VOA常速英语:Top 5 Countdown for Week Ending November 23

We’re covering the five most popular songs in the Billboard Magazine Hot 100 pop singles chart, for the week ending November 23, 2013.
 
Last week’s third-place debut of Eminem and Rihanna’s “The Monster” must have exhausted the rest of the songs, because they take a little rest this week.
 
Avicii starts us off today, as “Wake Me Up!” goes comatose in fifth place. If the song’s not budging, the artist himself is: he has four Australian dates planned for late January, with Germany and the United Kingdom following in February.

Holding tight in fourth place is Katy Perry with her former number one hit “Roar.” Katy and the rest of the pop singing posse rule Twitter.

Right now, Katy is the most popular person on Twitter, with 47.3 million followers. Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga are second and third, respectively. The web site Twitaholic has pop singers owning seven of the Top 10 Twitter accounts, with a total of 266 million followers.

Slipping a slot to third place is Miley Cyrus with "Wrecking Ball".  Miley says yes - that cigarette was exactly what you thought it was. On November 10, she appeared to smoke a marijuana joint onstage at the MTV European Music Awards in Amsterdam. As it turns out, our eyes didn’t deceive us. Appearing on Capital FM in the UK, Miley says she thought it would be fun to pull a joint out of her handbag and smoke it - and nobody knew about the stunt before it happened.

Last week’s Hot Shot Debut song is this week’s big mover: “The Monster” from Eminem and Rihanna jumps a notch to second place. Back in 2010, they spent seven weeks atop the Hot 100 chart with “Love The Way You Lie.” It remains Eminem’s best-selling single.

Speaking of seven-week champs, Lorde is still number one with “Royals.” The 17-year-old New Zealander just signed a music publishing deal reportedly worth a cool $2.5 million.

Can Lorde fight off Eminem’s challenge for chart dominance? We’ll find out next week.