New York Daily News –
http://www.nydailynews.com
For wave of chart acts,
life begins at 40
Mr. Jim Farber
Tuesday, October 28th, 2003
Call it elder power. Right now, 25% of Billboard’s Top 40 albums were either recorded by stars past the age of 40 or are enjoyed by listeners in that seasoned range.
Barbra Streisand, 61, just sold more than 160,000 copies of “The Movie Album,” double the opening week sales of her previous CD. Bette Midler, 57, saw her latest work (“The Rosemary Clooney Songbook”) start way up at No. 14. Two weeks later, the CD holds in the Top 25.
Both singers accomplished this while recording music that’s between 40 and 70 years old.
Meanwhile, Elvis Presley, Simon & Garfunkel, Seal, Michael McDonald and a Rat Pack collection also thrive in the Top 40, as do younger artists like Clay Aiken, Dido and Norah Jones, who each boast a huge ratio of graying followers.
Later this week, Rod Stewart’s second collection of American standards hits the charts, most likely in the Top 5. The 58-year-old Stewart’s previous album of songs by the swell set resurrected his career and sold 1.6 million copies.
“In a year that’s not great for sales, one silver lining is that music appealing to adults is doing quite well,” says Billboard’s chart maven Fred Goodman.
Record companies have tapped into this audience by hawking their wares over older-skewing TV outlets, and by reaching an underserved audience of conservative listeners in mid-America.
The day her album hit stores, Streisand deigned to leave the Malibu Colony long enough to offer her first live performance on TV in 40 years, on “Oprah.”
On her release day, Midler presented her first joint performance in 30 years with her original producer, Barry Manilow, on the “Today Show.” Midler’s record company has also been selling her album via 800-number TV spots primed to reach the couch potato set too doughy to make their way into record stores.
Michael McDonald’s “The Motown Collection,” on which he covers the catalogue of that classic label, benefited from having his “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” in an MCI ad. Next week, he’ll appear on QVC to move his album like so many juicers and hair-dye kits.
Much has been made of the fact that older listeners don’t know from downloading, so they buy the whole CD, thus upping their impact on the charts. It doesn’t hurt either that adult pop radio stations are bigger than ever; New York’s Lite-FM is our market’s No. 1.
The Streisand, Midler, Stewart and McDonald albums also represent a trend-ette within the trend: They’ve benefited not just from being cut by aging stars but by collecting songs proven by time.
