Simon Cowell's American Idol franchise continues to be a force to be reckoned with in a music industry that's grasping for ways to break new artists without the culturally-unifying force that was terrestrial radio.
This season's winner David Cook was the latest beneficiary of what Stephen Colbert would call "the Cowell bump," setting a new record for the series by landing 11 songs on the Billboard charts to break Miley Cyrus's previous record of six songs.
Leading the charge is "The Time of My Life," which dominated the digital charts with 286,000 downloads, according to Billboard. The last time a band landed more songs on the Billboard Hot 100 was when the Beatles landed 14 songs on the chart in 1964.
This marks the first time Billboard has factored this season'sAmerican Idol artists' digital download numbers, it says, because Applehas an agreement with the show not to release iTunes sales figures forthose artists until the final week of the season.
We normally stay as far away from this sort of smaltz as wecan, but if you're curious, here's the hit, which sounds like an evenmore "inspirational" version of Seal, assuming such a thing is possible. Ouch:
this audio or video is no longer availableThe Time Of My Life [STUDIO] - David Cook
Photo: I heart him
