Natural Airplay Peaks

[lady𝓐fan]

What are some songs that you think would've peaked a lot lower in a "natural" chart (e.g. no last-week pushes, no pushing til the wheels fall off)?

A current example would probably be "Be a Light", which I believe is naturally peaking at #9 (though it'll probably be pushed to #1 like everything else). Russell Dickerson's "Every Little Thing" pretty much crawled up the chart and at one point I thought that once it hit the top 20, the label would let it go, but it was pushed all the way to #1. Similarly, I thought the trio of 60-week songs ("Make Me Want To", "After a Few", "One Big Country Song") would barely scrape the top 20 or top 15, but all of them eventually hit #1 after a ridiculous amount of time.

[raylatch98]

I think in a more natural chart climate, none of the singles from Michael Ray hit #1 and I think the ones that made Top 20 don't even scrape the Top 30. Others off the top of my head, I think both "Hide The Wine" and "Heart Break" in 2018 miss the Top 20. Songs like "I Hope", "The Bones", "Nobody But You" probably spend many weeks at #1.

[davidcountry]

Usually none traditional country songs would be played on mainstream radio airplay charts. Be A Light would be #1 already, and so would Why We Drink. The Bones, I Hope, After a Few, Some Girls, all of Brett Young's songs, all of FGL songs, all of Sam Hunt songs, all of Russell Dickersons songs and so forth. Only a handful of Thomas Rhett's songs would, but the rest would be rejected. For Nobody But You would still be accepted since it is not any differences with this song then with Kenny Rogers singing duets with pop stars like Kim Karnes and Sheena Easton.

A Lot of these songs we are hearing today belong to other genres back in the 80s. R&B charts were used to be R&B/Soul charts, but it got taken over by rap and hip hop. It is now called R&B/Hip Hop. They created a sub-genre called Urban AC which is more of the traditional R&B/Soul of the main chart.

Now, you have country being raided by Pop, rock, alternative, hip hop, rap and the likes.