Ladies Can't Get No Love

So there's been a great number of recent singles from well-known female artists, of which a surprising number seem to be tanking on US Radio. The Washington Post has an article about the lack of airplay for Madonna's Confessions on a Dancefloor singles, which of course are doing very well in other countries. Besides Madonna though, other established female artists are coming up short.

Christina Aguilera's "Aint No Other Man" peaked a couple of weeks ago at #6. Although that's nothing to snicker at, I thought it would do better--top 3 at least, given that it's such a great single for her, certainly much better than "Dirrty," the flop lead single from her last album. Jessica Simpson is still rising up the chart (she's #19 up from #22 on today's Mediabase Mainstream Hit chart) with "A Public Affair," but it's climbing slower than I expected.

In real trouble are two R&B mainstays. First, there's Janet Jackson, who's recent single "Call on Me," the lead from her forthcoming album 20 Years Old, stalled on the R&R Top 40 chart at #32. Janet needed a hit to launch this album, given the poor reception to her last album, Damita Jo. But "Call on Me's" chart performance is even poorer than that of Damita Jo's lead single, "Just a Little While," which was out at the height of the nipplegate scandal and still reached #19.

More noteworthy though is the relatively poor performance of Beyonce's lead single from her forthcoming album. Unlike Jackson, Beyonce is much-loved by the pop music public of late, having scored two #1 singles from her first album a few years ago, and a #1 hit earlier this year with "Check On It." "Deja Vu," her current single, peaked this week on the medibase top 40 airplay chart at only #14, and it's declining pretty quickly.

The reason for this may simply be overkill--there's a lot of singles by solo female artists out right now--and the newcomers appear to have an advantage over the seasoned artists, especially if the seasoned artists are just doing the same ol' thing. The top 4 singles on the R&R top 40 chart this week are female artists: Nelly Furtado, Rihanna, Cassie, and Shakira. Furtado has of course completely reinvented herself to score one of the year's biggest hits, Rihanna and Cassie are fairly new and brand new respectively, and Shakira also has a pretty original single in "Hips Don't Lie." Other female artists that have had big hits this year include Natasha Bedingfield, Mary J. Blige, and Kelly Clarkson.