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.
If Bebe Rexha herself is not claiming to be country, then why the hell has her song been #1 on the country charts for 15 weeks now, and just broke the Top 10 at country radio? Someone please send Bebe Rexha’s quote over to Billboard’s country chart manager Jim Asker and have him explain to us why this ruse continues.
For the last couple of years country fans have been questioning how chart managers for Billboard and other entities could listen to certain songs or performers and consider them country in the slightest. Yet here is a band making music that’s more country than it is anything else, and more country than most of what you hear on country radio, and Billboard is denying their admittance on the country charts.