* New Albums coming this week from Kendrick Lamar, The Chainsmokers, Florence + the Machine, Luke Steele, Mallrat, Bob Moses, Mandy Moore, AyOkay, The Black Keys, Craig David, The Smile, Kevin Morby, The Bros. Landreth. Last edited:
Harry Styles claims a fourth week at No.1 in Australia with "As it Was", with his new album "Harry's House" due next Friday the 20th of May.
" As it Was" also logs a fourth week at the top in Canada, while it holds for a sixth week in both England and Ireland and was replaced at the top in America by Future. And by holding for a fourth week at the top here, the song becomes the second longest running No.1 for 2022, stuck behind the five weeks racked up by "Cold Heart" (Jan 3 wks/Feb 2 wks) and "Heat Waves" (Mar-April 5 straight weeks) during this year. Plus Harry's current No.1 has also accumulated more weeks at No.1 than any other One Direction or solo-member-effort put together, as 1D only ever had one chart-topping song in Australia, "Drag Me Down" (1 week on August 10th, 2015); and apart from Harry's debut solo single "Sign of the Times" (1 week on 17th of April, 2017) the only other 1D'er to hit the top was Zayn with "Pillowtalk" (1 week on 8th of February, 2016).
Jack Harlow is sitting at No.2 on both charts this week, as his former No.1 single "First Class" remains on hold at No.2, while his second album "Come Home the Kids Miss You" debuts at No.2 this week over on the albums chart, plus two further Top 20 debuts, a Top 40 rebound and potentially four more songs from his new album have landed within the Top 100 this week, giving him nine in total (8 from his new album and a guest appearance on a Lil' Nas X track). Both Jack entries (single & album) are at No.1 in New Zealand this week, with his album entering at the top and his single holding the top-berth for a fifth straight week.
Hello, Lizzo! Her new entry from last week "About Damn Time" is this week up nine places to land at a new peak of No.3, instantly becoming her highest charted single in Australia, surpassing the No.6 peak of her only other Top 10 entry "Good as Hell" (HP-6, peaked Nov. 2019), and in doing so it gives the Top 3 it's youngest and freshest top three songs this year, as the oldest song within the top three is the six week old Harry Styles entry, and also this week half of the Top 10 is only ten weeks old (or young).
From the youngest to the oldest, the Glass Animals long-running "Heat Waves" is down one spot to No.4 this week, racking up it's 67th week within the Top 10 and 91st week inside the Top 100. Lizzo's rise pushes down a couple of Kid Laroi tracks this week, as his three week old entry "Thousand Miles" dips one spot to No.5 after two weeks at it's entry peak of No.4, while his 44 week old entry "Stay" with Justin Bieber drops two places to No.7 (WI10-44, third longest), it's lowest ever chart position, as it dipped as low as No.6 on the January 3rd chart before rebounding back the next week into the Top 3, where it stayed until the first week of April.
Wedged in-between the two iOraL diK (Kid Laroi backwards) tracks is the Latto track "Big Energy", which holds at it's peak of No.6 for a second week, while I heard the track in two different media sources this week, firstly as the closing-credits to the recent Sandra Bullock/Channing Tatum film "The Lost City", plus in the season one finale of the CW superhero series "Naomi".
Swapping places at No.8 and No.9 are two duets/collaborations; firstly "Cold Heart (PNAU Remix)" for Elton John and Dua Lipa is back up one spot to No.8, logging it's 39th week within the Top 10 (sixth longest) and down one place to No.9 are Lost Frequencies with Calum Scott and "Where Are You Now". Ed Sheeran is down to only one Top 10 entry this week, as "Bad Habits" falls three places to land at No.10, notching up it's 45th week within the Top 10, keeping it as the second longest of all time in Australia (if it falls out next week and Kid Laroi's "Stay" keeps within the T10, it could surpass "BH's" in the next two weeks as the second longest Top 10 entry locally).
UP: Last week's new entry for Future with Drake and Tems called "Wait for U" is up three spots to a new peak of No.12, while the song has debuted at No.1 in America this past week (along with his album), with the only other climbing track within the Top 20 being JB's "Ghost", back up one to No.16. Leah Kate saw a twenty-seven place jump last week to No.38 with her face-slapping "10 Things I Hate About You" track, and this week she continues her upward trajectory by leaping sixteen spots to land at a new peak of No.22, after which the next climbing track is another of last week's new entries, for Benson Boone called "In the Stars", which is up one spot to a new chart height of No.34, after which Dean Lewis' "Hurtless" also moves back up one place, landing at No.35. The last two climbers for the week sees the Jack Harlow first single from his latest album called "Nail Tech" (HP-22) rebound back up twenty-nine places to No.38 thanks to his new album's high entry, while the love theme from the 1998 film 'City of Angels' called "Iris" by Goo Goo Dolls (HP-1x5, August 1998) sees a six place rise back up the chart to land at No.45 this week. Over the Easter weekend the song returned to the Top 100 (along with a heap of other older songs from Cold Chisel, Nirvana and Avicii) and now five week's later it's back within the Top 50 for the first time since January of 1999.
DOWN: There is one Top 10 dropout this week, Ed Sheeran with "Shivers" (HP-2, WI10-33, seventh longest of all time), which drops down one spot to No.11. After a couple of weeks of sitting at No.11 the Gayle track "abcdeFU" drops three places to No.14, while another former No.11 sitter in "Bam Bam" for Camila Cabello and Ed Sheeran falls five spots to No.18, followed by last week's rebound for Adele and "Easy on Me", back down three to No.19. Dropping seven places apiece are "Starlight" for DAVE and "That's What I Want" by Lil' Nas X to No.25 and No.27 respectively. Olivia Rodrigo notches up one-year within the Top 50 with her second No.1 single "Good 4 U", which drops four places to No.28, followed by a six place slide to No.29 for Tate McRae's "She's All I Wanna Be", with the song newly Gold (●) in sales, after which "Enemy" for Imagine Dragons falls three spots to No.30 on it's half-year (26 weeks) anniversary. After jumping to No.26 last week, the second entry for Lauren Spencer-Smith "Flowers" drops back down seven spots to No.33, with further seven-drops occurring for "Watermelon Sugar" by Harry Styles (30 to No.37) and "Mr. Brightside" by The Killers (32 to No.39), followed by a nine place slide to No.40 for the Luude and Colin Hay remix of "Down Under". Doja Cat drops eight places apiece with both "Kiss Me More" and "Woman" to No.41 and No.42 respectively, while last week's new Justin Bieber entry "Honest" tumbles down eighteen places this week to land at No.46. Two further seven-place slips occur for the "Tom's Diner" remix and Frank Ocean's "Lost" to No.47 and No.49 respectively, while the Tiësto and Ava Max entry "The Motto" plummets thirteen spots to land down at No.50.
NEW ENTRIES: * #13 - Dua Lipa by Jack Harlow (Generation Now/Atlantic) * #17 - Churchill Downs by Jack Harlow feat. Drake (Generation Now/Atlantic) are both from Jack's second studio album "Come Home the Kids Miss You" which has landed at No.2 on the albums chart this week, while further potential new entries from the album could be the tracks "Side Piece", "I'd Do Anything to Make You Smile", "Young Harleezy" and the Pharrell featured track "Movie Star". Jack is also sitting at No.2 and No.38 with the albums first two singles, "First Class" and "Nail Tech" respectively.
* #23 - This Love (Taylor's Version) by Taylor Swift (Republic) is a re-recorded track from the forthcoming redone "1989" album (not date known as yet), the original version came out in October of 2014, while this new version has a more indie-pop feel to it.
* #31 - The Heart Part 5 by Kendrick Lamar (Top Dawg/Aftermath/Interscope) is a promo single ahead of his just issued new album (Friday 13th of May) called "Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers", with the song a follow-up to 'The Heart Part 4' from 2017 where Kendrick offers social commentary on African-American culture and institutionalized discrimination. Kendrick's last Top 50 appearance was on the Baby Keem entry "Family Ties" (HP-44, Sept. 2021) and his last solo entry was with his 'Black Panther' entry "All the Stars" (HP-2, peaked late February 2018).
* #36 - Hold My Hand (from 'Top Gun: Maverick') by Lady Gaga (Paramount/Interscope) is the first track issued from the new Tom Cruise sequel to 1986's 'Top Gun' called 'Top Gun: Maverick", with Lady Gaga also composing the score to the film alongside Hans Zimmer and 80's soundtrack maestro Harold Faltermeyer, plus the new album will feature only three songs, one from the original album; "Danger Zone" by Kenny Loggins, along with the just released new OneRepublic song called "I Ain't Worried". Last edited:
Daniel Johns' second studio album "FutureNever '' rebounds back up ten places thanks to it's physical release, to become his first solo No.1 Album.
"FutureNever" (Reclaim Your Art/BMG) becomes the 947th No.1 Album in Australia (1965 to 2022), the 798th for ARIA (1983 to 2022), the sixteenth No.1 for 2022, the sixth this year by an Australian Artist, and the fifth for the BMG label, with their last being Kylie's "Step Back in Time" (1 week on July 8th, 2019).
Between April 1995 and April 2007 Daniel's former band Silverchair logged their five studio albums all at No.1, tallying ten overall weeks at the top for "Frogstomp" (3 weeks from April 9th, 1995), "Freakshow" (1 week on Feb 16th, 1997), "Neon Ballroom" (1 week on March 15th, 1999), "Diorama" (1 week on April 8th, 2002) and their last was "Young Modern" (4 weeks from April 9th, 2007). So this new No.1 "FutureNever" becomes his sixth No.1 appearance in Australia overall.
Last week I mentioned how three weeks from April 25th we had seen an album within the top two with the word 'Future' in it's title or artist, Dua Lipa with "Future Nostalgia" (#1 on April 25th), Daniel's album debuting at No.2 on May 2nd, then the artist Future took out the top spot last week with "I Never Liked You", now Daniel's album has extended that 'future' for a fourth week, making it also the third album at the top with the word 'future' in it's title, after Dua Lipa and previously Justin Timberlake's second album "Future Sex/Love Sounds" (1 week on Sept. 18th, 2006). It's also a second week at the top for the word 'never', as last week's #1 for Future also contained that word in it's title, while overall this is now the fourth album with 'never' within the title.
"FutureNever" got a physical sales boost this past week, as it was only digital sales and streams for it's first two weeks of release, while a limited edition colour cassette also helped boost its sales, while the vinyl edition is not schedule until September (according to JB Hifi's website). After Huskii on February 22nd, Daniel Johns is now the second Solo Australian Male Artist to hit the top this year, plus also the sixth Aussie act at the top after Midnight Oil, Gang of Youths, The Wiggles and at the start of May Northlane. Overall this is the 271st Australian Performed No.1 Album, and also (weirdly) the 271st chart-topping album by a Solo Male Artist (local or overseas). Daniel Johns becomes the 130th Australian Artist to hit the top, and also the 35th Solo Male Australian Artist.
Jack Harlow sees his second studio album "Come Home the Kids Miss You" debut at No.2 this week, matching the position of his singles chart entry "First Class", while two further songs from the album also land within the Top 20, "Dua Lipa" (#13) and "Churchill Downs" (#17) featuring Drake, with the album also seeing guest appearances from Pharrell Williams, Justin Timberlake and Lil' Wayne. Jack's first album "That's What They All Say" came out in December of 2020 debuting at No.46, initially peaking at No.40 in January of 2021, and finally hitting a new peak of No.36 on April 18th of this year (when "First Class" initially came out), so this new entry becomes his first Top 10 placement in Australia, while the set has debuted at No.1 in New Zealand (where his single is also at the top of their charts), No.2 in Norway, No.3 in The Netherlands and Ireland, No.4 in England and No.8 in Sweden (so far).
Olivia Rodrigo drops down one spot to No.3 with "SOUR", followed by a post Mother's Day sales climb of one spot to No.4 for Adele's "30" album, which swaps places with Harry Styles' "Fine Line" (#12 vinyl), down a place to No.5. Ed Sheeran's "= (Equals)" album is back up one place to No.6, while The Weeknd moves back up two spots to No.7 with "The Highlights", after which Doja Cat dips two places to No.8 with "Planer Her".
Sydney DJ and producer Alison Wonderland sees her third album "Loner" become her third successive Top 10 album this week, as it enters at No.9 (#4 vinyl) after "Run" (HP-6, March 2015) and "Awake" (HP-7, April 2018). This is followed by a No.10 entry for the third album by Sydney pop-punk act Stand Atlantic called "F.E.A.R." (#2 vinyl), which becomes their first Top 10 placement and their second chart entry, as their second set "Pink Elephant" (HP-23, August 2020) was their first to chart.
UP: Thanks to a ten-year anniversary vinyl reissue this past week, the sixth studio album for Hilltop Hoods called "Drinking from the Sun" (#1 for 2 weeks from March 19th, 2012) is the highest selling vinyl album this week, returning the album back to the Top 100 at No.12 this week. The first album to climb outside of the Top 10 is the Fleetwood Mac set "Rumours" (#10 vinyl), which rises back up to No.19, while Taylor Swift's "1989" set moves back up three to No.20, thanks in part to it's redone track "This Love (Taylor's Version)" debuting at No.23 on the singles chart, while she also moves up two spots with her other long-running entries "Lover" (to No.38) and "Reputation" (to No.46) The few other climbing albums this week are the 'Bohemian Rhapsody' soundtrack for Queen back up four to No.35, Lewis Capaldi and "Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent" up one to No.36 on it's 3 year chart anniversary (156 weeks). With a new Kendrick Lamar album issued on Friday, his older set "Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City" is back up four to No.40, with Bruno's "Doo-Wops & Hooligans" moves back up to No.44.
DOWN: The four albums leaving the Top 10 this week are "Dawn FM" for The Weeknd (HP-1x3, WI10-8a) down five to No.13, "Future Nostalgia" by Dua Lipa (HP-1x3, WI10-63a) dipping four to No.14, last week's No.1 entry (and U.S. and Canadian #1 this week) for Future and "I Never Like You" tumbles down sixteen places to No.17, while last weeks No.3 entry for Rammstein and "Zeit (Time)" dives down forty-four spots to land at No.47. Justin Bieber's "Justice" is leaving the Top 20 for the first time in it's 60 weeks on the chart, down six spots this week to No.21, while six place drops also occur for "F**k Love" for Kid Laroi (18 to No.24, equal lowest chart position since Dec 27th, 2021 #24), both albums for Billie Eilish in "When We All Fall Asleep" (19 to No.25) and "Happier Than Ever" (22 to No.28, lowest ever chart spot) and both sets for Luke Combs, with "What You See Ain't Always What You Get" (20 to No.26) and "This One's for You" (24 to No.30). In amongst those six-place drops is an eleven place decline to No.23 for the self-titled debut Harry Styles set, while a double-digit decline also occurs for Adele's "25" set, dropping fourteen places to No.39. Taylor Swift has two four-place drops with "Red (TsV)" and "folklore" to No.32 and No.34 respectively, while The Weeknd's "After Hours" set drops six spots to No.37. Top 40 entries from last week to drop into the lower fifty this week were by Mildlife (#29), Northlane (#33), Red Hot Chili Peppers (#34), Adele's "21" (#35) and Norah Jones (#36).
FURTHER NEW ENTRIES: * #2 (LP#2) - Come Home the Kids Miss You by Jack Harlow (Generation Now/Atlantic)
* #9 (LP#3) - Loner by Alison Wonderland (EMI Australia)
* #10 (LP#3) - F.E.A.R. by Stand Atlantic (Hopeless Records)
* #11 (LP#6) - WE by Arcade Fire (Arcade Fire Music/Columbia) is the sixth studio album for the Canadian rock act, with the album landing at No.1 this week in England, Ireland and The Netherlands. It's their sixth albums chart entry here and their first to miss a Top 10 berth since their debut set "Funeral" only reached No.80 in 2004, while they last charted with "Everything Now" (HP-2, August 2017).
* #27 (LP#15.3) - Infinite Disco by Kylie Minogue (Liberation) was a livestream event which had a recent physical release locally, with the set debuting at No.3 on the vinyl sales chart this week. The album is an extension (of sorts) from her "Disco" (HP-1, Nov. 16th, 2020) album and the expanded "Disco (Guest List Edition)" (HP-52, Jan 10th, 2022). As this was a live streamed event, it's also classed as her ninth live album, with this set containing new live versions of her singles "Come into My World", "In Your Eyes", I Should Be So Lucky", "All the Lovers", "Slow" and "Love at First Sight" among it's eighteen tracks, while the set has also hit No.11 in Scotland and No.40 in England this week.
* #41 (LP#9) - In the Eyes of a Child by Mark Vincent (Sony Australia) is the ninth album for the 28 year old season 3 A.G.T. winner (April 2009), with this new album being his first in three and a half years, with his last entry being his seasonal set "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" (HP-16, Dec. 2018). Songs covered on the album include "Hero" (Mariah Carey; not Enrique Iglesias), "Music" (John Miles; not Madonna), "The Power of Love" (Jennifer Rush; not FGTH or Huey Lewis), "Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman" (Bryan Adams) and "Smile" (Charlie Chaplin).
* #48 (LP#6) - We've Been Going About This All Wrong by Sharon Van Etten (Jagjaguwar) is the first Top 50 entry for the America singer/songwriter who issued her first album in 2009, and in 2021 she appeared in the film "How it Ends", which featured two of her new songs.
Happy Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers day to all who observe
"Churchill Downs" wasn't on the midweeks so I'm pleasantly surprised to see it show up in the end. I had this prepared to post in the event that it's missing and I still will because it's really funny this happened on the same day the song came out https://imgur.com/a/BMAlZWe
Also the top two must have been super close this week! Last edited:
I call them non-singles in a singles chart. Six isn't too much damage as compared to most previous album bombs. It's still six album tracks that don't belong in the singles chart.
I mean what quantifies as a single is pretty nebulous anyway. The two top 20 debuts are both getting extensive individual promotion which just leaves 4 other tracks which aren't even in the part of the chart that's freely published. Hardly prime real estate.
I think it's pretty clear what a single is for the most part - it's a track that gets promoted individually AND either gets airplay or has a music video. The rest of what you said is just excuses.
Is it clear? Radio airplay is extremely selective/slow/irrelevant. triple j has a tendency to do its own thing. Music video roll outs are often totally their own thing and for the most part, most music fans don't care much about either. The whole single vs. song semantic is so not worth the decade+ of complaints that it can only be a front for personal grievances akin to 'I prioritise the chart reflecting what I want to be there'* or 'I don't want to have to listen to all these songs I'm not going to like because I force myself to listen to everything that charts'.
*Otherwise why get more mad over this than when genuine, unquestionable SINGLES are left off the chart for no reason? Seems IE and myself are the only ones who seem to care about that
Yes, it's fairly clear what is a single or more to the point what isn't if you use your common sense. 15 album tracks charting after a major album release are clearly not singles and it's not semantics. As long as it's being called a singles chart and it constantly features non-singles, the complaints will continue. Why do you care so much if the charts are mostly the way you want them? I'm sure if the non-singles were removed you'd whinge about that more than the denied singles (which is a separate issue). Nice dig at the fact that I need to listen to everything that charts to do my job, real nice.
I can think of plenty of album campaigns where the single roll out is entirely nebulous. To say nothing of things like promo singles, buzz singles, initially campaigned singles that were demoted due to underperforming, radio only singles, teaser singles, belated hits and whatnot, it's really not a binary thing at all. Not to mention the timing of it. Usually songs get pushed to radio on specific dates, but are they a single on that announcement date, or do we have to wait until that impact date until they truly count? Is "2step" Ed Sheeran's current single? It's getting less airplay than 3 of his previous singles and isn't being actively pushed on playlists here. And even then, is it the solo version, the Lil Baby version or even the Budjerah version which must have been made for Australian audiences. And EVEN THEN, it's struggling to match the peak it set last year anyway which says itself that this model of drawn out singles campaigns is somewhat outdated. Yes I know there are exceptions but most people really don't care about honouring the system.
The charts aren't really how I want them at all. I don't know how anyone can be happy with tracks that would otherwise make the end of year chart failing to do so. The fact that the album chart often flickers point distribution with no rhyme, reason or disclosure. The fact that ARIA's insistence on publishing the chart before every other country means that they miss some 10% of data every week which isn't compensated or is estimated very poorly to the point of affecting the #1 spot sometimes.
I'm not trying to make a dig, I'm just trying to get a real understanding of what's really motivating the issue. Billboard bills the Hot 100 as a 'Songs' chart and people still get uppity whenever an artist makes an impact for a week, so I'm certain that if 'Single' vs. 'Song' wasn't the issue, there'd be a new branding of the same thing. I've made it pretty clear that above all else, I want a chart that tells me what the most consumed music is for the given week. I just can't see a rational reason to want otherwise that isn't petty grievances.
Of course there will be a grey area for what constitutes a single in this era but it's very clear that 15 album tracks flooding the chart are not singles. I really don't see why it's so hard to understand why someone would want the charts to only contain contemporary music that the radio would traditionally play or you'd see the music video for, much of which becomes part of pop culture. That's how the charts functioned for nearly 50 years without any major issues. The singles chart is broken - it's slow-moving, stale and consistently bombarded by tracks that are clearly not singles. These are not petty grievances by a tiny minority of people. It's an ongoing frustration that's affecting chart fans around the world, as you have pointed out. And if you want to know what is the most consumed music for the week then ARIA has a streaming chart for that and there's always the Spotify charts.
I'm a member of a fairly big French chart forum and only a minority of members is frustrated about how the charts around the world work.
I'll just say that the charts need to adapt to the way people are consuming music and it has drastically changed over the past 15 years. Of course a dynamic chart is more pleasing to see, I'll give you that. I'm satisfied that it almost entirely reflects what people are really buying / streaming.
My only issue is the exclusion, without valid arguments, of some songs.
Well as I've said before, that model just doesn't work anymore. At a stretch, there are maybe 50 contemporary hit songs in circulation on commercial radio right now (and half of those are pretty rinsed out) which cycles roughly 2.5 a week, while it also represents an increasingly small amount of relevance to the music listening public, hence some of the biggest hits of the decade (up until recently, "ROCKSTAR" was the best selling track released in the 2020s) not getting played on the radio, and radio instead playing songs that barely/don't even chart at all*. No matter how abuzz people are with new hit music, there will always be a vague cut-off point where you expect to see more old songs than new. It just so happens that this cut-off point has gotten higher than ever before but it just represents an exacerbation of something that's always been around. You're asking for the chart to be a conglomeration of a concentrated audience that more and more over time just isn't what it used to be. The real reason "Heat Waves" is still in the top 10 is because it's just not omnipresent like smash hits of the past used to be ("WAP" is the closest any song has felt like to being this recently but then someone who just listens to the radio might have missed it completely), so people haven't gotten over-exposed and sick of it. This isn't just Spotify's fault, but really all multimedia platforms giving us so many options for entertainment that music is just one of.
Also I can't just use the streaming charts to get this information. In the last 2 weeks we've gotten two top 50 hits that ever even hit the Spotify top 200, sales data does a lot of shifting around, as does the free/paid streaming ratio which I have no way of clearly discerning.
*Perth radio listeners prefer to hear the words 'real music' every 5 minutes rather than hear new music, we deserve what we get
IE: For starters, those French members are only one country - not what you can call a statistically significant sample size and there is such a thing as a silent majority - I wouldn't be surprised if more people don't voice their concerns because you instantly jump down their throats (and ditto in this forum too). And that's if you are to be believed, of course - only a few weeks ago in these threads, you told lies about me as part of a character assassination attempt that I chose to disengage from.
Jinxie: There's a reasonable number of songs on commercial radio that aren't making the charts that would have in any past era. Streaming playlists have way too much influence on the charts. The 'old songs' problem is one that streaming created that ARIA should have nipped in the bud years ago by creating a recurrent chart. It's a bit rich to criticise the streaming charts for a couple of omissions when you say the ARIA charts have even more of them. As with the definition of a single, you use outliers to discredit a working concept. Finally, it's only 96FM that bangs on about 'real music' and I agree, it's a bit wanky. However, they are not a CHR station anymore, so you can't expect much new music from them.
I barely post on this French forum. Users seem to be younger than here though. I used to go to other forums but I no longer have got the time.
You really are incredible Savagegrant. You always play the victim talking about "character assassination" (overexaggeration much?) and other people being rude when you exactly do the same. And what I said is true and I've got proofs anyway but won't bother. It's impossible to have a healthy and constructive debate with you.
That's why from now on I will just ignore you and your posts. Last edited:
You're just repeating the same lies. I've been having a healthy and constructive debate with everyone else, but you always have to make it personal, and not only towards me but to other members, particularly in the past couple of months. I do wish you all the best with ignoring my posts, but I really can't see you holding back your venom for long.
I'm okay with the way the charts are at the moment. I'd rather it reflect what people are actually listening to, even if those songs have been hanging around for 50+ weeks, because said people listen to the same playlists and so on. The "proper" singles will rise if they get attention, and if they don't, they won't. It's too bad if they don't I suppose. When I look at charts that exclude a lot of songs or give more point preference to sales, I always end up thinking "how popular is this really? How many people REALLY listened to that this week?"
As for Billboard in the US having a recurrents chart (where, in the last week, a couple of songs including Levitating fell off the Hot 100 to the recurrents), I just feel like songs are just as easily becoming stale there and it's not much of a fix. If they don't fall off because of several consecutive weeks of downward activity, there's usually an album bomb every month or so there with a rapper flooding the chart with the 10-20 songs from their streaming-bait albums that will drive the other songs off. I wonder how many songs will be driven off the Hot 100 this week from Bad Bunny and Jack Harlow's album bombs (and how many end up making it back on once they fall...), not to even mention Kendrick's tracks coming along next week.
Anyway, just weighing in, not really looking for a debate on my part. Last edited:
Yeah but my main point is that this radio -> sales -> chart pipeline just isn't as prominent as it used to be. 1 radio spin used to translate to tens, sometimes hundreds of sales, now it's often barely above a tenth of a sale. Partly because a lot of these people have probably shifted over the streaming services and are drowned out by the volume of other music listeners who don't get their music libraries from the radio, partly because they're naturally aging out of the top 40 demographic and don't feel compelled to keep engaged with it, and partly because radio themselves are making it harder and harder to hear new music. Reason I brought up 96FM is because it actually won the first radio survey this year, and only lost to Nova* by 0.1 points on the latest one. So a station that almost never plays new music is just about the most popular.
It's not so much that there are some outliers but they represent the bigger picture. Streaming is big but it's not the whole thing. It's like a jigsaw puzzle with several missing pieces: You can probably ascertain what's missing, but it sours the experience to not have it all. If the ARIA Chart accurately tells me what's the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 40th etc most popular song of the week, great, that's what I want from it. But the moment anything is missing**, it throws out the credibility. It calls to question the reason for the exclusivity, like it's someone's (or a group's) ideal projection of it where they can leave out anything that upsets it (which is bringing back unpleasant memories of weirdly pretentious chart fans I've interacted with). If I ever come across a song that didn't chart, I cannot confidently say that it was never a big enough hit at any point to not chart. Maybe they weren't even let on the chart. For the ones that do chart, I can't put much stock in their chart positions. Whatever is #100 on a given week is probably not really #100, but is it #103, #105, #110, I don't know. It's a chart position that's only accurate in that it's what's published, but for the chart to claim that it means what it says it is, is flagrant mis-information.
People get bothered that big album releases disrupt chart runs, but they just make it more credible. Chart runs that are so by-the-book drawn out parabolas feel like just a product of bland, inorganic behaviour. They get knocked down, but they get up again & such. The top 50 longevity battle is a thrill to me because both songs have had to weather multiple storms to get there.
*Ironically last time I got stuck listening to Nova they spent half an hour only playing throwbacks ("Be Alright" was the newest song I heard), though they did say they were gonna play "10 Things I Hate About You" I was gone by then
**Maybe this one is also personal because genuinely what would be my 3 favourite chart entries of maybe the last 15 years all got screwed over by arbitrary exclusion/mishandled data. When you buy a song, hoping to help it to get over the line and ARIA just weren't counting it yet, when a song you love is top 50 both on iTunes & Spotify and it never shows up on Friday/Saturday morning, it really takes the wind out of your sails y'know? Like I just want that gratification from passionately following the chart and then it's just brushed aside. I want to feel like I'm always contributing but I just get kicked down & dismissed as a weird outsider whose input is irrelevant. Story of my life lol.
(Mind you I wouldn't hate a catalogue singles chart [hence why I made my own ], provided that it was consistently ruled, wasn't subject to omissions & didn't result in us getting less information out of the published charts).
Hijinx, I don't know if part or most of your message was directed at me, but if it was, I feel like nothing you said had much to do with what I feel I was trying to get at. (Sorry if that sounds rude, I don't intend it to at all.) I wasn't lamenting the state of anything, just pointing out a couple of things that I personally feel about sales-based charts and charts with a 'recurrent' rule.
That being said, what are these three favourite chart entries of yours that got screwed over by ARIA? Last edited:
Oh I wasn't replying to your message haha, I also have a lot of issues with Billboard's recurrent rules (namely the inconsistency of their rulings). For me:
The Blacker The Berry - should've charted for a week XO TOUR Llif3 - peak is probably correct but the start of its run was missing and the past near 5 years have been a complete wash. Probably should've made the EOY list for 2017 Soaked - Possibly a top 40 hit, hard to be certain, but wasn't tracked by ARIA until after it left the top 100, this one probably hurts the most.
Fingers crossed Billie Eilish makes The Dø become a thing in the future 🙏
Maybe it's been going on for a while and i just never noticed it but curious seeing that a recorded livestream is now considered to be a live album. I suppose the lockdown performances that sophie ellis-bextor streamed which i think were put into an album would also probably be considered the same.
Justin Bieber has finally overtaken Rihanna as the #1 Aria Singles chart leader since 1988. Rihanna held the top spot for more than 10 years. Ed Sheeran is also expected to overtake Rihanna this year and move into 2nd position. Justin Bieber is also leading with weeks spent at #1, whilst Ed Sheeran is leading with time spent in the top ten.
Missing Songs: If a song is absent from the ARIA Chart this is not their fault. The label is responsible for the initial debut and is also responsible to stop a song’s presence on the chart.
Single: The word single means only one, not one of several. It is pointless if an artist releases an album and all of the songs are represented on the Singles Chart for a minimal time. The majority of songs “sales” should of been combined into the album. The Singles Chart is responsible for the representation of what’s currently popular and what’s about to trend into popularity / out of popularity.
Radio; Singles are serviced to radio weekly by the labels, radio can choose who they want to place emphasis on especially if they’re affiliated with particular labels. Radio scans the ARIA Singles Chart for debut’s, what’s currently popular, trending and losing it’s popularity. Due to the current situation playing out on the charts this has caused the usual pattern to almost halt resulting in a similar scenario of songs sticking around for longer than they should.
Labels: We’ve got to remember everything is about the $$$’s! Labels have found an avenue they can exploit over and over. Previously they would sign a large quantity of artists and service those large quantity of artists songs to radio or promote them across many facets of the industry to gain momentum on the chart. There were just as many successes and failures and this cost the label money. The scenario playing out now is something that’s continuously overlooked during these discussions and the repeated sale.
Repeated Sale: Applying the current process to previous years of music, whether that be record, compact disc or a digital a copy would result in the same outcome. When an individual chooses to love a song that song stays with them possibly for a liftetime or roughly a period of 6 years and that period of consumption becomes the nostalgia era and is continuously on repeat and rarely edited. Those songs are played over & over & over they’re the “best” to that person. For example, 1996-2001 (11-17 years old) is my period of love and between those ages music consumption is the highest, most impressionable and the labels know this bracket too well. An individual will explore newer music or back date their music knowledge but regardless the majority will always side with their years and start that dreaded conversation music back in my day was much better! The very love of someone’s tastes between the ages of 11-17 during the streaming era is playing out. We’re seeing a large quantity of people absorbing what’s popular and we’re seeing the other generations clue to streaming and this is resulting in a rebirth of older songs making their mark again. So I’m rambling on… we all listen to songs multiple times, it doesn’t mean that those multiple times deserve a place on the weekly chart. Regardless of the Age of the song if we were to scrap the repeat listens you would see an influx of fresh tunes across many genres. The Singles chart bases itself on highest selling single to lowest selling single but under this new banner that formula doesn’t work as it’s clearly known how many units are needed to shift to land a certain position on the chart in any given part of the year. The labels are finally smitten they have a method to guarantee a constant stream of income with minimal failure.
It’s difficult for me to take what’s in my mind and type it. In a nutshell the songs with longevity are genuine monster hits and should have sat at the higher end of the end of years charts but they’ve also lost their popularity with the current consumption but we can’t see that because of the repeat listens won’t allow them to exit when they should have.
It’s okay to disagree with one another as we all have elements of truth in what we’re saying. However if you’re unable to place yourself in their shoes and see what they’re saying along with what you’re saying then there’s a problem. You can’t prove someone right or wrong everytime. So if you dislike what a members saying take it as a difference of opinion rather than a hatred of the person behind the comments
By the way, just in case this comes up again, let it be known that I never delete posts because I disagree with them, but if anyone brings back the whole 'people have left the forum because of you' kind of arguments I will not be so lenient. At best it's lazy sockpuppetry, at worst it's an insidious ad hominem attack.
(Also I kept getting pulled away from this so this is total stream of consciousness free association with no central thesis, sorry to anyone trying to make sense of it)
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The weird thing about chart omissions I find is that it just reads to me as due diligence lacking on the part of whoever's job it is to audit all the data. I get labels not wanting songs to appear on the chart for aesthetic reasons (until this year it felt like Republic were really committed to The Weeknd's chart history being rather tidy), but historically there have just been bizarre, boneheaded instances that I as a (perhaps not very) casual observer can spot. I get that mistakes happen (anyone who follows my unofficial catalogue chart knows I make heaps of them) but there seems to be abject refusal to acknowledge and amend them anymore. ARIA once rescinded a published chart in 2010 because they left off some sales for Arcade Fire's 2nd week, whereas modern ARIA will be like '"Culture II" by Migos had a big jump in its 2nd week' and omit the 'sure is weird that literally no person in the country streamed it the week it came out' or the 'oh shit we messed this up, oh well it's just a rap album who cares'. I feel like ARIA themselves don't want to omit anything, and yet they have this weird archaic system that no other country in the world has seemingly because there's no one who cares enough to sift through their data with a fine-toothed comb. Also Maroon 5 keep disappearing from the catalogue albums chart, what's up with that?
On the topic of repeated listens, I'll stand up for it as genuinely the most interesting metric we have for measuring popularity. It admittedly is a bit messy that charts have to mesh together consumption models that don't match (you see it more pronounced on the Billboard charts where the 'big debut -> massive drop -> lesser parabola' chart run is amplified because digital sales are kind of OP and almost always fail to truly reflect the popular consciousness of the nation when displayed on the chart), but the fact that we can now see how long songs & albums (well the album chart is kind of rough but there's not much that can be done there) are really sticking with people is incredibly interesting. You can draw pessimistic interpretations for the reasons, but it's really interesting to see how a song like "We Don't Talk About Bruno" is plummeting off the chart while a contemporary hit "Ghost" is not. If you look at their digital performance, both tapered off in similar fashion, but streaming is a very different story. People snicker at it because it's not directly paid but I think the persistent commitment of time (you may do other things, but nobody I know is listening to two songs at once) is not only a powerful thing, but it tells you more about the general populace than boolean values of (DIDBUYSONG or DIDNOTBUYSONG) can. I strongly disagree with it on an anecdotal basis but a lot of people disparage "Hoops" winning the Hottest 100 because it simply must have picked up a lot of 10th place votes and it was no one's favourite, but all votes are counted the same (imo "Lean On" was the real benefactor of that at the time).
"LUST." by Kendrick Lamar is one of my favourite songs of the decade. It is one of those dreaded 'album tracks' but it just hits this sweet spot of melancholy that I can't find elsewhere, and I'll never forget when I was at the "DAMN." tour and Kendrick went right into the middle of the crowd (I was like 3-5 metres away from him!) when he performed it. I've never once provided it an iota of a chart sale though because I bought the album the day it came out and listen to it on iTunes. Furthermore, I know basically everyone here loves ranked lists, but when you boil it down to those aforementioned boolean values, you get strange realities like how I've technically contributed more chart points to "My Ways" by Sycco than "Dribble", simply because it took more listens of the former the convince me to buy it, but in the grand scheme of things, that difference in plays is pretty minor and thoroughly dwarfed by the points I contributed (assuming ARIA was tracking, LOL!) when I just bought them. With streams continually tracking listens though, we know the difference between a brief fling and 'omg this is the greatest song ever I will genuinely never stop listening to it'. More importantly, since it's the majority way people consume music, it's the best way we can observe these flickers of interest. The digital market is so insular that genuine new waves can come along without ever making a ripple. You're not gonna tell me that since it never appeared on the iTunes chart, the popularity of "Notion" by The Rare Occasions (absolute banger btw), a song that's 4 years old, is just the work of people who bought/liked it years ago? Who are we to say that's not true of "Lost" or "Iris"? Every day for the rest of our lives people are going to discover the song "Blinding Lights" by The Weeknd for the first time. I get that people find this sort of slow moving entropy to be boring but I feel it's wrong to draw the wrong conclusions from it. On an individual level, I'll bet there's a lot of really interesting stuff, like maybe 2 months ago someone heard "Sunflower" at a wedding and it hit them on a personal level and they played it daily for the next week but then no more. Put together all of its streams and yeah, it sure looks like a steady stream of streams from a very gradually diminishing fraction of its 2018/2019 audience but I don't think that's the real story.
You also see this sort of thing with the Spotify Wrapped effect on the chart. It itself has an unfavourable interpretation where when you boil it down, it's just specifically songs that were hits around January-April that get the biggest boost and what's interesting is that songs like "Mr. Brightside" come in really high on the overall list (it was like 30th last year?) but when this effect impacts the next week's chart, The Killers just don't get that boost because in actual fact the song is SO popular that it has a much wider audience who only need to listen to it like twice a year to rival the peak moment of the peak promoted songs of right now. This also works as an allegory for how the chart slowing down reflects it being more accurate than ever before, because there have never been more people weighing in on the chart with their music consumption. Every time a new format or platform is added to the chart mix, the chart slows down as a consequence simply because all of these platforms have their own relative bias towards something or other, which gets swamped out by all the existing platforms that don't have it, but what benefits are the universal hits, covered on all bases (eg "Baby Shark" might be the biggest beneficiary of YouTube data being added to YouTube but it has no presence elsewhere to sail up the charts, whereas when YouTube was added to the chart, a lot of very established hits were bumped up a little). This might be boring but it is ACCURATE. I don't know about anyone else, but if I see something wrong or contrived, it's hard to really respect the authority that it's trying to convey. It's like seeing a typo on a government form. If "Dreams" jumps back into the top 50 next week it'll only be due to un-related omissions (and incidentally, a downturn in streams more adversely affecting its close competition than itself). Why bother?
I think the ARIA Chart works best as a time capsule, letting you instantly put yourself into the world of whatever week you're looking at, which always strikes interest in terms of what does/does not feel relevant in a modern perspective. I always feel like there's a need for there to be a certain finality about it, where the #1 hit of a time is forever ingrained as a bigger hit than the #20 hit of the same time. I think in a time capsule sense that works but the beauty of it is that these hits persist (or not) and that's just as informative. Like you can go back to 2013 and see that MKTO had a huge hit with "Thank You" but nowadays that's a 'you had to be there' moment, meanwhile lesser hit "Classic" is one of the most enduring songs of the decade. Of 2013, some songs like "Wake Me Up" & "Counting Stars" are still absolutely huge, but they're now rubbing shoulders with "Sweater Weather" & "Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High?". We still have that snapshot of when Avicii, Katy Perry etc ruled the world, but now there's another valid, interesting interpretation. Too many people get too hung up on specific chart stats (and certain people, only when it can be used to their benefit) that they miss the bigger picture. So like I guess that could lead to one utilising the chart as a sacred artifact that's only drawn into question when something weird & distracting happens on it but I've never understood bearing any grudge in the long run. Once a song leaves the chart (or public relevance), I find it really hard to bear any ire to it even if I think it's really bad. It's not like I have to ever hear it. Funnily enough, when separated by the war of 'you are occupying chart space that belongs to my favourite', I actually find myself warming to a lot of songs I certainly thought I hated. But then I guess in general it's my philosophy to see a mixed experience and focus on the positive. I see a lot of people who will spin any experience or observation with cynicism and negativity and I just can't vibe with them, because they're going out of their way to be caustic and thus will probably always be mad.
Anyway justice for Moldova the judges were off their rocker.
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