American Idols slip on Album Charts, But Help Is On the Way... We Think...

green = Mandisa, maroon = Phillip, lt blue = Carrie, dk green = Kelly
(orange = Fantasia, lt green = Jessica, med blue = Colton)
Now that both Phillip Phillips' "The World From the Side of the Moon" and Kelly Clarkson's "Greatest Hits - Chapter One" have been out for 44 weeks (8 weeks shy of a full year), they are starting to slip on the BillBoard 200 album chart. They have both held on incredibly well (as well as Carrie Underwood's "Blown Away" which has sold over 1.5 million since its release in May 2012) especially when you consider Kelly's was primarily a greatest hits collection released before Christmas 2012. The leader on the album chart for the fourth week in a row, however, is none of those winners, but instead the #9 finisher from Season 5, Mandisa. Her "Overcomer" album slips from #72 to #60 but she still has the #1 Christian song on the radio with the title track. Phillip's album is next at #87 (from #74 last week), followed by Carrie at #97 (from #93) and Kelly who is barely holding in the Top 200 at #164 (falling form #119.) So they are all slipping a little, but there should still be American Idols on the charts for a few weeks before the new Idol releases in October.

But now I am wondering if the next American Idol winner with an album release is actually going to happen. No, I do not mean Scotty McCreery whose "See You Tonight" album is pretty much a guaranteed success, nor Kelly Clarkson's "Wrapped in Red" Christmas album which will not be out until October 29. I am still looking for news from Candice Glover whose "Music Speaks" album was supposedly going to be released on October 8, just a week from Tuesday. There has been nothing from Candice since the tour ended except for a free concert on September 12 in Hilton Head. They already have track listings for both Scotty and Kelly's albums, but nothing for Candice, and they even have music snippets for Scotty at Amazon.fr (why the French Amazon and not the US one?) How can they not have a track listing and samples for an album barely a week from release?

Something is very fishy with Candice's album, but if they are not going to release it on October 8, why not announce it by now? I am sure thousands of people (3,000? 5,000?) have already pre-ordered "Music Speaks", and they will not be happy October 8 if it does not appear. One telling statistic is entering her name in quotes on Google News to see how many news articles there are about her recently. Here is today's results for all the past winners:

1. Kelly Clarkson - 35,100 results
2. Ruben Studdard - 6,910 results
3. Fantasia - 30,000 results (it helps that it is only 1 word, but "Fantasia Barrino" only gave 1,800 and many of the lone "fantasia" results were about her)
4. Carrie Underwood - 24,700 results
5. Taylor Hicks - 1,800 results
6. Jordin Sparks - 13,700 results
7. David Cook - 4,750 results
8. Kris Allen - 998 results
9. Lee DeWyze - 788 results
10. Scotty McCreery - 4,830 results
11. Phillip Phillips - 6,930 results
12. Candice Glover - 457 results

As you might expect Lee DeWyze and Kris Allen have their names appearing in the least number of Google News results, except for... the most recent winner who recently finished her summer tour! Yikes, that is not much buzz for a recent American Idol winner. I can understand her having less buzz than recent successful winners like Phillip and Scotty, but having less than Lee and Kris is not a very good sign. What are they going to do in Season 13 when they bring her out? "Here is last year's winner, Candice Glover, carrying a framed platinum selling record.. which she is going to present to Phillip Phillips or Scotty McCreery." The signs are not looking good for her album.