From the moment I sit down at my desk at 7:30 a.m. until the dogs tell me its tools down at around 5, I listen to, analyze, evaluate, research, and write about music. My job requires me to listen to music professionally. So when I encountered a story about Ella Langley, a singer I’d never heard of, setting a new record for having longest-running hit single in this history of the Billboard Hot 100 charts, I was confused.
What was this Choosin’ Texas song? Did my music journalism have a giant blind spot? Was I failing at my job? Had I been in a coma? How was it possible that a song that had been number one on Billboard for almost half a year not graced my ears?
At first, I chalked it up to being a country song, and country is just not my jam. But that shouldn’t matter. To be number one on Billboard is to have the hittiest of hit songs, regardless of genre. I should have heard Choosin’ Texas floating through the air on some radio station. Or on TV. Or at the supermarket. Yet when I clicked on the YouTube video, I heard it for the very first time.
How is this possible? This required its own analysis, evaluation, and research. And the answer turned out to be very simple. Mainstream music ain’t what it used to be.
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In the era before the internet, the amount of music we got to hear was tightly controlled by record labels, radio stations, record stores, music magazines and video channels. They were all-powerful filters, the cultural gatekeepers, that determined what we got to hear. And even if your song managed to be approved by all of them, competition for attention was fierce.
Billboard became the de facto scorekeeper for music in North America. In the old days, the magazine would call out to a panel of select record stores to find out which 45 RPM, seven-inch singles sold the most over the previous seven days. They’d do the same with a panel of radio stations: which songs were played the most on the air? This data was tabulated, resulting in a statistically relevant ranking of the most popular songs in America. Anyone who’s ever listened to American Top 40 Casey Kasem knows that.
We heard these songs everywhere, largely through radio, which was our primary source of music discovery. Mainstream music was so ubiquitous that we couldn’t escape it. Because we couldn’t skip the song that was coming at us over the radio through through our TV screens on MuchMusic, we ended up knowing all the words to even the songs we hated. The hits were heard were everywhere. I can still sing along to You’re the One That I Want by Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta because during the summer of 1978, it was played roughly every hour and 15 minutes on the AM radio perched above the grill at the cheeseburger place where I worked that summer.
A number one song actually meant that it was the number one, most-heard and most-purchased and, ergo, most popular song in the land Therefore, having a long run at number one was rare. It was a big deal in 1995 when Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men stayed at the top for 16 weeks with One Sweet Day, a stretch many thought would never be broken.
But in the digital era, the Hot 100’s methodology has changed, Sales of 45s are no longer relevant. And while radio airplay is still important, streaming numbers factor in heavily. Very heavily.
Thanks to the way things are weighted, number one songs started to get number one-ier. Despacito by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee (and featuring Justin Bieber) tied Mariah and Boys II Men in 2017. Then came Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus who held down the top spot with Old Town Road for an incredible 19 weeks in 2019. But since then — and as streaming data became more important under Billboard’s rules — longer-standing hits kept coming.
Last Night from Morgan Wallen stuck around for 16 weeks in 2022. Then A Bar Song (Tipsy) by Shaboozey tied Old Town Road at 19 weeks in 2024. Which brings us to Choosin’ Texas, which reached the top for the first time since February of this year. It’s now October.
This new Billboard methodology has also resulted in weird situations like the one we saw for the chart ending May 30 of this year, where Drake songs occupied 42 of the 100 slots. How many of those songs can you name? I thought so.
Try this: stop a random person on the street and asked them to name three Taylor Swift songs. I’ll bet that you’ll have trouble finding someone who could do that, despite Tay-Tay being so huge through her music that she’s a billionaire.
Why are the hits now so less hit-y with the general public? Because thanks to streaming, the traditional gatekeepers — labels, radio, stores, magazines, and video channels — have lost the power they once had. We are now our own individual music directors thanks to our phones and streaming. When we’re not actively choosing what to listen to, the algorithm is serving up more of what it thinks we want to hear based on past choices. And the moment we hear something unfamiliar or disagreeable, we hit the “skip” button.
There’s no longer widespread public consensus of what constitutes a hit. That’s now up to each individual. This has reduced mainstream music, the songs that everyone was at the very least aware of, to just another niche in the universe of the 250 million or so songs available through any streaming platform.
So good on you, Ella Langley. You may have the longest-running number one song in the history of the charts, but you ain’t no You Light Up My Life or One Sweet Day or Old Town Road. And for the rest of us, don’t feel bad. Mainstream music isn’t as mainstream as it used to be.
As Yogi Berra might say, “No one goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”
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Source: globalnews.ca
