December
Monday
I happened to be browsing the Billboard Hot 100 Ringtones chart this morning, and noticed an impressive phenomenon that’s been occurring for more than four years with almost no fanfare — the theme songs to Super Mario Bros. and The Pink Panther have both been on the Billboard Hot Ringtones chart for more than 200 weeks:
The Mario Bros. theme still has a hefty 526 weeks to catch Dark Side of the Moon, but I’m confident that those two mushroom-popping plumbers can pull it off, and I look forward to celebrating the achievement in my late thirties. I don’t know why the Pink Panther theme is exactly two weeks behind Super Mario Bros, but I wish that luck too.
I’m not quite sure what this one says about our ringtone-purchasing population, however:
November
Wednesday
As if Britney Spears doesn’t already have enough people out to get her, Billboard changed their paramaters about how to count album sales literally yesterday, resulting in Britney’s Blackout album officially getting knocked out of the #1 spot by The Eagles’ Long Road Out Of Eden. Geoff Mayfield, Billboard’s “Director of Charts” (aka President?), attempts to explain himself:
“We would have preferred to make this decision earlier, but only became aware within the last twenty-four hours that Wal-Mart would be willing to share the data for this title with Nielsen SoundScan.” The new rule, dubbed “The Screw Britney Clause” by industry insiders, denied Brit’s comeback album from the top spot it had earmarked for the entire week.
We’ve ripped on Britney an awful lot on this blog, but this whole situation has an extremely fishy “Jamaica getting kicked out of the Olympics in ‘Cool Runnings’” kind of feel to it. So to even the score, I will now spend a couple paragraphs ripping on The Eagles:
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