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Interesting Hot 100 History Fact |
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Yah Shure 
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Joined: 11 December 2007 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 1 |
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 Posted: 17 October 2012 at 3:34pm |
There was no "rule," as such, on Billboard's part. Their country chart simply reflected the results of the many Billboard reporters who were all-too-happy to toe the Nashville line. I wasn't; consequently, being a Billboard reporter was a royal pain. |
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mstgator
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Joined: 06 September 2007 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 0 |
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Posted: 18 October 2012 at 5:50pm |
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Perusing Whitburn's Country Annual, which shows full chart runs for all
Top Five hits, I count at least three songs falling from #1 completely out of the Top 40 in 1981 alone... and most of the other Top Five hits from the end of the '70s through most of the '80s only spent one or two weeks in the Top 40 after hitting the top. Must have been a kick listening to American Country Countdown back then. (Mickey Gilley's "You Don't Know Me" appears to be the record holder as far as chart toppers are concerned, tumbling from 1-47). |
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JMD1961
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Joined: 29 March 2005 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 13 |
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Posted: 18 October 2012 at 8:10pm |
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Yup. The "sudden drop" of hits on the country charts is one of the reasons that Billboard made it the first chart to use monitored airplay. They wanted to make it more accurate.
Ironically, on the modern country airplay chart, which was REALLY slow, they were forced to impose "recurrent rules" in order to get upward movement. The result? Songs that dropped completely off the chart from the top 10. Go figure. |
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EdisonLite
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Joined: 18 October 2004 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 209 |
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Posted: 19 October 2012 at 8:59am |
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I always wondered - what was the reason for those huge drops from #1 on the country chart? Did virtually all stations stop playing a song the moment it hit #1 (which seems odd)? Did all listeners (coincidentally) stop purchasing the 45 the moment it hit #1? It seemed like some manipulation - because I didn't think everyone would abandon a song the moment it hit #1 (to be off the top 40 or pretty close to that the next week), but I couldn't figure out exactly what.
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AndrewChouffi
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Posted: 20 October 2012 at 5:48am |
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To EdisonLite:
The reason is because Country promo execs & independent promoters were such bedfellows with Country radio PDs that the promoters could tell the PDs the equivalent of "We took the record to #1, we don't need your help on it anymore; drop it and make room on your playlist for our NEW record we're working" & the PDs would oblige (Billboard's accuracy be damned). Andy |
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torcan
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Joined: 23 June 2006 Location: Canada Status: Offline Points: 12 |
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Posted: 20 October 2012 at 7:21am |
Considering there was a time lag between when a chart was tabulated and when it appeared in the magazine (usually a week-to-10 days), I guess they must have had the timing down perfectly. I guess if a song was at No. 2 with a bullet, they pretty well knew that would be the next No. 1 because the song ahead of it would drop out the next week, so they'd tell the PDs to drop it then(?) I should go back and check my old Billboards, but I wonder how many songs peaked at No. 2 during that era - probably not many. |
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JMD1961
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Posted: 20 October 2012 at 2:26pm |
Per my "Joel Whitburn's Country Annual" here are the number of #2 peaking records for each year of the '80s: 1980 - 8 hits 1981 - 8 1982 - 9 1983 - 10 1984 - 7 1985 - 11 1986 - 5 1987 - 14 1988 - 11 1989 - 6 By contrast, in 1990 (the first year of monitored airplay) there were 17 songs that peaked at #2. So more, but not many more as you'd might think. The real difference to me is the difference in the number of records making the Top 10. Between 1980 and 1989, an average of 125 songs peaked in the top 10 each year. But in 1990, only 100. In 1991, only 91. With songs fallen backwards naturally, there was less room for new songs to move up. Which explains why executives wanted them out of the way quicker, huh? |
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torcan wrote: