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Infamous - really? Why so negative? Hate the Beatles? INFAMOUS adjective 1. having an extremely bad reputation: an infamous city. 2. deserving of or causing an evil reputation; shamefully malign; detestable: an infamous deed. 3. Law. a. deprived of certain rights as a citizen, as a consequence of conviction of certain offenses. b. of or pertaining to offenses involving such deprivation. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Origin: 1350–1400; Middle English

So I put it in the wrong forum (by your definition)...I'm still new around here and a bit stupid, but at least I'm not rude. I thought other forum members might like an update on Leona Lewis' UK sales, as they are in the article. I'm sorry to have caused you offence but really, if you don't want to know about something the best thing to do is to skip past it and read something you do like, and not bother posting a sarcastic reply.

Leona reaches US summit but can she hold on? Friday March 28, 2008 By Alan Jones As widely reported elsewhere, Leona Lewis has become the first British female solo artist to top the US Hot 100 for more than 20 years, climbing 8-1 this week with Bleeding Love. Lewis, who turns 23 next Thursday (3rd April) was a toddler, just two years old, when Wilde reached the summit with You Keep Me Hangin’ On in June 1987. The fourth of five US chart entries for Wilde – follow-up Say You Really Want Me was the last, and peaked weakly at number 44 – You Keep Me Hangin’ On was a hit at a time when the chart was a much happier hunting ground for UK acts. The week it was number one, it was one of 19 hits on the Hot 100 by UK and Irish acts, with others including Chris De Burgh’s Lady In Red, Genesis’ In Too Deep, Billy Idol’s Sweet Sixteen, Heart And Soul by T’Pau, Mary’s Prayer by Danny Wilson, One For The Mockingbird by Cutting Crew, and a brace of Steve Winwood songs, The Finer Things and Back In The High Life Again. Since Billboard first devised its singles chart in 1940 (it became the Hot 100 in 1958), six other UK female solo artists have topped the chart, along with Lewis and Wilde. They are: Vera Lynn with Auf Widersehen Sweetheart (1952), Petula Clark with Downtown (1965) and My Love (1966), Lulu with To Sir With Love (1967), Olivia Newton John with I Honestly Love You (1974), Have You Never Been Mellow (1975), Magic (1980) and Physical (1981), Sheena Easton with 9 To 5 (1981), and Bonnie Tyler with Total Eclipse Of The Heart (1983). Since Wilde’s success, four British female solo artists have had number two hits – Sheena Easton with The Lover In Me (1989), Cathy Dennis with Touch Me All Night Long (1991), Nikki French with Total Eclipse Of The Heart (1995) and, most recently, another member of the Lewis clan, namely Donna Lewis, who reached runners-up spot with I Love You, Always Forever in 1996, losing out to Los Del Rio’s Macarena. The latter track, of course, sampled Alison Moyet’s giggle from Yazoo’s Situation, so had some British interest. On a wider note, Leona Lewis is only the second UK act to have a number one single in America this decade. Of the 107 previous chart-toppers since January 2000, the only one by a British act is You’re Beautiful by James Blunt. Like Lewis, Blunt was hugely indebted to exposure on Oprah Winfrey’s show just before reaching pole position. One thing Leona Lewis has in common with Kim Wilde is that both of them achieved their number ones with American songs. Wilde’s single was a hi-nrg cover of the Diana Ross & The Supremes smash penned by Holland, Dozier & Holland, while Bleeding Love was written by Ryan Tedder and Jesse McCartney. Tedder is the lead singer of OneRepublic. Unknown a year ago, he has since co-penned six Hot 100 hits. Bleeding Love is the first to reach number one, though OneRepublic’s Apologize collaboration with Timbaland reached number two. Love Like This was a number 11 hit for Natasha Bedingfield and Sean Kingston, Do It Well reached number 31 for Jennifer Lopez, and He Said She Said peaked at number 58 for Ashley Tisdale. OneRepublic’s follow-up to Apologize, Stop & Stare, climbs 16-12 on the Hot 100 this week. All of Tedder’s songs were penned with different co-writers. Available since December, Bleeding Love initially made slow progress in America but its download sales there have now overhauled their UK tally. With the Oprah effect helping to generate sales of 219,237 downloads there last week, it has now sold 537,061 copies, whereas downloads account for 471,198 of Bleeding Love’s UK sales tally of 867,884. Despite its sales success, Bleeding Love is far from being one of the top records on US radio. It has been on the Hot 100 airplay chart for just three weeks, moving 66-51-37. It is also number 34 on the Rhythmic Top 40, and number 22 on the Mainstream Top 40 airplay charts. TV exposure for the songs video didn’t really take off until the song got Oprah’s seal of approval but it debuts at number nine on the Hot Videoclip chart this week. Like Kim Wilde, Lewis’ reign atop the US chart will be limited to just one week – Bleeding Love is certain to be overtaken next week by Mariah Carey’s Touch My Body, which is way ahead of Bleeding Love on airplay and should easily sell more than 200,000 copies in the next week, as pent-up demand is released. Madonna’s 4 Minutes is also selling very strongly, and made push Lewis into third place. But the future looks bright for Lewis, who is due to appear on Good Morning America, Live With Regis & Kelly, The Ellen De Generes Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live and American Idol before her Spirit album drops stateside on April 8.

The 20 biggest selling albums of the 21st Century Wednesday March 12, 2008 By Alan Jones Another week, another achievement for Amy Winehouse’s blockbusting Back To Black album which now moves into the Top 10 list of best-selling albums of the 21st century. As of close of business last Saturday (8th March), the album had sold 2,467,575 copies, made up of 2,020,063 copies of the original edition of the album (issued in November 2006), and 455,512 of the deluxe edition, which was released just 18 weeks ago. The deluxe edition has become the dominant version of the album recently, helped by discounting, and reached number one on the album chart last week, before slipping to number two behind Duffy’s Rockferry this week. The original version of Back To Black has dived 12-30-37 in the last fortnight. Back To Black’s move into the Top 10 is at the expense of Norah Jones’ 2002 debut album, Come Away With Me. It means that nine of the 10 biggest-selling albums of the 21st century in Britain are by homegrown acts, while the other – The Scissor Sisters’ self-titled debut – is a UK-signed American act who have had very limited success in their homeland. The Top 10 are as follows: 1 BACK TO BEDLAM – JAMES BLUNT Recorded in 2003, released in 2004, and first charting in 2005, former soldier James Blunt’s debut album got off to a slow start, with first week sales of just 482 – not enough to secure a placing in the chart. It remained outside the Top 75 for a further 20 weeks, finally entering the list when You’re Beautiful started to receive airplay. The album arrived at the top of the chart in July of that year, a week before You’re Beautiful topped the singles list. Three further hits were plucked from the album, which continues to sell well, adding nearly 28,000 to its overall sales thus far in 2008, to reach 3,120,833 sales. 2 NO ANGEL – DIDO Dido’s 2000 debut album was kickstarted into action when Eminem sampled one of its tracks, Thank You, for his hit single Stan. Thank You subsequently became one of three Top 10 singles plucked from No ANgel, which spent six weeks at number one, and was in the Top 10 for 32 weeks in a row. It sells very slowly now, adding just 2,015 copies so far in 2008 for a to date total of 3,023,288. 3 WHITE LADDER – DAVID GRAY Mancunian singer/songwriter David Gray’s first three albums all fell short of the Top 75 but his fourth, White Ladder, made its introductory chart appearance at number 69 on sales of 2,056 in May 2000, with demand stoked by the success of introductory single Babylon, which subsequently peaked at number five. The album spawned four further Top 40 hits but it took it well over a year to reach number one. Sales to date of 2,888,025 include 4,593 this year. 4 LIFE FOR RENT – DIDO Following up an album as successful as No Angel was a daunting prospect for Dido but with introductory single White Flag reaching number two, Life For Rent hit the ground running in 2003, with a spectacular first week sale of 400,351. It subsequently stormed past its first million sales in 43 days – and then sped up, reaching the magical 2m. mark on its 85th day in the shops. By year’s end, it had sold 2,168,302. It has slowed down somewhat since then but has so far sold 2,823,569 copies, including 2,180 this year. 5 1 – THE BEATLES Collecting together all 27 of The Beatles’ British and American number one singles more than 30 years after the fact, 1 was a triumph of marketing, and stormed to the top of the chart the week it was released in 2000, on sales of 319,126. It spent its first nine weeks at number one, and had sold nearly 2m. copies by the time it was dethroned in January 2001. The only compilation to make the 21st century Top 10, 1 has sold 2,775,654 copies, including 7,361 this year. 6 SCISSOR SISTERS – SCISSOR SISTERS After introductory single Laura scraped to a number 54 peak, The Scissor Sisters’ quirky electro cover of Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb raced to number 10 on the UK singles chart providing the impetus for their self-titled debut album to sell 21,395 copies on its first week in the shops, to earn a number 11 debut in February 2006. Proving to be far from one trick ponies, their ultra-commercial hit-laden album also generated Top 20 hits in the form of Take Your Mama, the reissued Laura and Mary before the last single off the set – Filthy/Gorgeous – became the biggest hit of them all, climbing to number five. The album rose to number one on three separate occasions, and has so far sold 2,686,705 copies, including 7,376 this year. 7 A RUSH OF BLOOD TO THE HEAD – COLDPLAY Coldplay’s 2000 debut Parachutes was one of the most impressive ever, spinning off the hits Shiver, Yellow and Trouble, and selling nearly 2.4m copies. The anticipation of follow-up A Rush Of Blood To The Head was intensified by the enormous popularity of first single In My Place, which reached number two. The album duly raced to first week sales of 273,924. With subsequent single The Scientist and Clocks also reaching the Top 10, the album spent more than a year in the Top 40, and has accumulated sales of 2,638,927, including 9,683 this year. 8 HOPES AND FEARS – Keane Keane had already reached #3 with debut single Somewhere Only We Know and #4 with follow-up Everybody’s Changing, when their first album, Hopes And Fears, rocketed straight to #1 in May 2004 with first week sales of 155,373. The first UK rock band to debut atop the album chart since July 2000 when Coldplay - a band with whom they are often compared - did likewise, they took a further two Top 20 singles off the album. Their melodic, piano-based style has made them very popular, and Hopes And Fears has so far sold 2,627,253, including 8,733 this year. 9 X&Y – COLDPLAY Just as In My Place set the pace for A Rush Of Blood To The Head, Speed Of Sound was the first single from Coldplay’s follow-up album, X&Y, and also raced to number two. Although the band’s two previous albums selling 5m copies between them, it was still something of a surprise that X&Y scorched to the second highest first week sales in history to that point, selling a stellar 464,471 copies to debut emphatically at number one in June 2003. Number one for four weeks, it has now sold 2,473,433 copies, 17,511 of them this year. 10 BACK TO BLACK – AMY WINEHOUSE 2,467,575 sales, of which 318,350 have been made in the last 10 weeks. The album will overtake Coldplay’s X&Y later this week to rank ninth for the 21st century, and seems certain to replace the other ‘Back To’ behemoth – James Blunt’s Back To Bedlam – at the top of the 21st century best-sellers list in due course. Nine other albums have sold more than 2m. copies so far in the 21st century, and it would be churlish to deny them a mention. They are: 11 COME AWAY WITH ME NORAH JONES 2,432,712 12 PARACHUTES COLDPLAY 2,385,676 13 BEAUTIFUL WORLD TAKE THAT 2,372,280 14 THE MARSHALL MATHERS LP EMINEM 2,245,624 15 SWING WHEN YOU'RE WINNING ROBBIE WILLIAMS 2,235,240 16 SING WHEN YOU'RE WINNING ROBBIE WILLIAMS 2,187,283 17 EYES OPEN SNOW PATROL 2,098,620 18 GREATEST HITS ROBBIE WILLIAMS 2,095,703 19 ESCAPOLOGY ROBBIE WILLIAMS 2,047,299 Completing the Top 20, The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ By The Way has sold 1,945,495 copies.

Thursday March 6, 2008 By Alan Jones Amy Winehouse’s Back To Black album was in the news again at the weekend, as it returned to the top of the album chart after an absence of a year but arguably its biggest achievement last week was to become the first digital album to ‘go gold’ in the UK, passing 100,000 sales on download. Legal downloads dominate the singles market, where they accounted for 94% of all sales last week, with physical formats barely afloat on 6% but those percentages are almost exactly reversed in the album market. Downloading albums is still in its infancy, with most consumers still preferring to own the physical product – CDs, vinyl and cassette commanded a combined 94.9% of the album market last week, leaving digital with a 5.1% share. Even so, that’s 139,940 albums sold in digital form, up from 78,838 (3.1%) in the same week in 2007. There are still massive variations in digital penetration among popular albums – The Beatles’ back catalogue is famously not downloadable and 13 of the Top 200 artist albums last week were also available only in physical form. At the opposite end of the scale, Daft Punk’s new concert set Alive achieved the highest penetration in digital form, with downloads accounting for a hefty 42% of its first week sales (1,175 out of 2,850) – possibly because it is one of the few albums available at this stage available in unprotected iTunes Plus AAC format with a bit rate of 256, compared to iTunes’ regular downloads, which are protected with a bit rate of 128 kbps. The 10 biggest selling downloads, up to close of business last Saturday (1 March) are as follows: title – ARTIST – DOWNLOAD SALES – TOTAL SALES – DOWNLOAD AS %AGE OF TOTAL BACK TO BLACK – Amy Winehouse - 101,423-2,431,231-4.17% EYES OPEN – Snow Patrol - 77,267-2,095,586-3.69% LIFE IN CARTOON MOTION – Mika - 57,330-1,358,913-4.22% BEAUTIFUL WORLD – Take That - 52,018-2,363,486-2.20% UNDISCOVERED – James Blunt – 49,208-1,283,644-3.11% RAZORLIGHT – Razorlight – 45,987-1,413,449-3.25% VERSION – Mark Ronson – 45,452-672,543-6.76% FAVOURITE WORST NIGHTMARE – Arctic Monkeys – 43,162-655,695-6.58% SAM’S TOWN – The Killers – 41.785-1,224,152-3.41% HAND BUILT BY ROBOTS – Newton Faulkner – 39,979-563,054-7.10% Among multi-artist compilations, the top downloads are High School Musical (18,364-992,480-1.85%) followed fairly distantly by The Ministry Of Sound’s The Annual 2007 (10,677-278,960-3.83%).

X Factor dominates Christmas charts Monday December 24, 2007 By Alan Jones For the third year in a row, the coveted Christmas number one single is the debut release by the winner of The X Factor, and the all-conquering TV show also enjoys its first number one Christmas album. This year’s singles champion, 18-year-old Scot Leon Jackson, sold 275,742 copies of his debut release When You Believe, last week. That total includes sales of 60,949 downloads and 214,793 CDs. The download was made available last Sunday (16th), while the CD hit the shops officially on Wednesday (19th), though some copies did get sold on Tuesday (18th). A cover of duelling divas Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston’s 1998 number four hit, recorded for The Prince Of Egypt soundtrack, Jackson’s single is the fastest-seller of the year, beating third X Factor champion Leona Lewis’ current single, Bleeding Love, which sold 218,805 copies on its first week in the shops eight weeks ago. However, it sold fewer than half the 571,253 copies that Lewis’ debut single A Moment Like This sold when it debuted at number one exactly a year ago, following her X Factor victory, and little more than a third as many as the 742,180 copies that That’s My Goal sold for Shayne Ward to debut at number one following his X Factor win in 2005. First X Factor winner Steve Brookstein missed the Christmas week with his initial hit Against All Odds, and consequently recorded a lower first week tally of 127,701 sales in 2004. The big sales generated by The X Factor lead to very high expectations but it’s worth noting that aside from the Lewis and Ward singles, When You Believe had the highest Christmas week sale since Bob The Builder’s Can You Fix It? sold 359,639 copies in 2000. Although it sold nearly 40,000 copies more than the rest of the Top 10 last week, When You Believe accounted for only 12.68% of all singles sold, whereas A Moment Like This cornered a 28.85% share of sales, That’s My Goal scored a 34.25% share, and Against All Odds managed 17.58%, even though it was number two behind Band Aid 20’s remake of Do They Know It’s Christmas, which had a 32.01% market segment. Jackson’s success helped single sales to climb 22.4% week-on-week to 2,174,612 last week – the first time they have topped the 2m mark for exactly two years, when the aforementioned Shayne Ward single helped them to reach 2,166,929. While Leon debuts atop the singles chart, his predecessor as X Factor champion, and the woman whose name is a female version of his own, sizzles to another week at the top of the album chart – all of which can only mean that Leona Lewis’ debut album, Spirit, is number one for the sixth straight week. Spirit increased sales by 25.4% to 268,437 copies last week, to raise its 41 day tally to a very impressive 1,433,477. It helped album sales to increase for the ninth week in a row, climbing 31.2% to 8,324,707. That’s the eighth highest weekly sale in the history of the British record industry – sadly all of the seven bigger weeks have come in the comparable week of the last eight years. 10,176,752 albums were sold in the same week last year – 22.25% more than last week – while an all-time record of 10,581,571 albums – 27.11% more – were sold in the comparable week in 2005. In 2004, 8,884,280 albums were sold, in 2003 it was 8,868,697, in 2002 it was 9,232,167 and in 2001 it was 9,768,027. The first of only three 10m plus weeks came in the comparable week in 2000, when 10,298,132 were sold. In 1999, sales were just a little below 2007 at 8,304,011. All weeks shown are week 51, except for 2004 (a 53 week year), when it was week 52 than provided the big sale. 13 albums sold more than 100,000 copies last week, two of them compilations. That compares to 18 in the same week last year, when Take That’s Beautiful World scorched to 443,070 sales; and 17 in 2005, when Eminem’s Curtain Call: The Hits led the way with 314,553 sales. That week saw 40 albums record sales of more than 50,000; and 131 albums with more than 10,000 sales. Last week, 35 albums sold more than 50,000 and 113 topped the 10,000 mark. Aside from Spirit, the albums to sell upwards of 100,000 last week were Westlife’s Back Home (219,852), Now! That’s What I Call Music 68 (200,452), Michael Buble’s Call Me Irresponsible – Special Edition (155,899), Vivere – The Best Of Andre Bocelli (132,376), Long Road Out Of Eden by The Eagles (119,040), Led Zeppelin’s Mothership (116,042), Shayne Ward’s Breathless (111,434), Beautiful World by Take That (108,971), Ministry Of Sound Anthems 1991-2008 (106,738), Back To Black – Deluxe Edition (106,212) and original edition (103,587) by Amy Winehouse, and The Ultimate Collection by Whitney Houston (101,076). Some highlights from the above: Westlife’s TV special, screened by ITV immediately before the X Factor final, helped their Back Home album to increase sales 85.9% week-on-week to reach by far the highest tally of its seven week career although it fell short of the 236,558 copies its predecessor The Love Album sold when it was number two a year ago; Now! 68 increased sales 10% week-on-week to become the first and only compilation to sell a million copies in 2007, with a to date tally of 1,038,079; Take That’s Beautiful World completes the rare feat of selling more than a million copies for two years in a row, lifting its 2007 tally to 1,018,767 and its lifetime tally to 2,142,951; The deluxe edition of Amy Winehouse’s Back To Black enters the Top 10 for the first time on its seventh week in the chart, and also eclipses the original Back To Black for the first time. Combined sales of both versions of the album would have placed it third on the chart, of combined. The original Back To Black album’s once massive lead over Leona Lewis’ Spirit has dwindled to little more than 100,000. Spirit may still end up topping the annual best-sellers list on a technicality, though adding the 226,535 copies that the deluxe edition of Back To Black has sold to the 1,535,557 copies the original has sold in 2007 would secure the title for Winehouse. The 163.5% increase in sales of the deluxe edition of Back To Black was the second highest in the Top 75 artist album chart, beaten only by the 239.3% spurt in sales which earn Josh Groban’s Noel a belated chart debut. In at number 58 with sales of 16,062, Noel has been number one for four weeks in America, where its sales are approaching 3m, making it the biggest seller of the year. It is Groban’s third chart album here. His last regular release, Awake, reached number 12 just seven months ago. The album that Noel leapfrogs to become the top seasonal title – All Angels’ Into Paradise – is one of only four albums in the chart to suffer a decline in sales week-on-week, alongside the current Fron Male Voice Choir and Teatro albums, and The Traveling Wilburys’ compilation. Back on the singles chart, The Pogues & the late Kirsty MacColl sprint 8-4 with The Fairytale Of New York this week. Undoubtedly helped by the publicity generated by the debate about whether radio stations should play the original uncensored or a politically correct edit of the song, it increased sales by 58.4% last week to 28,419. Originally a number two hit in 1987, it reached number three at Christmas 2005 and number six last Christmas, and becomes the first single ever to feature in the Top 10 on three consecutive Christmases. Although relegated to runners-up slot by Leon Jackson, the Tesco exclusive, What A Wonderful World by Eva Cassidy and Katie Melua enjoys a 6.4% increase in sales to 59,680. Leona Lewis’ Bleeding Love, which has nothing to fear from Leon Jackson in the annual best-sellers’ list, also enjoys a resurgence, increasing sales by 11.4% to 30,897. Its overall sales thus exceed ¾ of a million, though only just, at 750,482. It must now stand a good chance of beating the 811,276 copies that Lewis’ debut single A Moment Like This has sold to date. Rihanna has passed a milestone this week too, with Umbrella – the year’s second biggest hit single – selling its 500,000th copy on Saturday. Overall sales of 5,414 in the week take its cume to 500,552. The song has spent 29 weeks in the Top 40, where it is one of three Rihanna songs at present. Likely to reach the 250,000 sales mark tomorrow (24th), Apologize by Timbaland feat. OneRepublic is in the Top 10 for the 10th week in a row, and already the 20th biggest seller of the year. It falls 6-10 this week with sales of 17,253 taking its current cume to 248,500. A performance on the series finale of The X Factor helps Kylie Minogue’s new single Wow to make its debut at number 32, on sales of 6,250. The second single from 39 year old Minogue’s current album X, following the recent number four hit 2 Hearts, it increases her haul of Top 75 hits to 42, and is her 40th Top 40 entry. It will doubtless eventually become her 30th Top 10 hit. It also helps X, which moves 19-18 with sales up 53.9% week-on-week to 73,655. X has sold 267,551 copies to date. Aiming for their third number one single of the year, The Sugababes fall somewhat short with Change, which was given a physical release last Monday but only moves 26-13, on sales of 11,912 – a 99.3% increase. It’s safe to say it won’t be the band’s seventh number one single in all, but with few new releases around at this time of the year, and Christmas songs set to drop like stones, it may still claw its way a little higher and provide them with their 15th Top 10 hit. Some of those Christmas songs are already on the wane but although the number in the Top 40 drops to 10, there are 22 seasonal selections in the Top 75 – a new record. Among those returning this week are The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire) by Nat ‘King’ Cole (number 51, 3,763 sales), Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town by Bruce Springsteen (number 60, 3,371), Mistletoe & Wine by Cliff Richard (number 68, 3,070), Walking In The Air by Aled Jones (number 72, 2,908) and Peace On Earth – Little Drummer Boy by Bing Crosby and David Bowie (number 73, 2,853). Nat ‘King’ Cole’s hit – penned by Mel ‘The Velvet Fog’ Torme – extend his span of hits to 55 years and six weeks, the entire life oof the UK chart. He thus equals the record of Bing Crosby, who also appeared in the very first chart and has two Christmas-related hits at present. Top 10 singles not mentioned elsewhere: Soulja Boy Tell’em’s Crank That (Soulja Boy) dips 3-5 on sales of 26,785; All I Want For Christmas Is You by Mariah Carey falls 4-6 on sales of 21,447; Take That’s Rule The World holds at number seven on its ninth week in the Top 10 with 18,990 new sales taking its overall total to 332,325; Mark Ronson & Amy Winehouse’s Valerie returns to the top tier, climbing 11-8 on sales of 18,261; Girls Aloud’s Call The Shots dips 5-9 on sales of 17,637 despite dethroning Leona Lewis at the top of the airplay chart, where it is their first number one. The only singles in the Top 10 to suffer a decline in sales are Call The Shots and Apologize.

A friend said that there was something about the album chart having an all British Top 10 for the first time this week in Music Week. Most of the interesting chart trivia that is in Music Week usually turns up here but I can't find this. Has it been posted? And is it really true that it's the first time it has happened?