Clay Aiken – “Spaghetti and Meatball”

By musicfan123 · Comments (4)
Wednesday, November 16th, 2011

Last night, I sat in front of my computer hoping for a tweet or message about  “Clay Aiken and His Wonderful Adventures in New York.”   But, no news!!  Do you think it is all locked up until February?  I am beginning to feel that way!

But, as I sat at my desk I couldn’t help but think about the last 8 years and the many exciting and amazing things that Clay has had the opportunity to experience.

Today is November 16, and eight years ago, Clay was standing on the stage of the Shrine Auditorium, accepting the Fan’s Choice Award at the 2003 American Music Awards.

Unlike the Grammys, the American Music Awards nominations are based on sales data compiled by SoundScan and industry trade magazine Radio and Records, while winners are based on ballots sent to more 20,000 record buyers.  Clay was nominated for two awards that night and won the Internet-voted Fans’ Choice award.  The following singers were nominated for the award:

 

  • Clay Aiken
  • Beyoncé Knowles
  • 50 Cent
  • Matchbox 20
  • Tim McGraw
  • Justin Timberlake

Ruben Studdard joined Clay for a musical performance at the ceremony.  They both sang their popular singles and then joined with a gospel choir to perform “Jesus Is Love,” a beautiful gospel song written by Lionel Richie.  Both Clay and Ruben sounded wonderful as they harmonized together and proved to the audience why they were an important part of the show.

The three-hour telecast was hosted by comedian Jimmy Kimmel who introduced Clay and Ruben as “the spaghetti and meatball” of music.  Clay attended the event with Amber Nix.

 

Did you watch the show on TV?  What did you think of the duet by Clay and Ruben?

 

The following are some videos of Clay at the show.  Enjoy!!

 

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Clay Aiken – Top Holiday Music

By musicfan123 · Comments (6)
Thursday, December 16th, 2010

Soundscan is the official method of tracking sales of music and music video products throughout the United States and Canada. The data is collected weekly and is made available every Wednesday to subscribers, which include executives from all the different sections of the music, film and TV fields. SoundScan has been the sales source for the Billboard music charts since 1991.

On Wednesday, December 15, 2010, Billboard published their 100 Hot Lists.  Because of the holiday season, many holiday albums are a part of their list.  The following Holiday albums were all a part of the Top 50 albums by sales for the last week.

  1. Susan Boyle – The Gift
  2. Glee Cast – Christmas Album
  3. Jackie Evancho – O Holy Night
  4. Andrea Bocelli – My Christmas
  5. Mariah Carey – Merry Christmas II You
  6. Josh Groban – Noel
  7. Vince Guaraldi – Charlie Brown Christmas
  8. Now That’s What I Call Christmas V. 4 – Various Artists
  9. Annie Lennox – Christmas Cornucopia
  10. Chris Tomlin – Glory in the Highest: Christmas
  11. Lady Antebellum – Merry Little Christmas
  12. Michael Buble – Let It Snow
  13. Taylor Swift – Holiday Collection

When you look at the list, you can see that it is a combination of new albums and albums that have become classics.  I am sure that each one of the albums is very nice, but it certainly isn’t MY list of favorite Holiday Albums.  My list would be:

  1. Merry Christmas With Love – Clay Aiken (Surprise!!)
  2. All Is Well – Clay Aiken (I wish more people could hear these fabulous songs)
  3. It’s A Wonderful Christmas – Michael W. Smith (I can imagine Clay dueting on Christmas Day.)
  4. Let It Snow – Chanticleer – New Yorker Magazine calls Chanticleer “the world’s reigning male chorus.”  The 12 male voices range from countertenors to bass.  It’s different, but really amazing.
  5. Christmas Carol – James Galway – This 1986 album is more instrumental than vocal.  Because Galway is a flautist, the arrangements are a bit different than you find in other albums.

What about you?  Besides Clay’s fabulous Christmas music, do you have a favorite album or recording?  If so, why not let us know.  We don’t need Billboard – we can put together are own Top list!!

Did you see the great music player that Team Clay put on Twitter today?  What a fun way to hear Clay sing O Holy Night!

O Holy Night


Another Twitter entry today revealed this great page.  Be sure to click on the chocolate to see the entire site!!

Here at Clay HQ we're enjoying some holiday treats! Look for a treat from us to you this coming Friday (though not the chocolate kind...)

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Clay Aiken – Still Holds The Record

By musicfan123 · Comments (10)
Tuesday, November 16th, 2010

Today is an anniversary of sorts in the ClayNation.  On November 16, 2004, Merry Christmas With Love, Clay Aiken’s first Christmas album was released by RCA.

The beautiful holiday album debuted at #1 on Billboard’s Top Holiday Albums chart with first week sales of 270,100 units.  This fete gave Merry Christmas With Love the biggest debut week sales figure for a Christmas album since the Soundscan era began in 1991.  Additionally, the album opened at #4 on the U.S. Billboard 200.  This chart tracks all album sales regardless of genre.  These numbers give Merry Christmas With Love the highest debut for a holiday album since Celine Dion’s album six years earlier.

Amazingly, the album is still has the highest debut sales of a holiday album in Soundscan history.  No one has beaten the record yet! Merry Christmas With Love reached platinum in only 6 weeks.  The album has sold over 2 million units worldwide.

Clay received many awards for MCWL.

Billboard Awards:

  • 2004: Won – Best Selling Christmas Album
  • 2005:  Won – Best Selling Christian Album

American Christian Music Awards

  • 2005: Won – Outstanding Yule CD

Even with all its success, Merry Christmas With Love had mixed reviews by the critics.  All of them enjoyed Clay’s voice, but a few thought the album was to “old-fashioned”…. ?!?

Christmasreviews.com had a great review of the album.  The author, a self-professed AI junkie, wrote a detailed review that included:

… Aiken has released Merry Christmas With Love, a lovely, heartfelt holiday card to his millions of adoring fans. The release definitely plays to Aiken’s strengths; this is no frivolous pop froth. Aiken sings these Christmas classics with the gusto of a seasoned holiday music icon, somewhat reminiscent of Sinatra or Como. Aiken is often compared with Harry Connick, Jr., and it’s a fair comparison. The arrangements are relatively straightforward, and Aiken’s stylings are old-fashioned, and I mean that in the nicest possible way. Although Aiken’s clean voice is accompanied by considerable engineering magic and background vocals, the production is largely restrained and tasteful. No annoying gimmicks clutter the fine music here.

Clay is in great company when you see the list of the best-selling Holiday albums of the different years in 2000.  I tried to find as many numbers as I could for each album, but I was not able to find all the details for all the albums.  The following are the numbers that I could find.

  • The best-selling Holiday album of 2000 was Dream a Dream, by Charlotte Church. The album went platinum after 2 seasons.
  • The best-selling Holiday album of 2001 was  Now That’s What I Call Christmas, by various artists. The album went platinum in two seasons
  • The best-selling Holiday album of 2002 was Now That’s What I Call Christmas, by various artists.  See 2001
  • The best-selling Holiday album of 2003 was Harry for the Holidays, by Harry Connick, Jr. The album went platinum during the second holiday season.  It reached #12 on the Billboard Charts.
  • The best-selling Holiday album of 2004 was Merry Christmas with Love, by Clay Aiken.
  • The best-selling Holiday album of 2005 was The Christmas Collection, by Il Divo.  The album charted at #12
  • The best-selling Holiday album of 2006 was Wintersong, by Sarah McLachlan. 20,000 units sold the first week.
  • The best-selling Holiday album of 2007 was Noel, by Josh Groban.  It sold less than 70,000 the first week, but exploded after a performance on Oprah.
  • The best-selling Holiday album of 2008 was Noel, by Josh Groban.  It is 5 times platinum.
  • The best-selling Holiday album of 2009 was My Christmas, by Andrea Bocelli. It sold approximately 100,000 the first week.

Clay’s debut sales figure might be challenged this year.  Susan Boyle’s new holiday album, The Gift will get great numbers.  We should get the totals today.  Mariah Carey also has a new album, Merry Christmas II You.  Sales are predicted to be around 56,000.

It is amazing that Merry Christmas With Love by Clay Aiken is still holding the record for most holiday albums sold in the debut week.  I am glad that so many people loved the album.

Do you have a favorite song from the album?

The information for this article came from Reality TV World, Billboard, Amazon, Wikipedia and Paul Grein at Chart Watch.

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Clay Aiken – Skilled In The Art Of Juggling

By musicfan123 · Comments (4)
Thursday, August 5th, 2010

Juggling…verb:  to manage or alternate the requirements of (two or more tasks, responsibilities, activities, etc.) so as to handle each adequately:  juggling the obligations of job and school.

Clay Aiken seems to to be skilled in the act of juggling. He has so many tasks at this time it is amazing that he can keep them all under control.

One of the tasks is the DVD – Tried and True: Live.  The DVD was recently released and great news was published by the Associated Press.  According to Soundscan, the DVD is a hit.

The Associated Press,
(AP) Weekly charts for the nation’s most popular videos as they appear in next week’s issue of Billboard magazine. Reprinted with permission:

Top Music Video Sales (Compiled from a national sample of sales reports)

1. “Beyond The Lighted Stage,” Rush.

2. “The Best Of The Hoppers: From The Homecoming Series,” The Hoppers

3. “360 Degrees At The Rose Bowl,” U2.

4. “London Calling: Live In Hyde Park,” Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band.

5. “Tried And True: LIVE!” Clay Aiken

6. “Live At Madison Square Garden,” Bon Jovi.

7. “Live In Bucharest: The Dangerous Tour,” Michael Jackson.

8. “Stones In Exile,” The Rolling Stones.

9. “When You’re Strange,” The Doors.

10. “Number Ones,” Michael Jackson.

Copyright 2010, Nielsen SoundScan, Inc

You can see the entire video list at CBS LOCAL

Another part of the juggling act is Clay’s new song for Disney.  Called I Believe We Can, the song is part of an episode of Phineas and Ferb.  Titled Summer Belongs To You, the entire project is getting a great deal of publicity from Disney and news about the show and song has been on most of the mainstream entertainment site.  The entire soundtrack for the show was made available this week at I-Tunes.  Have you purchased it yet?  For more information,  visit Wikia Entertainment


As most of you know, Clay is in the middle of a 17 city tour.  The Timeless Tour with Ruben Studdard is a huge success and is being heavily promoted at most venues.  The tour will visit the MGM Grand – Foxwoods on August 7th.  Susan Podhajski, a correspondent for ctpost.com, wrote an article about the concert and included a nice interview of Ruben.

They sang their hearts out and tried to out-perform one another while winning the hearts of millions seven years ago on TV’s “American Idol.”

Now, “American Idol” winner Ruben Studdard  and Clay Aiken are sharing a stage once again — the two will perform their “The Timeless Tour” Saturday at the MGM Grand at Foxwoods Resort and Casino.

To read the entire article, visit ctpost

The PBS special,The Clay Aiken: Tried & True ~ LIVE! started being shown throughout the USA this week.  In most cases, telecast of the program is being used as a part of the fall pledge drives for the individual stations.  If you want to support the station, the stations have different gifts that are given to supporters who donate.  Most of the stations offer a copy of Tried & True CD and the DVD.  Clay was able to visit many of the PBS stations to tape pledge breaks that are run during the telecast.  It’s always fun to see and hear Clay chat about his work.

A selected number of stations will have tickets to the new Tried & True:LIVE tour that is scheduled for February and March.  Two of the areas that are including tickets are East Tennessee and Miami.  They posted some information this week that is fun to read.

American Idol star Clay Aiken will return to the Tennessee Theatre on Thursday, Feb. 17, 2011.

Aiken’s live concert special, “Tried & True,” will air on East Tennessee Public Television at 8 p.m. this Thursday, Aug. 5. Filmed at the Memorial Auditorium in his hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina, the special is a preview for the upcoming tour. Aiken will perform standards from the ’50s and ’60s with a full orchestra. The special airs again at 6 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 8.

Tickets for the Tennessee Theatre show go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday, Aug. 6, at the Tennessee Theatre box office, all Tickets Unlimited outlets, by phone at 865-656-4444 and online.

Posted by Randall Brown on August 4, 2010 at 10:14 AM.  You can visit the site at News Sentinel

Clay Aiken Live In Concert at Adrienne Arsht Center

The Premier Guide – Miami has a wonderful article about the concert on February 10th.  They also included a short bio about Clay.  You can read the article at  Premier Guide.

The juggling isn’t over………In October, Clay has a concert in Chicago and then flies directly to Raleigh for the National Inclusion Project Gala.  I wonder what else he will add the the activity list!!

Don’t forget that tonight, Clay and Ruben will be performing in Windsor, Ontario tonight.  I hope all his Canadian fans have a great evening.

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Clay Aiken and BigChampagne

By musicfan123 · Comments (29)
Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

On August 18th, Universal Music Group entered into a long-term music monitoring and information deal with BigChampagne, the leading online music measurement company for North America.  BigChampagne will provide Universal with analysis of songs and listening patterns from music fans on social networks and online music services.

“As we continue to expand our services to our artists and partner labels, it’s important to utilize the best research tools available especially when it comes to the proliferation of music discovery and consumption on the web,” stated Jim Urie, President & CEO of Universal Music Group Distribution. “And with the addition of BigChampagne, we provide a comprehensive view of the marketplace, from the radio, online, and retail perspectives, all of which results in more opportunities for our artists and labels.”

By embracing a Web intelligence product, Universal is indicating how important the Internet has become to the music business.  It is also a sign to Nielsen’s media measuring company that Universal is not satisfied that they are equipped to provide all the information they need, especially when it comes to the internet.

Soundscan has been the leader in counting music purchases in the United States since 1992.  The Billboard charts rely on Soundscan for the calculations.  Exact numbers are not available, but it is estimated that Universal paid between 7 million and 8 million a year to Soundscan for their data.

Eric Garland is the CEO of BigChampagne. He said when his company started, people didn’t think there would ever be any company willing to spend money on internet-music listeners.  But, today, it is very important.

CNet spoke to Garland who said:

“The Internet has inherited the music business, When you look at MySpace plays, Rhapsody, iTunes, Last.fm, all of that dwarfs traditional music purchasing. Instead of CDs, we paid attention to this sleepy little Internet thing, but it happened when no one was watching. Well, we were watching.”

Last week, BigChampagne rolled out BC Dash, a new browser-based tracking system that allows a user to monitor in real-time song sales or streams at a number of websites, offline locations and peer-to-peer networks. Some of the sources include iTunes, YouTube, MySpace, retail brick-and-mortar record stores and Limewire.  They hope that this improvement will give Universal the kind of intelligence that guides strategy.

So, bottom line……..what will BigChampagne do for Universal?  In easy terms, the company will collect information about how and where people enjoy popular music and then analyze the information to tell them what titles are most popular, who is interested and why.

The on-line world of music is ever-changing and developing.  It is good to see that Universal Music Group is forward looking and continuing to add partners to help them do an even better job for their artists.

It seems that Clay Aiken is in good hands.  It will be interesting to see how Decca uses all these new ideas as they work with Clay in the next few months.

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Clay Aiken – SoundScan Excitement or Disappointment

By musicfan123 · Comments (22)
Friday, June 5th, 2009

March 1, 1991 was the beginning of something different in the world of music sales.  Nielsen SoundScan began tracking sales data of music throughout the United States. 

Nielsen SoundScan is an information system that tracks sales of music and music video products throughout the United States and Canada. Sales data from point-of-sale cash registers is collected weekly from over 14,000 retail, mass merchant and non-traditional (on-line stores, venues, etc.) outlets. Weekly data is compiled and made available every Wednesday.

SoundScan is the official sales source for the Billboard music charts.  Before 1991, Billboard tracked sales by calling stores all over the U.S. and asking about sales.  This method was inaccurate and could be manipulated easily by both the stores and the record companies.

Is SoundScan completely accurate today?  Well, as with any rating system, it is watched carefully and most experts feel it is as accurate as possible. The biggest problem seems to be that not all stores  subscribe to the reporting system. This means that any sales from that source will not be counted.

As a business, Nielsen SoundScan has many clients including all major and most independent labels, distribution companies, artist managers, and booking mangers.   Online retailers, concert promoters and venue owners also use Nielsen to help in their business decisions.

As fans of Clay Aiken, the weekly SoundScan numbers have been interesting to follow.  They fill you with excitement or bring disappointment.  Whether Clay is on the Top 200 list or not, most of the Clay Aiken fan boards list the weekly SoundScan numbers.  Be sure to check them out to see the trends in the music industry.

Most Clay Aiken fans are looking forward to watching for Clay to be active on the SoundScan reports in the near future.


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Celebrity Apprentice: Clay’s Presentation

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It is not always about performance art, but about receiving positive energy from people with positive spirits. Sometimes we can see someone's spirit, and those are the people with great energy. Those are the people that get me through the day, especially on Broadway. -Clay Aiken

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