By Staff
Did you see what the top-selling album of the year ended up being?
The Disney Channel "High School Musical" soundtrack with 3.7 million sales.
The rest of the Top 10 albums for 2006, according to Nielsen Soundscan, included Rascal Flatts, "American Idol" Carrie Underwood, Nickelback, Justin Timberlake, James Blunt, Beyonce, the "Hannah Montana" soundtrack, Dixie Chicks and Hinder.
Nickelback and Hinder were the only rock acts to crack the Top 10, with the Red Hot Chili Peppers third as CD sales sagged for the fifth time in six years by 4.9 percent in 2006.
"High School Musical" was the worst-selling number one since Nielsen Soundscan began tracking sales in 1991.
Rap sales plummeted 20.7 percent last year.
A couple of things are apparent.
TV is where you go to break new music, whether it's "American Idol," the Disney Channel or "Grey's Anatomy."
That's right, doc rock.
Two bands in particular, Snow Patrol ("Chasing Cars") and The Fray ("How to Save a Life") owe their success to the ABC hospital drama, which also gave exposure to Gnarls Barkley and KT Tunstall.
"American Idol" artists have moved 30 million albums for Arista/J Records as it starts its sixth season.
"High School Musical" spent 51 weeks on or near the top of the charts as the kids' music category saw 100-percent growth.
Duh. The Disney Channel plays more music than VH1 and MTV combined.
Youth marketing experts say the only folks spending more money on music are their over-40 parents.
That's obvious from the Rolling Stone Readers Poll, in which Bob Dylans's "Modern Times" finished second to the Peppers' "Stadium Arcadium" and ahead of Timberlake and such teeny-boppers as Johnny Cash and Bruce Springsteen also qualified for the Top 10.
Dylan had the No. 2 single with "Someday Baby" and was second to Timberlake for best male performer, with Madonna second-best female performer behind Christina Aguilera.
It's hard to believe it's 2007 when Dylan is Artist of the Year, the Rolling Stones are voted Best Tour and The Who mounted the Best Comeback.
The kiddie boom gives hope that a music industry might still exist in the future.
The music-buying public seems to have skipped a generation – the one where radio saturated us with oldies.
Missed the cut: Dave Clark Five. Van Halen and R.E.M. are headed for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Go figure: Apple CEO Steve Jobs Jan. 9 unveils the iPhone, demonstrating its music-playing capability by playing The Beatles' "Lovely Rita" from 1967's "Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band" – the band most conspicuously absent from iTunes.
War on ice: 2006 was the hottest year in the continental United States in 112 years, capping an unprecedented nine-year streak. Every single year since 1993 has been among the 25 warmest recorded.
The National Climatic Data Center also said Jan. 9 there are indications that the climate change rate is accelerating.
Northern hemisphere temperatures have not been this high for more than 1,000 years.
Anniversary: Muhammad Ali, 65.
Another UFO: Except Jan. 8 it was an Unidentified Funky Odor hanging over Manhattan before it disappeared by early afternoon. The natural gaslike smell confounded authorities.
Mercaptan is added to natural gas for safety reasons to give it a recognizable smell. By itself, natural gas is odorless.
70: Percent of Americans opposed to sending more troops to Iraq.
Obits: Animator Iwao Takamoto, 81, died Jan. 8 in California. You know him as the creator of Scooby-Doo, the Great Dane whose name he borrowed from Frank Sinatra's final phrase in "Strangers in the Night." He also created other famous cartoon dogs, including Astro from "The Jetsons" and Hanna-Barbera's Muttley.
Former Dowagiac resident "Sneaky" Pete Kleinow, 72, a steel guitarist born in South Bend, Ind., who was one of the original Flying Burrito Brothers, as well as an award-winning animator (Gumby cartoons) and special effects artist for films.
He recorded with John Lennon as a session musician. He had Alzheimer's disease and died Jan. 6 in Petaluma, Calif.
Yvonne De Carlo, the matriarch of "The Munsters," died Jan. 8 in Los Angeles. She was 84. In a vampirelike black dress, she played Lily in the 1964-1966 horror-movie spoof and in the feature movie "Munster Go Home!" in 1966.
She was the solid center of the faux scary household headed by her bumbling husband Herman, played by 6-foot-5 Fred Gwynne, dressed as Frankenstein's monster.
"It meant security. It gave me a new, young audience I wouldn't have had otherwise. It made me 'hot' again, which I wasn't for a while," she said when the series ended. De Carlo had played Moses' wife in "The Ten Commandments" and got her start in B-movie Westerns.