TEA

TEA TOTALING: The overall-plus-track-equivalent album chart this week is a tidy microcosm of the year as a whole so far, with Monte Lipman’s Republic and Steve Barnett’s CMG engaged in a dogfight over the biggest bone, er, so to speak. Fact is, Republic’s so loaded with hit singles at the moment—and so good at reloading—that it’s practically unbeatable in terms of this all-important metric, especially now that Island (the home of Fall Out Boy and Tove Lo) is in the mix. While Capitol has only one Top 20 single (Sam Smith’s “Stay With Me” at #14), it has five of the Top 25 albums, as we noted yesterday. Thus, the competition between the two—for the moment, at least—is a study in contrasts, the equivalent of a hurry-up offense going up against a power-football approach, giving it great entertainment value for marketshare buffs. (9/18a)