Idols are all over the holiday charts and there’s good news for David Cook. In addition, Idol fans can look forward to a plethora of new music after the first of the year. Read on for all this and more.
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Idol Albums on the Charts
Nothing new on the charts this week, which means all the existing releases jockeyed for position on the Billboard 200. This is good news for David Cook, whose self-titled debut sold 104,000 copies in its fourth week to keep him in the top ten (#10). The album remains on the Top Internet Albums (7) and Top Rock Albums (4) charts.
Hits Daily Double is predicting that Cook’s album will sell an additional 125,000 to 130,000 this last week before Christmas, and could end up in the top ten for the fifth week in a row. The album has been certified gold by the RIAA and has sold around 580,000 copies to date.
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Idol Singles on the Charts
Here’s a summary of all of the Idol-related singles:
“Light On” (David Cook): Hot 100 (48), Hot 100 Airplay (60), Pop 100 (32), Pop 100 Airplay (32), Mainstream Top 40 (23), Hot Adult Top 40 Tracks (11), Hot Digital Tracks (45), Hot Digital Songs (48)
“The Time of My Life” (David Cook): Hot Adult Contemporary (4)
“Crush” (David Archuleta): Hot 100 (43), Pop 100 (37), Pop 100 Airplay (41), Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks (11), Mainstream Top 40 (34), Hot Adult Top 40 (16), Hot Digital Tracks (32), Hot Digital Songs (37)
“Spotlight” (Jennifer Hudson): Hot 100 (47), Hot 100 Airplay (32), Pop 100 (68), Pop 100 Airplay (58), Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs (12), Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay (12), Hot Adult R&B Airplay (4)
“If This Isn’t Love” (Jennifer Hudson): Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs (52), Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay (52), Hot Adult R&B Airplay (31)
“One Step At A Time” (Jordin Sparks): Pop 100 (42), Pop 100 Airplay (31), Hot Adult Top 40 Tracks (27)
“What About Now” (Daughtry): Hot 100 (85), Hot 100 Airplay (66), Hot Adult Contemporary (12), Hot Adult Top 40 Tracks (7)
“Feels Like Tonight” (Daughtry): Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks (10)
“Just a Dream,” (Carrie Underwood): Hot 100 (61), Hot 100 Airplay (51)
Best Days Of Your Life (Kellie Pickler): Hot Country Songs (46)
“Lose My Soul” (TobyMac featuring Mandisa): Hot Christian Adult Contemporary (3), Hot Christian Songs (4)
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Reigning champion David Cook passed the 500,000 mark on this week’s Billboard album sales chart. Cook held the No. 10 slot for the second week in a row, putting the sales total on his post-show debut at 582,000.

A couple random stats on Cook’s achievement and where this places him in the Idol firmament:

– According to Yahoo’s Charts blog:

“This is the longest run in the top 10 for a debut album by an “American Idol” winner since Carrie Underwood’s “Some Hearts” logged 25 weeks in the top 10 in 2005-2006… This also matches Jennifer Hudson’s four-week run in the top 10 as the best recent showing by a debut album by an Idol contestant.“

– By my count, this makes Cook’s album the all-time 15th best selling Idol alum album. (Nine Idol alum albums have gone platinum.)

– Cook’s victory single “Time of My Life” has now spent more than 10 weeks on the Billboard adult contemporary charts. According to Americanidol.com, this makes “him one of 15 solo male artists to do so for 10 weeks or more since the chart began in 1961.”

And let us not forget the most important statistic of all, David’s birthday. This Saturday, DC turns 26. A very happy birthday to our champion!

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Yeah, we know people are celebrating: it seems “David Cook” album is now gold but right now this is just a rumor. We’re waiting for the official confirmation, okay?

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1. Leona Lewis - No. of Charted Titles: (3)

2. Jordin Sparks - No. of Charted Titles: (4)

3. Flo Rida - No. of Charted Titles: (6)

4. Katy Perry - No. of Charted Titles: (3)

5. Onerepublic - No. of Charted Titles: (3)

6. The-Dream - No. of Charted Titles: (7)

7. Metro Station - No. of Charted Titles: (2)

8. David Cook - No. of Charted Titles: (13)

9. Duffy - No. of Charted Titles: (2)

10. David Archuleta - No. of Charted Titles: (7)

There is your chance to tell the world which you think was the best album released in 2008. The albums with the most votes will become the Billboard.com Readers’ Top Ten list, which we will reveal on December 10.

Just fill in the form there. Entries must be submitted by December 8, 2008. The results will be posted in December 10th @ BillBoard.com.

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David Archuleta’s self-titled debut sold 183,000 copies in its first week, coming in a distant second on the Billboard 200 to Taylor Swift’s Fearless, which sold 592,000 copies. Coming in third, Now that’s What I Call Music 29, which features Jordin Sparks’ “One Step at a Time” and Daughtry’s “What About Now.” Archuleta’s CD also charted on Top Digital Albums (2) and Top Internet Albums (3).

While predictions for David’s sales were a tad higher than they ended up, considering CD sales are down 24 percent from last year at this time, he did pretty well. Of all the runners-up, only Clay Aiken and Bo Bice sold more in their first week out, and while Clay debuted at #1, the only other runner-up to enter the charts at #2 was Katharine McPhee, who sold just 116K her first week.

Last year’s runner-up, Blake Lewis, sold just 98,000 copies of his debut and entered the charts at #10. If you factor in the drop in CD sales in one year, David Archuleta more than doubled Blake’s sales.

In his first week, Archuleta sold more CDs than last year’s winner, Jordin Sparks (119,119), coming in at #11 on all-time Idol first week chart placement behind Jennifer Hudson, who moved 217,185 copies during week one.

What does all this mean? Probably that I’m a numbers geek… but seriously, first week sales aren’t always an accurate indicator of how well a CD will do in the long run. Jordin started off slow, but a string of hit singles has kept her album sales moving for over a year, with total sales to date at around 950,000 units. With the same type of label support, David’s album will continue to sell throughout the holiday season and well into 2009.

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[...]
David Cook, the smug-grinned rocker who won the most recent season of “American Idol,” has exactly two settings to his voice: Regular Howl and Anguished Howl. The beauty of his “Idol” run was in the way he deployed them. When reworking modern pop classics — Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean,” Lionel Richie’s “Hello” — he’d begin with Regular, shift to Anguished for an unexpected line or three midsong, then retreat. In this way Mr. Cook managed to appear meaningful, restrained and at times even clever.

Some residual counterintuitive strokes remain on Mr. Cook’s self-titled major debut album. But largely he stakes firm and unusually appealing claim to territory few covet: middlebrow ’90s rock, one part hard and one part alternative, an unabashed mix of heft and melody. On “Idol” he covered bands like Our Lady Peace and Collective Soul, much to the distaste of Simon Cowell. But this is where Mr. Cook’s heart and vocal range live. (He wears his self-consciousness about his “Idol” win on his sleeve; his obligatory post-“Idol”-victory single, “The Time of My Life,” is buried as a bonus track a full 11 minutes after this album’s final song.)

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[...]
6. Addicted to “American Idol”

Remember the part where I jumped up and down and clapped like a tween? It embarrasses me to say this now, but that’s what I did when David Cook beat David Archuleta on May 21. I was giddy. I followed the dang show religiously, not only writing about it but talking about it seriously the next day like a political debate. It’s a silly show, but as it happens my dad was watching too (and also rooting for Carly Smithson and Michael Johns — we miss you!). So were other people I had no idea cared about a marketing gimmick of a show like this. I watch more reality TV than “Idol” — including “The Bachelor” and “Bachelorette,” “Dancing with the Stars” and “Project Runway.” But this is the show that gets as many votes as a presidential candidate. I’m hooked. Can’t wait for next season.
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Since David Cook won the title in May, his fans hungrily anticipated the arrival of the American Idol’s self-titled album, which finally was released Tuesday. Cook can empathize.

“I feel like I’ve been waiting … for 25 years,” he says.

The seventh-season champ describes “David Cook” as the reintroduction of David Cook, not the “Idol” grunt at boot camp, but the liberated rocker at ground zero.

“I wanted this record to be a definition of me as a person,” says Cook. “The goal was to make an eclectic rock record. ‘Bar-Ba-Sol’ is guitar-driven and heavy but still melodic. On the flip side is ‘Permanent,’ with a string section and piano. … I love both songs for the aspects in my character that they define. It sounds egotistical, but I see myself as a complex person.”

Cook, 25, does embody contradictions. He is by turns reserved and goofy, articulate and tongue-tied, humble and ambitious.

He talks about ducking attention and fostering harmony among “Idol” finalists but also confesses: “I’ve had a competitive spirit all my life. Love me or hate me, just don’t ignore me.”

Newfound fame “is the most awkward thing,” he says. “When people look at me as a rock star, it seems humorous to me. I look at myself as a goober.”

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