The Meaningless Billboard Florida Georgia Line Songs Record
(Editor’s note: This is a rare Saving Country Music guest contribution. It comes from Deb Bose, aka Windmills Country, originally posted it at mjsbigblog.com. You can also follow Windmills Country on Twitter.)
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Billboard and the echo chamber that is much of the entertainment media/blogosphere made much hoopla last week over Florida-Georgia Line’s “Cruise” breaking the all-time record for weeks at #1 on the Hot Country Songs chart. With 22 weeks and counting atop the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, “Cruise” surpassed the 21-week totals accumulated by Eddy Arnold’s “I’ll Hold You in My Heart (Till I Can Hold You in My Arms)” in 1947-1948, Hank Snow’s “I’m Moving On” in 1950, and Webb Pierce’s “In The Jailhouse Now” in 1955. Although Billboard acknowledges that this happened because of its new chart methodology (introduced in October 2012) incorporating airplay from all genres, paid digital download sales, and streaming into chart rankings for its genre-specific Hot Songs charts, it has failed to acknowledge how much this new chart record misrepresents the real impact of “Cruise” compared to other big country hits.
Closer scrutiny of the charts shows that, contrary to the flashy press releases and hype you may see regarding Florida-Georgia Line’s “Cruise,” its “record-setting” week is the historical achievement that isn’t. As I will show below, Cruise” isn’t even the biggest country hit in the past 3 years, never mind all time. The fact that “Cruise” is now Billboard’s record holder is the direct result of the timing of a methodology change, and if the same methodology were in place 7 years ago, “Cruise” would now rank 3rd or 4th among country crossover hits. Not first, and not close to first.
Background
Let’s start by acknowledging the following: with 5.35 million in download sales and counting (41% and counting of that total from a remix of the song featuring rapper Nelly according to Wade Jessen of Billboard), plus major cross-format airplay that led to a #1 peak on the country airplay charts followed by top-10 peaks on the CHR/Pop and Adult Pop/HAC airplay charts, “Cruise” is an undeniably huge hit. Let’s also acknowledge Billboard’s well-intentioned desire to capture the changing environment for music consumption, which is what prompted last October’s move to carry the Hot 100 methodology over to genre-specific songs charts.
But let’s also note the problems with the change. Foremost, the incorporation of airplay from other formats basically handed control of the top of Billboard’s genre-specific Hot Songs charts over to programmers of the format that generates the largest audience impressions: Contemporary Hit Radio(or CHR)/Top 40. Because CHR/Top 40 programmers allot significantly more spins to their top songs than country programmers, more than twice as many in most cases, top 10 CHR/Top 40 hits generate larger audience impressions than top 10 country hits, and that’s before you consider the spillover from CHR/Top 40 playlists into Adult Top 40 (or Hot AC) and Adult Contemporary playlists. A look at the current Billboard airplay charts shows that the #10 song on the Billboard CHR/Top 40 chart (“Same Love” by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis featuring Mary Lambert) racked up higher audience impressions (49.558 million) than the current #1 song on the Billboard Country Airplay chart (“Runnin’ Outta Moonlight” by Randy Houser, which racked up 45.785 million AIs).
Let’s also make it clear that the objections to the new Hot Country Songs methodology have never been the incorporation of sales and streaming into a genre chart. The objection is to the inclusion of airplay from other formats on a genre-specific chart, especially the inclusion of airplay from other formats for remixes of a song, and also to the inclusion of sales of remixes on a genre-specific chart. Had the Hot Country Songs chart counted only airplay and sales for the original Florida-Georgia Line-only version of “Cruise,” the chart would have come closer to a true representation of the impact of “Cruise” as a “country” song. Let us also note that despite acknowledging that it was the release of the remix with Nelly that led to “Cruise”‘s surge back to #1 on the Hot Country Songs chart and crediting Nelly on the Hot 100 chart, Billboard declined to credit Nelly on the Hot Country Songs chart.
How Billboard Overstates “Cruise”s Impact Compared To Other Crossover Hits
Now, let’s dig deeper to show just how unrepresentative the current Billboard Hot Country Songs historical ledger is when it comes to chart impact. To do that, let’s look at the airplay peaks and sales of some of the biggest crossover hits of the past seven years (arranged in chronological order of release)
Digital download sales
Carrie Underwood, “Before He Cheats” (charted from 2006-2007): 3.82 million
Taylor Swift, “Love Story” (charted from 2008-2009): 5.6 million (according to Billboard)
Taylor Swift, “You Belong With Me” (charted from 2009-2010): 4.3 million (as of 6/12/13, according to this article)
Lady Antebellum, “Need You Now” (charted from 2009-2010): 6.2 million (according to Billboard)
Florida-Georgia Line, “Cruise” (charted from 2012-2013): 5.3 million (according to Billboard)
Sales of ‘host’ album
Carrie Underwood, Some Hearts (released November 2005): 7.334 million as of 8/10/13 Billboard chart
Taylor Swift, Fearless (released November 2008): 6.757 million as of 8/10/13 Billboard chart
Lady Antebellum, Need You Now (released January 2009): 3.996 million as of the 6/01/13 Billboard chart
Florida-Georgia Line, Here’s To The Good Times (released December 2012): 917k as of 8/10/13 Billboard chart
Country Airplay peaks:
“Before He Cheats”: #1 for 5 weeks (5 weeks at #1 on Hot Country Songs)
“Love Story”: #1 for 2 weeks (2 weeks at #1 on Hot Country Songs)
“You Belong With Me”: #1 for 2 weeks (2 weeks at #1 on Hot Country Songs)
“Need You Now”: #1 for 5 weeks (5 weeks at #1 on Hot Country Songs)
“Cruise”: #1 for 3 weeks (22 weeks and counting at #1 on Hot Country Songs)
Pop Songs (CHR/Top 40 Airplay) peaks:
“Before He Cheats”: #9
“Love Story”: #1
“You Belong With Me”: #2
“Need You Now”: #2
“Cruise”: #7
Adult Pop Songs (Hot AC Airplay) peaks:
“Before He Cheats”: #5
“Love Story”: #3
“You Belong With Me”: #2
“Need You Now”: #1
“Cruise”: #6
Adult Contemporary Songs peaks:
“Before He Cheats”: #6
“Love Story”: #1
“You Belong With Me”: #1
“Need You Now”: #1
“Cruise”: TBD “Cruise” is currently #17 on the AC chart.
So “Cruise” is the #3 digital download seller, its host album is at less than 1/4 of total sales of other albums with big crossover hits and unlikely to ever reach their sales levels, its pop airplay peaks are lower than those of “Need You Now,” “Love Story” and “You Belong With Me,” and it spent less time at #1 on the country airplay charts than “Need You Now” and “Before He Cheats.” Yet the historical record represented by Billboard Hot Country Songs claims that “Cruise” is by far the biggest Hot Country Songs hit.
Obviously, the reason for the discrepancy is the difference in methodology in tabulating the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. “Need You Now,” “Love Story” “You Belong With Me,” and “Before He Cheats” accrued their weeks atop Hot Country Songs when it was a country airplay-only survey. But just how off is the historical record that the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart represents when it comes to “Cruise” vis a vis other big crossover hits?
The Data
Well, the closest we can get to assessing this question is to comb through the Hot 100 charts, which since February 2005 have reflected the top songs by all-format airplay and paid digital downloads. As of October 2012, the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart is simply a distillation of the top country songs on or eligible to chart on the Hot 100. So, using Hot 100 rankings for country songs over the past 8 years will give us an extremely close approximation of what the top of Hot Country Songs chart would have looked like had it been constructed using the methodology used today (the only difference is that streaming data is absent from Hot 100 calculations prior to March 2012 in the case of Spotify and other audio streaming services and prior to February 2013 in the case of Youtube and other video streaming services).
I went back through the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the October 7, 2006 chart and noted the top charting country song on the Hot 100 every week, which would have been the #1 ranking song on the Billboard Hot Country Songs under the new methodology (minus streams, but those often favor crossover hits, anyway). Here’s what I found:
Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats” was the Hot 100”²s top ranking country song from: the 10/21/06 chart through the 2/24/07 chart, from the 3/24/07 chart through the 4/7/07 chart, on the 4/28/07 and 5/5/07 charts, and again from the 5/26/07 chart through the 9/08/07 chart.
Total weeks “Before He Cheats” spent as the top ranking country song on the Hot 100:40
Taylor Swift’s “Love Story” was the Hot 100”²s top ranking country-based song from the 9/27/08 chart through the 10/25/08 chart, on the 11/8/08 chart, and again from the 12/06/08 chart until either 3/21/09 chart if you want to count Miley Cyrus’s “The Climb” as a country song or until the 4/4/09 chart (when the Carrie Underwood/Randy Travis duet version of “I Told You So” rode a sales wave to become the top ranking country song on the Hot 100). Starting with the 4/11/09 chart through the 6/13/09 chart, “Love Story” was the top ranking country song unless, again, “The Climb” counts.
Total weeks “Love Story” spent as the top ranking country based song on the Hot 100: (if we don’t count “The Climb” as a country song) 33 (if we do count “The Climb” as a country song): 21
Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me” became the Hot 100”²s top ranking country-based song either on the 7/04/09 chart (if we don’t count “The Climb”) or on the 7/11/09 chart (if we do count “The Climb” as a country song) and remained in that position through the 11/07/09 chart. It once again became the Hot 100”²s top ranking country based song on the 11/21/09 chart and for 3 weeks starting with the 1/09/10 chart.
Total weeks “You Belong With Me” spent as the top ranking country based song on the Hot 100: (if we don’t count “The Climb” as a country song) 23 (if we do count “The Climb” as a country song): 22
Lady Antebellum’s “Need You Now” was the top ranking country-based song on the Hot 100 starting with the 11/28/2009 chart through the 1/2/2010 chart and again on the 1/30/2010 chart. “Need You Now” also held the top ranking for country based songs on the Hot 100 from the 2/13/2010 chart straight through to the 8/27/2010 chart.
Total weeks “Need You Now” spent as the top ranking country based song on the Hot 100: 33
Lengths of other notable reigns as the top ranking country or country based song on the Hot 100:
Miley Cyrus,”The Climb” (if we count it as eligible for Hot Country Songs): 15 weeks
Taylor Swift, “Teardrops On My Guitar”: 12 weeks
Taylor Swift, “Back To December”: 13 weeks
The Band Perry, “If I Die Young”: 10 weeks
Jason Aldean (featuring Ludacris), “Dirt Road Anthem”: 8 weeks (tied for the longest reign since October 2006 without major crossover airplay)
Luke Bryan, “Drunk On You”: 8 weeks (tied for the longest reign since October 2006 without major crossover airplay)
“Cruise” has just achieved 22 weeks as the top ranking country based song on the Hot 100, but had the same Hot Country Songs methodology been in place 7 years ago, it would still be months away from catching Lady Antebellum’s “Need You Now,” Taylor Swift’s “Love Story” (arguably), and Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats.” With “Cruise” now on the decline, Luke Bryan set to release a new album on 8/13 and hits by Randy Houser and Hunter Hayes gathering airplay and sales momentum, it is unlikely “Cruise” will be able to maintain its perch as the top ranking country song for the time needed to match those other crossover hits.
Conclusion
What’s illustrated above is why Billboard’s crowning of Florida-Georgia Line’s “Cruise” as the longest Billboard Hot Country Songs chart-topper of all time is a milestone without meaning. As music awards season heats up, we can likely expect a lot of crowing from Florida-Georgia Line’s team about “Cruise’s” achievement and why it’s necessary for the industry to acknowledge it over more acclaimed, substantial and risky work like that of country singer/songwriter Kacey Musgraves. But as you can see, this is a historical accomplishment that isn’t, and it exposes more than anything why Billboard importing the 68 year history of the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart into the chart with this new methodology has compromised Billboard’s status as a reliable and representative historical chart authority. There is more reason than ever to not believe the hype.
August 6, 2013 @ 10:55 am
Dang fine work Trig. Numbers don’t lie. Sad really the country music anti- Christ gets to use the gift Billboard gave him to strike gold again. Long love independent music.
August 6, 2013 @ 11:03 am
Windmills Country did all the work, but you’re right, once again Scott Borchetta is the one who ends up walking out on top. He is on an incredible winning streak that is showing no signs of stopping.
August 6, 2013 @ 11:53 am
Good work, I suspected this was true, but am glad to see it all spelled out. Of course, it’s not like I’m crying over Taylor Swift and Lady Antebellum not getting the attention they deserve.
Also, no disrespect to the artists who Florida Georgia Line surpassed, but it does show that high sales does not mean a lasting legacy. Very few people would put any of Eddie Arnold’s songs on their top 50 country songs. I’d say in the Jailhouse Now (and most people associate it with Jimmie Rodgers and Johnny Cash) and Crazy Arms are the only songs on that list that are that well known.
August 6, 2013 @ 12:21 pm
Thanks Trigger for posting this here.
My purpose in digging into this particular issue is really to show how broken the chart system and the historical record presented by Billboard is at this time. The “Cruise” “record” is going to be surpassed at some point, maybe by the next Taylor Swift song Billboard counts as country and gets enough crossover airplay, so Florida-Georgia Line is only an issue here to the extent its label and management are going around bragging about its achievement for the sake of getting pumped with industry awards. The congratulatory ad that’s among the pictures attached to this post (which appears in this week’s Billboard Country Update and Country Aircheck) is an example of what I’m talking about.
The vast majority of people who read here at SCM don’t confuse chart success with quality. But I think we commonly associate chart success with popular relevance, for better or worse. What I tried to illustrate with this blog is just how wildly this particular chart milestone overstates “Cruise”‘s popular relevance compared to other hits of the past 10 years. That reflects poorly on Billboard as a chart authority.
Not that “Cruise” hasn’t been hugely successful (which is not an encouraging thing in and of itself, especially with the hiphop trend in mainstream country growing). But I also think it’s important not to empower Florida-Georgia Line/”Cruise”/Big Machine by assigning them more historical relevance than they have. These are entities that thrive on unearned hype and are masters at generating more hype from it. I just wanted to do my little part to deflate the balloon, and hopefully encourage more scrutiny of what these chart milestones really mean in the future.
August 6, 2013 @ 12:36 pm
Very nice analysis but.. the rules are the rules and rules change all the time. To use a sports analogy when the NFL went to a 16 game season, all of the single season records were easily broken, along with the all-time records eventually. Is it fair to the players who only played in 12 game seasons, no. But it doesn’t matter, the new records are the new records like it or not.
August 6, 2013 @ 1:53 pm
I agree to an extent, but the problem with charts is they become self-fulfilling. The industry watches them, and when they see something succeed, they tend to copy it. That is why charts can have a real effect on music trends, they’re not just meaningless numbers that we can decide or not decide to pay attention to.
But I’m also conflicted about to what extent we should complain about this problem. Extending the sports analogy, I don’t want to come across as a sore loser, or a loser who then turns around and complains about the officials. As much as the rules may now be rigged and unfair, the bigger fight still lays in the court of public opinion, and we need to champion good songs and good artists to put a dent in the trends Billboard’s chart rules might be creating.
August 6, 2013 @ 4:12 pm
The NFL is still football though. It didn’t change to some weaker sport NFL fans don’t like. The main problem with the Billboard change is that it encourages and rewards the country music industry (labels, aritists, radio, CMA Fest, Billboard, awards, etc.) to change the music to weaker pop/rap, which is why the change was made so country could go pop like Bill Werde said when he defended it (and to further promote that like the misleading ad in Billboard does). When we turn TV on to watch a football game we expect to see football and still do. When we turn country radio on we expect to hear country music, not the pop and rap they are playing.
August 7, 2013 @ 8:24 am
Well, with the way they’ve changed the rules to favor the offense(don’t you dare touch that quarterback or receiver), put in penalties for celebrations and diluted the talent pool with expansion you could argue, and some have,,that they have watered down the game to get more offense and have more people watch. Same as country is adding pop, rap etc elements, to get more people to listen
July 9, 2014 @ 2:03 pm
The analogy works when comparing old records vs new records, but I would say that the NFL rule changes did not make shitty players better than their contemporary terrible players. The field was level (so to speak). The Billboard changes as Trig is speaking of have put certain artists at a disadvantage compared to others because they don’t appeal to multiple genres (or lowest common denominator).
August 6, 2013 @ 12:41 pm
This is very interesting. I have two thoughts:
1. Your point will be made for you when this list looks really stupid in about 5 years – when the top 5 is dominated by Country crossover hits.
2. While I don’t necessarily disagree that the current chart system is broken, the fact that a song hasn’t cracked the top 10 in HALF A CENTURY implies that the old chart system was pretty broken, too.
August 6, 2013 @ 4:28 pm
The fact that a song hasn”™t cracked the top 10 since 1956 doesn’t show that the old chart system was broken. I bet the main reason for that is radio has changed since then and they don’t keep songs at #1 for 22 weeks, not even Cruise, which is a good thing. In fact many in country music and radio complain that the radio chart still moves too slow. Also didn’t Billboard already change the Hot Country chart after 1956?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Country_Songs
This counting pop airplay change isn’t an improvement though. The fact is that some in power had Billboard change the rules to favor them and pop, which makes the whole system unfair to other labels and country artists.
August 6, 2013 @ 4:58 pm
I actually think what you’re seeing is a return to pre-1958 trends. That is, when you let people choose what music they want to listen to, be it in a jukebox or be it on the internet, rather than force feeding them via radio, a hit song can actually last significantly longer. I’m not saying there aren’t unintended consequences of the “new rules,” but really it’s a much more fair way to do it than to monitor payola radio.
August 7, 2013 @ 12:51 pm
That’s not what we’re seeing because the Hot Country chart never included pop radio formats until 2012 and the new rules added more monitoring of radio including an entire second huge format. Pop radio has a larger audience than country radio so it may carry more weight on this new chart. Or did Billboard bother to adjust for that to make it 1% fair for country artists, labels, fans, and radio listeners? Sales and country radio were already counted for the old Hot Country chart, and sales, radio and streaming for the Hot 100. If you don’t want to monitor radio there are charts for that too but radio is where most people hear music.
There was no reason to change the Hot Country chart to include pop airplay except to benefit the few artists and labels making pop and pop/rap music and sending it to pop radio, which most country artists don’t do. It wouldn’t surprise me if some of radio also wanted this change to make country radio more pop. It’s part of building a monopopoly and there are no unintended consequences. All this is thought and planned out in advance. Or do you think it’s a coincidence that the rules changed just in time to rocket Taylor’s We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together to #1 to benefit her and her label, and just in time to launch her album? Taylor, Florida Georgia Line and Nelly are on the same label and you can bet they are recruiting more pop/rap leaning acts and collaborations. Songs like Cruise last longer because they are placed on different radio formats at different times. It peaked on country radio long ago and now it’s on pop radio.
August 7, 2013 @ 1:09 pm
My point is (as made better by Joe below in the comments and on his blog) is that if a Country song is popular enough to become Pop then shouldn’t it track higher in the charts – which measure a song’s popularity. The great joke is that it all comes down to someone deciding if a song is Country or not. This is an issue that has existed and will exist forever, as long as songs are tracked by genre.
August 7, 2013 @ 6:47 pm
“My point is (as made better by Joe below in the comments and on his blog) is that if a Country song is popular enough to become Pop then shouldn”™t it track higher in the charts ”“ which measure a song”™s popularity. The great joke is that it all comes down to someone deciding if a song is Country or not. This is an issue that has existed and will exist forever, as long as songs are tracked by genre.”
Country songs don’t get popular enough to become pop. Someone decides to do a remix to make them (more) pop or they are made pop to begin with. Songs remixed or redone to add pop or rap or originally produced with enough pop and/or rap so pop radio will play them then released to pop radio should not chart higher on the Hot Country chart than country songs with no remixes, or sit at the top of the Hot Country chart for weeks like Cruise. If crossover doesn’t happen without changing a song it’s not crossover, it’s jumping the fence. The songs placed on pop radio already got a lot more attention before the change because they also did well on the Hot 100, which has always been considered a or the top chart.
Another important point is that the new rules prevent many country songs from becoming popular or selling because now country radio is playing more pop/rap songs listeners hate more than better country songs they like. Even some fans of artists making those pop/rap songs are complaining about it.
August 6, 2013 @ 1:43 pm
dont worry y’all kacey musgraves will save us! You know the one that didnt write a single song on her album by herself and is on tour with kenny chesney LOL. But dont mind that. By the way, by clicking on the billboard site and writing articles like this you are just giving the enemy occupied billboard legitimacy.
August 6, 2013 @ 1:55 pm
So we’re supposed to not even register our dissent, or show with statistics why Billboard’s charts rules don’t make sense from a genre-specific perspective?
August 6, 2013 @ 5:54 pm
So by pointing out the illegitimacy in something, one gives it legitimacy? Is that logic completely wrong, or is it just me…
Also, George Straight didn’t write his songs and he was pretty damn good for country music. Many of the biggest hits from ‘singer-songwriters’ like johnny cash and willie were written by other people. How does having someone else’s name next to hers in the songwriters’ credits make her music any less good than it would’ve been under another circumstance?
August 6, 2013 @ 1:57 pm
So what you’re trying to say is…
Considering the new WR contact rules in the NFL; “Cruise” is to “I’m Movin’ On” as Matt Cassel is to Dan Marino.
August 6, 2013 @ 10:31 pm
… but the methodology eventually had to change, no? And we can’t go back in time to change it.
I agree that we’re all not happy because the crossover hits are becoming more legit and will continue to upend the longstanding #1 streaks that for so long seemed untouchable, but had the methodology not ever changed we’d still have a country chart compiled entirely based on jukebox plays.
Love, love, love this article. Thanks for posting it, as well as the (clearly extensive) research that contributed to it.
Please check my blog for an extended comment.
August 7, 2013 @ 12:58 pm
No, the methodology never had to change to include pop radio. It’s terrible for country music and they should change it back. It was fine before this change. What isn’t fair about counting country radio and sales for country music and crossover acts also appearing on the Hot 100?
August 7, 2013 @ 7:28 pm
Billboard isn’t emotionally invested in the quality of the music. It doesn’t care if a song is traditional or a rap remix. Billboard’s job is to quantify the songs’ reach. If a song is identified as country and the airplay or purchase is trackable, then they will want to count it.
The problem isn’t with Billboard. The problem lies with the powers that be who’ve manipulated the definition of “country music” to include things like rap remixes. Or perhaps that there are few (to no) powers that be who can expand traditional country music beyond sub-genre — and, in some places, historical — status.
August 7, 2013 @ 10:38 pm
No doubt some big labels define pop as country. A few years ago I caught a rare interview with Sony Nashville’s former CEO on a radio station website. They asked him what is country? His answer, “It’s country if we say it is.” Billboard tracked fine before adding pop airplay to the Hot Country chart. Seems to me Billboard does what the biggest labels want. Follow the money. Who buys a lot of advertising in Billboard publications? Which label(s) buys the most? Who has many Billboard and Billboard.biz subscriptions?
I don’t know how you define traditional country but counting all types of country including country/pop is fine for the Hot Country chart. It’s just counting pop airplay and the impact it has on country music/radio (going pop) that’s terrible. Some are very greedy and want to make country as pop as possible. As Windmills showed in the above article, the most pop country acts like Lady Antebellum and Taylor expanded country just fine before the change. Now it’s all about expanding pop and to hell with country.
August 8, 2013 @ 7:55 am
I would argue there was no value added by importing the existing Hot 100 methodology into the genre-specific charts like Hot Country Songs. We already have the Hot 100 chart to track the general popularity of country or “country” songs. Higher Hot 100 peaks and longer Hot 100 chart runs already reward crossover airplay. Want to know which country songs have the biggest general popularity in any given week? Just look at the Hot 100 and distill it for songs that have charted at country like I did.
The top 25 to top 30 or so of the current Hot Country Songs chart is now merely an echo chamber for the Hot 100. If Billboard wanted to take the Hot 100 methodology and create a country chart, then it would’ve made sense to launch a new “Country Hot 50” instead of importing the whole history of the Hot Country Songs chart (which has never included crossover airplay) into a chart whose methodology incorporates crossover airplay from formats that generate higher audience than country radio.
As you can see from the ad, Florida-Georgia Line’s team is bragging about the historical significance of “Cruise”‘s weeks atop the Hot Country Songs chart. That misleading line of hype wouldn’t be possible had Billboard not imported the whole history of the HCS chart into its new Hot 100-distillation of a country chart. That’s why I wanted to illustrate the absurdity of asserting the historical significance of this new “record.” The truth is the historical continuity of the country chart was broken with this new methodology.
If Billboard wants to celebrate “Cruise” as the biggest hit of this current era (which it isn’t, but still) with a new chart, fine. But equating the circumstances of “Cruise”‘s chart run with the way things worked a year ago, never mind 70 years ago, is silly and claiming otherwise reflects poorly on Billboard as a chart authority.
August 10, 2013 @ 6:01 am
All good points and I’ll admit I agree, but only to an extent.
The Hot Country Songs echo of the Hot 100 is intentional. HCS is intended to directly contribute to the Hot 100. It shouldn’t be difficult to identify where the top country singles rank across all genres.
As well, I don’t believe Billboard had much choice but to import the history of the old Hot Country Songs into the “new” Hot Country Songs. Only for the past 20-ish years has that chart not included retail in its methodology so re-incorporating it now meant the old chart had returned.
Segregating the success of a single identified as country because it wasn’t payed by a country-identified radio station just doesn’t make sense to me. Billboard is simply using every piece of information available to it in order to rank the popularity of new music. The new methodology favors the songs individually and not the genre or the industry gatekeepers at radio or the labels.
I agree that Republic is capitalizing on the new methodology, and it’s not fair, but any one of us in their shoes would be doing the same thing.
Your research has provided a huge service in identifying/clarifying the context of this change to the chart. There is need for a huge asterisk at this point regarding the new methodology in that it should have been incorporated at least a few years earlier.
August 7, 2013 @ 5:30 pm
This is why making a crossover pop music of a country song by a country singer is a bad idea. Making a Florida Georgia Line pop song called Cruise Remix is a horrible idea. Pop music ruined country music. Why country music has to use pop music. Country music and mainstream music (pop/dance/indie/rap/soul/rock) are suppose to be different music. That’s why we have Vevo. I hate pop music version of country singers. Pop music ruined country singers. I’m sick of pop music version of country songs. Why pop music has to use country singers like Shaina Twain? Why? Thank goodness for country and pop crossover singers lie Taylor Swift. Unlike pop music made by country singers like Florida Georgia Line, country and pop crossover singers like Carrie Underwood not only makes country song appear pop music listeners but they also make pop songs for pop music only. That’s how Taylor Swift makes a crossover country song like Love Story. It would be nice if all country songs sung by a country and pop crossover singer can be played on pop music airplay and country music airplay at the same time. Since Carrie Underwood prefers releasing her country music worldwide, her country songs like Mama’s Song works really well on pop music as Carrie Underwood sings are made my the same team who produce Kelly Clarkson songs by 19 Recordings like Since You’ve Been Gone. Also, Taylor Swift will likely to retire country music or even take a break from country music so that way Taylor Swift can put country songs that only appear on country music airplay like Begin Again on pop music airplay. All Taylor Swift country songs like Picture To Burn works well on MTV since she also makes pop music like 22. Same ting for Carrie Underwood since only a few Carrie Underwood songs Before He Cheats appeared on pop music airplay. Soon, Lady Antebellum, The Band Perry and Hunter Hayes will be joining the pop music squad. Yeah, country singers like Shaina Twain making pop music is a bad idea. That’s why we have Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood as the real country and pop crossover singers. I hope this helps. 🙂
August 7, 2013 @ 6:02 pm
Anyone care to translate that?
August 8, 2013 @ 3:54 pm
See, even country radio listeners are complaining about this bull
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152095979084606&set=a.117558309605.121594.114322074605&type=1
August 19, 2013 @ 9:03 am
Great article. Love the scientific approach.
This reminds me a lot of Roger Maris 61* home run record – he has that asterisk because each season has more games than when Babe Ruth set his 60 home run record.
Right now, they have the record. But, based on the research above, it seems like it’s going to become more common for songs to last longer and in 10 years we’ll be able to put Cruise’s “record” in perspective – what may end up being a 25 week record will quickly become a mediocre record with the new reporting system.
And, when people go back and look at the records, it will be obvious something must have changed around 2012. Those records won’t be compared strictly by the numbers, because the numbers aren’t comparable – they’re not measuring the same things.