Rewriting Pop HIStory : Michael Jackson’s publicists are crowing about new single’s unprecedented success, but skeptics abound.

It’d be a lot easier to congratulate Michael Jackson if he didn’t always beat us to it.

The recent No. 1 debut of his “You Are Not Alone” on the Billboard singles chart is truly a first--but it’s not quite the historic accomplishment that his publicist suggests while trying to put a positive spin on the sluggish sales of the “HIStory--Past, Present and Future Book 1” collection.

“Michael did not respond to the media sniping about the sales of his albums,” declares a press release from the Lee Solters Company, Jackson’s publicist, heralding the single’s first-week sales of 120,286.

“This tremendous sales achievement is his answer to those who held the trial and found him guilty [of diminished sales power] without checking the evidence.”

The biggest blast of hubris, though, is the spokesman’s declaration that “Michael has accomplished something that the Beatles or the Rolling Stones could not manage.”

Once again, the man who declared himself the King of Pop is guilty of hyping himself.

Yes, Jackson did do something the Beatles and Stones didn’t do--but only technically.

The best you can say, fairly, about Jackson’s single is it’s the first single to debut at No. 1 since the system for measuring record popularity was drastically changed in 1992 with the advent of SoundScan’s electronic monitoring system.

Before SoundScan, a No. 1 debut was all but impossible due to a combination of cumbersome sales and airplay reporting systems and--in the Beatles’ and Stones’ ‘60s heyday--slower record distribution, industry experts explain. The reason the industry adopted a scientific monitoring system after all these years was to bring some reality to the charts. No. 1 debuts of singles will now become commonplace, as they have with albums.

Record companies say they have no figures on what individual singles, such as the Beatles’ “Hey Jude” or Elvis Presley’s “Don’t Be Cruel,” sold in their first week in the stores.

But pop historians maintain those kind of debuts stirred much more public excitement than “You Are Not Alone.”

“How can you compare this [Jackson record] to Elvis or the Beatles or even Michael’s own past hits?” asks Jeff Tamarkin, editor of the music collector publication Goldmine. “To me this is just another hit single, but nothing special.”

The truth is, “You Are Not Alone” wasn’t even the biggest-selling record nor the most-played song on radio last week. The biggest seller was Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise,” which sold more than 144,000 copies, and the most-heard song on radio was Seal’s “Kiss From a Rose.”

So why weren’t Coolio or Seal No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100? Simple. That chart is actually a combination of SoundScan sales figures and radio airplay, as recorded by Broadcast Data Systems. Coolio’s record was only No. 28 in airplay, whereas the Jackson single was No. 7. Seal’s song was No. 6 in sales.

Lee Solters said that the change in the accounting methodology doesn’t diminish Jackson’s achievement.

“Billboard has always been regarded as the bible of the industry, then and now,” he says.

In any case, whatever Jackson may have gained in sales credibility with the No. 1 performance is outweighed, many in the industry believe, by the hype accompanying it. They see it as yet another sign that Jackson is “desperate” to salvage “HIStory,” which has fallen to No. 17 after just 10 weeks in the stores.

When first asked about the current Jackson media campaign to applaud the single’s success, one major-label publicist said it was “nothing any of us wouldn’t do.”

But when told that the song wasn’t really the No. 1 seller, he snapped: “In that case, they should shut up.”

In fact, Solters probably won’t be sending out another press release pointing to the single’s second week chart spot. It lost the No. 1 position to Coolio, whose single outsold it 187,000 to 125,000 last week.