The top ten stays mostly steady again, with AIR BAG ONE being the sole disruptor as “1992” jumps 15-10 in its fourteenth week on the chart. Duran Duran score the top debut with “Pressure Off,” featuring Janelle Monáe and Nile Rodgers, in at #27. Beck is the week’s biggest mover as “Dreams” vaults from its #63 debut last week to a new peak of #42; MKTO also makes a large 20-position jump as “Bad Girls” moves from #56 to #36. Additional debuts include several tracks from Adam Lambert’s The Original High and a pair of Tori Kelly tracks, along with new songs from Josh Dorr, newcomer Cam, Leon Bridges, and Atlas Genius.

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The GRAMMY Awards are often described as Music’s Biggest Night. While the awards ceremony typically lives up to the moniker with star-studded performances and gramophone trophies for hundreds of artists across many genres each year, iTunes charts also show how music sales are impacted, providing the year’s first prominent sales increase following the post-Christmas bump fueled by gift card redemptions. Many of the songs featured during the 56th GRAMMY Awards broadcast on January 26 received significant jumps on the iTunes song chart throughout and following the show, and numerous songs heard in its music-centric commercials felt the benefit of exposure as well. The statistics below reflect positions on the US iTunes chart of about 1500 songs, tracked from the beginning of the broadcast in the Eastern time zone at 8:00pm to the end of the Western time zone broadcast at 2:40am Eastern. Continue reading “iTunes sales surge for Daft Punk, John Legend, and more following the 56th GRAMMY Awards”

These are one hundred songs that stayed in my heavy rotation throughout 2013. In a year that saw personal advancements including eight weeks studying abroad in France and graduation from college, these songs soundtracked my year, each song appealing to me through instrumentation, lyrics, or just its overall mood. Read on for descriptions of each track, access the whole playlist on SoundCloud to listen, and judge away.
Continue reading “Kurt’s 100 Favorite Songs of 2013”