Despite the album’s incredible success and booming popularity, after four weeks in the No. 1 spot, Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet was bumped to second on the Billboard 200 chart by Travis Scott’s mixtape Days Before Rodeo.
Though a drop from first to second may seem pretty insignificant, many artists “Don’t Play” when it comes to the Billboard charts. Some are more subtle about it, with Taylor Swift conveniently releasing The Tortured Poets Department album variants around the time of other artists’ releases, in an alleged conspiracy to block them from taking her No. 1 spot. Others say the quiet part out loud, with Charli xcx stating in “Rewind” that she “used to never think about Billboard / But now [she’s] started thinkin’ again.” While our favorite 365 party girl seems to have Billboard on her mind, should it really even matter to her?
Many artists have been able to find success without having chart toppers. Since the Billboard charts only take into consideration data about streams, radio airplay, and sales, they aren’t able to fully capture success derived from an album having great artistry or revolutionizing the genre it exists in. Quality and cultural impact are difficult to measure with numbers alone and don’t always translate into the metrics taken into account by Billboard. Success is also subjective, as some value impact and artistry (which also doesn’t have a universal standard) over streams, radio play, and sales in considering something to be successful.
Take the cases of Kacey Musgraves and Jon Batiste. Kacey Musgraves won Album of the Year at the Grammys for her 2019 album Golden Hour. Golden Hour was well–received by critics and fans alike, with Pitchfork writing that “Kacey Musgraves sings simply about the world as if she’s the first person to notice, and you’re the first one she’s telling,” and fans online citing the work as Musgraves’ best work yet. Despite the praise and awards the album received, only one of the songs off of the album, “Rainbow,” made it onto the Hot 100 chart, landing at No. 98. It also flopped on the country radio charts, peaking at No. 33 before promptly falling off. Still, Kacey Musgraves is an undeniably talented and successful artist, boasting 19.7 million monthly listeners on Spotify and seven Grammys to date.
Jon Batiste also won Album of the Year in 2022 for his album WE ARE. The album, a jazz and soul project with little mainstream coverage, was a very unusual candidate for a Grammy win. It had no Hot 100 hits and peaked at No. 25 on the Billboard 200. The few reviews the album received were primarily favorable, with fans online describing it as “an infectious slice of uplifting, enjoyable soul.” His failure to chart well clearly didn’t stop Batiste from becoming successful—WE ARE was critically beloved, appreciated by the Academy, and currently sits at over 92 million streams on Spotify.
Another factor that diminishes the importance of the Billboard charts is how easy it is to manipulate them. If Taylor Swift’s alleged plot to maintain the No. 1 spot on the Top 200 is intentional, it seems to be working. With the help of 34 variants, The Tortured Poets Department held the No. 1 spot for 15 weeks, through the release of both Charli xcx’s BRAT and Billie Eilish’s HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, two major mainstream releases. Taylor Swift holding the No. 1 spot long after the cultural conversation had shifted to other works speaks to how numbers can be easily boosted without an album contributing to the cultural conversation. Another way charts can fail to capture the full story is by excluding songs that fail to attain radio play, which can be difficult to get a hold of for many artists. Kacey Musgraves’ failure on the charts has a lot to do with her being blacklisted from country radio.
The Washington Post wrote that “country radio programmers claim that Musgraves hasn’t been very friendly to them and didn’t seem to care much about airplay—and although they insist their priority is playing the best songs, personal bias can seep into decision–making.” Additionally, radio usually favors clean, audience–friendly music, so if a work is more explicit or controversial, it won’t get the radio play numbers necessary to be a chart topper. Even if a work has a high number of streams and sales, it may not chart very highly (if at all) because it gets no radio play.
The Billboard charts, once one of the most important industry metrics for success, should perhaps be reevaluated. The ambiguous and variable nature of success complicates how it’s measured—after all, success is about more than just numbers. The easily malleable nature of the charts have reduced the Billboard lists from the most important metric of industry success to just another metric. Charli xcx should be at ease knowing that Billboard is not the be–all and end–all of her career. Travis Scott said it best: A “Whole Lots Changed” since Billboard was founded in 1894, and perhaps our metric of success should, too.
