But after a 1991 host change, and in response to longtime station complaints about the edgier hits making the chart (e.g., " Me So Horny"), AT40 switched to other, more radio-centric charts for its data. For more than 20 years (1970–91), the national syndicated program American Top 40 with Casey Kasem did actually count down the Top 40 of the Hot 100 (for Boomers and Gen-X pop nerds, it was paradise). That's usually because the wide range of genres on Billboard's big chart are a little too wide for their tastes, falling outside of a station's target demographics - an adult-pop station that doesn't play rap, for example. This might all seem obvious - but it should be noted that many radio or TV programs that count down the top 40, top 20 or top 10 don't use the Hot 100. Virtually all music critics and chart historians referencing a "Top 40 hit" are talking about the Hot 100's first 40 positions, and if a song is understood to have "missed the Top 40," it peaked on the Hot 100 at No.
#BILLBOARD TOP 40 FULL#
(The full list of 100 songs is published in Billboard's weekly magazine and online.) But nowadays, when Americans refer to the Top 40 as "a list of popular songs," generally they're referring to the first 40 songs on the Hot 100. Is "the Top 40" related to the Hot 100?As a term for a radio format that plays current, popular music, "Top 40" dates back to the early '50s, before the Hot 100 even existed. 2 can't be - but this chart, designed for the music business and followed by pop nerds like me worldwide, is still the best benchmark we have to measure the bigness of hits.ĭefining our terms: Before dissecting how the Hot 100 came to be the industry standard for pop hitography, let's answer some basic questions. It's not perfect - any chart where Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Missy Elliott peak only at No. It's a voracious creature, built to absorb whatever medium is delivering music to the masses at any given time. The better question is this: How is it that, half a century later, we still follow a chart called the Hot 100 to measure which songs are dominating our earbuds, our streets, our beaches, our dancefloors, our American lives? We don't listen to transistor radios anymore, or buy seven-inch 45-RPM vinyl (not in quantity, anyway). If he'd known in 1958 what a music video was, he'd have shot one with ladies in various states of undress, too.) (Trust: 28-year-old Ricky Nelson had swag.
#BILLBOARD TOP 40 PLUS#
So, yeah, gender politics in pop music have scarcely evolved in a half-century- plus ça change and all that.
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