Flashlight: Popstars-Release fails

This is the Christmas Week and nothing changed at the top of the German charts. Israel IZ Kamakawiwo'ole is still no.1 with Over The Rainbow – finally the track also entered the French charts at no.4. As media control the chart compiling institution informs today also no.2 and no.3 in Germany are the same like seven days ago. The Black Eyed Peas with The Time (Dirty Bit) and Empire Of The Sun with We Are The People. That's what German people are listening to in the festive season.

And what's the biggest story of the week? It's a story of failure. December the 9th the final show of the TV casting Popstars was aired. The four winners now forming LaVive. Their debut single No Time For Sleeping is on sale since December 10th. It's a cover version of a Romanian eurodance track sung by Corina feat. JJ. As Romanian productions had some success in 2010 europewide (Edward May / INNA) the popstars management for sure hoped to launch a guaranteed hit. But the new version even fails to make top 10 in its release weeks. No.13 is not bad at all but again the popstars act misses the top 10 with its first release. Even worse: 2008 act Queensberry started low down at 23 but they had two more successful releases following. 2009 act Some & Any crashed down with Last Man Standing only climbing to no.16 in its first week and the duo separated a few months later in summer.

Decreasing sales stand in sharp contrast to the rising anticipation of the TV show. media control informed that the 2010 season of Popstars had 100.000 follower more on an average. There are some rumours around about high prices of the offered tracks especially on the digital market. Maybe the industry behind Popstars still want to sell physical CDs … but this is of course not clarified.

To summarize: the only casting show which really generates top sales now is Deutschland sucht den Superstar - the German version on Idols. Start of the new season will be end of february.


Original sung by Corina feat. JJ


New Version by LaVive

Best CD start in the week 10th to 16th of December was the new offering made by Taio Cruz. Higher is a collaboration with Kylie a well produced singalong pop track which was a sure hit. No.10 in its first week maybe is not completely the best position but it's enough to give Taio Cruz the third straight top 10 hit in a row - all of them were highest new entry of their week. With that Taio Cruz is one of only six artists to have a triple in a row and even better he's the only male artist. David Guetta and German band UNHEILIG had also three top 10 tracks but they appeared somewhere more low down in the charts in between. Talking bout Taio Cruz and the ending year one could mentioned him as the most successful newcomer in 2010. Finally one have to add cause his breakthrough in the UK came more than two years before.

Kylie appears for the 37th time in the German singles chart list under her own name. Although Higher is only her 9th track climbing to no.10 or higher. Having two tracks in a year doing so just once happened before. At the very beginning of her career in 1988 she managed having four singles in a row climbing top 10. 2010 seems to be one of the commercial more successful years in her career.