Billboard Music Awards Nominees

Billboard announced their BMA nominees today. BMA categories are based upon Billboard's year-end charts, with the award going to whoever is #1 for the year in that category. The nominees for the Hot 100 are:

"Bad Day" - Daniel Powter
"Promiscuous" - Nelly Furtado featuring Timbaland
and "Temperature" - Sean Paul

So one of those three songs is the #1 single of 2006 in the Billboard Hot 100. Interestingly, all of them are foreign artists; Daniel Powter and Nelly Furtado are Canadian and Sean Paul is Jamaican. So a non-American is guaranteed to top the Hot 100 this year, which last happened in 2002 when Canadian group Nickelback was #1 with "How You Remind Me."

I can think of at least three other foreign artists that might land in the top 10 of the year-end Hot 100, Rihanna's "SOS" (Barbados), Natasha Bedingfield's "Unwritten" (Britain), and Shakira's "Hips Don't Lie" (Colombia). That's quite a turnaround from last year when the highest a non-American act charted was #18 (Rihanna with "Pon Da Replay"). Foreigners held down the top 4 spots of the Hot 100 in 1998, with George Michael (Britain), INXS (Australia), George Harrison (Britain), and Rick Astley (Britain).

As for this year's "nominees," my bet is that Nelly Furtado is going to be this year's Hot 100 chart topper.

The albums set to top the year-end Billboard 200 are a sorry lot:

"All the Right Reasons," Nickelback
"High School Musical" soundtrack, Various Artists
"Some Hearts," Carrie Underwood

I read somewhere that High School Musical is the best-selling album of the year, so look for that at #1. Carrie Underwood has certainly done well for herself, becoming arguably the second most successful artist from American Idol. I would expect that Rascal Flatts and Mary J. Blige will also show up in the top 10.