A Prince Beats A King (Of Pop)

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Thread started 04/09/09 3:23pm

FunkyMoon

A Prince Beats A King (Of Pop)

From http://new.music.yahoo.co...ng-of-pop/

Week Ending April 5, 2009: A Prince Beats A King (Of Pop)
Posted Wed Apr 8, 2009 11:55am PDT by Paul Grein in Chart Watch

Who would you say has amassed more top 10 albums, Prince or his one-time arch-rival, Michael Jackson? As of this week, the answer is Prince, and that's true even when you give Michael credit for albums he recorded with his brothers. LotusFlow3r, which enters The Billboard 200 at #2, is Prince's 14th top 10 album. Jackson has notched 13--seven on his own and six with the Jackson 5, later known as the Jacksons. Though Prince and Jackson have been considered rivals since the early ‘80s, Prince owes a big debt to Jackson's trailblazing. 1999 was released five weeks before Thriller, but it hit the top 10 only after Thriller had clocked a few months at #1--and, significantly, only after Jackson's mega-hits "Billie Jean" and "Beat It" broke down MTV's resistance to playing videos by black artists. 1999 ultimately logged 11 weeks in the top 10, no match for Thriller's 78 weeks, but enough to establish Prince as a star. Prince's follow-up, Purple Rain did far better than it would have had Thriller not paved the way. Purple Rain logged 24 consecutive weeks at #1, spawned five hit singles and brought Prince an Oscar and three Grammys. LotusFlow3r, a Target exclusive, sold 168,000 copies this week. It fell less than 4,000 units short of debuting at #1. Keith Urban's Defying Gravity took the top spot with first-week sales of 172,000. This was the closest margin between the #1 and #2 albums since August, when Slipknot's All Hope Is Gone led The Game's LAX by less than 2,000 units. (It was so close that Hits magazine, which has its own charts, called it the other way, putting Prince at #1.) Two factors helped boost sales of the new album--the bargain price ($11.98) and the fact that Prince's erratic recording career has been on an upswing in recent years. This is his fourth studio album in a row to debut in the top three. It follows Musicology, 3121 and Planet Earth. LotusFlow3r consists of two disks of Prince music and one disk by Prince's latest discovery, Bria Valente. It's Prince's third 3-disk release, but his first to reach the top 10. Prince's earlier 3-disk sets were The Hits/The B-Sides, which reached #19 in 1993, and Emancipation, which hit #11 in 1996. As a postscript, Prince has long used artistic license in coming up with the titles for his albums, inventing such words as Lovesexy and Newpower (as in Newpower Soul). But LotusFlow3r ranks with Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic as his most creative yet.

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Reply #1 posted 04/09/09 3:29pm

squirrelgrease

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Purple Fact #542: Prince can make a Weeble™ fall down.

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Reply #2 posted 04/09/09 3:53pm

unity225

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But Michael Jackson has sold over 750 million albums
[Edited 4/9/09 15:54pm]

2 Corinthians 4:18 "While we keep our eyes, not on the things seen, but on the things unseen. For the things seen are temporary, but the things unseen are everlasting."

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Reply #3 posted 04/09/09 4:13pm

stanleylieber

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squirrelgrease said:

dude that guy's kinda cute who is he

it's time for a new direction / it's time for jazz to die

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Reply #4 posted 04/09/09 5:14pm

wildgoldenhone
y

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stanleylieber said:

squirrelgrease said:

dude that guy's kinda cute who is he

I don't know, but he's making me hungry for some popcorn.

razz

4EVER
~ heart

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Reply #5 posted 04/09/09 6:59pm

savoirfaire

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unity225 said:

But Michael Jackson has sold over 750 million albums
[Edited 4/9/09 15:54pm]

What?? Really? Thriller, the best selling album of all time, sold 65 million copies, according to Guiness...

If all 13 of his top 10 albums sold an average of 50 million copies apiece (which there is no way they did), he'd still come up short of 750 million copies. I find this number extremely dubious.

Unless we're counted singles, but I wouldn't call singles albums.

Anyway, I'm not disputing that MJ sold more records, but that number just seems excessive.

"We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further." - Richard Dawkins

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Reply #6 posted 04/09/09 8:03pm

Lovesymbol2

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Ofcourse michael jackson sold more records, but the 750 million are singles if i may add which changes a lot. But MJ was more of a publicity musician. Great yes but not a Prince. Prince is a musical genius, versatile, multi instrumentalist, eccentric, unusual, unique and what not. Prince is an actual MUSICIAN Mj is more of a guy who puts his voice on songs written by song writers and then it gets made to a cool video and lots of publicity around it. Prince could be much much bigger now if he would of had MJ's publicity.

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Reply #7 posted 04/09/09 11:17pm

aarontj

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unity225 said:

But Michael Jackson has sold over 750 million albums
[Edited 4/9/09 15:54pm]

Well the point here is that if MJ released one album every year since 1979 he wouldn't have sell that many records.

Prince don't need any hype, big publicity stunts or sell gimmicks to stay on top, MJ will never dare to release 3 albums in a single year.

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Reply #8 posted 04/09/09 11:19pm

sexyone

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