Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control” spent over two years on the Billboard Hot 100 till this week, as new guidelines for the chart go into impact.
Cameron Spencer/Getty Images/Getty Images AsiaPac
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Cameron Spencer/Getty Images/Getty Images AsiaPac
Billboard has revised its system of eradicating songs from the Hot 100 singles chart as soon as they’ve gotten too outdated to qualify as modern hits. The measure, meant to shorten the period of time profitable songs spend on the Hot 100, knocks 10 tracks off this week’s chart — together with Swims’ “Lose Control,” which spent greater than two years on the Hot 100 — and within the course of cements a file that would take a decade to surpass.
Billboard has lengthy had an issue with streaming — in addition to with radio stations’ rising reluctance to drag hit songs from heavy rotation after many, many months. When you take a look at the listing of the songs with the longest-ever runs on the Hot 100 (a chart whose historical past dates again to 1958), they’re all from the streaming period. Streaming providers use algorithms that feed individuals songs they’ve already performed, and that is created a doom loop that is allowed recent-vintage songs like The Weeknd‘s “Blinding Lights” (90 weeks on the Hot 100), Glass Animals‘ “Heat Waves” (91 weeks) and Swims’ “Lose Control” (112 weeks) to remain on the chart for absurdly lengthy runs.
Until this week, Billboard employed a system that appeared affordable sufficient: Songs had been pulled from the Hot 100 in the event that they’d dropped beneath No. 25 after 52 weeks, or beneath No. 50 after 20 weeks. That usually prevented the chart’s decrease reaches from getting crowded with stubborn-but-declining hits — endlessly charting smashes like Post Malone‘s “I Had Some Help (feat. Morgan Wallen)” and Shaboozey‘s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” lastly dropped off the chart in latest months due to this technique — however did not have a solution for songs that simply weren’t descending far sufficient or rapidly sufficient.
Effective this week, the thresholds have moved dramatically, in methods that may reshape the charts within the months and years to return. Now, if a music drops beneath No. 5 after 78 weeks — a yr and a half! — it is gone. (Consider that “Lose Control” sat at No. 6 earlier than The Life of a Showgirl got here alongside.) If a music drops beneath No. 10 after 52 weeks, it is gone. If it drops beneath No. 25 after 26 weeks? Bzzzt. And if it drops beneath No. 50 after 20 weeks? That’s a wrap.
Billboard is reserving the proper to bend its personal guidelines and preserve songs on the chart past these benchmarks on a case-by-case foundation, and you’ll see a handful of exceptions on this week’s chart. Most notably, Billie Eilish‘s “Wildflower” — the longest-charting music left on the Hot 100 — is in its seventieth week on the chart and sits at No. 50. But, whereas it is lasted far more than 26 weeks, it is truly climbing, leaping from No. 63. Also, as soon as the vacations roll round, the standard chestnuts will not be held to exactly the identical requirements, supplied they rank at No. 50 or greater, similar as in earlier years.
So you should definitely take a second, mild a candle and pause to mirror on such once-immortal, now-vanquished eternals as… [lights dim as a screen bears the words “In Memoriam”] Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars‘ “Die With a Smile” (60 weeks), Benson Boone‘s “Beautiful Things” and “Sorry I’m Here for Someone Else” (89 and 32 weeks, respectively), Morgan Wallen’s “I’m the Problem” and “Just in Case” (36 and 29 weeks, respectively) and Kendrick Lamar‘s “Luther (feat. SZA)” (46 weeks), in addition to songs by sombr and BigXthaPlug. We’ll by no means know the way lengthy they may have lasted below the outdated system — besides within the case of “Lose Control,” which we are able to state with digital certainty would have left the Hot 100 someday after the subsequent Ice Age.
