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 4/10 Good --- idolator.com http://idolator.com/tag/top/index.xml
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Saturday, August 02, 2008 --- 27 days ago http://idolator.com/399692/bulls-bears-and-bullets-50-years-of-the-billboard-hot
 When this column debuted on Idolator, I briefly referred to the Hot 100 , Billboard 's premier singles chart, as "the Dow Jones of pop." As quippy as that might have sounded, I wasn't kidding. Like the Dow Jones Industrial Average—which signifies the health of the U.S. economy for millions of people who understand little about what the Dow means or how it works—the Hot 100 has been around long enough to become both a fixture and a shorthand for the current state of U.S. popular music. The Hot 100 is exactly 50 years old this week. The first No. 1 song on the chart Billboard launched the first week of August, 1958, was Ricky Nelson's "Poor Little Fool," an ode to a teasing girl and her bedeviling kiss . It's a considerably politer—if more spiteful—song than the current chart-topper, which tackles a similar topic . I've been following the Hot 100 avidly for about half of its 50 years, from the first time I heard Casey Kasem on the radio. So before I go on a two-week vacation and put "100 & Single" on a brief hiatus, I hope you'll indulge me as I tackle why I think the Hot 100 matters—even as the industry it was invented to track comes crashing down around it. I have vague memories of hearing Kasem's "American Top 40" in the car with my cousins as early as 1981, and watching his "America's Top 10" on Saturday-morning TV around the same time. But I definitely recall listening, rapt, to his top 100 countdown of the biggest hits of 1983 ... |
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