Bebe Rexha & “Meant to Be” Poised to Make More History on Hot Country Songs Chart
As predicted by Saving Country Music the very first week pop star Bebe Rexha’s “Meant to Be” song crested the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, it is now on a flight path to break the chart’s all time record for most weeks at #1, which had already been made a mockery of by Sam Hunt’s “Body Like a Backroad” after his 34-week run. This has all been made possible by Billboard’s ill-advised and shortsighted chart rules first implemented in 2012 that unfairly award pop artists for spins and play outside of country music’s purview and influence.
This week Bebe Rexha tops the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart for a 31st week, leaving her with only three weeks left to tie Sam Hunt. Her collaboration with Florida Georgia Line has already shattered every other record on the chart for female artists, solo artists, or any artist appearing on a country chart for the first time. She’s also at #1 once again on Billboard’s Country Streaming Songs chart, and the Country Digital Song Sales chart for another week, signaling the track’s success is showing no signs of slowing down, and might be poised to become the unofficial “country” music “song of the summer.”
This is all from an artist who is not country in any sense of the word, does not identify as a country artist, never meant “Never Meant to Be” to be considered a country song when it was first recorded and released, and had no idea who Florida Georgia Line was before collaborating them, let alone having any cursory knowledge of country music itself.
The one challenger who perhaps could have dethroned “Meant To Be” was Kane Brown’s “Heaven.” Similar to Bebe Rexha, Kane enjoys curiously-favorable placement on country music streaming playlists on Spotify, YouTube, and other places, as well as strong grassroots support. But “Heaven” peaked in sales and on country radio already. Since no other country artist receives radio play and support in the pop realm like Bebe Rexha does, it gives “Meant to Be” and incredibly unfair advantage over country artists. In 2012, Billboard tweaked its rules for the Hot Country Songs chart where any pop artist or song considered to be fit for the country realm would also have its plays, streams, and downloads counted on the country chart.
Meanwhile zooming out on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, the madness, rabid shortsightedness, and inherent unfairness of their methodology couldn’t be more obvious. As journalist Grady Smith recently pointed out, in the last 73 weeks of the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart dating back to February 25th, 2017, there have only been five total songs to crest the chart. Two of those—“Meant To Be” and Sam Hunt’s “Body Like a Backroad”—have benefited from pop plays and spins for a total of 65 weeks and counting. That means that over the past 1 1/2 years, two songs have occupied the chart’s top spot 89% of the time. And those two artists very specifically benefit from pop attention.
Weeks at #1 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs Since February 25th, 2017:
Sam Hunt – “Body Like A Backroad” (34 weeks)
Kane Brown – “What Ifs” (5 weeks)
Luke Combs – “When It Rains It Pours” (2 weeks)
LANCO – “Greatest Love Story” (1 week)
Bebe Rexha (ft. Florida Georgia Line) – “Meant to Be” (31 weeks, and counting)
This severe anomaly is shading out country artists on what is supposed to be a country music chart, and creating an extreme anomaly that renders the entire enterprise of charting country songs either comical, or obsolete. Add in the nefarious way songs like “Meant To Be” are being added to playlists, and it makes the monopoly at the top of the charts even more dubious. This especially hurts country music’s female performers since the slots for women are so few.
Billboard should rectify this clear incompetency of their current chart metrics, and it only has a few more weeks to do it before the history books will show forevermore that a pop star that never self-identified as country had the most successful song in the 70-year history of the chart.
July 5, 2018 @ 8:40 am
Hope to eat this cactus and stuck in her throat.
July 5, 2018 @ 3:14 pm
A fitting choice of header pic, considering she’s doing exactly what I would rather do than listen to her. 😀
July 5, 2018 @ 8:46 am
I predict that the next record breaking country song will be the McDonald’s jingle.
July 5, 2018 @ 10:57 am
Which was written by Justin Timberlake, so it’s not completely out of the question.
July 5, 2018 @ 9:08 am
The song actually stays strong and steady on the Hot 100 as well, as it gets dropped out of the top ten then back again then drop then back (but probably will drop again next week because Drake will release an album which will surely invade multiple charts, especially the Hot 100). The song also benefited from being included on her debut album Expectations, so I guess it will really steal Sam Hunt’s record on the country chart. I just hope after the song become the longest peaking song on the chart, it will stop there and drop. But it’s still a bit unlikely, because of what I said earlier (being included on Rexha’s album boosted the song’s chart performance again)
Anyway, I was actually hoping Sam Hunt and Kane Brown’s new singles will steal the top spot from her because their songs may be bad but people like their songs, and atleast they consider themselves mainstream country-pop singers, but the songs are not performing as good as what I hoped for.
July 5, 2018 @ 9:12 am
Sam Hunt’s “Downtown’s Dead” is the only song I see at the moment that could knock it out of the top spot, and only if it gets picked up significantly by pop stations. But like you said, it’s not performing particularly well, and would only knock it off because it’s another pop song. We could easily be looking at September or even later before this thing gets dethroned. Meanwhile Billboard’s chart managers are sitting on their hands.
July 5, 2018 @ 4:50 pm
Hey, Trigger could you do a review of Dan and Shays song Tequila?
July 5, 2018 @ 6:16 pm
Not one of those songs I have a ton to say about, but we’ll see. Thanks for the interest.
July 5, 2018 @ 6:28 pm
Yeah, “Tequila” is kind of one of those “meh” songs, not particularly good, not country, but mostly harmless compared to some other stuff out there.
July 5, 2018 @ 9:28 am
Calling this trash Country Music is sort of like calling an allen wrench a suspension bridge
July 5, 2018 @ 10:58 am
IF YOU GO TO A PANCAKE HOUSE AND THEY SERVE YOU STEAK
blah blah
we get it, already.
July 5, 2018 @ 11:33 am
It bears repeating.
July 5, 2018 @ 11:42 am
If everybody got it, I wouldn’t repeat it. but apparently there’s a lot of people who need to hear it.
July 5, 2018 @ 1:09 pm
One either get the difference between the “Blues” and “Zippity-Doo-Dah” or they don’t. If they don’t, my experience says it’s a waste of time trying to explain the difference. They may get there on their own. Probably not.
July 5, 2018 @ 1:18 pm
BEBE REXHA, MAREN MORRIS, SAM HUNT AND FLORIDA-GEORGIA LINE ARE REAL COUNTRY
blah blah
we get it, already.
July 5, 2018 @ 1:32 pm
I believe none of that, but um, ok?
July 5, 2018 @ 1:22 pm
Not to mention COUNTRY MUSIC MUST EVOLVE, Y’ALL ARE JUST JEALOUS/HATERS ETC.
we get that, too.
July 5, 2018 @ 10:10 am
While country sounds more pop than ever, most country stars don’t push hard for pop spins, so it’s unfair to include it. I’m sure the new ranking attempts to find out how popular a song is. That’s fine. We should have a chart for overall popularity then. You know like a pop chart. Oh, wait! We already have that. I don’t know why we can’t have, as we always have, have a chart that looks at a song’s overall popularity and a chart that shows it’s popularity on country radio.
To me it wasn’t broken. I don’t know why they fixed it.
July 5, 2018 @ 10:34 am
This is a good pop song, but as country, absolutely not. I like this song but it makes me sick to know what its doing to mainstream country. This is WAY more of a threat than Sam Hunt is I dont care what anyone says. Sam Hunt identifies as a country artist, Bebe Rexha identifies as a pop artist, a pop artist shattering records like this on country charts could mean a flood of failed pop artists to come into the country genre. I know Sam Hunt was looked at before as the “guy who destroyed country music” and as the biggest threat to mainstream country, but I think hes becoming the least of our worries now, especially with his talks of potentially recording a Tyler Childers song – he could be getting the point that he cannot make the same music hes making forever and expect to keep his career going strong, or who knows, maybe he doesnt give a fuck he said before that he was going to quit music altogether…
July 5, 2018 @ 1:15 pm
I begrudgingly agree this is worse than Sam Hunt. Yes, Sam Hunt’s not country, but it’s hard to argue against the fact that he’s at least part of the country industry, for better or worse. Right now country music is working as hard as it can to promote the pop side of the radio dial. Not sure how this serves anyone’s interest in country music.
July 5, 2018 @ 8:00 pm
Bebe Rexha is so bad that it’s actually made people like us have to defend the likes of Sam Hunt, and I think that’s what pisses me off the most.
July 5, 2018 @ 10:38 am
I seriously don’t understand how these people top the country charts. It’s like no one has any concept or remote memory how country music used to sound like.
I mean if Chris Stapleton was all of the sudden #1 on the “HOT R&B/HIP-HOP SONGS” billboard/chart people would be protesting on the streets, and flipping cop cars.
You can’t be clearly in genre X and be number#1 in genre Y.
July 5, 2018 @ 4:14 pm
But Chris Stapleton is R&B
July 5, 2018 @ 4:40 pm
Whiskey, I’m feeling more that way by the day. Does anyone remember actual country music? I know I do, but I think I’m a minority.
And we here sing the praises of Tyler Childers and Stapleton but really there are many other sounds in the history of country that are just waiting to be revived, rediscovered etc. I’m kinda wondering where is the next Vern Gosdin and Keith Whitley for example. Or how about Dolly and Tammy and Emmylou. Or Jerry Reed? So many different shades in the country spectrum that are near extinction.
July 5, 2018 @ 7:54 pm
Kevin
There is a singer named Kevin moon who might scratch your itch for some Vern and Whitley. He’s got 4 or so albums out. His latest was a tribute to Vern. I like him quite a bit, but the song writing obviously is not as good as hank Cochran, but that’s a given.
As for Emmylou, Kelsey Waldon I think has been doing fantastic stuff with good writing and a killer band.
July 5, 2018 @ 5:19 pm
“I seriously don’t understand how these people top the country charts. It’s like no one has any concept or remote memory how country music used to sound like.”
Here’s an interesting post from Feb. 2012 that says that Top 40 POP radio programmers are also programming their local country stations! WTF?
“This is another reason to despise the beancounters who’ve taken over radio in general, since many of the top 40 PDs who’ve been assigned to program their local country station really don’t know the format, or the music, as well as having a total disconnect between the format’s fans and the artists themselves, and especially with a format icon such as Martina.
It’s amazing that the format continues to do very well *in spite of them*.”
http://pulsemusic.proboards.com/post/3716581
July 5, 2018 @ 10:42 am
I really liked “Greatest Love Story”, but didn’t care much for the rest of the Lanco album.
“When it Rains it Pours” is one of my favorite Luke Combs tracks, really fun and catchy 🙂
July 5, 2018 @ 11:28 am
Me too. I didn’t care for Lanco’s voices but the story is good.
July 5, 2018 @ 11:06 am
The fat lady has sung………………the last nail is now in the country coffin!
July 5, 2018 @ 11:28 am
I know, music is a business. Fine. Got that out of the way. Now, the only song released in the last few years that could be considered as ‘ country ‘ would be Midlands ‘ Drinking Problem ‘ . The rest would be either pop or crossover. If you don’t understand tradition, you’ll go nowherr.
July 5, 2018 @ 11:38 am
Commercial music is a business. Any time you’re trying to make money with the music, you’re in the biz. No exceptions. The question is, which is to be master, art or commerce? Of the two, there always emerges a favorite.
July 5, 2018 @ 11:39 am
This my thing.. Even if Midland is a manufactured group, if they end up being very successful it will be a net gain for all of us because it will signal to major record labels that traditional country music is still very profitable and thus allow more traditional country artist/musicians bigger opportunities.
July 5, 2018 @ 11:57 am
Will never understand why people can’t celebrate the sucesss of others and feel like they need to fear them down. Bebe is an AMAZING song writer. And has written and performed songs is just about EVERY genre. Dance, Pop, Rap, Hip-Hop, Alternative Rock. She’s been writing music for YEARS. Talent is talent. I’m so mad I wasted my time reading this nonsense!!! Break records Bebe!!! Break em!
July 5, 2018 @ 1:04 pm
Bebe Rexha’s “success” is at the expense of country artists, tearing them down by subordinating them on charts where she doesn’t belong. I wish Bebe Rexha all the success in the world, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of the people who’ve devoted their lives to country music.
July 5, 2018 @ 2:48 pm
So… If I go into a Taco Bell, ask for a taco, and get told “we don’t serve tacos anymore, tacos evolved, here eat this spinach and if you don’t like it don’t come to taco bell” but the spinach is breaking records set by Taco Bell, that’s good?
Because I want a taco, and I don’t want spinach. and if spinach is breaking records set by tacos we have a problem.
and Bebe Rexha isn’t a great songwriter.
Just like a Big Mac isn’t a good sandwich.
Peter Ostroushko is a great songwriter. but you have to know not to start sentences with the word “and” in order to appreciate his songs.
July 6, 2018 @ 3:07 am
Jesus fucking CHRIST
July 5, 2018 @ 6:20 pm
I noticed you didn’t mention COUNTRY , Sean . Good for BR if she writes hits in other genres . THIS is the point ….SHE BELONGS IN OTHER GENRES . The more spins this song gets on country radio , the more actual country songs get overlooked . Is that fair ?
July 6, 2018 @ 5:55 pm
Dear Sean:
Just please shut the hell up. You are literally too stupid to insult!!!
July 5, 2018 @ 12:40 pm
Never read before such a biased and hateful article against a singer who in the end of the day is making young people listen to country despite the fact it has some pop vibes in it. Meant to be is an evolution of country music and Bebe does Pop, Rock, alternative, country, dance.
July 5, 2018 @ 1:40 pm
You actually read it? I see no evidence of that.
July 5, 2018 @ 2:30 pm
Music gets created, it doesn’t ‘evolve’ through trained monkeys.
If that’s music evolution then there is no God
July 5, 2018 @ 2:49 pm
How is it an evolution of Country Music?
is a corn dog an evolution of a pop tart?
You can’t just tell people that something evolved from something else when the two of them have nothing in common.
July 6, 2018 @ 5:55 am
Those food analogies are so played. Having said that, I completely agree with your last sentence.
July 6, 2018 @ 5:57 am
I don’t like them either. I get it. it’s tired.
Unfortunately I don’t know any better way to explain the issue to all the people to whom it needs explaining clearly
July 7, 2018 @ 8:53 am
It may be tired Fuzzy,but that one was perfect.
July 5, 2018 @ 10:23 pm
Bebe does country? This is her first ‘country’ song
July 5, 2018 @ 2:43 pm
It’s really the widespread airplay on pop and Hot AC pop that have helped “Meant To Be” stay on top so long. Same with “Body Like A Backroad’ last year. I don’t have a problem with the Hot Country Songs chart incorporating sales, streaming, and airplay as long as it’s COUNTRY-only airplay. It makes no sense to incorporate pop, hip-hop, rock, etc. airplay which could have pop remixes into the country chart. This would allow a Beyonce song to be #1 on Hot Country Songs for months as long as it was officially sent to country radio for adds, even if it got little to no country airplay. Before 1990, the official Billboard country chart DID combine single sales and country-only airplay, so they have a precedent for this type of chart (sales/streaming + country-only airplay).
July 5, 2018 @ 3:13 pm
I don’t think the article is actually against BeBe; it’s against the charting of these type songs. It says she never set out to make a ‘Country’ song. If I read it right, the problem is not her, it’s that it ended up on the ‘Country’ charts.
A bit off-topic, hate that type photo she posed for. People in music can have fun with posing, but when a gal poses like this, like it or not, it sends a certain msg. Maybe she doesn’t care, but it could cause at least some people to not respect her musically as much as they would. Like I said, maybe she doesn’t care, or even wants that attn. It just doesn’t help to get respect for your music, just attn for other things.
…….”This esp hurts Country music’s female performers, since the slots for women are so few.” –It seems time for an ‘unspoken rule’ to start, that no guy in mainstream Country make any song/collaboration with any gal outside of Country music right now. The serious problem with the lack of women getting played on Country radio and therefore on the charts needs to be dealt with now, by anyone who can do anything about it. I also can imagine how women in Country music take it to see Pop singers team up with guys in Country and do well on the charts and on radio that wont play their songs. Like salt in the wound.
July 5, 2018 @ 3:28 pm
We’re not blaming the “artists” or the “song” in this thread. This is the fault of a “system” that is corrupted and broken. The radio business is corrupt and the Billboard charting rules are a joke. Together they are the system. I don’t think any of us really care about the fuckin song itself or who wrote or sings it other than it not being Country. A song is a fuckin song, after someone records it they have no say in what happens after that. A broken outdated system takes over after a song is pushed to radio and THIS is what can happen. We have to keep bitching about it every day to be heard and make change.
July 5, 2018 @ 4:36 pm
Hi JB, you might not have even seen my comment when you wrote yours, but I was in response to the comment at 12:40pm. I prob should have written it directly as a Reply.
July 5, 2018 @ 4:23 pm
I saw on Mediabase that Dan + Shay’s “Tequila” got 1 add on a Top 40 station (Sirius XM’s Top 40 station) this week. “Tequila” has the best shot right now of dethroning “Meant To Be,” with “Tequila” moving from #34 to #21 on the Hot 100 and “Meant To Be” at #10 but losing steam in airplay.
I would imagine “Tequila” has probably about peaked out on country airplay at #1 and 60 million audience impressions, though. Will it be plummeting quickly down the country airplay chart pretty soon?
July 5, 2018 @ 7:32 pm
its holding pretty strong right now at #1, itll likely get its 2nd week at #1 no problem.
July 5, 2018 @ 8:08 pm
I was wondering because usually after a song hits #1 on country airplay for 1 week (or maybe 2 weeks) it plummets quickly.
July 6, 2018 @ 4:08 pm
It’s important to remember that Dan + Shay and Kenny Chesney are labelmates at Warners Bros. Nashville now.
It’s also noteworthy that “Get Along” is Chesney’s first single with Warner Bros. Nashville.
“Tequila” is currently in the midst of its final week at #1 before it throws everything behind “Get Along” this coming week. I simply see no opening for “Tequila” to dethrone “Meant to Be” with the streaming gap.
July 6, 2018 @ 4:04 pm
“Meant to Be” has a large advantage in streaming, however.
On the daily YouTube streaming chart, “Meant to Be” is at #88 today while “Tequila” is absent altogether from the Top 500. On Spotify the margin is much narrower (“Meant to Be” at #66, “Tequila” at #86), but it’s still a considerable stream margin and Dan + Shay simply won’t have enough to cover the spread despite their advantage in sales.
July 6, 2018 @ 11:34 pm
Yeah, that’s true. The unfortunate thing is all of that stream advantage for “Meant to Be” is due to its huge exposure to listeners on pop and Hot AC radio.
July 5, 2018 @ 4:48 pm
Is there any reason why Bebe Rexha always has to have her tongue out? Is she trying to be like Miley Cyrus?
July 6, 2018 @ 9:35 am
Pornification, I’m guessing. Sex sells.
July 5, 2018 @ 5:54 pm
And people wonder why the heck it is that the corporate Nashville mainstream gets such a pranging over here, right?
I keep trying to wrap my mind around how this basically processed single ever got up to #1 on any chart to start with, let alone the country AND pop charts for such an obscene amount of time. After all, it features two bro-country chuckleheads who absolutely despoil the idea of harmony singing being put side-by-side with a pop music “vixen” (for lack of a better term) who, apart from not being all that much to write home about as a Pop vocalist, in terms of Country makes Olivia Newton-John in her 1974-75 country/pop crossover phase seem far more authentically country than anyone ever gave HER credit for (and I stand by that last part quite firmly).
And then I have to remind myself that this is just the way Nashville does things these days: a “throw something at the wall and see if it’ll stick” mentality. Commercially, it works…for now. Creatively, however, it is a train wreck; and in the long run, it helps put the country music genre in the ICU (IMHO).
July 5, 2018 @ 6:55 pm
ONJ in her ’74-75 phase was Tammy Wynette compared to Bebe Rexha. Heck, even during her “Physical” phase she was arguably more country, lol:
https://youtu.be/1hrtLkOt8eg?list=PLAQqTZeJr20qPbuSxihi080necc_TVf-N&t=22
July 5, 2018 @ 6:02 pm
It’s bizarre how this particular chart is so broken when that wasn’t the way it was originally…what we now know as the “Hot Country Airplay” chart didn’t become the industry standard until 1990, so that means that the platform before that year was a chart based on radio airplay as well as total sales. If you look at the #1 songs from the 1980’s especially, it was a constantly-revolving door of artists; only seldom did the average #1 hit last longer than two weeks. I have no clue what could be behind this chart becoming so broken. I realize that Bebe gets airplay on pop radio and has the benefit of wider exposure to a pop audience but is the country industry so dead right now that they can’t even produce ONE song that outsells her?
July 5, 2018 @ 8:27 pm
The charts before 1990 were definitely interesting. Before BDS started monitoring accurate computer-tracked airplay on the Billboard Country chart in January 1990, there were 367 songs that made the top 75 on the Billboard Country chart in 1988 and 376 in 1989 vs. only 238 in 1990 and 272 in 1991. So apparently country radio had been playing a lot fewer songs before 1990 than the charts were showing.
July 5, 2018 @ 8:40 pm
The playlists that program directors submitted in the pre monitoring era were largely fiction. There is no earthly way that every song that would go #1 will then automatically fall to like 14 on the next weeks chart yet it happened week after week year after year both all time classics and forgettable filler had the same thing happen to them.
July 5, 2018 @ 10:25 pm
But even nowadays most of the time after a song hits #1 on country airplay it falls to like #6 or #9 the next week. Like Maren Morris’s “I Could Use A Love Song” earlier this year which hit #1 on airplay then fell to #9 the next week. Also “Losing Sleep” by Chris Young hit #1 then fell to #7 the next week, “Legends” by Kelsea Ballerini hit #1 then fell to #9 the next week, “Broken Halos” by Stapleton hit #1 then down to #7 the next week, “For The First Time” by Darius Rucker #1 then down to #9 the next week.
July 5, 2018 @ 10:37 pm
But not always. Look at the most recent chart. The Combs song and the Kane Brown song are both former number ones that are still in the top five several weeks after dropping and the DLM/Chesney song is dropping somewhat slower.
One of the best ways to judge if a song is a legit hit is how it drops from the top because that is in some ways the only time when a song is being played because it’s actually in demand. The label promotion is often gone so stations that play it are doing it because it works for them. Of course none of this means these songs are any good but they undeniably hits.
July 5, 2018 @ 10:41 pm
Not always though. The Combs song and Kane Brown song are both still top five weeks after peaking. Been several examples of this best seen with ‘Body Like A Back Road’ which stayed in the top ten for months after peaking. These are the real hits.
July 6, 2018 @ 2:40 am
ScottyJ,
Yeah, that’s a good point. “Meant To Be” spent 3 weeks in the top 5 after peaking at #1 in late April. Would you say that was a real radio hit? If so, that’s kind of scary that this pop song by a pop tart girl was a bonafide country radio hit.
July 6, 2018 @ 9:20 pm
Yes, probably but not on the same level as a few others. There really seem to be tiers of hits with sort of mirage hits like that last Rucker #1 and ‘I Lived It’ by Blake Shelton which were pushed up to the top five and then when the pushing stopped they took massive and fast tumbles. Then you have the middle ground hits that work there way up and then linger for a couple weeks and then disappear. Then you got your big hits which linger for several weeks and then live on for months in recurrent play. Check out the top recurrent hits in Billboard Country AirPlay report. ‘Body Like A Back Road’ is still on there almost a year later. That dumbass song is a massive hit even though it is god awful.
July 6, 2018 @ 11:40 pm
ScottyJ,
That’s kind of depressing and weird that people aren’t totally sick of “Body Like A Backroad” yet. They’ve been hearing it every day for a year and a half. lol
July 5, 2018 @ 6:25 pm
Given this, why would anyone pay any serious attention to the charts? And what the fuck is wrong with people? I read about how country music is all about the right thinkin’ God fearin’ hard workin’ people in the middle of the country. Really? If so, fuck ’em. Morons. The people who listen to this shit are not right thinkin’ God fearin’ hard workin’ people in the middle of the country, they are mini-van or giant SUV drivin’ assholes who used to listen to real music but now have kids and like lemmings listen to shit like Bebe Rexha and FLG. Fuck them. Every one of them.
July 5, 2018 @ 9:49 pm
I 100% support this article and hate pop music anywhere near my country music. But who cares at this point. No one actually thinks Sam Hunt’s garbage is country, or Bebe Rexha either. Billboard should get the pop music rules off the country chart. But again who cares, we just pretty much know the songs that do well on this chart are just the most trash. No actually country consistantly will be on the top of this chart. Its basically just a waste of time.
July 6, 2018 @ 12:02 am
Trigger you really need to devote more real estate on this page to the people who are actually saving country music, and less to the ones who don’t have a clue what it is.
You also need to stop acting like charts are relevant in 2018. They aren’t. They only reflect what the labels and the radio people want them to reflect. They in no way reflect what the people who visit this page listen to so why do you keep writing about it? Charts have zero meaning in our world. Stop covering the artists and music that we despise. You don’t need to tell us FGLand Sam Hunt make shitty music. We know. That’s why we originally came here. To see true country artists get some ink because nobody else is writing about them.
But lately you spend more time bitching about the shit coming out of Nashville then you do about the pure magic coming out of Kentucky.
Get back to Saving Country Music.
July 6, 2018 @ 2:48 am
A lot of the people who come here (probably most actually) ONLY listen to mainstream pop country for their country fix, at least at first. That’s how I was when I first came here a few years ago…I was drawn to a rant article I enjoyed about a mainstream country act, then I hung around and discovered who Chris Stapleton and Isbell and Tyler Childers and Sunny Sweeney were.
July 6, 2018 @ 7:40 am
Yep. This is what Saving Country Music is designed to do. Take away the critical coverage, and all we’re doing is preaching to a choir. Good for some, but not what I’m interested. I’m interested in saving country music.
July 6, 2018 @ 11:26 am
Same here. I discovered this site when TSwift released 1989 and Trig made a review for it. I of course disagreed with the review at first because it’s a pop album so why would country critic review it? But then i went on to read some articles and discovered artists I wouldnt have known if I only relied on stuff like Taste of Country or some other country music sites that focuses on mainstream acts. I only became a little active commenting a few months ago though, but only mostly just on country-pop related articles, since that’s the side of country music that I’m familiar with
I agree with Rob on some aspects though. I discovered countrier artist through this site so i hope it will be focused on more (though we actually have healthy ammounts of that stuff but i dont know, he probably crave for more)
July 6, 2018 @ 10:22 am
I’m just really upset that Bebe Rexha can have more success on country radio than two actually country, female artists—Kacey Musgraves and Ashley Monroe.
July 6, 2018 @ 3:55 pm
I predict “Simple” will be the eventual song to dethrone “Meant to Be”.
In other words, Florida Georgia Line will replace themselves at #1 and could very well go on a minimum of 40 consecutive weeks at the summit! =X
Dan & Shay’s “Tequila” has actually been able to edge “Meant to Be” in sales this week, and isn’t far off it in airplay either. But the thing is that “Meant to Be” maintains a wide edge in streaming that’s directly related to the strategic playlist placement. “Meant to Be” is #88 on today’s daily YouTube streaming chart, while “Tequila” is completely absent from the Top 500. The margin is considerably smaller on Spotify where “Meant to Be” is at #66 today while “Tequila” is at #86………………but it’s still remarkable in that “Tequila” is at maximal airplay presently through the end of this week and also was buoyed by the release of its parent album a week ago, and so if it can’t vault a track with as prolonged a run as it has had at its peak activity, it underscores how ridiculous the chart rule is.
Again, I predict “Simple” will be the track that dethrones it. But I think “Meant to Be” will remain in the top spot for about another month before it happens.
July 6, 2018 @ 11:55 pm
Curated playlists are messing things up. Same with “album bombs” like Drake’s new album this past week where all 15+ songs took up the top 15 or so positions on the Spotify chart simply because people were streaming the whole album, not because they actually wanted to hear each individual song. Heck, they might have been on the toilet and not even listening while the Drake album was playing in their bedroom, lol.
I wish streams didn’t count toward the singles charts if they are part of a curated playlist or if they weren’t actually clicked on by the listener (i.e. songs that auto-play as part of an album or curated playlist). Self-created playlist songs would count, though.
July 7, 2018 @ 7:12 am
One good thing is that Billboard has now started weighing paid streams more than free streams in its charts, meaning people who subscribe to streaming services as opposed to ad supported or YouTube stream get a bigger say so.
July 7, 2018 @ 7:16 am
I agree that’s the best contender at the moment. My question is if it will be after the all-time record is tied or broken. “Simple” to me is just too dry to be a super hit, but I think as it’s peaking, “Meant to Be” will be falling. So Florida Georgia Line beats out Florida Georgia Line for the next #1. Add “Up Down” to the mix, and basically Florida Georgia Line IS mainstream country at the moment.
July 7, 2018 @ 7:19 am
Stop the world and let me off.
July 8, 2018 @ 9:58 pm
Billboard charts don’t mean anything anymore. Its a sham and a joke.
July 9, 2018 @ 9:27 am
‘It doesn’t matter what you think!’
– The Rock
I think we all need to indulge Trigger in these types of stories–chart insanity, awards show bullshit, radio nonsense, social media war games, etc. They’re all legitimate stories, even if I gave my last fuck about them many moons ago.
Let the web traffic get drawn in and then hopefully they’ll see something else on here that will help them see the light.
That is all.