Articles tagged with: number one
It's good to end your year better than you started it - Britney Spears has, but only because she was cheating. Britney Spears' 2008 is ending with her new album Circus at number one in America - and she's also the first ever SoundScan artist to have four albums sell 500,000 week-one copies. So well done - Britney Spears' year has ended better than it started. But then again she did start it in a mental hospital - Britney could have caught Ebola off a rabid zombie meerkat while falling down a lift shaft and the year would have still been an upswing for her.
There are all kinds of ways to tell if your comeback has been successful, but Britney Spears has easily just found the best one. Britney's big new comeback single Womanizer has jumped 95 places in the American singles chart to reach number one. And you know what they say - when a song that sounds like Professor Stephen Hawking's faulty voicebox being jumpstarted by a big spluttering clown-car engine gets to number one, you've probably been accepted by the general population to some extent. And now that Womanizer's number one position is the cherry on Britney Spears' public rehabilitation cake, it's time for her to celebrate. How? The same way she always does - by shaving her head, mashing anti-psychotic drugs into her food and trapping her own children in a bathroom until she's sedated and taken to a mental hospital. Hooray!
Nicolas Cage apparently lives in Bath, but everyone knows that his real home is the top of the weekend box office. Or a wig shop. Who knows? Anyway, We're only telling you this because Nicolas Cage's new film Bangkok Dangerous is number one at the US weekend box office this week, taking in a mighty seven million dollars. Look, that figure might be 22 times less than The Dark Knight took on its opening weekend, but did The Dark Knight feature a skinny man in a funny wig shooting people in a boat? No, no it didn't. Point proved. Bangkok Dangerous' weekend box office success makes us think that all Asian movies would do well if they were remade starring Nicolas Cage. Imagine Nicolas Cage eating a live octopus in an Old Boy remake. Or Nicolas Cage kicking over cities in a Godzilla remake. Or a remake of The Ring where Nicolas Cage crawls out of a TV and scares Nicolas Cage to death and Nicolas Cage has to investigate it. Yes!
If you watched the Transformers movie, then you'll have noticed how sexy Megan Fox is. Well, maybe not. Maybe you'll have been too busy noticing how much enjoyment Michael Bay was taking in stomping all over your beloved childhood memories by filling the movie with piddle jokes and confusing Ebonics-speaking robots who enjoy watching teenagers have sex. Anyhow, Megan Fox was also in Transformers and she was sexy. And that sexiness is official, because the results of FHM's 100 Sexiest Women In The World poll has just been released, and Megan Fox is number one. Congratulations, then, to Megan Fox, who can now go to sleep at night knowing that more gawky teenage boys furiously masturbate to disturbing imagined adolescent sexual scenarios involving her than anyone else. Masturbate and then cry. Or is that just us?
If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. That’s one of the many mottos passed down to us from our fathers who subsequently had the same advice given to them from their own decaying parents.
And with this firmly drilled in to her mind, it’s good to see Leona Lewis has taken the same advice. As her appearance on X Factor 2006 dragged on, her singing style never really changed that much. Any song with a BPM over 40 was totally inappropriate for her. Instead she belted out ballad after ballad keeping grannies, young children and people in comas extremely happy. After boring us all silly with her hit Bleeding Love she’s now done the same to our American chums. She’s only ruddy gone to number one in the album charts!
Top that, crying bad-haired Scottish boy whose name we can't even remember - Leona Lewis, who won X Factor before you is number one in America.
Bleeding Love by Leona Lewis is number one in the American singles chart, proving that not even global superpowers are immune to personality-free girls doing generally passable Whitney Houston impressions.
It's worth pointing out, though, that Leona Lewis is the first British female to get a US number one single since Kim Wilde in 1987. And if Leona Lewis keeps her head down and work hard, maybe she'll reach the same dizzying heights. That's right, the TV gardener/ health food commercial actor/ novelty Christmas single with the fat one from Smith & Jones combo is now well and truly within her grasp.
In the depths of the countryside, five men collectively known as Radiohead locked themselves away in a big empty house to make their new album In Rainbows.
People everywhere had high expectations for this one so savvy people like us could call it 'the return to OK Computer days' album. Finally in October, an announcement was made that a new album had been created with an immediate release a few days later. Not only would this mean that the traditional three month wait between news of a new album and release would be quashed, but the geeks on the internet wouldn’t have to brave the outside when the big day finally came. And on Monday everyone else got to buy it on CD.
And, according to plan, In Rainbows has shot to number one.
Along with the giving and receiving of official Cliff Richard calenders and morbid gluttony, Christmas is all about Simon Cowell getting personality-free dullards to number one with awful pretend-aspirational songs.
And that's no different this year. Leon Jackson, winner of X Factor and a young man so crushingly inarticulate that his primary method of communication is weeping, has been all but guaranteed this year's Christmas number one with his song I Believe or Believe In Me or When You Believe or I Preconceive That My Sleeve Believes Its Weave's Called Steve. Not only that, but When You Believe by Leon Jackson looks set to become the fastest-selling single of the year, selling 300,000 copies in less than a week. That's not the only record When You Believe's broken, either - it's also the only Christmas number one with a tune that nobody can remember even when they've just finished listening to it.
