Billboard Charts

[Toups]

How is the world is 6ix9ine popular?  Some of his videos rack up 100+ million views in a short period of time and his music isn't very good.  He's also a terrible person: "In October 2015, Hernandez [6ix9ine] pled guilty to a felony count of use of a child in a sexual performance. He was charged with three counts of the offense after a February 2015 incident in which he had physical contact with a 13-year-old girl and later distributed videos of the incident online as part of a music video." 

 

 

So his song with dropped 33 spots?  There's a been a lot of these one-week-wonders lately where #1s drop out of the 10 after just a couple of weeks.  Going #1 is just not impressive anymore, especially when they're only popular for one week. 

[Faulkner]

It’s been weird. You have these quick one-week flameouts like “Stuck with U” and then you have these viral meme-y songs like “The Box” and “Old Town Road” (and now likely “Rockstar”) that hang out in the top spot and break records.
 

And then Post Malone takes up residence in the top 10 for months and months with songs like “Sunflower” and now “Circles,” which has spent 39 weeks (almost 9 months) in the top 10.

[kalbir]

In this era of TikTok and Spotify, is the Billboard Hot 100 even relevant anymore?

[Faulkner]

I think there’s an argument that, in theory, it could be more relevant than ever, since we have so much data on how people listen to music. Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, and other places all have their own charts, but there’s no place that brings them all together. I just think Billboard hasn’t figured out the right formula to determine what’s a hit. And there are too many ways to game the system (concert ticket bundles, etc.).

[Faulkner]

 

[BetterForgotten]

I mean, was that supposed to be anything significant? Madonna, Whitney, Janet, Paula, and Mariah had all gotten multiple #1 singles off an album prior - and 3 of those women did it with their debut albums. 

Edited July 13, 2020 by BetterForgotten

[Faulkner]

I don’t think he’s saying it’s special in terms of pop history. Just that she had more and bigger chart successes than her peers of that era, which might surprise people who are more familiar with the hits of Britney, BSB, and *NSYNC. As big as they were, you’d think they’d all have five or six No. 1s. (Crazy that “I Want It That Way” or “Toxic” never topped the charts. Those were as ubiquitous as they come.)

Edited July 13, 2020 by Faulkner

[BetterForgotten]

Britney was marketed by her label in the same way Sony marketed Celine Dion in the 90's - as an albums artist vs. being a singles artist. Jive released very few singles commercially from Britney's first two albums. In the late 90's and very early 00's, the singles market was still huge business, and at certain points, you needed to release a physical single to even chart or to chart highly on the Hot 100.

 

RCA released released all of the singles off Christina's debut album commercially, which resulted in high charting positions for her on the Hot 100 - Jive only released like one of two singles commercially from Britney's debut (including Baby One More Time, which went to #1). They did the same with BSB - their priority and strategy was to drive album sales, so they held back releasing physical singles to not hinder that and to increase sales of the actual albums.

 

Christina never had the same success on the Hot 100 again after her debut, when the chart rules changed again and radio airplay became more important to chart in the early 00's. 'Beautiful' was a huge radio airplay hit, which allowed it to hit #2 on the Hot 100. 

 

Toxic would have definitely gone to #1 had Billboard had the appropriate rules in place that accounted for more relevancy of the streaming format in 2004 - it was a huge iTunes hit. 

Edited July 13, 2020 by BetterForgotten

[Skin]

 

It's significant in context of the times I think. I don't necessarily find Christina Aguilera to be especially impressive in any chart capacity, but the chart climate they are speaking about is a bit nuanced. Christina (or more accurately her label) deserve kudos for exploiting it for those feats and achievements. Christina getting back to back number one's with Genie, Come On Over and What A Girl Wants is somewhat similar to Ariana Grande getting her strings of number ones in this climate.

 

 

What the original tweet fails to understand are the chart methods that Christina used to employ to achieve her results was a very different strategy than Jive's Britney, Backstreet Boys and N'sync used, as BetterForgotten notes above. Jive's strategy was to limit the singles success so more people would buy the album. If they couldn't buy the single, pre Napster they had to buy the full album to access/own/listen to the material outside of radio. As such people shouldn't be looking at Billboard's Hot 100 to measure the success of those particular artists. They should be looking at their album sales, Billboard 200 chart and comparing those sales to Christina's to see how successful they were in their commercial efforts.

 

Christina's strategy was to flood the single market to get more #1's similar to Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Destiny's Child and Micheal Jackson. 

 

 

Basically this. Britney's singles never got physically released unless they were radio/airplay flops and Jive wanted to save face with a high Hot 100 peak. Jive knew that Britney could always get a sales hit so they timed releases to get her to chart higher if it benefited them. Britney only released 3 singles physically: Baby One More Time (her debut single), From The Bottom Of My Broken Heart (airplay was low) and Stronger (Airplay was low). After 2000 sales declined so significantly there was no reason to even release singles as the Hot 100 was basically just an Airplay chart until digital downloads were measured in 2005. 

[BetterForgotten]

Only Genie and What A Girl Wants were back to back, I Turn To You peaked at #3 before Come On Over hit #1 in the fall of 2000. 

 

Edited July 13, 2020 by BetterForgotten

[Faulkner]

I think the Hot 100 alone is a dubious way of measuring the success of artists, considering how much the rules have changed over the years and how artists game the systems in place to land hits. I always go back to “Don’t Speak” being one of the biggest songs of 1996, and it didn’t even chart on the Hot 100 because it wasn’t released as a physical single.

 

I do think it’s interesting how relatively forgotten that era of Xtina is, for all its successes. You do see its impact on Ariana Grande and a few years back with Demi Lovato and Jessie J. 

[BetterForgotten]

Not to mention Kelly Clarkson in the mid 00's, which basically took Christina's formula and had much better success with it ultimately. 

 

Christina's pop career trajectory has almost followed that of Paula Abdul's - one strong debut album with multiple #1 hits, a second successful album (though not as successful as the debut), and then everything else after that being a blur and flop. Then the singing reality show era, which helped with a public renaissance, but did nothing for the pop career.  

 

Only Paula can actually dance, and Christina despite having terrible form, does have decent vocal ability. 

Edited July 13, 2020 by BetterForgotten

[Skin]

I've always felt that Christina was always trend following her contemporaries, so I am not surprised that she is overlooked. She always got there with a sound that wasn't especially her own or was often too late in capitalizing her material to fully embody, actualize and trademark the sound as hers.  

 

In her debut she copied Britney, in her sophomore effort she copied P!nk's Misunderstood and Alicia Key's Songs In a Minor, for her third album she copied Amy Winehouse, and with her fourth album she was creating material very reminiscent of Gaga. The rest of her material has been pretty generic, and not of particular note as the public forgot about her outside of her features which played to other artists strengths. She's an artist who has always in some shape or form been musically bereft, and inconsistent. 

Edited July 13, 2020 by Skin

[BetterForgotten]

She also had no idea how she wanted to market herself. She mentioned in her debut era that she wanted to be the first female pop artist to combine the visual and aesthetic merit of Madonna/Janet, with the vocal impact of a Whitney/Mariah.

 

You can't be everything to everyone, and I think she struggled with the type of artist she wanted to be and Sony later had trouble with knowing what to do with her and how to properly market her.   

[Faulkner]

She’s a gifted singer but she’s often clueless as to how to use it. Her oversinging eventually just became a joke, and then she was better known as a behind-the-scenes bitch who got into fights with P!nk and Mary J. Blige.

 

I do hear “Fighter” a lot in the wild, but people are suckers for a pump-up song.

Stripped was just such a grab bag of styles. She also tried to hone in on the Latin pop market too.