Last week, David Cook found what he was looking for and made history on the Billboard charts.
After winning the seventh season of “American Idol” last month, Cook set a record for debuts on the Billboard Hot 100 and the Hot Digital Songs chart. Led by “The Time of My Life,” which made its debut at No. 3, and followed by “Dream Big,” “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and eight other tracks, Cook crashed the Hot 100 with 11 debut singles in one week. That’s the most songs any one artist has ever had on the pop charts aside from the Beatles, who had 14 the week of April 11, 1964.
Cook also managed to place a record-breaking 14 titles on the Digital Songs chart, including 236,000 downloads of “The Time of My Life,” a song specifically designed as the ’08 “Idol” winner’s anthem.
Billboard charts guru Geoff Mayfield doesn’t find Cook’s feat especially astonishing. He notes the massive publicity surrounding “Idol” and the fact that this season was the first in which songs performed on the show have been available for immediate download.
“I think he had the advantage of being on the most popular show in the country,” Mayfield said with a chuckle from his office in Los Angeles. “In the early days of ‘Idol,’ the CD was still the leading format for singles. Now with iTunes and its competitors, you can get really fast digital sales and really fast reads on those digital sales.”
Cook’s runner-up benefited as well. David Archuleta had three songs enter the Hot 100 last week, led by his cover of John Lennon’s “Imagine” at No. 36.
“American Idol” creator - and now Cook’s manager - Simon Fuller did even better. With three other “Idol”-spawned artists - Carrie Underwood, Jordin Sparks and Daughtry - Fuller’s acts occupied 17 chart positions, surpassing the record set by Beatles manager Brian Epstein, whose stable landed 14 songs on the Hot 100 in one week in 1964.
Billboard’s singles chart is determined by a number of factors including sales, radio play and online streaming. Because sales in the digital age revolve around big first-week swells, all five of Cook’s big singles fell out of the Top 50 in their second week; “The Time of My Life” dropped from No 1. to No. 4 on the digital chart.
“Maybe the song can have a longer life if it hooks into radio,” said Mayfield. “But the thing about these ‘Idol’ songs is that they’re not built for radio. They’re for that big, emotional moment when all the confetti is falling.”
But radio’s power is waning. TV has become the launching pad du jour of artists from Josh Groban to Sia to the Fray, who all picked up download and physical sales bumps after TV tie-ins.
Now Cook has become the king of the music/TV nexus, thanks to the 31.7 million people who watched the “Idol” finale on Fox. At least he’s a record-setting king until next season, when a new crop of “Idol” hopefuls arise and more fans than ever start downloading their performances.
