a zen koan: what is the sound of a hit single?

Over on Threads, there has been considerable discussion (at least according to my algorithm) about a recent piece in Rolling Stone about Ella Langley’s Choosin' Texas. Recently, it has been reported that Ella Langley’s song has broken the record for the longest time on the Billboard charts, breaking the record previously held by Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You. This was greeted by skepticism, as Mariah Carey’s song is a yearly juggernaut, and many people have asserted that they can’t pick out the Ella Langley song out of a lineup (I’m one of those people). Some of this side eye is also due to the fun fact that Ella Langley’s father is a billionaire, and that this chart success may have been purchased in some manner. This, of course, can be added to charges from earlier this year that Geese had also gamed their increased profile.

The Rolling Stone’s response claimed to unpack this confusion. The author’s conclusion: people who insist that they haven’t heard Choosin’ Texas are engaging in cultural snobbery—a modern day version of “I don’t listen to country music.” The song is evidently a country song (country pop, to be more precise). And while plenty of people have been more or less proving Rolling Stone’s point by saying that they don’t listen to country, or Top 40, others have taken a more nuanced view. They might not listen to country (or contemporary country), but in the age of streaming powered by algorithms, it’s pretty damn easy to miss hearing a popular song. The era of the popular monoculture has passed (and I would argue that the ubiquity of that monoculture is probably overstated—it certainly was segregated).

The rebuttal made to many of the “death of the monoculture” proponents is that surely they’ve unknowingly heard the song on the radio, or in the grocery store, or at Starbucks (or similar public locations). And that may be true for some people, but taking my experience as a counterexample, I don’t own a car, nor do I commute, so I’m not going to hear it during drive time. I also don’t listen to terrestrial radio, so that avenue is cut off. At the grocery store? My brother and I joke that the CEO of our regional chain is controlling the music from his back office (and he’s a fan of rock from the 60s and 70s). The drugstore? No piped in music. I only go to Starbucks when I travel, and my local coffee shop tends toward cool jazz. I’m not exposed to canned music like I once was. I listen to music all the time, but it’s generally on vinyl. Last month, I bought a repress of Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, and earlier this summer, I bought albums by Emmylou Harrison and Rhiannon Giddens, so I’m not anti-country music. I haven’t heard Choosin’ Texas, and to do so, I would need to make a conscious choice to do so. And I don’t feel like it. That could change, but The Discourse is not enough of a reason for me at this time.

In the past, I have joked that grad school broke my brain. By this, I generally mean that I overthink things more frequently than I did with just a BA. However, because of grad school, I’ve noticed the absence of what I think is the most important point in this whole discussion. Comparing the chart position performance of Choosin’ Texas and All I Want for Christmas Is You is like (cliche incoming) comparing apples and oranges. The data used to calculate the charts in the 2020s was non-existent in the 1990s, and the data used in the 1990s contributes very little to the data mix in the 2020s. According to Billboard.com, the charts are “the weeks most popular current songs across all genres, ranked by streaming activity data by online music sources tracked by Luminate, radio airplay audience impressions as measured by Mediabase and provided by Luminate and sales data as compiled by Luminate.” According to the Hot 100 chart for the week ending October 3, Choosin’ Texas has spent 49 weeks on the chart, and 24 weeks at #1. The numbers provided by Billboard include 21.8 million official streams, 58.3 million radio airplay audience impressions, and 6,000 copies sold. However, it’s important to note that Luminate also converts streams into units sold as well, and that is estimated to be 6 million (6x platinum). It’s interesting that it has toppled All I Want for Christmas Is You, a song that has come back on the charts every year since 2000 (for a couple of weeks a year, obviously). But that the bulk of the success of this song exists in an entirely digital plane makes it difficult to compare to the days when the bulk of a single’s success was primarily due to physical sales. For example, in the UK, the best-selling non-charity single of all time is Wings’ Mull of Kintyre, a song that was released in 1977. Technically, Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody has sold about 300,000 more copies, but that second release was for charity. Even without that caveat, Bohemian Rhapsody is largely of the same vintage. The fact is that getting a hit record doesn’t require moving physical product, and it takes a lot less physical product to make it on the charts (provided you’re also getting those streams).

The upshot: between algorithms pushing what you already like, the nichification of our cultural experiences, and a completely different ontology for chart success in the 21st century, it’s not surprising that a song can be a hit, yet largely unknown to large pockets of the population.