Surprises abound on the charts

It’s hard to look at the pop charts these days and not think back to more innocent times -- like January. That was when it was possible to note casually, as was done in this very column, that Janet Jackson “was booked to perform in the Super Bowl halftime show” to promote her upcoming “Damita Jo” album.

We were all so naive back then. But the real naivete was predicting that “Damita Jo” would be one of the year’s top-selling albums. It hasn’t been. The album hasn’t even broken the relatively modest million-sales mark in the U.S., and as we head into the year’s holiday-shopping home stretch, it’s not in the current Top 200.

Though sales of more than 900,000 copies isn’t bad for most releases, given the expectations and promotional expense from Virgin Records, it certainly qualifies as the year’s biggest disappointment.

So much for the notion that all publicity is good publicity.

“All the havoc created a logjam of some kind,” says Chris Morris, music editor of the Hollywood Reporter. “I think people may have been sick of her by the time the record hit the stores. If the Super Bowl hubbub was a calculated ploy, and I’m not saying it was, it certainly backfired in the biggest way imaginable.”

Meanwhile, a few albums among the year’s biggest got almost no attention from pop pundits when asked various times this year to pick the ones to watch. Maroon 5’s “Songs About Jane”? Los Lonely Boys’ self-titled debut? Each was released well before the start of the year and was under the radar for most on the pop scene. Yet in 2004, they’ve sold more than 1.9 million and 1.2 million, respectively, and remain strong as we head toward winter -- drawing praise from business watchers as triumphs of both solid music and solid marketing.

“With both Maroon 5 and Los Lonely Boys, the process actually took place over two labels,” says James Diener, president of the Octone Records label, which released the Maroon album in 2002 before the J/RCA Records group (of which he is senior vice president), took over the project. Los Lonely Boys album initially came out on independent Or Records and then was picked up by Sony Music. “I believe this model is really something relevant for the music business again.”

Morris agrees.

“Both of those stories tell people you have to do it the old-fashioned way. You have to develop acts. All too often the business expects to drop a record and blow it out the doors. Well, no, you can have a record that develops over several years. But a lot of times the labels aren’t willing to do that.”

And those records are hardly alone among those exceeding expectations this year. Others: teen Ashlee Simpson’s “Autobiography” to Gretchen Wilson’s “Here for the Party” to veteran alt-rockers Modest Mouse’s “Good News for People Who Love Bad News” to Ray Charles’ “Genius Loves Company.”

“What’s indicative this year is variety,” says Rob Sisco, president of Nielsen Music, the operators of the Nielsen SoundScan sales charts. “Looking at the year-to-date sales, there’s a Top 10 that includes Usher, Norah Jones, Kenny Chesney, Evanescence, Kanye West, OutKast, Josh Groban and both Jessica and Ashlee Simpson. There’s country, R&B;, jazz, hip-hop, rock and pop all populating the Top 10. So what’s going on in music in general across formats is feeling healthy.”

And it makes for a lot of opportunities for surprises, both positive and negative.

Usher’s “Confessions” has been the year’s biggest seller, at 5.7 million, with Norah Jones’ “Feels Like Home” as the runner-up at nearly 3.5 million and Kenny Chesney’s “When the Sun Goes Down” third at nearly 2.8 million, though none of those qualify as a surprise.

The unexpected hits

Among the hits that do qualify as surprises:

Black Eyed Peas’ “Elephunk.” The veteran Los Angeles “positive” hip-hop act finally had a hit, with sales of nearly 1.3 million.

“This is a great success story,” says Adam Jacobsen, radio editor of Radio & Records. “They’ve been knocking around for a long time.”

Kanye West’s “College Dropout.” This debut is the year’s biggest hip-hop album, with sales of 2.3 million.

“People in the hip-hop world were looking forward to it,” says Spin music editor Charles Aaron. “But it’s a really intelligent, creative record that sold millions and just keeps going. He’s got a big hit with a song about Christianity and Jesus, really complicated attitude. He said it wasn’t going to be a hit, that nobody would play it on the radio, but it got played. Was a big surprise.”

Jimmy Buffett’s “License to Chill.” A big No. 1 debut in June for the beachcomber’s album featuring duets with various country stars.

“That shocked everybody when they realized he quietly had a No. 1 without anyone paying attention,” says Jerry Suarez, senior product manager for the Virgin Entertainment Group North America, which operates the Virgin Megastores retail chain. “He decided to embrace the country roots and shocked all of the people in the industry that had written him off.”

Ray Charles’ “Genius Loves Company.” The release got a boost coming shortly after his death, but there’s much more to the sales story, especially a tie-in with Starbucks, which is selling the album at its outlets.

“It’s still selling 100,000 a week, and that indicates that the Starbucks-friendly older consumer is going in and grabbing a record with their morning croissant and frappuccino,” says the Hollywood Reporter’s Morris. “Some of the labels have finally figured out that they can very profitably market to an older demographic. Kids are fickle and have other things to spend on, but they weren’t catering to a market that spends more money on music than the kids do. In that regard, the Ray Charles record is a touchstone record.”

Among the other disappointments:

Beastie Boys’ “To the 5 Boroughs.” Picked by rock, pop and rap radio programmers to be among the year’s biggest releases, the album has sold about 960,000 and has slipped down the charts steadily.

“That’s mostly colored by the fact that a lot of people didn’t like the album once they got it,” says Aaron. “The single was peppy and goofy fun, but there was not much left on the album that people were moved by.”

Shyne’s “Godfather Buried.” The rapper got a ton of publicity, but mostly for making the album in jail, where he’s serving a sentence for 1999 shooting. Sales stalled after a 157,000 debut week in August, totaling less fewer than 400,000 so far.

“The fact that a guy in prison makes an album is kind of sensational, but the record is lackluster,” Aaron says. “Comparison of how much hype it got to how well it did, that’s a great disparity.”

Lenny Kravitz’s “Baptism.” His appearance with Sarah Jessica Parker in a Gap ad campaign could provide a boost, but the 288,000 sales of Kravitz’s May-released album haven’t come close to expectations for the rock favorite. As for retro vibes, even “The Essential Dean Martin” outsold Kravitz, with 325,000.