Most Consecutive Weeks Without Moving Down

[j]

Similar to "... With A Bullet"

I don't know what the answer is, but I'm sure Cerebro and others can make an educated guess? Is it "You Were Meant For Me"? "Fly"? "I Love You Always Forever"?

I'm talking about the CHR/Pop chart... before someone volunteers the information that this record belongs to "Southside" on The Hot 100 (26 weeks, I believe).

[Hervard]

Uh, could you be a little more specific? I'm not clear as to what the question is.

[JCMF3]

ulij20 said:

Uh, could you be a little more specific?  I'm not clear as to what the question is.

I think the question is asking what is the record for the most weeks where a song on the CHR/POP chart either moved up or stayed at the same position without moving down. For example, a song whose chart run was:

40-36-36-30-24-24-23-18-16-15-15-15-15-14-13-12-11-11-11-10-11

would have 20 weeks. A song whose run was:

36-35-30-31-30-30-38-off

would have 3.

[Cerebro]

Hmm...this is a tough question to answer.  One would have to scrutinize the chart runs of long winded songs (those that took forever to peak) in greater detail.  No doubt, many of these likely had a week or two where they fell a notch or two for whatever reason while climbing.

I will say that this sort of practice was the norm prior to the PPW era just because of how the charts were compiled.  Prior to PPW songs would almost always move continually upward, peak, and fall continually downward.  That is, "backward bulleting" and "vacuuming" (the term I like to use for upward chart movement without a bullet) were less common occurances.  But, then again, chart runs were also shorter.

[Hervard]

Well, I know that "You Were Meant For Me" wasn't one of these songs, since it did move down at one point during its climb to #1 (but it kept its bullet).

In the pre-PPW period, it wasn't that uncommon for songs to move back up before the charts became a little more consistent around 1979. In fact, the only three times I can remember that happening since then before the PPW period began was when "Rock The Casbah" by the Clash moved from 16-18-14 in early 1983, then again almost exactly nine years later, when George Michael/Elton John's "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me" moved 4-2-3-2. The other instance was just weeks before the PPW era started, when Toni Braxton moved 2-3-3-2. It didn't have a bullet during the weeks it was at #3 and probably shouldn't have had one when it moved back up to #2, because this was clearly a vacuum effect, since many songs in the Top Three were moving down (this also caused Celine Dion to make an unusually strong move from 11-3, and then not go any higher), so clearly that was a soft area of the chart.
A few songs in 1993 did backward bullets like DLTSGDOM, but did not move back up. But these are the only instances since early 1979 when songs moved back up after starting their chart descent.
As for songs with the most consecutive weeks without moving down, I'm not sure.