Andrea Bocelli Earns 10th Top 10 on Album Sales Chart With ‘Believe,’ Bows at No. 1 on Classical Albums

Andrea Bocelli earns his 10th top 10 on Billboard’s Album Sales chart (dated Nov. 28), as his latest release, Believe, bows at No. 5. The set was released on Nov. 13 via Sugar/Decca Records, and sold 20,000 copies in the U.S. in the week ending Nov. 19, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data.

Also in the top 10, AC/DC’s Power Up launches at No. 1, Chris Stapleton’s Starting Over debuts at No. 2, Pentatonix’s We Need a Little Christmas arrives at No. 8 and a flurry of catalog titles see major gains thanks to sale pricing at Walmart.

Billboard’s Album Sales chart ranks the top-selling albums of the week based only on traditional album sales. The Album Sales chart’s history dates back to May 25, 1991, the first week Billboard began tabulating charts with electronically monitored piece count information from SoundScan, now Nielsen Music/MRC Data. Pure album sales were the measurement solely utilized by the Billboard 200 albums chart through the list dated Dec. 6, 2014, after which that chart switched to a methodology that blends album sales with track equivalent album units and streaming equivalent album units. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram.

Bocelli got his first top 10 on the Album Sales chart in 1999 with Sogno, which debuted and peaked at No. 4. He landed his first No. 1 with 2018’s Si.

Through his career, Bocelli has sold 24.3 million albums in the U.S. Believe also gives Bocelli his 20th No. 1 on the Classical Albums chart and his 14th No. 1 on the Classical Crossover Albums tally. He extends his own record for the most No. 1 albums on both charts.

The Classical Albums ranks the most popular classical albums of the week based on multi-metric consumption, combining album sales, track equivalent album units and streaming equivalent album units. The Classical Crossover Albums chart ranks the top-selling classical crossover titles of the week.

Back in the top 10 of the new Album Sales list, AC/DC’s Power Up debuts at No. 1 with 111,000 copies sold. As earlier reported, the album also enters at No. 1 on the multi-metric consumption Billboard 200 chart – the band’s first No. 1 since 2008.

Chris Stapleton’s latest effort Starting Over starts at No. 2 with 75,000 copies sold, while Queen’s Greatest Hits blasts 46-3 (a new peak) with 24,000 sold (up 737%) – its best sales week since 2007. The bulk of the latter’s sales (23,000 in fact) came from vinyl LP sales, thanks in large part to a Walmart sale where all vinyl in-store on Nov. 14 was marked down to $15. Greatest Hits, which was initially released in 1981, also reaches the top 10 of the Billboard 200 for the first time.

Greatest Hits logs its best sales week since the Dec. 8, 2007-dated chart, when it sold 36,000 copies (in the tracking week ending Nov. 25 – which reflected the busy Thanksgiving and Black Friday shopping holidays that year).

Dolly Parton’s A Holly Dolly Christmas returns to its peak of No. 4 on Album Sales, as it rises two spots with 21,000 copies sold (up 90%).

Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours jumps 18-6 with 17,000 sold (up 261%), with vinyl LP sales comprising 16,000 of that sum (up 369%). Rumours was also a beneficiary of Walmart’s $15 sale pricing. Rumours additionally reaches the top 10 on the Album Sales chart (whose history dates to May 25, 1991) for the first time, and marks the band’s first top 10 since the 2003 album Say You Will debuted and peaked at No. 3 (May 3, 2003-dated chart). Rumours also tallies its best sales week since the May 21, 2011-dated chart, when it sold 30,000 copies in the wake of the premiere of the Glee TV episode dedicated to the album (May 3).

Carrie Underwood’s holiday set My Gift is pushed down 3-7 on the new Album Sales chart, but posts a gain, as it sold just under 17,000 copies (up 17%).

Pentatonix’s latest holiday album We Need a Little Christmas bows at No. 8 with 16,000 sold. It’s the 11th top 10 for the vocal group. Of those 11 top 10s, six have been Christmas titles.

Bob Marley and The Wailers’ Legend: The Best Of… vaults 48-9 with 15,500 sold (up 453%). It also was goosed by the Walmart vinyl sale, as the title sold nearly 15,000 on vinyl LP (up 639%).

Legend logs its best overall sales week since the Sept. 20, 2014-dated chart, when the album sold 41,000 copies after it was discounted to 99-cents in the Google Play store.

Closing out the new top 10 on the Album Sales chart is another title that gets a lift from Walmart, as Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Chronicle: The 20 Greatest Hits rises 59-10 with 14,000 copies sold (up 485%). Of that sum, 13,000 are in vinyl LP sales (up 776%). Chronicle nets its best sales week since the Aug. 17, 2013-dated chart, when it moved 15,000 copies.

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Here’s Why Frank Ocean Inspired Yara Shahidi to Get Tattoos

Yara Shahidi is a huge fan of Frank Ocean’s. So much so, that the actress and activist revealed how the singer influenced her to get inked up.

In Vogue’s latest “73 Questions” installment, Shahidi admitted that she listens to music “every moment of the day,” while showing off her impressive vinyl record collection.

When asked if she has a tattoo inspired by Ocean, the grown-ish star had to clarify. “OK, so I have tattoos because of Frank Ocean, but they’re all inspired by different things,” she explained, before pointing out a lyric from the singer’s Chanel title track, in which he boasts, “Hide my tattoos in Shibuya.”

“I heard that, I was 16, I hadn’t had tattoos yet and so when I got tattoos, I was like, ‘When I got to Shibuya, now I have something to hide,” Shahidi continued.

What makes her such a big Ocean supporter? “His artistry and his work ethic, but also I’d have to say his music is so ripe with cultural references,” she replied. “Whether it be Kerry James Marshall or somebody else, it’s oftentimes an entry point to learn about other artists.”

Watch the full “73 Questions” segment below.

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Radiohead, Elbow Members Call for Better Streaming Royalties at Opening of UK Parliament Probe

LONDON — Low payouts from music streaming services are placing artists’ livelihoods and future careers at risk, four British artists testified at the opening of a U.K. Parliament probe into the streaming business.

On Tuesday, rock band Elbow frontman Guy Garvey warned that “the system, as it is, is threatening the future of music,” as more artists are struggling to make a living with the current rates streaming platforms are paying.

With streaming accounting for more than half of the global music industry’s revenue, the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee is looking into the economic impact that streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon are having on artists and record labels, as well as the sustainability of the wider music industry.

Garvey and Radiohead guitarist Ed O’Brien were among a group of four artists and two industry analysts that provided evidence on the first day of the inquiry, which is anticipated to stretch for several months and will call upon executives at major labels and streaming platforms to answer questions.

The Parliament probe — which so far is being done with witnesses testifying virtually, as the U.K. is in lockdown — is also addressing a lack of transparency in record contracts and opaque accounting practices, safe harbor provisions and the European Copyright Directive, which will hold online user-generated services like YouTube liable for unlicensed content.

The inquiry comes at a time when the coronavirus pandemic has decimated income from touring, focusing artists’ attention on how much — or in many cases how little — cash they actually make from music streaming.

Spotify paid labels and rights holders a blended per-stream rate of $0.00366 in 2019, while Apple Music’s rate is about $0.0070 per stream and YouTube doles out $0.0033 for ad-supported official videos.

The COVID-19 crisis “has provided an opportunity for us to really see what we’re making from recorded music [and] it’s pretty horrific,” Tom Gray, from British rock band Gomez, told the committee. He cited a “very successful” unnamed songwriter friend who recently received payment of £70 from YouTube in return for 1 million plays of his music.

“There have always been imbalances in the system, and they need to be addressed,” O’Brien told the Parliament members, “but it’s more acute now.”

All of the musicians taking part in Tuesday’s session said they were fans of music streaming but stressed that something needed to be done to address the imbalance between revenues record labels and rights holders receive from streaming services and the often-miniscule payments artists were getting for their work.

“It would be disingenuous of me to pretend that there aren’t some artists who are doing well from streaming,” Gray said. “But the problem is that they conform to one type of artist broadly speaking. They tend to be solo artists. They tend to be fully independent … and they tend to be working in a genre that is highly playlisted.”

Garvey and Gray both advocated a move towards streaming platforms and labels implementing a user-centric payment model that will see artists paid every time their music is directly streamed, rather than the current arrangement where royalties are distributed on a pro-rata model based around market share.

Gray also criticized outdated record label contracts that see rights holders withholding the lion’s share of streaming income, noting that the imbalance in artist payouts was occurring while “foreign-based multi-national” corporations reported record revenues.

Last month, Universal Music Group, the world’s biggest record label, posted €1.86 billion ($2.14 billion) in third quarter revenue, up 3.1% on the same period the previous year. Spotify’s third quarter 2020 operating income fell to a loss of €40 million from a gain of €50 million during the same time last year, while revenues climbed 14% to €1.97 billion ($2.29 billion), with the streaming giant growing its customer base to 144 million paid subscribers and 320 million total monthly active users.

Gray drew attention to physical breakage clauses — automatically deducting 10% of an artist’s royalties to cover the cost of damaged vinyl and CDs — that are still present in many record deals.

While acknowledging he was one of the lucky artists who had made a good living from playing music, O’Brien said he was taking part in the inquiry to support new acts struggling to survive in the digital music economy.

One of those is British singer-songwriter Nadine Shah, whose 2017 album Holiday Destination was nominated for the Mercury Prize. She released her fourth studio set, Kitchen Sink, on BMG this year.

Shah told MPs that, despite her success as an acclaimed artist with a substantial fanbase, she and many fellow musicians were struggling to pay their rent. “The reality is that we could lose lots of musicians,” she said.

Garvey said that if musicians could not afford to live, “then we haven’t got tomorrow’s music in place.”

Whether the Parliament hearings will have any genuine impact on the streaming industry remains to be seen. Although the DCMS committee is made up of 11 elected members of U.K. Parliament, it exists independently from the British government and does not have any regulatory power. Instead, the committee makes recommendations based on its inquiry findings that government officials can then choose whether to pass into law.

Its real power lies in shining a light on previous hidden business practices and inequalities. A two-year probe into the U.K. live music market which ended last year helped bring about major changes to the British secondary ticketing sector, culminating in Ticketmaster shutting down its two major U.K. secondary sites, Get Me In and Seatwave.

Viagogo, which made headlines when it twice snubbed a request to appear before the committee, also made changes to comply with British law following the DCMS inquiry and a number of concurrent investigations by regulatory bodies.

Additional reporting by Ed Christman.

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Megan Thee Stallion Feels Like She ‘Said Enough’ on Clapback Track ‘Shots Fired’

Megan Thee Stallion masterfully addressed the Tory Lanez shooting incident on her recently released debut album Good News with the blistering opener “Shots Fired.”

The song, which samples Notorious B.I.G.’s “Who Shot Ya?,” features fiery lyrics like, “You shot a 5’10” b—- with a .22 / Talkin’ ’bout bones and tendons like them bullets wasn’t pellets / A p—- n—- with a p—- gun in his feelings.”

In a new interview with Radio.com, Meg was asked if she felt that she properly expressed her side of the story on the track. “I feel like I said enough…,” she explained. “I don’t like to go back and forth. If I said something one time, that’s what it is, that’s what I said and I meant it, there’s no need for me to continue to go back and forth.”

“I am a rapper, and at the end of the day if you put something down on wax, I’mma do that too,” she continued. “So, you know, that’s what I had to do.”

Lanez allegedly shot Megan twice in the foot back in July, after the two were leaving a Hollywood party together. Lanez pleaded not guilty to a felony assault charge in the incident, and appeared to address the situation on “Money Over Fallouts” off his September album Daystar.

Watch the full Radio.com interview below.

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Legal questions surround mystery donor in FL Senate races. Answers could take ‘years’

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Driver wanted in fatal hit-and-run crash in Little Havana, cops say

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Who’s open for a Thanksgiving grocery run? Publix? Sedano’s? What about mass transit?

Thanksgiving is Thursday, and you need to know what’s closed and what’s open, and for how long, on the holiday and Friday. Supermarkets Publix: All stores and pharmacies closed on … Click to Continue »
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The Weeknd criticizes Grammys over nominations snub

The Weeknd angrily slammed the Grammy Awards, calling them “corrupt” after the pop star walked away with zero nominations despite having multiple hits this year. The three-time Grammy winner criticized … Click to Continue »
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No plan to close South Florida schools as COVID numbers rise in the schools, counties

Public schools in both Miami-Dade and Broward counties saw their confirmed COVID-19 cases jump by well over 100 in a week’s time, a trend that started shortly after students were … Click to Continue »
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Josh Groban on Finding ‘New Meaning’ in Classic Songs for His Quarantine-Recorded ‘Harmony’ Album

“I’m amazed. It was the hardest way to finish an album,” Josh Groban says of recording his new release, Harmony, in the midst of a pandemic. “But I think I’ll always remember it in these very dark times as one of the most inspirational processes I’ve had so far.”

In normal times when making an album, Groban would find himself in a recording studio, “looking out on 60 people” and “playing together as a unit.” But that simply wasn’t going to happen in the era of COVID-19 safety concerns and being socially distanced.

So he had “two choices.” He could either simply opt to not make an album right now, or, he could adapt to how “creativity is happening” from afar — over video.

“I’m watching strings play at AIR Studios in London, while my producer’s in Nashville, I’m in Los Angeles,” he tells the Billboard Pop Shop Podcast (listen to his interview, below). “We’ve got band members in different cities around the world. And it became a really powerful thing to watch everybody doing what they could from where they were… it’s one of the reasons why we thought ‘Harmony’ was a good word for (the album), because it wasn’t just the music of it, it was just that everything had to come together.”

The 12-song Harmony album was released on Nov. 20 and features 10 covers of classic tunes that range from vintage songs from the 1960s like “The Impossible Dream” and “It’s Now or Never” to more relatively recent selections like Robbie Williams’ 1997 single “Angels.” Harmony also boasts guests in Sara Bareilles, Kirk Franklin and Leslie Odom, Jr., and is bookended by two newly penned recordings, written by Groban this year: “Your Face” and “The Fullest.”

In support of the album, Groban will take the stage for a pair of livestream concert events on Nov. 26 and Dec. 19. The former will be focused on songs from Harmony and beyond, while the latter will be his first-ever Christmas show.

Below are some highlights from Groban’s interview on the Pop Shop Podcast, including how watching the news “on mute” led to him writing “Your Face,” how a glass of wine (or two) with Glen Hansard-inspired “The Fullest,” what to expect from his upcoming livestream shows, and what holiday music he plays around the house during the season.

On how he found new meaning in “The Impossible Dream” as things changed around him this year:

The songs that I had recorded [he recorded four before lockdown in March], that were just on the surface beautiful great songs — all of a sudden I’m finding new meaning in the lyrics that were relevant to what was happening. A song like ‘Impossible Dream,’ for instance, is a song … people had been asking me to sing that song for a very long time. There’s a lot of great big beautiful versions of it. It’s kind of one of the big baritone songs. And I always knew it to be a beautiful and inspirational song. And then when I looked at the lyric and I’m seeing about how, you know, ‘brave’ it is to ‘dare’ go where there’s a little bit of hope when you’re feeling caged in and feeling like the world is unfair and our government is unfair. You know, it’s the story of Don Quixote in that song, and having to go to a place in your mind that is very opposite from what the world has boxed around you. All of a sudden I wanted to go and re-sing it, because it just felt different. It felt like there was a different layer to it. A lot of songs, as we continued to choose [them], after I finally had a chance to think about making this album again — came about that way.

On the new song, “Your Face” and how it came together:

I wrote ‘Your Face’ entirely and … [it] happened very very quickly. … I was just watching the news. It was on mute and I was tired of listening to the pundits and the arguing and the opinions … and just kind of, I was looking at the faces of nurses and doctors and students and people being interviewed and there’s hope and there’s fear and there’s humanity, and through all of the chaos and confusion, I just wanted to write a song based on the idea that in the end, you know, we have what it takes, if we take stock in the simple things that will get us through it and make us feel more alive and more human through this time. And just wanted to write a song of hope. Not expecting anybody to hear it. I just wrote it as therapy, essentially.

(Groban sent off the basic Garage Band track of his recording of ‘Your Face’ to producer Tommee Profitt, who has worked with NF, among others.)  

And that afternoon, with all his samples and all his stuff, he said, ‘well, I did a thing, what do you think?’ And he took my vocal that I recorded in my bedroom, which is the vocal on the album, and he said, ‘I took a pass (at producing the track).’  And that’s it. That’s what on the album. So, that happened very very fast. And sometimes you just have to let it go if it feels right. And it did. Every time we tried to up it, or re-sing it, it wasn’t the same.

On how a glass of wine with Glen Hansard led to the album’s other newly written song, “The Fullest”

With [“The Fullest”] … the line ‘would you follow me out on the thin branches,’ came from Glen Hansard, about five years ago. We were sitting and having a glass of wine and talking about songs. And he said, ‘you know I’ve got this idea for a lyric. It’s a rather nice sentiment to say, you know, would you follow me out on the thin branches. Would you go out there with me?’

‘Yeah, I love that Glen, that’s a great start of a song.’ We, you know, kept sending ideas back and forth of different melodies that could possibly go on that line, and we just, in the end, we just round up having a laugh and having a few drinks, and never found that thing that would finish the song.

How Kirk Franklin brought “The Fullest” across the finish line:

And so the first thing I did after ‘Your Face,’ was I sat down and I said, ‘I’ve gotta come up with something for ‘follow me out on the thin branches.’ Because I feel right now we’re all on those thin branches. And so I wrote basically everything but the bridge. Then I was connected to Kirk Franklin, who I’ve loved his music forever. Whatever religion you are, it’s impossible not to feel amazing when you listen to Kirk’s spirituality in his music and what he infuses. And so I thought, this is a song that is about making sure you’ve lived your life to the fullest, and that … on that day you look back and realize you did things the right way and you treated people well, and you treated yourself well.

So I sent it to him and he’s going ‘I got an idea for the bridge.’ And then he sent the bridge, and recorded the choir in Texas, and worked with an amazing producer named Fede — another person I had not worked with before, whose worked with Coldplay and all these other people.

On what to expect from his upcoming livestream concerts on Nov. 26 and Dec. 19:

The Thanksgiving show will be songs from Harmony and beyond. And we’ve already got a different space for that. It’s going to be more expansive and beautiful. And then we’ve got some plans for my first ever Christmas show. I’ve never done a full Christmas show, surprisingly. But we felt this was a good time to do it. I know for myself and a lot of other people, being with families is going to be virtual, so we felt like what better time than to do a virtual holiday show, with songs that have meant so much to me. And we’re almost on the verge of getting a spot [venue] for that show that would just be absolutely mind-blowingly awesome. But … the ink’s not dry yet, so hopefully that’ll happen.

Speaking of Christmas… Groban’s 2007 holiday album Noel — which spent five weeks atop the Billboard 200 chart — is a seasonal favorite, what does holiday music does Groban play around the house during the season?

You know, I still have some of the old cassettes that I used to listen to when I was a kid. My parents kept them and they sit on a dusty shelf and they get pulled out every year. Ray Conniff Singers… Gladys Knight & The Pips had a great Christmas album. You know, Mel Tormé of course. … Johnny Mathis, of course, has a classic one. The Brian Setzer Orchestra’s got a great Christmas album. So yeah, we keep it pretty old school.

His thoughts on making a modern Christmas album and how “lucky” he was to make Noel:

I think, you know, Christmas music is about that nostalgia, first and foremost. I think for any of us that make a modern Christmas album, I think our ultimate goal is to make an album that is going to collect that dust on the shelf until that time of year that everybody pulls it out. And re-listening to it brings them back to a time of innocence and safety and feeling together. And I feel lucky that I was able to make one of those hopefully for future generations.

Also in the new episode of the Pop Shop Podcast, hosts Katie and Keith discuss the just announced Grammy Award nominations and review chart news about AC/DC, Billie Eilish and The Weeknd.

The Billboard Pop Shop Podcast is your one-stop shop for all things pop on Billboard’s weekly charts. You can always count on a lively discussion about the latest pop news, fun chart stats and stories, new music, and guest interviews with music stars and folks from the world of pop. Casual pop fans and chart junkies can hear Billboard’s deputy editor, digital, Katie Atkinson and senior director of charts Keith Caulfield every week on the podcast, which can be streamed on Billboard.com or downloaded in Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast provider. (Click here to listen to the previous edition of the show on Billboard.com.)  

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