Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Yep, that’s Taylor Swift in the photo at the top of this blog, not an American Idol.

I figure she deserves to be there. I mean, her album just sold 1,047,000 in its first week on sale, more than any album since March 2005.

And that’s only part of the story. Check out Billboard’s new list of Hot 100 singles. Eleven are songs off Taylor’s new “Speak Now” album.

I don’t know that I’ve ever seen that before. Heck, there are only 14 songs on the album.

I’ve heard the album. It’s great. Each and every song is written by Taylor. There isn’t a co-write among them. And nearly every track sounds like a potential single.

So all those folks bemoaning declining album sales might want to take a lesson — perhaps in song-writing — from Ms. Swift.

With Taylor mania sweeping the charts, there isn’t a lot of good news on the Idol sales chart. A couple of highlights …

* Daughtry has two songs — “September” and “Life After You” — in the top 10 on the adult contemporary chart. But it looks like “September” is going to fall short of number one on the adult pop songs chart. After four weeks at number two, it slips a spot this week, landing behind Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” and Neon Trees’ “Animal.”

* Fantasia’s new single, “I’m Doing Me” moves up five spots to number 22 on the R&B / Hip-Hop singles chart, leaving the season three Idol with the number 21 and 22 songs on that chart.

* By the way, new American Idol Lee DeWyze’s first single, “Sweet Serendipity,” was available for download beginning last Tuesday. But it’s not among the top 40 digital downloads for the week.

Now, here’s a look how all the Idols fared on the most recent charts.