Billboard Hot 100 55th Anniversary: Top 100 Songs/Artists

[Enyasurvivor]

Aug 4, 2013 19:55:27 GMT -5 Kris said:

Does this mean we can assume the current top 10 of the Decade are Party Rock Anthem, We Found Love, Somebody That I Used to Know, Rolling in the Deep, Call Me Maybe, Tik Tok, Moves Like Jagger, Just the Way You Are, One More Night, We Are Young in that order? Or would they be weighted differently? I feel like JTWYA should be higher than 8th, especially higher than MLJ.

TiK ToK would be lowered due its beginning run in '09, unless they use Billboard years in Decade-End charts as well. While she didn't hit #1 until 2010, she spent some time on the chart before that, which would no doubt cause her to tumble a few spots.

[Deleted]

Aug 4, 2013 21:37:52 GMT -5 Adonis the DemiGod! said:

Aug 4, 2013 20:44:42 GMT -5 HolidayGuy said:

^Still wouldn't be fair, comparing pre-digital hits from 1992-2004, with pre-BDS/-SoundSca-era hits.

The methodology is the same across the board- it's just that certain eras are weighted differently to make all eras "equal."

I agree with the first sentence. It's not the same across the board. It's different. It's applying different rules than what the rules were when the songs originally charted. That's arbitrary....ie NOT ACCURATE. There is no way for an inverse point system to account for competitive weeks on the HOT 100 or if a song sold 7million copies in a week. It's flawed by design.

It's flawed to even try to normalize prior years with recent years because the time periods are different and there is no way for it to be truly accurate because the formula has changed drastically over time.

It's not arbitrary, they had a method for choosing the weights. They looked at chart turnover rates with each switch in methodology. That can be calculated, I don't believe they just rolled the dice and picked a number.

Is it 100% accurate? no of course not

Is it close enough? Yes

Like any statistics that vary over time, you have to normalize the playing field before you can even think of doing a comparison, otherwise, One Sweet Day would be t he biggest song ever and the next 15 would have come after 1992.

[HolidayGuy]

Indeed. And, yes, BB didn't just roll a dice and pick a number. It looked at the turnover rates and weighted the eras accordingly, so that, in the end, everything would be on a fairer playing field.

It's all about weekly performance on the Hot 100, via ranks- not how tracks fared individually on airplay, sales or streaming charts.

On a side note, I wonder how much the rankings would improve for Diana Ross and her, if their full-name credits on their group/duo hits were lumped with their solo entries. (Their group/duo stints are regarded as separate recording entities, which is why they're not lumped.)

Billboard sometimes mentions that Diana Ross has sung lead vocals on 18 No. 1 hits- that is true. However, just two of the 12 Supremes No. 1 hits had the "Diana Ross and the Supremes" credit. She did have six top 10s under that credit, too.

Sonny & Cher scored 18 Hot 100 entries, including five top 10s and a No. 1.

It's another story with acts like Michael Jackson and the individual Beatles- their full names was not part of their group hits. If it had been "Michael Jackson and the Jacksons," it would be worth speculating. :)

[jebsib]

I'm going to play devil's advocate, because I've always wondered:

Why do we need weighting?

I know that the argument is that different eras are not represented equally pre-and post BDS, but... so what? Is THAT accurate?
I appreciate the sense is that 'back in the day' hits weren't accurately represented on the Hot 100 because it was so imprecise at the time.
But I also think we want to mix eras through a sense of nostalgia and fairness.

While it is true that the music and entertainment industry's eyes were opened by the longevity of BDS & Soundscan numbers, it doesn't erase the fact that in the 60s, 70s and 80s, chart runs were demonstrably shorter, generally reflecting the release schedule of singles. Thus a song's 'sphere of cultural influence' WAS much shorter: It wouldn't receive the press, airplay, marketing or aggregate pop culture impact that later BDS songs would enjoy by virtue of the climate they were released in. Labels would push a song for two months, then drop it completely and move on to the next song post haste. There was so much competition from new product being pushed that recurrent airplay was almost non existent on pop radio; That began to change in the 1980s, but it was still a novelty to have a top 10 song pounded in rotation 6 months after its peak.

So again, these were big hits - and obviously the biggest hits of their day - but just cause something's the strongest of a weak era, does it deserve a place at the table of the strongest?

[Deleted]

Like a said above, without a weighting system, the top 15 or 20 songs of all time have been released in the last 20 years. This would mean they were all bigger 'hits' than there predecessors.

They lasted 10-14 weeks at #1 because as you said, there was less competition. The market conditions changed.

How many weeks, would all those Beatles songs been at #1 if they were released under the same market conditions as 'One Sweet Day'?

[HolidayGuy]

If BB had kept the same methodology it had been using, and technology didn't advance, etc., the hits from 92-on would probably be short-lived, too. But, it didn't- and to compare eras, weighting is necessary. And, as quick as the turnover was for singles pre-92, the big hits still lingered on radio- it's just that stations didn't list them on their playlist, just so the newer hits could climb faster.

It took BB this long to come up with this system, and, like other updates to chart methodologies (i.e. adding digital sales and streaming to the Hot 100), it's the best move.

[Verisimilitude]

www1.billboard.biz/bbbiz/photos/pdf/2013/T40_mw_0822.pdf

How The Hot 100’s Biggest Hits Changed Radio

Earlier this month, in celebration of the Billboard Hot 100’s 55th anniversary, the ranking of the chart’s all-time top 100 —the Hot 100’s hottest
hits—was updated from the list that first appeared on its 50th.
The Hot 100’s significance as the first weekly music chart based on
airplay as well as sales cannot be overstated, when you consider songs
making the cut that didn’t just play on radio but had an impact beyond
their weeks in heavy rotation. Among the songs in the all-time top 100
that changed top 40:

“My Sharona,” the Knack (No. 85). In 1979 it was the song that
killed disco—at least in the short run— forcing top 40 to correct an imbalance favoring dance after close to a year where most rock acts couldn’t
break into the top 10 without “going disco.” In the process, it made such
dance-formatted stations as WXKS-FM (Kiss 108) Boston question their
long-term viability to the point where they moved toward top 40.

“Sugar Sugar,” the Archies (No. 73). The bubblegum landmark by
a group seen only in animated form hit at the same time as 1969’s Woodstock, following a period when mostly AM top 40’s attempts at making hits
of edgier songs from album-based FM had sent older listeners packing. It
was top 40’s way of saying to FM about the Woodstock generation, “You
can have ’em.” It also may have suggested that having pre-teen listeners
(and their parents) aboard was an asset.

“Whoomp! (There It Is),” Tag Team (No. 67). While rap-based
songs earned an occasional slot on pop radio prior to 1993, the multiplatinum sales, wider age appeal and staying power of “Whoomp!” assured the
genre was at top 40 to stay.

“I Want to Hold Your Hand” (No. 44)
and “Hey Jude,” the Beatles (No. 10).
The former’s meteoric rise in 1964, sparking Beatlemania, changed how stations
promoted themselves (“W-A-Beatles-C” in
New York, for example), using the association with the hottest recording act in years
as a ticket to bigger ratings. Nearly five years
later, the latter’s seven-minute playing time
opened the door for more rock-based songs running past the usual 2:50.

“Physical,” Olivia Newton-John (No. 8). Being sexually overt in
ways acceptable only for male artists to that time (1981), Newton-John
not only broke ground but helped redefine top 40’s focus for decades to
come. Arguably, without “Physical” there’d be no Madonna, Rihanna,
Katy Perry or dozens of other female acts currently ruling the format.

“I Gotta Feeling,” the Black Eyed Peas (No. 6). Singularly responsible for the end of the “no rap” slogan and programming policy at both
adult top 40 and adult contemporary. And
to this we say, “Mazel tov.”

“The Twist,” Chubby Checker (No.
1). During its second chart run in 1961-
62—when its popularity was driven by
adults discovering both the dance and
song introduced a year earlier—it became
the first teen-adult consensus record in
the rock’n’roll space, solidifying top 40
as an adults-too format.

[HolidayGuy]

Not sure if this was posted, but these are the acts who dropped out of the top 100, five years later:

Queen
Dion
Aerosmith
Billy Ocean
Tommy James
Earth, Wind & Fire
Brook Benton
Michael Bolton
Styx
Toni Braxton
Herman's Hermits
Simon & Garfunkel

Now... were there any surprises in terms of who didn't make the cut? I thought Britney Spears had a shot, but it didn't pan out- perhaps the next list. With a similar Hot 100 history to Kanye West, Eminem didn't make the cut.

[Daniel Collins]

I just noticed that 33 of the All-time top 100 is from 1976-1983. Is it just because the songs are really that big or the weight given to it were too much?

I also wanted to ask what makes the chart turn over rate became slower in 1967-1972? (is there a new rule at that time ?) Then why did it become fast in 1973-77? slow in 1978-84? fast again in 1985-91?

[HolidayGuy]

Do you expect more to be from 1984 to the present? Given how the chart was compiled before late 1991, I don't think there was any kind of significant change to the methodology, like there was with the start of BDS and SoundScan data.

Billboard looks at how long songs stayed on the chart in a given era and weighs those eras accordingly. It's the only way to have a fair comparison; it would be silly to have a top 100 list from a certain time period, and then another from 1992-present. Just as it would be silly to penalize older releases just because BDS and SoundScan weren't around for the charts.