Billboard’s Senior Country Chart Manager Departs. What It Could Mean

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Unless you work in the country music industry, the name Jim Asker probably doesn’t ring a bell to you. But as Billboard’s senior manager of the country music charts, some of his decisions over the last decade have been the most titanic, and historically significant in the genre’s history. Taking over the role from Wade Jessen who held the position for 20 years previously, Asker presided over the moments that have made the term “country” more open, more obfuscated from its original meaning, and more confused and full of conflict than ever before.

When Jim Asker took over the position in 2015 while presiding over the Christian and Gospel charts as well, country music and the Billboard charts were already going through a dramatic period of transition. The country songs charts had recently been split into one chart measuring radio play, and another measuring consumption in the “Hot Country Songs” chart. Billboard had also just ushered in an era where song streams were weighted in album calculations.

This was also at the height of Bro-Country when the boundaries in popular country were being pushed farther and wider than ever before.

The Billboard chart manager position could be considered one of the premier “gatekeepers” of the entire country music industry, if not the biggest gatekeeper since its their decision what ends up on the country charts, and what doesn’t. Early in his tenure, Jim Asker signaled that perhaps he would take this responsibility seriously, safeguarding what could be considered “country.” If anything, his definition was too austere when he forbid the Fort Worth-based band Green River Ordinance from appearing on the country charts, while acts like Sam Hunt and Florida Georgia Line appeared on the charts unquestioned.

Perhaps the most controversial and consequential decision Jim Asker ever made is when Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” first appeared on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart at #19 on March 11th, 2019, before Asker decided the song actually wasn’t country, and removed it from the chart published March 18th, deciding Lil Nas X had purposely manipulated the track’s metadata, fully knowing it would chart higher if sent to country as opposed to hip-hop/R&B.

After Asker’s decision, Rolling Stone published an article called Lil Nas X’s ‘Old Town Road’ Was a Country Hit. Then Country Changed Its Mind on March 26th—a full nine days after the removal of the song. In fact a whole new weekly chart cycle had passed and been published when Rolling Stone chose to address the issue. However with the misleading headline of the article blaming “country music” as opposed to Billboard and Jim Asker for the removal—and with the insinuations by Rolling Stone that the removal had been racially motivated—it set off a media firestorm on if Lil Nas X had been a victim of racism.

Within days, the biggest story in all of entertainment media was how “country music” had removed Lil Nas X from the country charts because he was Black, with little context or counterpoints being offered about how and why Billboard and Asker had arrived at their conclusions. Strangely, Pitchfork, Salon, NPR, and other outlets falsely claimed it was Saving Country Music that somehow was responsible for the removal, even though SCM didn’t even address “Old Town Road” until after Asker made his decision.

Nonetheless, “Old Town Road” remained removed from country, and that decision stands to this day. But with the overwhelming claims of racism stemming from the incident, this set the table for the inclusion of other songs and albums that likely didn’t deserve to be considered for Billboard’s country charts, namely Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, which the superstar herself said “ain’t a country album,” but Billboard chose to include in country anyway, likely knowing the backlash would be incindiary if they chose otherwise.

This issue would come up again when Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter tour was also named the “biggest tour in Billboard boxscore history.”

But perhaps the most significant decision during Jim Asker’s tenure did not involve race at all. It was deciding that pop star Bebe Rexha’s song “Meant To Be” deserved to be on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart despite not even characterizing itself as a country song, and simply because Florida Georgia Line appeared on the track.

To this day, it’s a pop star and a pop song that holds the Billboard Hot Country Songs record for the most weeks at #1 with 50. Bebe Rexha has subsequently never shown interest in country at all, and didn’t even know who Florida Georgia Line was when she collaborated with them. The song beat out another dubious Jim Asker inclusion in Sam Hunt’s “Body Like a Backroad” to earn the historic, and likely, insurmountable achievement.

By all accounts, Jim Asker is a good guy on a personal level. He’s a Leukemia survivor, despite at one point only being given weeks to live, and is an avid marathon runner. Billboard penned a glowing tribute to Asker ahead of his official departure on August 15th. No replacement has been named as of yet. Asker plans to return to academia where worked before taking the position at Billboard.

For the country music fans who believe that the genre should have some semblance of borders, however loosely defined, should they hold out hope that the departure of Jim Asker will usher in a new era where some sonic sanity returns to the Billboard Country charts? That feels like very wishful thinking. It might be difficult to impossible to put that genie back in the bottle with the precedents the Jim Asker era has now set. But one can hold out hope a new regime might mean a fresh approach.

But in truth, the cumulative decisions not just by Jim Asker, but the entirety of the Billboard universe have made the most important charts in the music industry virtually meaningless to many, if not the majority of the actual country music community. They have long ceased to measure the interests and economic activity of actual country music fans, and instead carry water for the agendas of individuals decidedly outside of the country music fold, often with ulterior purposes.

The false pretense that having country music sound like every other genre somehow celebrates “diversity” instead of ushering in the death of it—and demanding that non-country artists, albums, and songs be counted on country charts—has made those charts more irrelevant than ever. It’s a great illustration of how institutions attempting to placate the loudest voices in the room often results in winning (or avoiding) battles online, but losing the overall war.

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