case, when the record sets a record for sales drop in its second week on the heels of said 99 cent offer, can we even legitimately say she deserves to call it a number one album? When Madonna runs out of body parts to flash (just one left) and her career finally sputters to an end, she’ll have some great statistics to affirm her greatness. But only close examination will reveal which ones are wholly valid. MDNA is not a number one album in my eyes.

This is how, in some cases, modern-day artists’ claims of exceeding the sales feats of pop music immortals are made–by moving the goalposts, as it were.

The FameThe Fame Monster [Deluxe Edition]

Were the Beatles so inclined, or had it foremost in mind to compete with the incredible sales feats of Elvis Presley, they would have avoided releasing EPs and non-album singles entirely. Songs like “I Want to Hold Your Hand”, “I Feel Fine”, “We Can Work it Out”, “Paperback Writer” and “Hey Jude” (all number ones, by the way) would never have been single-only releases. They could have been tacked onto albums to inflate the numbers, and who knows how many number ones an album like Magical Mystery Tour could have had? But since it wasn’t done that way back then, it just seems unfair to compare apples (or Apple Records) to oranges.

Painting by All Four Beatles Heads to Auction

10 Sep 2012 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags: ,

A painting created collaboratively by all four Beatles in 1966 is being offered as part of a music memorabilia sale by Philip Weiss Auctions, in Oceanside, N.Y.,  on Sept. 14. The auction house estimates that the painting, now called “Images of a Woman” will sell for between $80,000 and $120,000.

The group produced the work during a visit to Tokyo in 1966, as a way to relieve the tedium of being all but locked into their hotel rooms by their security-conscious Japanese hosts. They were concerned about death threats the group had received from devotees of sumo wrestling, who regarded their engagement at the Budokan arena to be a matter of sacrilege. After Paul McCartney and John Lennon slipped out for some unchaperoned touring, security was tightened.

To while away the hours, the group set a 30-inch by 40-inch piece of white paper on a large table, put a lamp in the middle (slightly off center) and each began painting a corner of the sheet using bright red, yellow, black, blue and green oil paints. When they finished the abstract work, which anticipates the psychedelia that would explode through the pop world a year later, they removed the lamp and signed their names around the edge of the white circle that the lamp left.

The Beatles gave the painting to Tetsusaburo Shimoyama, the president of their Japanese fan club. Mr. Weiss said that be believed that the current owner bought the painting from Mr. Shimoyama, possibly in the 1990s. It was offered for sale on eBay in 2002, but was withdrawn after it failed to meet the seller’s minimum.

(Reprinted from the New York Times Artbeat)

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