Adele breaks a Whitney Houston charts record

Just when you thought Whitney Houston had taken considerable control of the charts with her "Greatest Hits" album posthumously nabbing the number two spot and seemingly rising, another popular female singer broke forward to challenge (and defeat) Houston in a another category in which she reigned supreme.

Keeping the top spot for the twenty-first week in a row, Adele's "21" album broke the record set by Whitney Houston for longest number-one album by a woman. Even Whitney Houston could not stop the juggernaut of music that is Adele, effectively allowing "21" to take number one for as many weeks as in the name of the album!

Now, Adele did not get this just for being the singer she has always been -- in fact, there is a pretty specific reason for why she held strong to number one. Her Grammy performance exposed her to so many people who would never have heard of her, or might have stopped listening. Their return to her music is evidenced in older albums of her own also taking strong rises in sales.

Whitney Houston racks up sales after death

Naturally, the death of a popular musician or artist in contemporary times leads to a resurgence of their music in the industry, with album sales and (recently) singles downloads flying through the roof. This "rediscovery" of music, as many like to call it, almost always follows on the trail of the death -- a true schooling on the realities of the music industry.

Though a morbid enterprise, it has already sent Whitney Houston's music to high positions on charts worldwide just days after her death. Houston's album, Whitney: The Greatest Hits has soared to sells of over 101,000 copies by itself, this coming literally 3 days after the discovery of her submerged body in a Beverly Hills hotel bathtub as she awaited the huge Grammy event the next day.

Of course, speculation has run rampant: most are already convinced that this was the work of drugs, as Houston was known to have frequent incidents of abuse with hard narcotics. Authorities have not confirmed or denied too much at this point; they have not released the cause of death.

Timbaland - The Way I Are (ft. Keri Hilson and D.O.E.)

So I decided to take another little deviancy from the usual songs that I post on this blog to go with something by Timbaland, that goes by the name of The Way I Are. Chances are that if you spend any time listening to the radio on the way to work or something, you have heard this song a few times over. It is more of a electronic hip-hop song than rap, so you guys may enjoy it. ;]
This song featured Timbaland-signed Keri Hilson as credited vocals on the track, as well as (sometimes) uncredited vocals from D.O.E. Check out the video below to listen to this song on the official Timbaland VEVO:

Timbaland is a bit of a rapper, a bit of a hip-hop artist, and a bit of an electronic artist. Though hip-hop, rap, and electronic music have been mixing for as long as the genres have existed, popular music within the past few years in the rap/hip-hop category has been consumed almost entirely by electronic music.

In my opinion, it made these songs a lot more listenable than they were before, and Timbaland rode this wave of new hip-hop and rap straight into the top of the charts, nabbing double platinum for The Way I Are in seven years.


Check it out and let us know what you think!

Sneaker Pimps - 6 Underground

Here is a song that you may have heard of sometime on the radio, or maybe even on some obscure cassette mix-tape. This song is actually a hit from way back in 1996, believe it or not, by the British trip-hop band Sneaker Pimps. Oh yeah, we are going back far here for this one! ;]

Believe it or not, this song was more popular a whole year after it was released than when it first reached the charts, and no lie, 6 Underground re-emerged on the charts in Britain after being in an American film. If that was not weird enough for you, it then proceeded to show up in films across the mainstream cinema scene for almost fifteen years, most recently making an appearance in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.

Sneaker Pimps is not an exceedingly well known band, even if their song 6 Underground is. The members of the band proceeded to make side projects and a few other albums into the new millennium, but nothing quite reached the popularity of 6 Underground. To be fair, though, they did make it on the charts with each of their successive albums, but not much has been heard of the band since.

Check 'em out!