“Giving Up the Gun”, Vampire Weekend
Vampire Weekend takes the criticism that they are a bunch of preppy blue-bloods to heart and makes a video set on a tennis court, with The RZA as a line judge.
Contra is short for contrarian
With all of talk of the Pazz and Jop votes that came out Tuesday night, something interesting happened on the Billboard 200 charts that might have been easy to miss. According to Yahoo’s chart watcher Paul Grein:
Vampire Weekend’s sophomore album, Contra, enters The Billboard 200 at #1 with first-week sales of 124,000. That includes 74,000 digital copies, which is 60% of its total. This is the second week in a row in which the #1 album has sold more digital than physical copies. Ke$ha’s Animal debuted last week with sales of 152,000 copies, more than three-quarters of them (76%) sold digitally. These are the first #1 albums in chart history that sold more digital than physical copies in the weeks they were #1.
Four other #1 albums came close, with digital sales accounting for between 40% and 45% of their sales totals while they were #1. These albums, and their digital percentages: John Mayer’s Battle Studies (45%), The Fray’s The Fray (44%), Colbie Caillat’s Breakthrough (41%) and Coldplay’s Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends (40%). Note that all four of these albums were released since June 2008. I think this is what they call a growing trend.
I don’t think any more needs to be said.
--Tagged under: ke$ha--
--Tagged under: vampire weekend--
--Tagged under: charts--
This feels so unnatural. Peter Gabriel too.
Something really interesting could happen on the Billboard Top 200 next week: a band I really enjoy will debut at number one.
Billboard is estimating that Vampire Weekend’s sophomore album Contra will sell somewhere between 60-75,000 copies. That might be a little low because this week’s number one album, Ke$ha’s Animal, sold about 152,000 copies and would have to have a 50% second-week plunge to be bested if the VW projections hold.
The industry analysts at HITS Daily Double also predict that VW will come out on top next week, but they forecast sales between 110-120,000 copies, which would be more in line with what it would take for an album to debut at number one.
It’ll be another week before the charts come out, but I’ll be sure to update this once final numbers are in. In the meantime, I want to listen to Contra again.
--Tagged under: charts--
--Tagged under: vampire weekend--
Q: May Vampire Weekend “steal” music from the Congo?
A: May I dance?This an interpretive, highly unskilled reaction to Vampire Weekend’s “California English,” from Contra, which dropped yesterday. Any similarities to Patrick Dempsey’s dance in the film Can’t Buy Me Love are purely intentional.
Recall that I called this band overrated in a post on Lizzyville. But now they actually have a second album! And if it compels me to dance, then it achieves one of the most important criteria of good music: pleasure.
This last sentence will probably be my favorite thing I read all day today.
--Tagged under: vampire weekend--
“Horchata” by Vampire Weekend
Although I’m going to see Minus the Bear tonight at the Showbox, so I don’t know what the first song of 2010 I will hear will be, the first song I listen to when I have time to myself is “Horchata”.
I do really like the optimism of this line “Here comes a feeling you thought you’d forgotten” late in the song but the reason I want to hear it before anything else is because the sophomore VW album Contra is scheduled to be released on January 12 and it is the first record of 2010 I am very anxious to hear.
Rather than choosing a song from the past decade I love (“Hey Ya!”? “All My Friends”? “Toxic”? “Since U Been Gone”?) I want to go head into the new year thinking of how great 2010 and beyond can be.
--Tagged under: vampire weekend--
