MUSICAL MUSINGS
by Josh Hosler
November 16, 2004
WHAT IS THE TRUEST MEASURE OF POPULARITY?
Every week since 1940, Billboard magazine has ranked the top hits in the nation. We all know instinctively what a hit is, right? Or do we? The term "hit music" may seem self-explanatory at first, but the definition of hit music has changed drastically throughout history, and despite the amazing growth in technology, it's getting more and more difficult to determine what makes a song popular.
At the risk of moving from the ridiculous to the sublime, let's go back about six hundred years. My college music history professor once proclaimed that Messe de Notre Dame by Guillaume de Machaut was the #1 hit of the 14th century. Putting aside the obvious fact that this was only true for Southern Europe, how did my professor come to this conclusion? I think it had something to do with the piece's long-term influence. That's the gauge we usually use to define a "hit" from years past: how influential has it been over time? By that measuring stick, perhaps Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 in C Minor was the biggest hit of the 19th century.
Just over a hundred years ago, song popularity was measured by sales of sheet music. These were the days when well-to-do families would gather around the piano and sing together. (Was this for real, or is it just a romantic notion we have of the Romantic era?)
Columbia issued its first recorded cylinder in 1890: "Semper Fidelis" by the U.S. Marine Band. This and other early recordings were written and conducted by John Philip Sousa. If sales of recordings can be called the primary measure of popularity, then "Semper Fidelis" was the first #1 hit. But Scott Joplin ushered in the ragtime era without recording a single piece; the popularity of classics like "Maple Leaf Rag" came exclusively from sheet music sales.
Since about 1940, the history of popular music has revolved around the "star system": certain artists gain immense popularity that lends credibility to everything they record. Glenn Miller and Frank Sinatra are two of the earliest examples. We're still using the "star system": a measure of popularity is attached to a specific recording of a piece of music, not to just any old recording of it. There's a difference between "Play That Funky Music" by Wild Cherry and that god-awful version by Vanilla Ice.
Bear in mind, though, that we're still talking about long-term influence. One of the first things a student of the pop charts learns is that the charts record a moment in history; you can't dwell on after-effect if you publish charts in a weekly magazine. No matter how you slice it, "What I Like About You" by the Romantics missed the Top 40. The fact that it has become a classic will never change that. So let's look at the charts for what they always will be: a snapshot. What does that snapshot measure today?
The first half of the 20th century saw a mishmash of popularity yardsticks: sheet music sales, sales of recordings, jukebox plays, and finally, radio airplay. But nobody compiled the different sources into a single chart until 1958, when Billboard began publishing the Hot 100. This chart combined what the magazine considered the two primary measures of popularity: radio airplay and sales of singles. The Hot 100 remained the most authoritative chart in the music business for decades.
One of the rules for inclusion on the Hot 100 was that a song had to be available for sale as a single. Every now and then, a song would get completely missed despite its immense popularity. The Beatles released no singles from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, so classics like "With a Little Help from My Friends" and "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" never charted. Neither did Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven," Madonna's "Into the Groove," or George Thorogood's "Bad to the Bone." But these examples were few and far between until the 1990s.
In 1991, Billboard launched a new and improved Hot 100 that was no longer subject to human error or deceit. In other words, computers could now tell us which songs radio stations were playing and record stores were selling. It turned out that the charts had been way off the entire time: the charts actually moved more slowly than we'd thought, and many songs were selling that weren't getting much radio play. My ironic theory is that these technological improvements ended the era of the Hot 100's authority. People in the industry were set in their ways; they didn't really want to know what was being played and sold.
Meanwhile, radio people realized that a song didn't have to be available in stores to get played on the radio. This had always been true with some formats, such as rock, but now it applied to top 40 as well. In 1994, "Mr. Jones" by Counting Crows climbed to #5 in monitored airplay without ever being released as a single. A very popular record was barred from the Hot 100. A flood of other album cuts followed, including the top 10 airplay hits "When I Come Around" by Green Day, "I Could Fall in Love" by Selena, and "I'll Be There for You" by the Rembrandts, which hit #1 in airplay without being allowed onto the Hot 100.
Before long, record labels picked up on this trend and started using it to their advantage. By releasing no singles from a new Stone Temple Pilots album, the label could force the fans to plop down $18 for the entire album. (Napster could be seen as an equally shrewd form of revenge.)
Also, labels began delaying the release dates of commercial singles in order to cause high debuts on the Hot 100. This trick is what caused Michael Jackson's "You Are Not Alone" to debut at #1 on the Hot 100 in September 1995. It had received two months of airplay prior to its single release, so when the single hit stores, it just appeared at #1. It had been popular before that week; it just hadn't been eligible. The question of what made a song eligible to chart was the remaining nail in the coffin of the Hot 100's authority. Billboard penitently began allowing non-singles to chart in 1998, but the damage was done.
Today, the market for store-bought singles in the U.S. is effectively dead. Last week, the #1 selling single in the U.S. was "Lua" by Bright Eyes. Have you ever heard of it? Neither have I. But you'll notice I said "store-bought singles."
Over the past few years, the market for digital downloads has eclipsed the "terrestrial" singles market and shows signs of replacing it. In my own chart studies, I've come to see Billboard's Hot Digital Tracks chart as a very important measure of popularity, and I hope Billboard will soon incorporate its figures into the Hot 100 chart. My case in point is Eminem's song "Mosh." An impressive bit of Bush-bashing, "Mosh" sold over 16,000 downloads the week of the presidential election with almost no radio airplay. I've heard an awful lot in the news about "Mosh." I would argue that it's a very popular song, but because it's not being played on the radio, it's nowhere near the Hot 100. Digital downloads need to start contributing to a song's official popularity immediately.
So we have yet to find the perfect measure of song popularity. Is there a good formula for creating such a chart? When the same song gets played on thousands of country stations in tiny towns all over the U.S., how popular is the song? If a song gets played only in New York City and 300,000 people hear it this week, does that count for more than all that small-market play, or could you argue that a song with more geographical saturation has a better claim to popularity? Should there be an electoral college for pop music?
When a person pays 99 cents for a song, does that mean the person will listen to the song again and again? (Doesn't that partly depend on each buyer's supply of disposable income, and also on each buyer's passion for music?)
What about songs that get played only in dance clubs? Theme songs of popular TV shows? Songs used in TV commercials? (I hear "Diamonds and Guns" by the Transplants several times a week on that Garnier Fructis ad.) What about songs that only get played at weddings? Songs being offered for free as promotional items?
I have this fantasy in which everyone in America has to report his or her favorite current song each week, and we make a chart out of that. Would that be the best measure of popularity?
What was the #1 song on the day you were born? Click here to find out.