Alanis Morissette › Guardian

TMJ Charts: M83 Dethrones Santigold

A record-breaking streak of 17 weeks at #1 for Santigold's Disparate Youth has finally come to and end as we now turn our heads to M83 whose Midnight City reigns as the new #1 on the Songs chart. And it comes as big feat, not only because it's the electronic band's first chart-topper but it's a song that has been all over the chart since its debut. It first appeared in early November of last year where it bowed at #74 only to climb to #66 four weeks later before experiencing a brief absence starting early December. By February of this year the song re-enters at #97 and goes up to #42 by late March, before hovering around the lower parts of the chart once again. But it wasn't until early May that the song picks up a steady pace and finally breaks the Top 40. And steady ever since, it's now reached the top as Greatest Gainer in its 27th week on the chart. I can only remember one song that's taken longer to reach the summit and it's Kings Of Leon's Closer which back in 2009 conquered the top in its 37th week.

Midnight City (Official Video)

In other chart news, it's a good week for Flo Rida who sees Wild Ones featuring Sia pick up once again and is the week's Power Play at #18. There's also two debuts from his new album: I Cry is the week's Highest Debut at #29 followed by Run featuring RedFoo at #42. Howler's Black Lagoon is the week's other debut entering at #87. The week's Biggest Jump is Benny Benassi's Close To Me featuring Gary Go, a song that refuses to leave the chart and goes up 45 places to #55.

And a couple of names are also news. First off, Alanis Morissette gets her best chart peak so far as her newest single, Guardian, stands at #7 this week. Her best effort had been Incomplete which went as high as #9 in 2008. Another return to the top belongs to Linkin Park with Burn It Down standing at #10. This is their best chart position since Waiting For The End reached #6 in October of 2010.

TMJ Charts: Santigold Breaks #1 Record!

I saw it coming and it's happened. A 7-year-old record has finally been broken and we all have Santigold to turn our heads to. 16 weeks at the top gives Disparate Youth the honor of being the longest stay at the top for any song since I started this little chart back in late 2004. The record was previously held by Mariah Carey whose We Belong Together spent a total of 15 weeks at the top back in 2005. A few years later - six, to be exact - that record was almost broken when Friendly Fires tied at 15 weeks at the top with Hawaiian Air. That was in late 2011, but now the record goes back to one and one woman only. Cheers to that!

Disparate Youth - Live at BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge


Now the thing is how long can she hold on to the top spot. Let's not forget that Disparate Youth had an incredible debut at #2, only to claim the #1 spot the week after. And the thing is that it's still ahead from its closest competitor by quite a decent amount of points. WZRD is getting ready though to claim their first chart-topper with either Love Hard (the week's Greatest Gainer) or Teleport 2 Me, Jamie which finds a new peak at #4. Alex Clare is also headlining the Top 10 with two tracks as Up All Night returns to #7 and Too Close goes single-digit for the first time at #9. And we say good-bye to Adele's Someone Like You as it leaves the Top 10 for the first time since December 23, 2011. The Biggest Jump and Power Play of the week goes to a well-deserved return to the charts to one favorite, Alanis Morissette, as Guardian jumps to #28. Her last chart appearance came in early 2009 when Not As We peaked at #63.

The Recurrent Chart sees Kings Of Leon returning to the #1 spot with Notion for a sixth week, while WZRD returns to the top of the albums chart with their self-titled record for a second week.

'Guardian' by Alanis Morissette

Alanis Morissette: "Not As We" video

Alanis Morissette: "Underneath (Live @ AOL Music Sessions)"

Alanis Morissette: "Flavors Of Entanglement" review

No one ever envisioned Alanis Morissette penning the comfort guide to a harsh breakup, yet for electro-influenced "Flavors of Entanglement," her clear-eyed look back, inward and forward is with a poise borne of time's passing. She no longer prowls in search of vengeful hookups. After the finger-pointing "Straightjacket," the singer declares "a respite from the toils of liaison" on transcendent ambient trip "Moratorium." Chill-out track "Giggling Again for No Reason" gurgles with delicate happiness, and there's room for throbbing masterstroke "Versions of Violence," whose vibe compares to Delerium's "Silence." Every wall is torn down for vulnerable piano prayer "Not As We," but plenty of hope is left for the uplifting "Incomplete." Full of gratitude for being "ever unfolding, ever expanding, ever adventurous," Morissette's superb lyrics leave you cheering for her—and assured that she's going to be just fine.

Source: Billboard.com

A new album helped Alanis Morissette ease her heartbreak

Alanis Morissette has felt heartbreak before, as anyone who’s listened to her ripped-from-life songs knows. But last year’s split with her fiance, actor Ryan Reynolds, turned out to be the big one.

“I think it’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back,” Morissette says. “It’s having had too many of them. And I was a full-blown love addict, so it was like, ‘I can’t keep doing this; my body can’t take it.’ Breakups are a horrible thing for almost everybody I know. For someone who is a love addict, it’s debilitating.

“I’ve been on a constant journey toward finally surrendering and hitting the rock bottom that I’ve been avoiding my whole life. . . . So this was a huge, critical juncture for me. Everything broke, and it was an amazing and horrifying time.”

Not surprisingly, you can hear all about it on Morissette’s new album, Flavors of Entanglement, released last week. Although it touches on other themes and isn’t framed as a literal blow-by-blow account, the 11 songs describe knotty conflicts and the pain of separation.

“I miss your warmth and the thought of us bringing up our kids / And the part of you that walks with your stick-tied handkerchief,” she sings in “Torch,” dealing out vivid details in her distinctively conversational style.

But more of the songs — “Not as We,” “Moratorium,” “Giggling Again for No Reason” — are drawn from the prolonged aftermath of the breakup, a process leading to what she calls “the Phoenix rising.”

“I entered into my own version of rehab. I went to therapy five days a week. I journaled. I had a lot of support from this incredible group of friends. … It was just really moment by moment, step by step, snail’s pace.”

She also gutted and remodeled her Los Angeles house (one of her favorite forms of expression, she says, equal to making two or three albums), rode motorcycles, worked on a book and designed jewelry.

And made music, this time with English producer Guy Sigsworth, who helped her return on some tracks to an electronic dance style reminiscent of her records as a teen star in her native Canada.

While Morissette has been known for raw candor since her landmark 1995 album Jagged Little Pill, parts of Flavors take it to a new level. This time she didn’t need to call on the journals she usually uses as a catalyst, because the events were unfolding as she was working on the music in London and Los Angeles.

“There is an immediacy in that it was all written in real time,” she says. “A lot of times I’ll write in retrospect. These songs were written in the exact present moment as it was happening, so that may be something that’s palpably felt on the record.”

A lot of that immediacy also stems from Morissette’s unusual method of lyric writing, which is pretty much stream-of-consciousness.

“Typically I go in the studio and whatever I’m contemplating that day will wind up being a song. I don’t come in with lyrics. . . . I just go in and let it happen. . . .

“I don’t change anything once we’re done. I put all my energy — and this also shows up in other areas of my life — my energy goes into being ready. . . . With songwriting I spend a lot of time living life, accruing all these experiences, journaling, and then by the time I get to the studio, I’m teeming with the drive to write.”

Sigsworth, who has worked extensively with Bjork and teamed with singer Imogen Heap in the group Frou Frou, says, “So many of my ideas about songwriting have been changed by working with her, because she works so fast as a writer and gets the raw statement of the song so precisely so quickly.”

“She seems to just center on that focal point, the crisis issue at the heart of the song, and she gets it immediately,” he says.

“There were songs where I would listen and be almost in tears and think, ‘Where did this come from? There was nothing here this morning.’ ”

Sitting in a dressing room at a Southern California rehearsal studio where she and her band are preparing for a long stretch of touring, Morissette, 34, doesn’t seem like someone who’s been to rock bottom.

Surrounded by exotic wall hangings she’s brought in to decorate the bare space, the singer has the focused, upbeat manner of a life coach. She’s looking forward to what she calls “the sensual experience” of being on the road. She’s dating someone again, and she laughs easily.

She has also finished shooting a lead role in Radio Free Albemuth, a science-fiction movie based on a Philip K. Dick novel — one more public venue for a woman who isn’t sure that’s where she wants to be.

“To me the biggest irony of this lifetime that I’m living is that for someone who thrives in the public eye in the creative ways that I do, I actually don’t enjoy being in the public eye,” she says. “I feel like I’m a recluse in a famous person’s body.

“But I love to entertain. . . . My vocation is to accrue all these experiences, to write about them, to get them out of my system, to not get sick, and then to share them publicly. So the sharing-them-publicly thing is that voice that constantly says, ‘You have to share this.’ I have this temperament of someone who just wants to yell ‘No,’ but it’s what I’m here to do, so I keep doing it.”

Source: The Providence Journal

Lil Wayne A Lock To Top Next Week's Album Chart

It's all about Lil Wayne this week as The Billboard 200 prepares for the arrival of "Tha Carter III." The rapper's new Cash Money/Universal album will easily bow at No. 1 next week, as it leads Nielsen SoundScan's Building Chart, to be released this afternoon (June 11) at 5 p.m. ET.

Unweighted first-day sales of "Tha Carter III" at nine leading accounts through the close of business yesterday (June 10), stood at 423,000. Sources close to the album project "Carter" could shift between 850,000-950,000 in its first full week.

That would easily give Wayne the biggest sales week of the year, surpassing the 463,000 start that greeted Mariah Carey's "E=MC2," and the best since Kanye West's "Graduation" started with 957,000 last year.

To compare, "Graduation" saw a first-day Building number of 437,000 from eight accounts, about 3% more than that posted by "Carter."

Billboard estimates the nine merchants who report to Nielsen SoundScan's Building chart -- Trans World Entertainment, Best Buy, Circuit City, iTunes, Starbucks, Borders, Target, Anderson Merchandisers and Handleman Co. -- comprise about 80% of all U.S. album sales.

Starbucks was not part of the Building Chart panel when West's title came to market last Sept. 11.

Other albums likely to make top 10 debuts next week, based on first-day numbers reflected on Nielsen SoundScan's Building chart: Plies' "Definition of Real" (Slip-N-Slide/Atlantic), N.E.R.D.'s "Seeing Sounds" (Star Trak/Interscope), Alanis Morissette's "Flavors of Entanglement" (Maverick/Warner Bros.) and My Morning Jacket's "Evil Urges" (ATO).

Source: Billboard.com