Usher can add another memento to his album

R&B; heartthrob Usher’s competition-squashing performance at record stores in 2004 so dominated the pop music world that he would have topped Calendar’s eighth annual Ultimate Top 10 even if he hadn’t generated any tour income. The list combines concert grosses and album sales to show which acts U.S. pop fans spent the most money on during the year.

Usher’s “Confessions” album, released in March, sold nearly 7.9 million copies through Dec. 26. That translates to $102.2 million at the cash register, using an average $13 retail sale price. His tour also grossed $29.1 million. No one else topped $100 million during 2004.

The rest of the Ultimate Top 10 skews strongly country, with four performers -- Kenny Chesney, Toby Keith, Tim McGraw and Shania Twain -- joining Prince, Celine Dion, Norah Jones, Madonna and Rod Stewart on the list. Reflecting the disparity between top album sellers and the highest-grossing concert attractions, only Chesney finished in the top 10 of the Nielsen SoundScan list of the year’s bestselling albums and in the top 10 of Pollstar magazine’s tally of the biggest-grossing concerts.

Dion, Keith and Jones are the only returnees from the 2003 Ultimate Top 10, which was topped by Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band with $132.8 million. In 2002, Eminem headed the list with $158.3 million. Even though Eminem’s “Encore” was the third-best-selling album of 2004, the rapper didn’t make the final cut because he didn’t tour during the last 12 months.

The 2004 Ultimate Top 10:

1. Usher, $131.3 million. The 25-year-old singer didn’t just impress at the box office. The sultry “Confessions” is also nominated for album of the year in the Grammys.

2. Kenny Chesney, $96.8 million. The country singer-songwriter from Luttrell, Tenn., doesn’t get as much ink as the more outspoken Toby Keith, but he continues to be one of the genre’s most dependable acts. His “When the Sun Goes Down” album was the year’s fourth-biggest seller, topping 3 million. Combined with continuing sales of his 2002 album “No Shoes No Shirt No Problem,” he rang up $46 million at record stores, and posted the year’s biggest country tour, pulling in $50.8 million.

3. Toby Keith, $95.2 million. Oklahoma’s boisterous pride and joy gave Chesney a run for his money on the country concert trail, logging $43.7 million worth of tickets. He also placed two albums among the year’s top 40 sellers -- a second volume of hits and the “Shock’n Y’all” studio collection -- while his 2002 “Unleashed” album also contributed to $51.5 million in sales of records for the year.

4. Prince, $94.6 million. The Purple One made it an asterisk year, statistically speaking, by giving all 1.4 million people who bought a ticket to his hits-laced concert tour a copy of his new “Musicology” album. Billboard magazine initially reported those albums as “sales,” but later reversed itself, saying that in the future any artist who does the same thing will have to give consumers the option of buying a concert ticket without the album before the magazine will count those in its weekly sales tallies. Those “giveaways” aren’t counted as sales in today’s ranking -- or else Prince would have finished second behind Usher. Prince’s tour alone generated $87.4 million, with the rest coming from actual record store sales.

5. Celine Dion, $88.5 million. Dion’s concert take of $80.4 million was just a shade off the $80.5 million she collected in 2003 with her exclusive run at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. She managed only $8.1 million in record sales this year, however, about one-fifth what she sold the previous year, part of the reason she’s dropped from third place a year ago to fifth.

6. Norah Jones, $82.3 million. The classy, Texas-reared singer-songwriter demonstrates the value of creating an evergreen album while moving ahead to new frontiers. Her latest album, “Feels Like Home,” sold more than 3.8 million copies, and her 2002 debut, “Come Away With Me,” moved an additional 1.3 million during 2004, making her album revenue for the year $66.6 million. Her $15.7 million in concert ticket sales allowed her to top the $74.9 million that earned her the No. 10 slot in the 2002 Ultimate Top 10.

7. Tim McGraw, $81.7 million. Faith Hill let her hunky hubby shine during 2004, which turned into a big year with the success of his album “Live Like You Were Dying” and the title single, which is on its way to becoming a movie. On the album front, McGraw posted $41.6 million, part of that a boost from continued sales of his 4-year-old “Greatest Hits” album, and he took in $40.1 million in concert ticket sales.

8. Madonna, $79.5 million. The Material Girl got a lot more with which to be material from her “ReDefined” tour, which was heavy on the hits. She didn’t have an album among the year’s top 200 sellers, but her concert sales alone were enough to win her way onto the Ultimate Top 10. Her average ticket price of $143.59 was second during the year only to that of Elton John, whose tickets averaged $158.22.

9. Rod Stewart, $75.7 million. By reinventing himself as a romantic crooner of classic pop, the recalcitrant bad boy of rock scored big on the album sales charts and at the box office. His three collections of American pop standards combined for $33.2 million in sales of records for the year and helped him generate $42.5 million on the concert trail with a tour that cannily played to his latter-day fans with a sprinkling of the Cole Porter-era material and a healthy sampling of his almost 35 years of rock hits for his veteran followers.

10. Shania Twain, $70.7 million. The perky and sultry singer-songwriter from Ontario will never leave Canada dry if she can keep raking in money like this. Even without a new studio album in 2004 and with her “Greatest Hits” album not released until late in the year, Twain still sold a healthy $36.2 million worth of records and logged $34.5 million in box-office receipts.