132 Hot 100 === [00:00:00] Maura: oh my gosh, this is a perfect mix of like robo funk from 1982 or whatever. [00:00:21] Ben: Hello, and welcome to the EuroWhat? Episode number 132 for the week of October 11th, 2021. I'm Ben Smith. And I'm joined today by Mike McComb. Hey Mike. [00:00:29] Mike: Hello. [00:00:30] Ben: and our special guest Maura Johnston. Hey Maura. [00:00:33] Maura: Hi. [00:00:34] Ben: We are a group of Americans trying to make sense of the Eurovision Song Contest, and this week we'll be talking about Eurovision's intersection with the _Billboard_ Hot 100. Welcome back to the show, Maura. [00:00:43] Maura: Thank you. It's a delight to be back. [00:00:45] Host city when? Now! --- [00:00:45] Ben: It is always great to have you here. Exciting news, everybody, a host city now. [00:00:50] Mike: Yay. [00:00:51] Maura: Yeah. [00:00:53] Ben: We have been sort of loudly banging on our desks and saying "host city when?" for about a month, because we were supposed [00:01:00] to know it, like the start of September who this host city was going to be. And, uh, RAI and the ESC took their time. But we now know it's Torino 2022, which I kind of need to go back to our episode about host cities, Mike, just because I, I feel like I said it was going to be Torino. [00:01:14] So I'm just feeling very proud right now. [00:01:17] Mike: Yeah, that sounds about right. Yeah. [00:01:18] Ben: Correct. Milan's great. But Milan is busy with large arena shows that would be a pain in the butt to move. It's going to be a May 10th, 12th, and 14th at the Palasport Olympico. [00:01:29] Mike: Yes. And, uh, if you're already starting to make your travel plans, uh, have fun with that. Checking right before we started recording, uh, hotels in Turin are currently running about a thousand bucks a night for the weekend of the grand final, which calm down hotels. [00:01:46] Ben: Yeah. [00:01:50] Mike: Hopefully prices will calm down once the panic buying has stopped and a ticket tickets go on sale and people get shut out and Yeah. [00:01:57] Uh, I guess there's a lot of pessimism happening there, [00:02:00] but, uh, yeah. Uh, Maura, were you planning on making the trip to Italy for next year's show? [00:02:04] Maura: Oh, wow. I would, I would love to, um, unfortunately that coincides with finals at Boston College where I teach. So it might be a little rough. [00:02:14] Ben: Yeah. [00:02:15] Maura: But, uh, it would be really, really fun to go because I'm sure that there be a lot to take in. [00:02:21] Ben: Yeah. I feel like Italy is going to be a fun show next year. And like, if nothing else I'm looking forward to seeing what 30 years since the last time they chaotically hosted, uh, brings to the party. [00:02:33] Maura: The nineties revival is back once again. [00:02:36] Ben: Yeah. In so many ways, [00:02:38] Maura: Hooverphonic's already petitioning to be back on. [00:02:43] Mike: They do a complete recreation of the opening sequence from the 1991 contest with the word art flying across the screen. [00:02:52] How do the Billboard charts currently work? --- [00:02:52] Ben: But Maura, we, we have you on to talk about the _Billboard_ Hot 100 and the [00:03:00] current intersection that Eurovision appears to be having with it. [00:03:03] Maura: Yes, it's very exciting. It's been a while since that happened at all a quarter century. [00:03:08] Ben: Which is mind boggling to me. And we can talk about like the last time it was that Eurovision intersected with the charts in the U S but I guess as a starter, how do the Billboard charts currently work? [00:03:20] Maura: So right now, the Hot 100, which is the main singles chart for the US works as in this sort of formula where they take a numbers from streaming sales, so like iTunes, but also, you know, the few physical singles that major labels and other labels might've put out there and cross format radio airplay. So if something gets played a lot on top 40 stations, hot AC, country, hip hop, and R&B anything. Because of the inclusion of radio airplay, it's still weighted in favor of songs that are released as traditional singles emphasis tracks [00:04:00] that, you know, get played on radio or that gets sent to radio or have videos made made with them. But streaming has definitely had much more of an effect on the charts. [00:04:09] Um, something that was sort of presaged I think in 1998, which we can talk about in a little bit later. But for example, this week there are 12 songs by Drake on the chart. And that's because his album _Certified Lover Boy_ came out a couple of weeks ago and it just blitzed the entire chart, you know, like, because people were streaming every song on that record individually. [00:04:33] And so you saw the whole album essentially released as singles, even though not all the songs were getting radio airplay or, you know, maybe they were getting sold on iTunes individually because of the just massive effects of streaming that helps them accrue enough points to get on the hot 100. And I, when I say streaming, I mean like on Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube, YouTube Music. [00:04:58] And we can talk about that a little bit [00:05:00] later too. Cause there are some differences there. [00:05:02] Mike: You met, you mentioned that it it's weighted. So are the different streaming services also weighted? Like, is a Spotify stream worth more than say the song appearing on TikTok, or is streaming all kind of in the same bucket? [00:05:17] Maura: As far as I know, TikTok actually does not count toward the Hot 100 at this point. They are a little conservative about, you know, what they add. And back in 2018 Billboard and BDS, which are the Nielsen, which are the entities that make up the hot 100, they decided that paid streams would be more, would be weighed more heavily than streams for ad supported or essentially free services. So if you're paying for Spotify premium, your streams count more toward hot 100 points than if you just have the ad supported free version of Spotify. Or if you're like watching on YouTube and you don't pay for YouTube premium. The TikTok [00:06:00] thing is interesting because obviously like TikTok prizes the snippet of the song and, you know, in theory it shouldn't count as much, but at the same time, like there is a threshold for number of seconds that a song count that, that count as a play of a song. Um, and I think it falls below, you know, it falls below the, what the TikTok minimum length of video is now. [00:06:25] Mike: Okay. Oh man. There's a lot of math already. [00:06:28] Ben: Yeah. [00:06:29] Maura: There's so much math and there's a lot, it's a lot. [00:06:31] Ben: Yeah. Cause like, I feel like I've seen weird places where Eurovision has popped up in like altered forums on TikTok, because for whatever reason, there was a TikTok challenge that was using a Nightcore remix of Getter Janni's Estonian entry from like 2011 "Rockefeller Street." And I, and like, I was just seeing it pop up and going, why is it this song? Why this one? And like, I still don't fully have an answer for that. [00:06:54] Maura: A lot of it is just the hook, you know? I mean, that's the thing about TikTok is that it really has brought back [00:07:00] the idea of the hook being so crucial to the success of a song, which I think is good because I feel like the 2010s were definitely marked by a lot of just kind of hookless drones that really didn't have an impact. And I feel like if a TikTok creator makes a video where they have a relatable angle, the song where the provenance of the song almost doesn't matter because it's just, if it's effective, it's something that other creators will want to copy and make, you know, make their own. [00:07:33] Ben: TikTok is interesting because I believe that's where Duncan Laurence sort of popped up out of nowhere after winning two years ago. [00:07:40] How Duncan Laurence May Have Got on the Billboard Charts --- [00:07:40] Maura: Yes. So Duncan actually talked about this in an interview with _Billboard_ back in June of this year. Some Harry Potter fan created a new scene of with using footage of the movies with Malfoy and Hermione, right. And so that was like the shipping of these two characters and [00:08:00] it used "loving you is a losing game" as the hook. [00:08:03] And so Harry Potter fans just, you know, started sharing it and that led to other people seeing those videos. And then they would use that sound for their own purposes that might not have been necessarily Harry Potter related. But you know, obviously the sentiment "loving you is a losing game" is a very, it can be a very universal one. [00:08:24] And then it showed up on the Spotify top 50. So the thing about the charts on streaming media and streaming music is that oftentimes they will be these kinds of like self-reinforcing entities because discovery on streaming music is still very complicated. I mean, Spotify, I think has really good tools for it. [00:08:43] Disclaimer, I'm friends with their data alchemist Glen McDonald, who, you know, comes up with a lot of the tools that lead to like your daily mix having, oh my gosh, this is a perfect mix of like robo funk from 1982 or whatever. But like, it still is a [00:09:00] very kind of hard to get a handle on thing. If you want to see like what's new. [00:09:05] So of course, like if you want to see what's new, what's popular, you go to the top 50 global chart, the top 50 chart for your country. So once a new song is in that chart, people will be like, oh, what's this. And then they'll play it. And that'll increase its position on the chart. And so it'll become this kind of like, you know, if it's an effective enough song, it'll become a certain sort of snowball rolling down the hill kind of thing. It's really interesting too, because like, I feel like the 2000s were this period when a lot of songs got really entrenched on the hot 100, because of the way that pop radio would flow from like a song being popular on top 40 radio. And then it would kind of graduate to the old folks home that is hot AC you know, like the mix stations or the light FM stations. [00:09:48] And then those stations have very, very glacial airplay shifts. So like Jason Mraz's "I'm Yours" is a great example of this. Like, it was a song that was popular on pop radio, but [00:10:00] once it like hit the AC world, it became just like a monster and it didn't leave the chart for over a year. [00:10:08] Mike: That also seems to kind of coincide with those stations seeming to run a little bit on autopilot. Uh, i, yeah, like I, uh, I know in like the Detroit area and in the Cleveland area, like a lot of these stations where it's just like, it really does sound like it's a computer DJ and they're just kind of pulling from the same playlist of maybe 150 songs and just rotating through that. [00:10:30] Maura: Yeah, there'll be like shifts and stuff and stuff will drop out. If it's like more than five years old, it'll drop from recurring to gold or what have you. With the consolidation of commercial radio in the US, you definitely have a lot of centralized playlist decisions being made, and that makes for more homogenous charts and slow moving charts. [00:10:53] I mean, one thing about TikTok is that even though, obviously I'm not privy to all of the behind the [00:11:00] scenes machinations that like get a song into my feed and TikTok definitely is I, out of all the various opacities of, social media TikTok I think is the most opaque of them all. But at the same time, it is rewarding songs that have an immediate effect on listeners, much more quickly than radio, which is still very, obviously even more top-down than ever, does. [00:11:26] Ben: Yeah. And like, especially that moment in around like, 2007 is just, just thinking about that Jason Mraz song and other stuff that were just everywhere on the radio. So you had, you had that, you had like Colby Calais of just these very adult contemporary friendly sounds that just hung around forever. [00:11:42] Maura: They hang around forever. And there was a rule that was implemented by _Billboard_ about these songs to stop the lower reaches of the chart, especially for being clogged up with these just unkillable adult contemporary hits, where if a song has been on the chart for more than [00:12:00] 20 weeks and it falls below the top 50 it's taken off. "Arcade" was number 41 two weeks ago, then it disappeared. It might've dipped to like number 52 or something. [00:12:09] Ben: And like we had a period where in addition to like Drake's Loverboy, Kanye's album had sort of a similar, all of these tracks are on the chart now bump and the combination of those two could have easily made it drop below 50. [00:12:21] Maura: For sure. Absolutely. Yeah. And so, if it gets enough points to come back, it'll come back. I mean, you can see with Mariah Carey and "All I want for Christmas is You" bubbling up every December and January into the upper reaches of the chart. [00:12:35] Why is "Beggin'" rocketing up the Hot 100? --- [00:12:35] Ben: Arcade was a two year journey for that song to start charting over here. Måneskin has rocketed out of nowhere, post Eurovision, specifically with "Beggin'", which is from like years ago. Why are they rocketing up now instead of on a similar two-year delay? [00:12:49] Maura: So that's another TikTok thing. "Beggin'" became like a dance craze over the summer. Um, I'm sure that the spotlight that they got from Eurovision helped the [00:13:00] awareness of their song, but, um, it became a dance craze over the summer and then it reached the global chart on Spotify, the charts on Apple Music, the curiosity factor about, oh, the songs on the chart, I'll check it out. [00:13:14] And then that just snowballs. It's funny because there was another version of "Beggin'" that was a much more minor hit 13 years ago or so by a group called MadCon. I kind of like that version better. But, um, but like that was, you know, that was very popular. Like I, like, I would hear that at the gym a lot, which was like the upbeat songs that you can work out to playlist. [00:13:35] And yeah, it, got on the charts and then people started playing it. And I heard it when I was in an Uber last week on kiss 1 0 8, which is the iHeart programmed top 40 station here. So the thing about its chart position right now is that it's number one on U S alternative airplay, right. [00:13:54] Which is drawn from a panel of 80 stations that are monitored by [00:14:00] Broadcast Data Systems, which is the automatic tracking service that monitors airplay of songs. So there's that, but there's also hot alternative songs. So hot alternative songs is essentially a sifted chart. It's a sifted version of the hot 100. [00:14:16] A song can be number one on hot alternative songs, but not necessarily getting airplay on alternative rock stations because hot alternative songs is kind of like if the hot 100 was only these bands that are in the bucket that we determined as alternative. So like "High Hopes" by Panic at the Disco, might not have gotten a lot of play on alternative rock stations. [00:14:36] And there aren't many alternative rock stations either, but there are a lot of pop stations. Even negligible attention from pop stations can dwarf the amount that alternative rock radio counts, if that makes sense. [00:14:49] Ben: Yeah. Even though, yeah, this, the song that has been tagged as alternative is getting play on a pop station. Therefore it is rising up the hot alternative songs chart. [00:14:58] Maura: Right. The best example of this is I [00:15:00] think from 2017 and 18, when I'm "Meant to Be" by Bebe Rexha and Florida Georgia Line, that was number one on hot country songs for 50 weeks because it was getting airplay on pop stations and hot AC stations. But during that time, the country airplay chart, which is only the radio tracking, had a ton of number ones and was very volatile. So I think this is probably a case of the tail wagging the dog where it's like, okay, it's number one on alternative songs. Like, let's give it a shot on alternative radio. Cause alternative radio has just been this weirdly moribund format. 80 stations in America is not a lot, and there are definite programming philosophies that are different where some stations will play new stuff or like festival headlining bands and other stations will just be like grunge and post grunge, you know, with maybe a little bit of like Fallout Boy, just to leaven [00:16:00] the formula. [00:16:00] Mike: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. The radio station that I listened to in high school actually came out of Canada. So they also had the Canadian content, uh, restriction on there, but it was just like 89X, the new rock alternative. And like, if you listen to it today, they're still playing the same songs that they were playing when I was in high school. And with some like Nelly Furtado and Sarah McLachlan thrown in just to hit that CanCon. [00:16:23] Maura: Right. [00:16:23] Mike: It's like, okay. [00:16:25] Maura: Always important. Yeah. [00:16:27] Ben: Well, yeah. And I'm just thinking of like the radio station. I remember listening to a ton of in high school city is 97 and the twin cities has like a weird blend of things. And then, uh, Mike, I know that you also read, uh, the number ones column, just reading the story of how Roxette broke in America. Roxette, broke in America because a Minnesotan essentially studying abroad in Sweden, came back with their album and somehow it got on the radio and that's how everyone else started picking it up. [00:16:52] Maura: Yeah, I miss those stories. I remember like hearing about, Sly Fox's "Let's Go All the Way" and how there was just like one DJ in [00:17:00] Houston who just like, loved that song and was just like beating the drum for it. And then it became one of those weird singles of the 1980s. I mean, I feel like that's kind of coming back now with the idea that TikTok is like rewarding songs that have something catchy about them and they might not all be chart toppers. [00:17:20] They're not going to all be "Old Town Road", but they can be. And you know, my feelings about the songs aside, they can be like an "Arcade." Yeah. [00:17:29] Mike: And is the fact that it's, uh, that "Beggin'" is a cover also kind of feeding into the aspect of it. I'm thinking of Tiffany's, "I think we're alone now" where that was a cover and that was also massively successful. [00:17:41] Maura: Covers are more used as kind of, I don't know, like bait to keep an artist in the news, like the BBC one live lounge or triple J. So you don't really see that as much, but I guess that could help. The fact that it is this classic pop song with another classic sentiment definitely [00:18:00] helps fuel that fire. [00:18:02] Other Eurovision Hot 100 Appearances --- [00:18:02] I took a look at previous times that Eurovision entries or artists have charted in the U S. The best example of it is also another Italian song is "Volare." Because in 1958, Volare placed third at Eurovision. It's one of those songs that's entered the canon as kind of won anyways, just because of how ubiquitous it went. Volare went to number one on the U S hot 100 in 1958 to the point where it was Billboard single of the year. It is the first ever winner of record of the year and song of the year at the Grammys. [00:18:30] Maura: Wow. [00:18:30] I was delighted looking at record of the year. It beat out the, the Chipmunk Song by Alvin and the Chipmunks. [00:18:37] Maura: Well, I wonder, and obviously like I wasn't alive in 1958, so I can't totally speak to this, but I do wonder if part of it is just that it is this very sort of like classic pop song. Classic in the sense of what was big in the forties and early fifties. And like it wasn't a rock and roll song because obviously like rock and roll was the thing that was encroaching on popular culture and [00:19:00] certainly popular music at the time. Even now with the changes, you can never discount the Grammys conservative streak. [00:19:06] Ben: Agreed. I've pulled up the full list of things that were up for record of the year. So you have Volare, you have Perry Como's "Catch a Falling Star," Peggy Lee's "Fever," Frank Sinatra's "Witchcraft", and then Dave Seville and the Chipmunks, "The Chipmunk Song." [00:19:19] Maura: Wow. [00:19:20] Mike: Wow. [00:19:21] Ben: Yeah. Yeah. But some other examples, throughout the years, in the seventies, Mocedades' "Eres Tu" went to number nine. And Mike, you had found out this is apparently in a season three episode of Riverdale. [00:19:34] Mike: Yeah. Yeah. Every time that I Google this track, that pops up and it's just like, what, what is going like, I have not watched one second of Riverdale and it's like, what is going on with that show? [00:19:44] Ben: I mean, I just have a distinct, clear memory of there being an exercise in Spanish class where we listened to "Eres And I don't know if that's just a Minnesota educational system thing or just an everywhere thing, but like lyrically, it's very straightforward, very simple. So I see why it works is like a good exercise there. [00:19:59] [00:20:00] Uh, but elsewhere in the seventies, uh, Abba's "Waterloo" peaked at number six. [00:20:03] Maura: Awesome. [00:20:04] Ben: Yes. Yeah. and then as long as we're talking about the two main Eurovision artists Americans know about, I checked on Celine Dion, "Ne Partez Pas Sans Moi" given that it's in French, uh, did nothing on the charts. And like, frankly, she wasn't really releasing anything that charted in the U S until 1990, when she released the English language Unison album. [00:20:23] Maura: Gotcha. [00:20:25] Mike: But I'm sure winning Eurovision was probably helpful in getting that record deal. So. [00:20:29] Ben: Yeah, I would not be surprised because like in 89. So like the year after she won, she released a greatest hits album at the time that featured "Ne Partez Pas Sans Moi". But the most recent up until "Arcade" popped up was Gina G's "Ooh Aah Just a Little Bit" in the nineties getting to number 12 and being nominated for a best dance recording Grammy. [00:20:48] Maura: That's a good song. It's also very much of like the trends of the charts at that time, because there was so much of that, super peppy Euro dance. [00:20:58] Ben: Like that was like a brief moment that we [00:21:00] like let Euro dance into America. [00:21:02] Maura: It was a beautiful [00:21:03] Ben: time. [00:21:03] It was a great moment. Yeah. [00:21:04] Mike: Yeah. That was my musical upbringing. So like I had no idea that it was a Eurovision track until much, much later. And just like, oh, like this song. [00:21:14] Ben: Yeah. And like, I had the opportunity to be part of the pop justice, 20 quid prize this year, the jury. With, with like one other American. And both of us had very fond memories. Danny Harle's "On a Mountain" was one of the songs up this year, which that one's a lot of fun and like feels very riffing on both the nineties moment where we had like a bunch of Euro dance got let into America and then the very specific moment in the early 2000s where like some random Danish duo would find a vocalist and cover an eighties song, like would do like a trance remix of "Heaven" or a trance remix of "Listen to your Heart." [00:21:48] Maura: The "What's Up" dance version is also very good. The Four Non-Blondes song. [00:21:52] Mike: Yeah. [00:21:52] Maura: I know that's nineties. [00:21:54] Ben: Just like these brief moments where like these very Euro dancy sounds were just like on the [00:22:00] American radio. And like, we, we, we were, we were both very much fighting for, for on a mountain in that discussion. It got knocked out first. [00:22:06] Maura: Oh, sorry. [00:22:07] Ben: I mean, on the other hand that we also like the ultimate award went to Laura Mvula's "You Got Me" and was just the right choice. [00:22:15] Maura: Totally. [00:22:16] Why a 25-year gap between chart appearances? --- [00:22:16] Mike: I mean, considering that Euro dance pop had a moment in the U S and I don't think it ever fully went away. Like, I think people still have a fondness for it, or at least people I hang out with. But, uh, like why, why was there that gap from 96 to now on Eurovision crossover? I'm guessing part of it may be just the quality of songs coming out of Eurovision during that time, but there were some bangers in the mix and didn't seem to get any sort of traction. [00:22:47] Maura: it's a really good question. I think part of it is just that Eurovision has been sort of this abstracted thing for Americans, up until this year, I would say. I didn't actually know about Gina G's Eurovision [00:23:00] history either. Um, and neither did you, Mike, and I think that that's, kind of part of it is that like, it was marketed in a way that was kind of Eurovision agnostic. [00:23:09] It was just something that fit into the trends of the moment and American pop trends have been very mercurial and, I think probably more hip hop oriented in recent years than Eurovision is. [00:23:23] Ben: Yes. Yeah, Eurovision does not really get anywhere near hip-hop. [00:23:27] Maura: No, no. Which is, you know, I mean, it's a reflection of the cultures of Europe and everything, but I think that that's a big part of it It just hasn't been in sync with the ruling sonics of the moment, but now that the game for that is a little more wide open than it was, you're seeing stuff filter through. [00:23:48] You've mentioned that the way that the stats get tabulated now have changed drastically over the last few years, like has the measurement system been kind of evolving over the last [00:24:00] 25 years. [00:24:01] Maura: Absolutely. You know, back in the late nineties, this was when the record industry was enjoying record profits, selling boatloads of albums. And part of that was because of the introduction of what I call the $18.99 maxi single. A song would be released to radio, but it wouldn't necessarily be released as a physical single which up until 1998, in order for a song to make the Hot 100, it had to be released as a physical single, because sales and airplay were the two things that made up the calculus. [00:24:32] In 1998 the Hot 100 changed from being a single chart to just a songs chart. Because of the success of alternative artists like Jewel and GooGoo Dolls who were releasing very successful songs that would get airplay on MTV, but that wouldn't make the hot 100 because there, there was no single available of the songs that were, being spotlighted and being listened to on radio. [00:24:59] So it's [00:25:00] funny because this time of record profit and also forcing people to buy an album in order to hear the one song that they wanted, I feel like was a big contributor to why Napster was developed. If you just wanted "You Get What You Give" off the New Radicals album, they could just download that. They didn't have to worry about buying the whole album and not liking it as much. That led to Napster's introduction, led to paid downloads becoming a thing, with the iTunes music store and other outlets. And they were first tracked by Billboard in 2003 as digital songs chart, and then they got added to the hot 100 methodology in 2005. So you could buy a song off of N*Sync's Celebrity, you could buy "The Game is Over," which is my favorite song on N*Sync's Celebrity, and if you bought it in like late 2005, it would count toward that song's Hot 100 position. So it's like the evolution of like singles being these kind of like top down [00:26:00] phenomenon, you know? And it still is obviously cause like songs with music video budgets and everything, labels get behind them. But there was more choice in the matter of what listeners could decide was their single from a record. [00:26:12] Yeah. So that was 2005. And then in 2007 they added the first streaming services like AOL and Yahoo music to the Hot 100. So if you were listening to a song on Spinner, it counted. [00:26:27] Ben: I'm just now remembering streaming things through like MSN music around that time. [00:26:31] Maura: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. All of the portal services had their own music services as well. And then in 2013, services like Spotify got added to the mix. And the most crucial addition was YouTube. YouTube was definitely fueling a lot of songs popularity. Gangnam Style was probably the most crucially a denied of being on top of the chart because its YouTube streams didn't count. American radio is [00:27:00] very English language centric, so it didn't necessarily get as much airplay as its popularity it might have reflected. And so YouTube being added definitely shook things up. [00:27:12] Five years after that in 2018, the formula was sort of shifted again, so that paid streaming services subscriptions were prioritized over free services. Like I said earlier, like if you pay for Spotify, like your streams of certified Loverboy count more than they might, if you were just watching those songs on YouTube or playing them through YouTube. [00:27:36] Mike: Does it take as much to move the needle at this point? Cause I'm just thinking of like, I don't know, the last time that I bought a song or an album since so much of it is available through streaming services. So is the sales component, still going to be as relevant, like five years from [00:28:00] now, or is streaming going to end up kind of being the main driving factor on a song's success? [00:28:06] Maura: So I think that they'll still count. I think that streaming is still the main factor now. Like you, a lot of people have shifted toward all streaming consumption. The way that they do this now is lemme, this is as of 2018 paid subscription, streams are a full point. Ad supported streams are two thirds of point and then program streams are like a half a point. So program streams are like "you're listening to this radio on Spotify," you know, whatever. For the Billboard 200, which you know, sort of is a different chart, but it's just interesting to see if you stream 1,250 songs from an album, and you have Spotify Premium or Apple Music that is equivalent to buying an album. [00:28:54] Mike: So if an album has 12 tracks, you have to listen to it about a hundred times for it to [00:29:00] count. Okay. Okay. [00:29:01] Maura: That's why there are so many super, super long albums now, too. [00:29:04] Mike: Um, [00:29:05] Maura: Yeah. So you thought that the 74 minutes CD was a lot of space. Oh, welcome to the era of infinite room. [00:29:14] Ben: Yeah. I just remember having a conversation with a coworker at the time that they missed the era where artists were putting out like 75 minutes CDs. Cause it was around the time of like 2013, where like artists were like putting out like a solid 10 or 12 track album that was much more focused. And I greatly prefer that over when we were just trying to pat out the CD. [00:29:32] Maura: Even, um, like that Metallica thing that they released a couple of weeks ago, the black album covers album, which has I think like 50 tracks. Yeah. So you only need to listen to that whole thing, you know what, 24, 25 times in order for it to count as a sale. Obviously the Billboard 200 and the Hot 100 are different charts that, you know, the Billboard 200 measures album consumption, but they are related because you wouldn't have all of those Drake songs [00:30:00] or Kanye songs flooding the chart if long albums with multiple songs weren't rewarded. Yeah, it's wild. And it's definitely gonna change again, just cause I think that the ways in which people react to and consume music are just ever shifting. But I also think that there are gatekeepers who still want to hold onto their relevance and their importance. [00:30:23] And, and they also have an ear at a lot of these companies that are doing consumption charts. Rolling Stone launched a suite of charts a couple of years ago. It has slightly different methodologies and slightly different panels, but right now on that chart, Drake is number one. And actually it's a little more transparent than, um, the billboard charts in that. Like, you can see sort of like how things are trending and everything. But it's also formatted so that you have to scroll and then open. So Beggin is number 46 on the latest Rolling Stone chart that's live [00:31:00] on rollingstone.com. [00:31:01] But, I mean, the fact that there is a credible challenger to the Hot 100 alone is just a sign of how the market has really fluctuated and blown open. And you can also see at the bottom, they also really do count a lot of older songs cause like "Dreams" by Fleetwood Mac is number 91 and "Sweater Weather" by the Neighborhood is number 94. [00:31:25] Mike: Yeah, that one always seems to pop up. I guess it is sweater weather right now. So that sort of makes sense. But. [00:31:33] Ben: one tracks. Everybody loves listening to Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams". So like that would just being sort of bubbling under does not surprise me at all. [00:31:40] Maura: Yeah. And then the video of the, of the skateboarding guy with the cranberry [00:31:44] Ben: yeah. The cranberry juice guy. [00:31:46] Maura: Yeah. [00:31:47] Ben: Like if you weren't already listening that song, the cranberry juice guy immediately. [00:31:51] Maura: Well, and even like Stevie Nicks made a, you know, when Stevie Nicks is like copying your meme of your Fleetwood Mac song, you've hit a big, so. [00:31:58] Ben: Yeah. Yes. [00:32:00] Will Eurovision tracks be making more Hot 100 appearances? --- [00:32:00] [00:32:00] [00:32:00] Mike: So with all of these shifts, do we think that Eurovision songs are going to be appearing a little bit more frequently and, I don't know, like dipping its toe into the mainstream with a little less delay? Or is this just kind of a fluke that's happening right now and it's probably gonna be another 25 years before we see Eurovision on the charts again. [00:32:25] Maura: I don't think it'll be 25 years. I mean, I think having Eurovision on Peacock this year really helped the profile of it in the States. And it helped the profile of the bands. Cause I mean, even like that whole sort of kerfuffle with like, why was the lead singer bent over the table? That got on much more American radar than I think anything that's happened in a Eurovision ceremony in a long time. So I think that having it on Peacock and being accessible helped. The Netflix movie helped as well. It just, as far as like awareness of Eurovision existing, [00:33:00] I'm not going to say it's like a brave new world or anything, but like the light democratization of what makes a popular song thanks to TikTok definitely is a factor here and the global nature of TikTok as well. If there's a video that goes super viral that a lot of people are watching and it's by somebody in Italy or in the Netherlands and it gets to American audiences, then that'll help a song sort of like push off into the American chart. [00:33:30] Ben: And like, as we're seeing, like, if you hear like the snippets of the hook, like you go start streaming on Spotify, but that helps it get up the charts. [00:33:37] Maura: Yup. Curiosity is such a, it's such a factor here, and the fact that you can go and be like, oh, this was on, you know, and it's any TV show, right? This was on the blacklist. This was on good girls. Like, what is it? You know, that, that helps. So I think that like the instant try-on aspect of pop music and the fact that like those trial balloons [00:34:00] result in potential chart positioning is, is a big factor. [00:34:03] Ben: Agreed. One final question I had, especially given that often the song by a Eurovision artist is not necessarily what charts in the U S. With Maneskin and what's charting right now is "Beggin'". so I guess for both of you, Who do you think is the best known Eurovision artist in the United States and the most well known Eurovision song? [00:34:22] Maura: Well, I wish it was "I Feed You My Love", but it's, it's gotta be Waterloo. It has to be Waterloo and Abba. I mean, I would think, and Volare. [00:34:30] Ben: Yeah, I would argue for Volare just because that one, I think has just like, that one's been around since the fifties, it pops up in a lot of compilations. And again, like it's a Grammy winner I don't think it's necessarily something that people know as a Eurovision song, they just know it's a song that's that has music history. Artist-wise, though, I would agree that it might be Abba. [00:34:48] Maura: Yeah. [00:34:49] Mike: Yeah. I think with Abba, it comes up often in their bio that they won Eurovision. And like that was like their stepping stone to fame. You don't get that as much with Celine Dion. And I want to see that [00:35:00] Celine Dion fake biopic thing, just to see how they handle the Eurovision... [00:35:03] Ben: I am. so [00:35:04] Maura: my gosh. [00:35:05] Ben: Like I am going to be at that bonkers Aline Dieu opening weekend. [00:35:12] Maura: I have the album by, the woman who made this movie, Valerie Lemercier. She put out a record on a label called March in the nineties and it's super good and a really fun like French pop. So recommended. [00:35:25] Mike: Awesome. In terms of like the most, well-known Eurovision song, it's probably Waterloo, but I don't know if people necessarily know that that is the Eurovision song that Abba had. Like, I don't think people necessarily know what are the Eurovision songs, if that makes sense. [00:35:41] Ben: Yeah, no, that totally makes sense. I could totally see someone knowing that Abba is a Eurovision winner and just assuming it's something like "Dancing Queen". [00:35:47] Mike: Yeah. Yeah. [00:35:48] Maura: Right, right. [00:35:50] Ben: Well, Maura, thank you so much for joining us for this discussion. This has been super enlightening in understanding, the hot 100 more. Where can people find you online? [00:35:58] Maura: Yeah. [00:36:00] so I'm on Twitter @maura. And my 15th anniversary of Twitter is next month, which is terrifying. Um, and then, oh, thanks. I think, I think, I don't know. Um, and then, I have two radio shows. I have a show every Tuesday night from 10:00 PM to midnight Eastern on uncertain.fm, which is a streaming radio station based here in the Boston area, run by TJ Connolly, who, is DJ for the Boston marathon, which is happening this taping week. That is called the Pop and Wrestling Connection where I play pop music and talk about wrestling. And then I have a show every Thursday from one to 3:00 PM Eastern on WZBC the station of Boston College, where I teach. And that is called maura.com/wzbc. And that link does work for old playlists and that is sort of a new music spotlight. And I write for the Boston Globe. I have a column there [00:37:00] called Omnipop, which I initially talked about, all of this. So that's, I think that's it right now. And I'm still, like, my book is very slow in coming. but it's coming, uh, book on Madonna. So [00:37:13] Mike: Very much looking forward to that. [00:37:14] Maura: Former Eurovision performer, Madonna, I should [00:37:17] Ben: Former Eurovision. Yeah. Former Eurovision interval act, Madonna. [00:37:21] Mike: Yes. She is now the best known Eurovision artist in United States. [00:37:24] Maura: Yeah. Yeah. Right. [00:37:26] Ben: Oh yeah. But you also have Justin Timberlake. [00:37:29] Mike: Um, true. True. [00:37:30] Ben: He did promote the one troll song, movie [00:37:35] Mike: Sorry, [00:37:35] Ben: sorry, natural song, movie trauma, trolls, the movie song. [00:37:38] Mike: a troll song. [00:37:40] Maura: It is a troll song movie though. Cause it's all about the trolls, like singing and. [00:37:44] Ben: Very true. That's going to do it for this episode of the Eurowhat, thanks for listening. The Eurowhat Podcast is hosted by Ben Smith, that's me, and Mike McComb. [00:37:52] Mike: That's me. You can follow the Eurowhat on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or the podcast app of your choice. If you would like to [00:38:00] support the show. We are also on Patreon at patreon.com/eurowhat. [00:38:05] Ben: Show notes are in the description of this episode and on our website at eurowhat.com. If you'd like to contact us we're @eurowhat on Twitter, or you can email eurowhatpodcast@gmail.com. [00:38:14] Mike: Next time on the Eurowhat: we play Eurovision Inception as we discuss Eurovision songs about Eurovision.