Scoreboard: Pink, Remembering Fats Domino

This week on Scoreboard Pink’s new album takes #1 and we remember Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Fats Domino

Billboard Artist Top 10

For the magazine dated November 4, 2017

See the full chart at http://www.billboard.com/charts/artist-100

This week on the charts, Pink crowns the Scoreboard of both the Billboard 200 and the Artist 100. The veteran pop star achieves her biggest sales week ever with seventh album Beautiful Trauma, whose first week traditional album sales, helped by a bundle deal with tour tickets, set the high mark for 2017. On the Hot 100 Post Malone and 21 Savage hang on to #1 for a second week with “Rockstar.” Check out Scoreboard’s feature on Post Malone here. This week Scoreboard also remembers New Orleans singer and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Fats Domino, who died last week at age 89.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Ba4cuDPjolu/?hl=en&taken-by=laflare1017

Gucci Mane has the week’s #2 album with new release Mr. Davis

Pink Shares Her Beautiful Trauma, Takes #1

Alecia Moore, a.k.a. @pink, has seen it all in her 17 years in the pop spotlight. Back in 2002 when she was Missundaztood she was singing about how she was “tired of being compared to damn Britney Spears” yet she and @britneyspears have both emerged as survivors of that early 2000’s pop scene. While both have had their ups and downs, @pink can celebrate that Beautiful Trauma had first week consumption nearly four times than that of Spears’s Glory from last year. On the family front, @pink separated from husband Carey Hart and sang about it in 2008’s #1 “So What” (on which she also dissed Jessica Simpson) yet they were back together by 2010 and today they have two children. The personal, beautiful trauma of Pink’s relationship comes through on the title track as well on the standout cut “Whatever You Want.” The trauma is also political: lead single “What About Us” is a reaction to the lack of decency that the election of Donald Trump ushered. At age 38, Pink is still a fighter. The album warns of explicit lyrics on 6 of the 13 tracks, and brings in Eminem to represent the early 2000’s team on “Revenge.” If we take Beyoncé‘s definition of “best revenge” as “your paper,” then Pink has achieved it. The biggest-selling physical album week since Drake‘s Views shows that @pink can still get the party started like no other.

@pink’s Beautiful Trauma also took #1 in Great Britain

R.I.P. Fats Domino (1928-2017)

“Boogie-woogie” is piano based musical style, the dancing cousin of blues. And in the 1950’s nobody boogie-woogied harder than Antoine Dominique “Fats” Domino, who died at age 89 on October 24th. Fats was born and raised in New Orleans where he first gained fame as a piano player and later as a singer and entertainer. His output was most prolific from 1955 to 1960 when he notched 11 top 10 hits on the Billboard singles charts and on the Hot 100 (which made its debut in 1958), achieving a peak of #2 with “Blueberry Hill” in 1956. Domino’s infectious piano playing inspired the first wave of rock ‘n’ roll artists, including Elvis Presley who referred to Fats as the “real king of rock ‘n’ roll” at a 1969 press appearance. In 1986 Domino was among the first 11 performers to be inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, along with Chuck Berry, another Elvis influencer who passed away this March.  The only members of that first class who are alive today are Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Don Everly.

Despite his recording success, Fats Domino remained in greater New Orleans his entire life. He was married for 61 years to Rosemary Hall, who died in 2008, and with whom he had eight children (Domino was also the youngest of eight children). In 2005 he was in the news when he decided to stay in the Lower Ninth Ward when Hurricane Katrina flooded the city. There were rumors of Domino’s death, but he and family members were rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter. Although Domino and his family lost their possessions in the flood, President George W. Bush restored Domino’s National Medal of Arts. Since the flood and until his death, Domino lived in nearby Harvey, Louisiana. He continued to perform at benefits and festivals, even appearing as himself on an episode of HBO show Treme. With the passing of Domino, we lose another early rock ‘n’ roller, who was possibly the happiest performer in that first class in the Hall of Fame. Let’s send off Domino with his theme song, “The Fat Man,” in which Domino demonstrated that boogie-woogie does not require a chorus, a few “wah wah wahs” get the job done: