In the last few years, a slew of Billboard Hot 100 chart records were broken that until recently would have been unthinkable. Some of these new records are truly mind boggling. For nearly twenty five years, Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men held the record for the most consecutive weeks at #1 with "One Sweet Day". For two decades, nothing came close to matching it. Who could possibly defeat the kings of slow jam R&B and the most successful female solo artist ever? Destiny had seemingly taken over. But in 2017, Luis Fonzi's "Despacito" became the summer jam to end all summer jams and tied the record. And two years later, the record was smashed by a complete unknown. When "One Sweet Day" dominated the charts, Boyz II Men and Mariah Carey had twelve #1 hits between them, tens of millions in albums sales, and nearly unlimited promotional support behind them. Lil Nas X was armed with a $20 beat and an obscure Nine Inch Nails sample. If the CMA hadn't banned "Old Town Road" from the country charts, prompting a wave of free publicity and the remix with Billy Ray Cyrus, it probably comes nowhere close to topping the Hot 100 for nineteen weeks. But it happened, and you'll never find a more unlikely megasuccess story in the history of pop.
There are other ways to measure the success of a hit song. The Hot 100's methodology has changed many times during its six decade history. The 90's were a particularly confusing time. To be considered for the Hot 100, a single had to exist as a physical product. But since those were peak CD buying years, many artists didn't bother releasing physical singles, they simply "released" a "new" song to radio as a means to stoke their album sales. The songs weren't new because they were readily available on the CD album, but the labels would simply signal the record stations to start playing track three instead of track six and voila, there was a "new" single. Thus you had the strange conundrum of completely unavoidable 90's hits that didn't chart due to this bizarre technicality, at least until the rules were changed around the end of the decade.
This is to say that prior to streaming and digital downloads, ranking chart hits by the number of radio plays was as good a metric as any, and remains an effective measure of a song's impact even today. The record for the most weeks at number one on the "Radio Songs" chart (formerly the "Hot 100 Airplay" chart) used to be held by the Goo Goo Dolls' "Iris". Ask anyone who lived through 1998 and they'll confirm that you couldn't go five minutes without hearing it. It topped the airplay chart for an unthinkable eighteen consecutive weeks. For the next twenty plus years, nothing approached this number. Then in 2020, The Weeknd's "Blinding Lights" crushed just about every chart record imaginable. Most weeks in the top five. Most weeks in the top ten. First song to remain in the top ten for an entire year. Most weeks in the Hot 100. And not least, most weeks atop the "Radio Songs" chart -- 26 weeks, or nearly 50% more than the ostensibly unbreakable record formerly held by the Goo Goo Dolls.
Michael Jackson's "Bad" was a blockbuster album, all the more amazing considering it was the follow up to one of the most mythical pop music albums of all time. Michael hit number one with a record five consecutive singles from "Bad" (later tied by Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream"). With nine singles released in all, it dominated the charts for two solid years. And yet, those five number one songs spent just seven weeks cumulatively at the top of the charts. Drake spent 29 weeks at number one with three songs in 2018. It's simply an unprecedented time for chart records. Add worldwide blockbusters like Ed Sheeran's "Shape of You" to the mix, and one could easily argue that five of the ten biggest hits ever have occurred just in the past half decade. This isn't all hyperbole, last year Billboard officially declared "Blinding Lights" as the biggest hit of all time.
What else can possibly happen? Well, let's take Harry Styles. His song "As It Was" it now in its fourteenth non-consecutive week at number one, tied for fourth most all time. But more remarkably, it set a record by hitting number one five times this year. What's more, each time it was knocked out of the top spot, it fell to number two and stayed there. That makes a total of 23 consecutive weeks in the top two (another record), a near six month run of pure dominance. The song itself is remarkable too, and not only because its this decade's answer to Don Henley's "The Boys of Summer". The propulsive, mechanical drumming, atmospheric keyboard in the foreground and subtle Fleetwood Mac-like guitar picking in the background, it's all there. The song is ready to be digitally inserted into any roller rink movie scene from the 80's at your leisure.
It's a wonderful song. Just about all these new chartbusting songs are great. This in itself feels novel. The 90's were packed with awful number ones, the previously mentioned "One Sweet Day" is typical of sappy, tuneless R&B of the time that found success purely based on star power and vocal calisthenics. What is happening? Are we in a golden age of songwriting and producing? I think we might be. Music production has become a superstar endeavor unto itself, the Swedes and Americans who shaped the sounds of the late 90's and 00's have spawned a new generation of curious and creative disciples. The artist-producer relationship feels more important and more symbiotic than ever.
However, this recent article in The Ringer gives me pause. The success of Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" has solidified an ongoing trend, where catalog music is rapidly growing at the expense of contemporary music. Songs might top the charts for multiple weeks but completely fail to become cultural touchstones and are forgotten a few years later. Song and album sales are cratering, it's mostly about streaming now, which puts catalog artists on more of an equal footing. Songs released yesterday and those released forty years ago are both one simple click away. Does this mean that the charts are more top heavy in favour of the most popular artists? That is, are there fewer contemporary artists competing for chart spots than before? With less competition, it will be easier for a great song to dominate.
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