NR--Billboard Chart Placement?

[Emotional Toothpaste]

Its growing on me. Jimmie Standing in the Rain. Five Small Words.

[thepopeofpop]

not sure of the relevance of this, from billboard

#39 in top 200
#9 in "Rock Albums"
#12 in Digital Albums

Something is seriously screwy here. He's number 12 on the digital albums (downloads) chart, but number 39 on the regular albums chart...

Maybe their data covers different parts of the week for different charts - but every other chart placing that he currently has in the US suggests as he should be in the Top 20 on the main chart.

We'll see where he is next week.

[cwr]

Is it higher on the digital because Amazon was selling the download for 4 bucks on day of release? Would that account for the disparity?

[Top balcony]

Given that it's Merseyside, Elvis will probably deliver them personally.In a certain light the deliveryman looks like Elvis...

Kayak arrived today - greeted with parcel by daughter and a "Dad is this what all the fuss has been about" look - it felt like Christmas.

("Sometimes you confuse me with Santa Claus, It's the big white beard, I suppose"

Colin Top Balcony

[Neil.]

Regarding the chart placement...

I think the reason it hasn't charted as strongly as his previous album is because for SP&S, he was using the very comical, clever, immediate-impact song - From Sulphur To Sugarcane - to promote the album on every TV and radio show.

Its funny, saucy lyrics would have appealed to a lot of people who hadn't noticed him before... they would then have the bought the album and thought "Erm, hang on - where are all the saucy, light-hearted songs? What I'm hearing are songs about slave ships! Opera singers on riverboats! How Deep Is The Red? I'm not buying another album of his! I was sold this on false pretenses!"

This, I think, is what happened with Spike - a lot of non-fans bought it on the strength of Veronica's promise of breezy, bright pop - but what they got was Any King's Shilling, Let Him Dangle, Last Boat Leaving, and Tramp the Dirt Down - the subsequent album, Mighty Like A Rose, just didn't build on that new, potential fan base, who were disappointed by Spike.

Basically, Elvis is pretty strong stuff, and takes quite a few listens to get into. Far more rewarding, ultimately, than a whole album of breezy ditties, but not something most average people (simple people, let's face it - sorry!) can manage. I think there will have been a lot of 'one listen' purchasers of SP&S and Spike.

But I'm glad Elvis doesn't pander - I'm still loving the new, dense, scary, staring-into-the-abyss nature of much of the new album.

Nx

[cwr]

I still don't think we can discount the prominent Starbucks placement being perhaps the key factor in SP&S's high chart placement. His highest chart entry since 1980's Get Happy!! is on an album with no "hit single" and no rock & roll whatsoever, and it also happens to be the one album that is displayed next to every Starbucks cash register in the country. One year later, an even stronger album is released with apparently no presence in the coffee chain, and it sells less.

I personally know of a few people who bought the record on impulse upon seeing Tony Millionaire's striking cover art when buying a coffee, people who liked EC but were not in the habit of buying each new record.

If NR enjoyed the same kind of Starbucks push in combination with all the extensive PR Costello has been doing for the album, I think it would have easily outsold SP&SC.

[Jack of All Parades]

Stubbornly, I have had to come to accept that EC's days of big chart placement are long gone. Various factors in my mind have come together in my estimation. People do not buy the cds anymore in real volume[ I am too frequently the only person in the record section of a store when I am shopping.]. The increasingly poorer distribution of his product- last night there was all of one copy to purchase at my local Borders[ I am not even convinced had NR been placed in Starbucks it would have boosted sales.]. The marginalization of his fan base; though of some size, it does not appreciably grow with each album release. Let's be honest, as well, the sheer theft of the material via the internet has to impact sales. I no longer concern myself about his album sales numbers nor do I suspect does he truthfully given the recording deals he cuts these days as the size of each label and its marketing department shrinks. The New Yorker profile makes most clear that his income is from performing along perhaps with the occasional positioning of a song on a successful sound track. Thankfully he has the ability to get and to create gigs and tours, consistently. Welcome to the life of a working writer/musician today!

[Neil.]

Christopher, I'm with you, there! Although I'd love him to have a global hit again, I have to be grateful that at least he's putting out studio recordings for his existing hardcore of loyal, and extremely tasteful fans (let's face it, if you like Elvis, then you've got severerly great taste) - even if they don't sell bucketloads.

Bring on the low-selling but brilliant albums - it's the world's loss if they don't know about them! Bring on the live gigs for the likes of us - life is short, so if I've got Elvis gigs to go to for the next ten years (twenty would be great, if I make it!) then, wow, that suits me.

I know this sounds a little over the top, but I am quite moved by how great he is, this late in his career. He's a bit of a touchstone in my life, and when he comes up with the goods, yet again, it's pretty special.

Nx

[Jack of All Parades]

Neil, I am not so certain that my enjoyment of EC equates to me having 'extremely great taste'. I am fond of NRBQ and the Blasters, as well, and my wife frequently questions if my taste is up another orifice because of those likes! And she does have impeccable taste.

[jardine]

Great discussion. I expect, like has been mentioned, that my desire for more chart action is simply an extension of my desire for more people to experience this wonderful guy and his wonderful work. It seems like such a shame for something as wonderful as n.r. to exist and to slip away too quickly for most people.

A side question: is there any noticeable increase in "guest" traffic on this site when there is a new cd?

[Neil.]

Agreed, Jardine - with every release I wish him global success, and when he doesn't attain it, I feel a pang for those who are missing out. I crave Costello cover versions, everywhere.

But I'm glad that at least some of us get to appreciate how talented he is - and I'm grateful that one of those people is me.

[cwr]

I always hope that EC's records will do well because I like it when great things are appreciated by as many people as possible. There's something sad to me about how an obscure-but-great EC song will go unheard by a great many people who would probably love it.

More selfishly, I want EC's albums to do at LEAST well enough so that he doesn't get discouraged and throw in the towel like he threatened to a few years back. As much as I've enjoyed the many Costello concerts I've seen, the records are what got me interested in the first place, and those recordings are the things that last. The Lonely World Tour is a fond and distant memory, but I can still put Painted From Memory on any time I want to. I wasn't around to witness the Spinning Songbook, but Blood & Chocolate is still a perfect experience from start-to-finish.

Thank goodness for Joe Henry, who, according to the New Yorker profile, talked to Elvis after he swore off making records a few years back and told him he was crazy. It seems we have Mr. Henry to thank for the existence of Momofuku, SP&S and National Ransom...

[A rope leash]

Elvis is above it.

The world doesn't deserve him.

Stop hoping for his "success". He's fine without it.

He doesn't need to make a record. If National Ransom proves anything, it proves that Elvis should quit trying to sell, and start trying to prove.

Let him rest. Let him make. Let him live.

Let us love him.

Let him go.

He has yet to make history.

[cwr]

Elvis LIKES it when his records do well. It makes him happy.

It pisses him off when his records tank.

When he's pissed off about his records not doing well, he tends to not want to make more of them.

Fewer Costello records makes the world a place that I like much less.

This makes me less happy.

I wish him success.

I'm GLAD he didn't quit making records in 1980.

More, please.

[sheeptotheslaughter]

It could also be that any casual fan who bought SP&S might have been disappointed in it and thought they might give this one a miss. I know as a massive fan myself I don't like it, although it would never put me off buying an Elvis album.
NR might suffer for that.

The UK chart position would be more of a disapointment as he really did a lot of publicity over here this time. Still he's been going over 30 years now and still to be making quality music at this stage in his career is a real bonus.

[jardine]

n.r. has fallen to #132 on billboard.

if i may add, sigh.

it is not exactly elvis's success that i'm longing for. it is for the world to be a better place in which elvis's greater success would be normal.

oh, and, ahem
#32 in rock albums
#19 in alternative albums
#15 in tastemaker albums.

[jardine]

and. . .wait for it!. . .gone!

[John]

and. . .wait for it!. . .gone!

I suspect Elvis will be really disappointed with this. I think SP&S spent three weeks in the US top 20. He must have been hoping to do at least as well with this album and he seemed in really good spirits during all the promotion. I suspect we will see a return to a more downbeat Elvis now, that recent German interview maybe signalling the start. The album sold a mere 12000 copies in the first week in the US. I can't imagine it has sold more than 25000 worldwide. On those sort of numbers there must be some seriously large losses on the project.

My first Elvis purchase was Get Happy! (just after the peak of his popularity) so I seem to have spent most of the last 30 years being disappointed with chart positions of albums I was particularly keen on. Only Punch The Clock, Spike and Brutal Youth seemed to strike a cord with the public in the UK.

It's nothing new for Elvis' follow ups to chart successes to flop. Accidents Will Happen, High Fidelity and Sweet Dreams all flopped in the charts following his 3 top 10 singles, Sweet Dreams incredibly so even after a premature Top of the Pops appearance.

Maybe after a certain age it is difficult to achieve commercial success unless you cover well known classics (Rod) or team up with trendy young dudes (Tom). Even the Elton John album, which received massive promotion over here on radio and television, has fallen to number 90 after just 4 weeks.

Not sure where Elvis goes from here. He has talked about an album just with acoustic guitar. That sounds interesting (and cheap!)

[cwr]

I hope Elvis doesn't take it badly. I know there's always a certain contingent that likes to say "I don't care about EC's sales", but I want Elvis to keep making records, and really low sales are hardly likely to encourage him to record more often.

My one hope is that perhaps his direct sales were strong-- that is, that there were a lot of people buying NR directly from his website-- and that maybe those sales aren't reflected in the Billboard numbers. That would actually be a really good thing for EC fans, because it would mean it would be more likely to encourage him to use his website to target his fans directly and release more things like the National Ransack digital EP.

In theory, he could put out something like that anytime he wanted. Five seconds from now, he could release an EP of songs he wrote and recorded ten minutes ago, and charge 5 bucks for it. That's a world I'd like to live in, when Costello's next release could happen at any moment, without warning. I've been hoping for something like that to happen for about a decade, and National Ransack was the closest thing to it, in that we had no inkling of it until about a week or so before it came out.

[jardine]

so, do direct sales from his website count? i really don't know how billboard, e.g., gets its figures. i would assume only from large distributors/sellers, and then only a "representative" sample, where "representative" would NOT include smaller, local or specialized stuff.

i love holding the vinyl copy of n.r., and i still don't quite think that i "have" a new release when i've only downloaded it. even if the cover art of n.r. came with the site's cd download, and even if i printed it myself. . .

but i think you're right, cwr, i'm going to have to get over this. this pressing. printing, shipping, having some in stock etc. cycle only works when the numbers are large enough to warrant it. it reminds me a bit of having strawberries to eat in the dead of winter here in Alberta: Nice to have, but there is something wrong with the process and unsustainable.

and the cost recovery for an artist like e.c. . . . it would be a shame to record less because of prohibitive costs in HOW the thing is available.

however, as e.c. said about the 78s and about the "double L.P.": beautiful objects

weird dilemma, this

[Neil.]

it is not exactly elvis's success that i'm longing for. it is for the world to be a better place in which elvis's greater success would be normal.

God, that's so how I feel! In an ideal world, these amazing songs would be standards.

Sadly, over here in the UK, the reunion of a band called Take That is being received like the reunion of The Beatles, when in fact, it's like the reunion of The Partridge Family.

People just have zero taste - you hear so many industry types (such as Simon Cowell) saying "Oh, the audience knows what's what. They're not stupid."

Erm, sorry Simon - the vast majority of the audience is stupid, has no taste, and just does as it's told by the like of... Simon Cowell.

[cwr]

jardine wrote:
it is not exactly elvis's success that i'm longing for. it is for the world to be a better place in which elvis's greater success would be normal.

Yes. A world where more people want to buy and listen to National Ransom is a better world, as far as I'm concerned. I'd be pleased if all his records did the same amount of business as SP&S did-- a healthy amount of sales, nothing too splashy, enough to keep Elvis happy and interested in making another record instead of simply going on the road.

I can foresee a time when Elvis mainly sells his newest music through digital downloads and ALSO makes available a more limited edition vinyl version. Not as limited as the 78s, but limited enough that it satisfies the general demand and doesn't leave a bunch of unsold platters lying around in some warehouse.

He sort of went halfway to that approach with Momofuku, making it vinyl-only at first and then releasing the CD shortly after. I must admit that the CD of National Ransom will probably end up being the least-played format I own, and part of me feels like I merely bought the disc out of a sense of nostalgia, in that I grew up in the CD generation, and it's kind of unthinkable to me that I wouldn't buy a new Costello album on Compact Disc...

[jardine]

I suppose that this might be one good thing about how quickly e.c. can record--was it 11 days for these twenty songs? something like that at least makes the initial costs manageable to some degree. it isn't one of these "six months in a studio in nepal and then four months mixing in downtown rio" and so on.

i really don't have any sense at all of how expensive such an 11 days would be. not even sure what the "session rate" is for musicians brought in, and whether that is was is used as a base-line for initial expense, or studio time by the hour, etc. ::::and therefore--anybody have any idea?--how much, even ball-park, it might cost to make something like n.r.?

But there is another side aspect here that i find interesting. i'm thinking back to river in reverse and how, after "the events" in new orleans, costello was able, in a very small way, to "support" allen toussaint by writing and recording with him, and then touring a bit (and i expect that "support" was the furthest from e.c.'s mind as well, but just when a.t.'s n.o. studio got flooded, the chance meeting after the floods and the chance to get to work again, get out on tour, get, in some small way, the songs heard to a new audience, however small we may be, was not a bad thing for either man). i understand, of course, that toussaint, mccartney, bacharach, and others don't "need" costello's collaborations, but it sure didn't harm any of them and were, i expect, certainly more a lift (musicially and sometimes otherwise) than a burden.

Likewise, i'm sure the sugarcanes are all well able to get regular session and performances gigs before and after their current work w. e.c., but i expect that it is also a nice thing, as a working musician, to have this regular, however-brief but reliable gig for several months/years, to get to play interesting stuff, and to get heard and named on stage and on record beyond the regular sphere of their day to day work.

[Top balcony]

Elvis LIKES it when his records do well. When he's pissed off about his records not doing well, he tends to not want to make more of them.

As a professional musician with a (completely justified) bordering-on-arrogant sense of his own abilities as as songwriter, he is bound to be hacked off that once again his sales have been modest.

Big shame.

However, I think it's a mistake to believe that necessarily consummate musicianship equals commercial success. Same goes for movies and books too.

I've done my bit for the Costello coffers over the years, most recently via the NR CD and LP, with the EP to follow.

I also admire his approach in ignoring the offers to use his music for adverts.

Listening to his shows with the 'Canes and hearing his interviews, I firmly believe he is at the height of his powers - lets hope he sees all this as a challenge rather than a defeat.

An uncharacteristically optimistic Colin Top Balcony

[bambooneedle]

I think that EC was satisfied that this new album was a success before it even came out.

He played with the best musicians in the genres and mastered new styles, the album had the prestigious T-Bone stamp of approval, listeners including press who heard new material live almost unanimously said it was brilliant... he was so proud of it that he engineered his own hype via the Oldie Husband stuff... It is not hard to conclude that in his mind it was a great success which nobody could deny him.

I can't see him being too particularly pissed off about sales. What for most new artists is career-killing commercial failure, for EC is just a relatively small return this time. At least Elvis is a highly esteemed talent and he earns a very good living.