Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Turns out “Remind Me” stayed at the top of the Billboard country singles chart for just one week.

The Brad Paisley-Carrie Underwood song hit number one on the Billboard charts published Sept. 1.

When last week’s chart came out, “Barefoot Blue Jean Night” by Jake Owen had nabbed that spot, bumping the Carrie-Brad duet to number two.

The song also slipped one spot on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, dropping from 22 to 23.

But that’s still the best-showing for any song involving an Idol contestant.

Also, on the Carrie Underwood front, she told Ryan Seacrest on his radio show last week that she’s halfway through recording music for a new album.

But she won’t be singing any of that new music when she performs at the iHeartRadio Music Festival in Las Vegas on Sept. 23-24.

“”It’s a little too early to debut anything,” Carrie said in an interview you can hear here. “I just want to make sure it’s all right before I let it go.”

Since the music festival is being held in Vegas, Ryan also asked Carrie about her gambling habits.

She admitted to gambling “a little bit. But there’s a certain point when it’s like, this is like a pair of shoes or a nice outfit. I could have something to show for this. Because I always lose.”

Well, anyway, I’m dwelling on Carrie because there isn’t much good news on the chart front for the Idols.

Other highlights, or lowlights, as the case may be …

* Among the few highlights, Scotty McCreery’s Idol EP moved from number 12 to number 8 on the country albums chart and is number 26 on the Billboard 200, the best showing for an Idol album or LP. His first single, “Love You this Big,” didn’t fare as well, plummeting 20 spots on the Hot 100.

* The Idol EPs from Haley Reinhart and James Durbin dropped out of the Billboard 200 for the first time. Both had been on the Billboard 200 for nine weeks, which is a pretty good showing considering most of the music was previously available from iTunes.

* Mandisa’s solid third album, “What If We Were Real,” re-enters the top 25 on the Billboard Christian chart at number seven.  The album peaked at number two on the chart and has already yielded one hit single, “Stronger,” which reached number one.