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Post by renfield75 on Aug 8, 2016 15:54:05 GMT -5
Fascinating, thank you Paul!
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Post by paulhaney on Aug 9, 2016 9:14:52 GMT -5
^Paul (and others), thanks for the info. Fascinating story, and I wonder what Whitburn's reaction was when he finally head the record after 35+ years of assuming it may never have existed. Funny that there are actually things out there called phantom records... Joel was very excited to finally hear the song and get the whole story. After all, he waited 37 years to finally hear it! |
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Post by lasvegaskid on May 21, 2017 15:28:17 GMT -5
"Ready 'N' Steady" was simply a case of a record promoter reporting the song to Billboard and actually getting someone there to put the song on the Bubbling Under chart, despite there being no physical product. I verified all of the details before appearing on the radio show...here's the link: archive.org/details/cftp-2016-07-08 (the D.A. segment starts at the 44 minute mark). More about this on Crap From the Past that aired 5-19-17. They spoke to a member of D.A. archive.org/details/cftp-2017-05-19 |
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Post by OnWithTheCountdown on Oct 30, 2017 0:23:39 GMT -5
Bumping, thanks to recent discussion on the XM thread. I remember reading this thread many months ago - fascinating stuff. I didn't become an AT40 listener until 1984, just a little over a year post-shenanigans.
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Post by lasvegaskid on Nov 1, 2017 12:33:06 GMT -5
BTO also fell 1 to 12 around the same time though. Fall of '74 was full of songs hitting #1 and then falling out of the top 10 the following week. Besides the two already noted, Barry White, Andy Kim, and Stevie Wonder also fell from 1 to 12, while Billy Preston and Dionne Warwicke/Spinners did even better: From #1 to #15. However, none of the other big droppers only had three weeks in the top 10 like John Lennon did. Dionne/Spinners then fell 39-15, then off the top 40 completely. Two weeks in the top 40 after reaching #1 must be a pre-'Idol record? |
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Post by dukelightning on Nov 1, 2017 12:38:10 GMT -5
Yes but it is shared with most of the other droppers you listed. The Barry White, Andy Kim, Stevie Wonder and Billy Preston hits all were in the top 40 for just 2 weeks after hitting #1. "Nothing From Nothing" in fact also fell to 39 after falling to 15, like "Then Came You".
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Post by torcan on Nov 5, 2017 20:43:26 GMT -5
The charts of that period were interesting, to say the least, but since the magazine is really geared towards industry insiders and radio more than anyone else, I wonder if any radio programmers or anybody complained to Billboard about the way the charts were compiled. It must have been disconcerting to radio programmers to see songs spend so long in one position, then drop off a cliff for no apparant reason. I wonder if people were starting to complain...
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Post by woolebull on Nov 9, 2017 13:41:48 GMT -5
Even in this era with "concrete" numbers, sometimes chart movement defies logic. On 10/21/17, Taylor Swift dropped from 4 (at the time her peak position) to number 5, with "Look What You Made Me Do". The next week, it jumped from 5 all the way to number 1. Last week, it dropped to 2.
Watching Mediabase, it actually seemed appropriate that she did make that jump. For a week, she was losing spins before miraculously, for one week, gaining a ton of spins that put her at the top. What was more interesting to me was the next week and that she didn't drop further. On Mediabase, the week after she was at #1 she plummeted to #6 in spins. It seems that AT40 is actually continuing to inflate "Look" in regards to where it should be on the countdown.
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Post by lasvegaskid on Nov 9, 2017 15:20:39 GMT -5
Even in this era with "concrete" numbers, sometimes chart movement defies logic. On 10/21/17, Taylor Swift dropped from 4 (at the time her peak position) to number 5, with "Look What You Made Me Do". The next week, it jumped from 5 all the way to number 1. Last week, it dropped to 2. Watching Mediabase, it actually seemed appropriate that she did make that jump. For a week, she was losing spins before miraculously, for one week, gaining a ton of spins that put her at the top. What was more interesting to me was the next week and that she didn't drop further. On Mediabase, the week after she was at #1 she plummeted to #6 in spins. It seems that AT40 is actually continuing to inflate "Look" in regards to where it should be on the countdown. |
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Post by artsmusic on Nov 9, 2017 16:41:53 GMT -5
The charts of that period were interesting, to say the least, but since the magazine is really geared towards industry insiders and radio more than anyone else, I wonder if any radio programmers or anybody complained to Billboard about the way the charts were compiled. It must have been disconcerting to radio programmers to see songs spend so long in one position, then drop off a cliff for no apparant reason. I wonder if people were starting to complain... Please remember that all companies' charts at the time were based on "reported" airplay and "reported" sales. No hard data. I am sure other people who worked in the industry in the pre-Soundscan/pre-BDS time period could concur with this following example: When I worked for WAMO in Pittsburgh as its music director from 1989 to 1992, once a song had peaked on the national chart and was "done" , tons of stations would report other titles while playing the peaked record the same or MORE than the one reported. Record company folks would actually say to continue to play the record, just report the new one. Or another title they were pushing. Very rarely would the top 40 songs played at a station match the 40 list they "reported". In the 1980s there were not 51 number one songs a year on the country chart. There were 51 songs which took their "turn" at number one. |
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Post by dukelightning on Nov 9, 2017 17:07:41 GMT -5
That country chart data has to be the best example of chart manipulations. And to think that Casey and the staff once thought the AC chart data was spurious, which is why they never mentioned the AC chart in the other chart #1s feature throughout the 70s and 80s.
So it is still possible to a get a song to #1 even here in the deeply monitored era of 2017. Needless to say, the Taylor Swift hit is the weakest of the 4 legitimate top 10 debuts in AT40 history. Because for all intents and purposes, it is the only one not to reach #1. Would not be surprised if the push to get it to #1 was to avoid that distinction.
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Post by doofus67 on Nov 9, 2017 22:24:27 GMT -5
Wow, artsmusic, that explains a heck of a lot, especially about chart action patterns pre- and post-BDS. Also why I noticed, moving out to SoCal in mid-summer of '87, that, for example, "I Wanna Dance with Somebody" continued to get heavy radio play on LA stations even as it was dropping off the top 40 nationally.
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Post by woolebull on Nov 10, 2017 11:32:59 GMT -5
Even in this era with "concrete" numbers, sometimes chart movement defies logic. On 10/21/17, Taylor Swift dropped from 4 (at the time her peak position) to number 5, with "Look What You Made Me Do". The next week, it jumped from 5 all the way to number 1. Last week, it dropped to 2. Watching Mediabase, it actually seemed appropriate that she did make that jump. For a week, she was losing spins before miraculously, for one week, gaining a ton of spins that put her at the top. What was more interesting to me was the next week and that she didn't drop further. On Mediabase, the week after she was at #1 she plummeted to #6 in spins. It seems that AT40 is actually continuing to inflate "Look" in regards to where it should be on the countdown. Thank you for the article! It is interesting, and not surprising, that this happened. From a radio standpoint, I wonder if they did the exact same thing to get her to #1 of Mediabase. If they did, it would be the first artist that I can think of since 1991 that actually had a record company care if they were #1 on AT 40 as much as being on top of the Hot 100. But judging from the numbers, it might have happened: it was starting to lose spins, then picked up a ton of spins for a week, and then saw the numbers spiral down the next week. And I don't think it was a push just to get a #1 on the Hot 100 and they needed spins. "Look" was already out of #1 when the spin increase for that one week happened. Watching "Look" go up AT reminded me back in the day when Van Halen, Prince, and Guns N Roses would put out "gotcha" singles before releasing the second single that would do much better. The difference is Taylor's "gotcha" single was strong enough to be a big hit in its own right. It shows how truly big Swift is. It will be interesting to see how AT decides to drop "Look" down the chart. Thanks again for the link! |
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Post by dukelightning on Nov 10, 2017 11:47:20 GMT -5
^Look drops all the way to #8 this week. So it stands to reason that without the record company push, its chart run the last few weeks would have been 4-5-6-7-8 instead of the 4-5-1-2-8 run that it actually had. Btw, as it is, this is a #1 song that spent just 2 weeks in the top 3. What is the last #1 hit to spend less than 3 weeks in the top 3. Certainly has 'chart manipulation' written all over it if you ask me!
And these shenanigans may have caused something else in the unprecedented or almost category. "Look What You Made Me Do" is the biggest dropper of the week, dropping from 2 to 8. How many times in AT40 history has the biggest dropper been in the top 10. And what is the latest in the countdown that the biggest dropper has been heard?
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Post by woolebull on Nov 11, 2017 1:58:59 GMT -5
^Look drops all the way to #8 this week. So it stands to reason that without the record company push, its chart run the last few weeks would have been 4-5- 6-7-8 instead of the 4-5-1-2-8 run that it actually had. Btw, as it is, this is a #1 song that spent just 2 weeks in the top 3. What is the last #1 hit to spend less than 3 weeks in the top 3. Certainly has 'chart manipulation' written all over it if you ask me! And these shenanigans may have caused something else in the unprecedented or almost category. "Look What You Made Me Do" is the biggest dropper of the week, dropping from 2 to 8. How many times in AT40 history has the biggest dropper been in the top 10. And what is the latest in the countdown that the biggest dropper has been heard? The answer is one of my favorite chart quirks and ties in quite nicely with the subject of chart manipulation. The latest the biggest dropper has ever been played was on the 10/30/82 show when "Jack and Diane" tumbled all the way down from number 1 to number...2! Yup, on that countdown only one song dropped that stayed in the countdown, and it only dropped one point. The crazy thing, however, is that of the five songs that dropped off the chart that week, four dropped from the top 21, with "Abracadabra" disappearing from all the way up at #10. The other one dropped from 31 to 74. But of the 40 that made up the top 40 that week, only #1 dropped. I really wish Casey would have said something like "plunging all the way down from #1 to #2 this week, here is the week's biggest dropper"! "Look" is having an unprecedented modern run. To put it in perspective, Logic didn't hit the top 20 until week 10 or 11 of its still upward, on going run. For "Look" to go up and down so fast would make it a great candidate to have charted in the year commemorated by her last album. "1989" 😂 |
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