The Modfather is shouting to the top.

Paul Weller’s Fat Pop (Polydor) is the leader on the U.K.’s midweek chart, with an advantage of almost 13,000 chart sales over his nearest competitor, the OCC reports.

Fat Pop is the former Jam and Style Council frontman’s 16th solo studio album. It’s the best-seller on CD and vinyl formats so far this week, and if it holds its momentum it’ll give Weller his sixth solo leader and second in less than 12 months, following 2020’s On Sunset.

Coming in at No. 2 on the Official U.K. Albums Chart Update is J. Cole’s The Off-Season (Interscope). The U.S. rapper has the most-streamed album in the first half of the week, and it’s on target to become his third Top 10 entry. Cole’s peak U.K. position in his career to date is a No. 2 for 2018’s KOD.

The current leader on the Official U.K. Albums Chart, Rag’n’Bone Man’s Life By Misadventure (Columbia), dips 3-1 but still manages to lead the market in downloads.

Also new to the midweek chart is St. Vincent’s sixth and latest effort, Daddy’s Home (Loma Vista). It’s new at No. 4 and is on track to give the Grammy Award-winning alternative pop artist her best-ever chart position in the U.K.

Completing the Top 5 at the midweek stage is the Black Keys’ covers album Delta Kream (Nonesuch), while new albums from Myles Kennedy (The Ides of March at No. 7 via Napalm), Matt Berry (The Blue Elephant at No. 11 via Acid Jazz), Nicki Minaj’s re-release of Beam Me Up Scotty (at No. 13 via Cash Money/Republic Recordings), Jorja Smith (Be Right Back at No. 14 via Famm), and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (Déjà Vu at No. 20 via Atlantic) are eyeing Top 20 bows.

The Official U.K. Singles and Albums Charts are published late Friday local time.

BMG is the new label and publishing partner for American Idol, as revealed on the ABC series’ Season 19 finale Sunday (May 16). The deal — struck between BMG and the show’s producer, Industrial Media’s 19 Entertainment — pertains to this season and next, the companies tell Billboard.

Prior to the BMG deal, the show’s partners were Hollywood Records and Disney Music Publishing.

19 Recordings vp of music Elissa Felman says the new agreement is part of a broader strategy to invest more time and energy in contestants who sign a label deal in the show’s aftermath. “Over the course of the last couple of years, I’ve really been pivoting 19 Recordings, just behind the scenes…as more of an artist development company,” she notes.

The agreement came about after Felman floated the idea of forming a BMG publishing partnership with that company’s executive vp and U.S. head of publishing, Monti Olson, for Idol’s current season. In the course of their conversations, Olson pitched the idea of BMG’s label division also becoming involved. Very quickly, says Felman, “we realized that our creative vision aligned,” and the deal was set in motion.

“[We want to] give the artists the opportunity to grow,” says Olson of that vision. “Our development ideas won’t be nine-month plans; it’ll be 18-month plans…. We’re looking at it more as artist development versus ‘let’s just capture lightning in a bottle right now, and if it doesn’t work, we’re gonna move on.’”

Felman seems inspired by Industrial Media’s recent success of Idol Season 16 contestant Gabby Barrett, the first bona fide star produced by the show in years. After no major labels expressed interest following her third-place finish, Barrett signed a deal with 19 Recordings, which released her single “I Hope” independently in collaboration with Red Light Management. When the song began rising up the country charts, its success sparked a major-label bidding war, and Barrett ultimately signed with Warner Nashville.

The following season, contestant Alejandro Aronda (a.k.a. Scarypoolparty) also cultivated a devoted following after performing a total of seven original songs on the show — an outlier in the cover-heavy Idol universe. Felman took note.

“I was watching [that] thinking, ‘Man, this is insane, if we really pivot the way we are structuring this and look at this as a platform to launch artists’ careers … we can use artists who really know who they are to come on the show, see what works for them, develop some fans, develop a platform,’” says Felman. “We still have to do the work, we still have a couple of years of development, absolutely…but we have that platform that can set them apart.”

Felman stresses that a robust artist development process is particularly important in the age of streaming and TikTok, where competition for listeners’ ears and dollars is even fiercer than it was early in American Idol’s run. “It was a very different landscape, where radio still ruled and you really needed a major label to break and all that kind of stuff,” she says of Idol’s early days. “But since then … artists are breaking in different ways. And so development has changed, A&R has changed.”

As opposed to earlier seasons of Idol, none of the current crop of contestants — including the winner — are guaranteed (or obligated) to sign with BMG. Rather, says Olson, any contestant who finished in the top 10 will be considered. “It’s just strictly going to be up to the A&R process,” Felman adds.

There is one guarantee, however — at least for top-six finishers Casey Bishop, Chayce Beckham, Grace Kinstler, Willie Spence, Arthur Gunn and Hunter Metts. Each of those contestants will have an original single released by BMG; the top four, meanwhile, were given the opportunity to perform theirs on Sunday’s finale. That was a significant first for the long-running series, which partnered each of the semi-finalists with super-producers Tricky Stewart, Ian Fitchuk and Ross Copperman to collaborate on the tracks. (Another contestant, Caleb Kennedy, also cut a single but left the show last week after an old video of him wearing what appeared to be a Ku Klux Klan hood surfaced.)

What seems clear is that the sort of one-size-fits-all deals applied to previous Idol contestants are a thing of the past.

“It’s really up to where the artist is at in their career with how we roll that forward,” says Felman on structuring individual deals. She adds, “What we don’t want to do is rush anybody to the detriment of their career — but also while capitalizing on what they’ve got from American Idol, which is a fan base.”

The top 10 roster of the Billboard Japan Hot 100 continues to shift rapidly this month as three new songs break into the top 10 following the four debuts from last week.

On the tally dated May 3 to 9, J-pop boy band Johnny’s WEST leads with “Something New,” a wedding-themed track penned by hitmaker Aimyon. The group’s 16th single sold 211,396 copies in its first week to rule physical sales, look-ups, and Twitter mentions.

The septet’s previous single sold slightly more than the current one (227,615 first-week copies), but many brick-and-mortar music stores in Japan have been closed due to the third COVID-19 state of emergency, so “Something New” can be said to have fared relatively well in spite of this setback.

Debuting at No. 2 is Kaze Fujii’s “Kirari,” currently being featured in Honda commercials. The rising young singer-songwriter scored his first top 10 with his previous single called “Tabiji,” which debuted at No. 10 in March. “Kirari” is off to a better start, faring better in downloads (38,418 first-week units, “Tabiji” started off with 24,337) and streaming (5,071,563 streams, about double that of 2,494,342 for “Tabiji”), indicating his steadily growing reach.

Meanwhile, Official HIGE DANdism returns to the top 10 with its latest digital single “Cry Baby,” which performed much better in first-week downloads (22,068 units) than the band’s previous single, “Universe,” did when it peaked at No. 4 in March. The “Pretender” hitmakers’ new release is off to a good start at No. 10 on the Japan Hot 100.

The Billboard Japan Hot 100 combines physical and digital sales, audio streams, radio airplay, Twitter mentions, YouTube and GYAO! video views, Gracenote look-ups and karaoke data.

The full Billboard Japan Hot 100 chart, dated May 3 to 9, can be seen here.

Nicki Minaj had no idea hot pink Crocs would be flying off the shelves thanks to her.

Earlier this week, the rapper shared a snapshot of herself wearing not much more than a pair of the comfortable clogs, which were accessorized with bedazzled charms, including one of the Chanel logo.

According to reports, the Instagram look led to people rushing out to find a pair for themselves — “pink crocs” and “nicki minaj crocs” were breakout searches that day, Google Trends said — and resulted in a 4,900% spike in sales of pink Crocs. The retailer’s website apparently crashed, too.

“Did you expect Crocs sales to soar after posting your picture?” one fan asked Minaj in a tweet on Saturday (May 15).

“Absolutely TF NOT. LOL,” Minaj replied.

While answering some questions from her Barbz, Minaj also offered a fun fact about her verse on her team-up with Lil Wayne and Drake, “Seeing Green.”

“Honestly I kept coming back to it for like a week. I have like 7 diff versions of my verse on that song,” she revealed, “and no I’m not gonna upload them.”

See some of her Saturday afternoon tweets below.