Obviously, we need to talk about the new song that takes over the top of Billboard's Hot 100, and the mind-blowing record it sets. But before we do that, let's talk about Hilary Swank. I find Swank's movie career totally incomprehensible: She either wins Oscars, or she tanks. Not even Meryl Streep h...

Maura and I have already taken a victory lap about our fulfilled prediction that Kelly Clarkson would vault to the top of Billboard's Hot 100. Clarkson's "My Life Would Suck Without You" dominates the list again this week, thanks to commanding sales and fast-rising radio airplay. How long will she s...

The most interesting news on Billboard’s Hot 100 isn’t at the summit, where the entire Top Five has been static for the last couple of weeks. It’s in the basement, where a flotilla of new songs—many by established acts—debuts. We could talk about the return of Eminem to the Hot 100...

Over the holidays, Billboard's song charts were, at least on the surface, pretty sleepy. On the Hot 100, most of the songs that were hot late last fall—Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies� and “If I Were a Boy,� T.I. and Rihanna’s “Live Your Life,� Kanye’s “Love Lockdown� and “Heartl...

Writing teen-oriented pop is a fairly specialized talent. Writing for a musical is an even more rarified art. Combining the two—and introducing the musical-theater art form to an entire generation that previously had little use for the stuff—is some kind of pop triple-lutz, a strange sort of acc...

The release today of Billboard’s tallies for the year’s biggest U.S. singles and albums produce few jaw-dropping surprises. The top eight songs of the year, according to the Hot 100, come directly from the list of 10 songs in my predictions post last week. So what about those two songs I called ...

In a year that’s seen the digital economy upend our notions of what a “hit� is—from songs leaping to the top of Billboard’s Hot 100 before radio has even digested them, to acts turning every damned song on their albums into a momentary chart smash—it’s appropriate that the weirdest ins...

The singles charts have settled into what we hope will be a momentary midsummer slumber. And that starts with the song in its fourth week at No. 1 on Billboard's Hot 100. Idolator's distaste for Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl" is well-documented, but I nonetheless have to acknowledge that this blandl...

A front-line act with a months-old album decides to push his most obvious hit-bound song to radio—a song heavily reliant on a prominent sample of a deathless pop hit. But, bucking the day's prevalent trend, he decides not to release the song on the most popular singles medium, forcing most cus...

Ed. note: Chris "dennisobell" Molanphy, our resident chart guru, looks at the upward, downward, and lack of movement on this week's Billboard charts: In the last two years, we've seen several impressive feats on Billboard's Hot 100 by Disney Channel-groomed pop acts, and this week, we see another. F...