Who Keeps On Choosin’ Texas?

0:00Hey, what's up guys, it's Hayley Bailey. Okay, I need to tell you about something. I just got YouTube Premium. It's got tons of awesome features like offline downloads, so I can download my favorite videos before I travel and watch them whenever I don't have Wi-Fi. Because we all know airplane Wi-Fi is the worst. I get to add free, I get back room play, and there's like a ton more in there. You should try it. If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. Try it now for two months free at youtube.com slash premium. Try a eligibility varies, terms apply, cancel anytime. That's a mouthful. Hey, it's Wesley. We're gonna start this week's episode in one second, but I just wanted to let you know that there are a lot of great things that happen at the New York Times. And if you wanna know what they are and hang out with them for free, you can do it for a whole month without a paywall in the New York Times app. If you already subscribe, thank you. But if you don't download the NYT app, first month is for free. I'm Wesley Morris and this is Cannonball.

1:11Today, I brought my drain out. Does this song mean anything to you? I put it right back into her arms. I wasn't a match for that kind of sport. She's from Texas, I can tell. It's Tuesday in Texas by Ella Langley. I'm sure you knew that. And it's a thing for two plus months, this song, this country song about a woman sitting at a bar, suddenly realizing that some dude went with option number two has been number one on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart. And it's just tied this record for non-consecative weeks in that spot at number one, 22. Sorry, Mariah, your rain is over. And yet I also didn't know what kind of thing

2:14this song was because I was not experiencing it out in the wild. I wasn't shazamming it, I didn't hear it on the radio. The only way I knew this song was a thing was because I'm a student, I'm one of these students of the charts. And the charts tell me what's going on. And now I am wondering, months into the song's chart domination, what is happening? It isn't just a question of my being curious about the song's popularity, I actually would really love to know why, according to Billboard, we are choosing it. But there's a related concern here. I've also noticed that this song has been on the chart for almost a year. And a lot of songs lately have been just essentially paying rent to live inside the top 40. And especially the top 10 songs like, ordinary about Alex Warren, and beautiful things by Benson Boone, lose control by Teddy Swims. Oh my God, that song. For a long time, we have labeled hit songs,

3:14chart toppers, we still call them that. Well, today, I want to think about a different designation of chart supremacy, chart cloggers. Hair in the drain of national popularity. My guest today is Chris Malampi, my favorite chart expert. He writes this great column for Slate Call, Why Is This Song Number One? And he hosts one of my very favorite podcasts, Hit Parade, where Chris practices a kind of a really unique pop music criticism by combing through our chart history. And he's also the author of an extremely illuminating book about the popularity of Old Town Road. Today, we're going to talk about Choose in Texas. And what kind of choice that is? Chris Malampi, welcome to Cannonball. Thank you, Wesley. I'm very flattered by that introduction. Well, you know, I am no longer drinking jackal by myself. Well, you don't have to drink jackalone today. No, you've got a gill to drink with. Yeah.

4:15So, all right, here's a deal. I, first of all, I want to ask you when the first time you heard Choose in Texas was? I would say the first time I heard Choose in Texas was just before Christmas, 2025, when it started making lists of the best country songs of 2025. Ah, okay. Okay. And if I recall correctly, I think Billboard magazine and their critics, they ranked it. Their favorite country song of the year. And I played it. And I thought, huh, this is a darn good country song. Mm-hmm. And another thing I found kind of remarkable about it is, it is country qua, country. Yeah, it is not, it is not a country slash anything. It is not a hybrid. It is not country slash. I wouldn't even call it necessarily country pop. I would not call it a hybrid. This is a country nothing like that. Pure, pure country. I mean, it could live, it could live in the 1980s. It really could. It could live in the 1980s. It had, it makes references to the 1980s. You know, she references the song, George Straits Amarillo by Morning is in the lyrics.

5:18Yeah. It could have been sung by Kathy Matea 35 years ago. Or Roseanne Cash 40 years ago, or God love us, Rebimack entire. Like it is, it is that kind of country song. And it's co-written by Miranda Lambert, who's a superb country songwriter. Never had to hit like this in four years. Never, not in her own column, right? She's got better songs. She's got songs like, you know, I mean, she's gunpowder and lead. There've been many great Miranda Lambert songs. But yeah, this modest little song has kind of taken over everything. And I'll admit I didn't see it coming. I thought it was, I will say, I'm a fan of the song. I think it's an exceptionally good country song. But, you know, 22 weeks, probably by the time people hear this podcast, at number one, on the Hot 100, the All-Genera Pop Chart, yeah, I could never have predicted that. So I heard this song because I saw that it was in the top 10.

6:23And it was at this moment where I'm going to volunteer to listen to it. Because at that point, I had not heard it out in the wild. And, you know, for, just to be clear about like, what the wild is to me, like there are other places where you can find out what is going on in popular music by just leaving your house. So I had not heard this song in a restaurant. I had not heard this song at a CVS, Duane Reed, Walgreens, or the supermarket. I had not heard this song coming out of anybody's car. Okay, did all of these non-encounters happen in New York City? So I want to talk about this. But yes, I mean, it sounds like what you might be implying or what I'm hearing, the implications of here are perhaps a kind of regionalism. Yeah. Yeah. And I, before we get into the chart, just sort of want to think about like what we're talking about when we talk about the song as being like a pure country song.

7:25Exactly. That you may not be hearing on the radio the way you would be hearing like Olivia Dean's, man I need. Yeah. So let's just sit in the song as a song for a second. I mean, it's got a really sort of classic country sound in that there's a slide guitar kind of crying behind her. Yep. Metal steel, mandolin, all the classic country tropes. It's got a story. Just when I thought I got in the fall in love with Tennessee I shouldn't know better than a taking back to Abelene. I mean, it's a story song about a woman who is using states as a metaphor for who her paramour is choosing to be with. Right. Because what she wishes is that he was choosing Tennessee.

8:26Yes. But he is hearing the siren call of a pretty little thing from Texas. Abelene. Abelene, no less. I mean, which could be a name, honestly. Right. I guess he forgot about the smokey mountain rain. The mold, hang tunes, the Memphis blues we used to sing. That already makes her more interesting to me. Right. I love them real by morning. I should have taken. He always loved Amarilla by morning. Great George Street classic. I should have taken that as a one. Right. I mean, I don't know. I just, I do enjoy the thing that I love. And I've always wondered about with country songs and why they didn't chart pop was just what a pleasure it is to be taken and put into a world that is human size,

9:26but also detailed. Right. There are not only proper nouns. There are objects here that you can pick up. And put down and run into or be run over by. I love that about country music. And it always wished that more of it, more of that sensibility would appear on the pop charts. I agree. And when folks hear the word pop, pop chart, I think people picture what Taylor Swift does now. What Sabrina Carpenter does. There's a good distinction. Great distinction. And we've kind of defined pop as this sugary, frothy, often female genre. But pop can be anything. And in the history of the Hot 100, which by the way, is a nearly 70 year old chart, it was launched by Billboard in 1958. This is not the first time we've seen country music cross pop. If you were around in the 70s, we had moments with everyone from Glenn Campbell with Reinstone Cowboy to Miss Dolly Parton,

10:28Miss Ereston, Peace to what John Denver and Olivia Newton John were doing. Folks may not remember this, Olivia Newton John. Originally a country star before she did grease and crossed over pop. In the 80s, the Urban Cowboy moment after that John Travolta movie blew up. Suddenly for a few years, folks like Eddie Rabbit with I Love A Rainy Night. I love a rainy night. There you go. In the 90s, you know, trivia, who was the best selling artist of the 1990s? Is Garth Brooks? It is Garth Brooks. It is Namaraya Cari. It is not Pearl Jam. It is not Tupac Shakur. It's Garth Brooks. Garth Brooks outsold everybody and everything in the 1990s. The Bro Country phenomenon of the 2010s, you know, you did have a little bit of crossover that decade. Talking about Sam Hunt. Sam Hunt, you know, batty like a back road or cruise by Florida, Georgia Line. They even did a remix with Nelly of that song. But what's been fascinating about the 2020s is that we now have more regular ass country music sitting in the top 10.

11:28If we zapped back to 2023, 2023, that summer was a heavy country summer as well. So baby, last night we lived to a liquid top. I can't remember everything we said. This was the summer of last night by Morgan Wallen, which spent 16 weeks at number 1 on the hot 100. This is the summer of Richmond, North of Richmond. Living in the new world. We're in Holtz. By all of our Anthony, this bizarre song from a man who had never had a hit of any kind and debuted at number 1. This is the summer of Jason Aldean's Try That in a Small Town. Got a gun that my granddad gave me. They say one day that gone around over. So like, we've seen country crossing over. And some of that has to do with the data. And you can tell me how deep you want me to go on the day. I want you to go so deep. I can't find you, Chris. There you go.

12:28What's changed in the 2020s is that now the charts are overwhelmingly dominated by streaming data, meaning Spotify, Apple Music. Any streaming music provider that you may listen to is overwhelmingly the largest factor in the charts. Radio still counts, sales of singles still count, whether you buy a download or on very rare occasion by a physical single, that all still counts. But overwhelmingly, the hot 100 measures streaming. And country listeners, in particular, were kind of the last genre to adopt streaming services. It accelerated during the pandemic, in fact, because like everybody else, nobody was leaving their houses. Nobody was in their cars with their radios. And suddenly you had, in general, there was mass uptake of Spotify and Apple Music. But it really accelerated with the country audience who previously had been extremely loyal to their local radio stations. And also, I mean, the ownership question

13:30seemed important to them too. That too, right? They would buy a tape of, you know, George Straight, 50 greatest hits or whatever. And that would sit in their car. And that, you know, that plus the radio was their listening diet. And now there is a whole generation of country listener, particularly a Morgan Wallen fan, who streams the bejesus out of that music. And we finally have data on, you know, what country fans are playing. And streaming, by the way, does this to all sorts of types of music in genres, you know, whether it's Christmas music, kitty music, you know, we had a number one hit about four years ago from the movie in Conto. Sure. We don't talk about Bruno. We don't talk about Bruno. Um, rap disc records, like you can't really picture not like us by Kendrick going to number one without without streaming music, without tracking what people are actually playing, not just buying. So it has really, dare I say, democratized the charts to an extent that I don't think we even could have fully comprehended

14:31when they added streaming to the charts. But what is, what's the formula now? Because I think that over time, the, the billboard chart, the magic formula has changed. It has. Or the balance of its ingredients has shifted. Yes. Some ways they no longer use high fructose corn syrup. In some of the tribal flavin. Now, you know, right, there's no more dextrose. We don't need that anymore because I figured out a bit different way dextrose is like puffing things up in a way we don't need. So what at some point were things like YouTube and TikTok doing where were they positioned in the formula? And are they still there? Okay. If you will indulge me please, I'll take it back briefly to the beginning. So this chart's been around since 1958, the hot 100. And it has always measured at least two things. Sales of songs and radio air play. And those two things right up to the present day have always been in the formula. And, you know, obviously the composition of those things

15:33has changed over time. In the 50s and 60s, sales meant buying a 45 RPM single. Nothing else. Then, you know, casingles in the 80s, CD singles by the 90s. All we knew was that you bought something. We have no idea if you buy a CD, if you use that CD as a beer coaster. That I leave it in the car. Did I leave it in the car? Did it melt or did I play it a thousand times? We had no idea how much you actually played something. We were only capturing your consumption at the moment you bought something. The point of sale was the boat. Exactly. And radio has changed over time. For a long time, billboard only counted contemporary hits radio or top 40 radio on the chart. Now, pretty much any current base formula counts for the hot 100, which partially explains why the LL langley record is done so well. But then, here's the key thing. In the late Aughts, and really, really the early tens, because Spotify didn't get to America until 2011, they add a third factor, which is streaming.

16:34And what's interesting about streaming is it's like both of those other two factors, but it's different from both of them. Like sales, you the user get to pick the song. But like radio, you listen to it passively, and then you don't keep it. And it turns out that having this celestial jukebox, if you will, radically changes our understanding of how songs are consumed. Now, what is the streaming component of the charts? Overwhelmingly, it's Spotify and Apple music and those kinds of digital services. For a long time, it also included YouTube. Billboard added YouTube to the charts in 2013. Billboard is currently having a bit of a feud with YouTube. YouTube pulled its data from Billboard and I believe early 2026. But by and large, because YouTube is, you know, mirrors the kinds of consumption that you see on Spotify and Apple music, I have not sensed that yanking YouTube has made a difference. It's made that big of a difference. Yeah. Before anybody asks, it does not include TikTok. It has never included TikTok.

17:34Billboard did briefly try contracting with TikTok to get their data. And they even had a TikTok chart for about, I don't know, two years. But the kinds of songs that will take off on TikTok, first of all, if they lead to an actual hit record, a full length hit record, then you'll see the knock on effect in Spotify and all the other data that does factor into the chart. And second of all, the kinds of things that hit on TikTok. This, you know, the things hit for all sorts of random reasons because there's a squeaky noise that everybody wants to use. Or there's a lyric that I'm going to use. A little bit of the beat. Yeah, exactly. But, all right, so LLangley. Yeah. What is the achievement here then? Not only what is it a reflection of, but what is the actual chart achievement? The achievement is that this one song, and by the way, this song, I think is even bigger than anybody in LLangley's camp pictured at being. You know, if you look at their release pattern, I don't think they were planning for this record to sit at number one for 22 weeks. That was not their plan.

18:35But it shows that, you know, folks who love country music, or who are inclined to love country music, really, really, really love this record. Now, the LLangley song has never set any one week data records. There has never been a week where, shoes in Texas has been streamed, you know, 100 million times. She's not Drake. She's not Drake. Right, she's not going to have a Drake week. She has not done that. What she has been is a model of consistency. Basically, for the year 2026, shoes in Texas has become the hot 100s default hit, meaning, if nobody like a Drake or a Taylor Swift, when she dropped her Toy Story 5 song, I knew it, I knew you or around, I mean, literally, you rolled out a carpet. Yep. See when I, and for two weeks, I knew it, I knew you debuted at number one in sat at number one for two weeks, and then guess who went right back to number one? LLang, you know, when Bad Bunny played the Super Bowl back in February, and debited on Misfotos, DTMF,

19:36briefly went to number one, it interrupted shoes in Texas just a couple of weeks later, choosing Texas, went right back to number one. You know, Ariana Grande, when she dropped her album, and, you know, hate that I made you love me, debuted at number one, Olivia Rodrigo. LLang Lee's hit has gotten interrupted multiple times, but every week, reliably, weekend, week out, it gets turned... This one coming back. It gets streamed in Average, or about 25 million times. Give or take. That is a good enough number that in an ordinary chart week, she's just got the most consumed record. The question you're asking before, when you're talking about, why am I not hearing this out in the world, is it crossing over? We are now at the point where billboard has the data where if the record never crosses over in, let's just say it, blue states, or, you know, coastal urban areas, that's... It can still top the chart. It can still top the chart, exactly, because it's got enough data, it's got enough consumption, because streaming actually tracks every time you play a record.

20:39And that has had a profound impact on the charts. I guess the whole reason that I wanted to talk about this in the first place is because choosing Texas didn't debut at number one. No, it climbed. It climbed to that spot. What I really want to understand, given the way that we've been talking about, the tributaries that bleed into the river of the chart now, is how do we account for, and how should we think about the stagnation, that's my word, of the way... Let's just sort of hang out in the top 20, the way the top 20 works now. I mean, one way I think you need to think of it is that if we'd had better data in the 60s, songs would have hung around a whole lot longer. That human nature being what it is, once a song catches on, especially with the passive fan, the fan that's just listening to the radio, the fan that just kind of enjoys whatever is presented to them, these records would have lasted a whole lot longer on the charts.

21:43For the record, billboard doesn't like its charts getting clogged up with hits too long either. Ever since they computerized their charts, and this dates all the way back to 1991 in sound scan, they have had rules, recurrent rules, they're called, where if a record gets too old, they retire. And it falls below a certain position, they retire it. Now, it got so bad recently in the streaming era that they have had to supercharge those rules. Just last year, they changed the rules such that songs that have been on the chart for, I think it's 78 weeks and fall below the top five, or, you know, below the top five. Yes, because records like lose control by Teddy swims were sitting in the top 10 and even the top five, four months and months and months on air. There is a drain, hair on the drain. Exactly. I like that song. I don't love that song. But is it oral wallpaper that's pleasant enough when I'm buying toothpaste? Yeah, sure, fine. And all of that, yeah, sure, fine. Results in a record that sits in the top 10

22:44and doesn't go anywhere. Die with a smile by Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars, sat on the chart for over a year, you know, and... Did they retire that? They had to retire that after they changed the chart rule last year because it was not going anywhere. So Olivia Deans about the bite dust in about a month. Probably. Okay. Yeah. All right. That is the technical part of this conversation. In terms of just how the chart actually functions and makes a song like choosing Texas, the massive hit that it is. I want to take a break. And when we come back, I actually would love to then take this conversation and move it just a neighborhood over and talk about what it means for these songs to clog the chart. Why, why we like the ones that are there, what it means for us to have made them popular and what is their popularity saying and doing to and for us? Fair enough, we're in for it too.

23:45We'll be right back. I'm going to take a break. I'm going to take a break. I'm going to take a break. I'm going to take a break. I'm going to take a break. I'm going to take a break. Sometimes that one thing you've been putting off becomes the thing that can change your life. Whether it's earning a master's degree, building leadership skills, or preparing to take your career in a new direction, Southern New Hampshire University can help. With flexible online graduate programs designed for working professionals, SNHU makes it possible to earn your degree while balancing your busy life. So stop putting off your education. Start today at snhu.edu slash cannonball. If you're a parent of a teen or have teens in your life, it can be hard to figure out the right way to approach social media and technology. Ultimately, if you feel like your teens are ready, there are tools to help. Instagram teen accounts have automatic protections for what your teens see and who can contact them,

24:46plus time management tools like daily time limits and sleep mode. An Instagram will continue adding built-in safety features to help create age-appropriate experiences. Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at Instagram.com slash teen accounts. That's Instagram.com slash teen accounts. This message is brought to you by Applecard. It's a new school year, which means yet another back to school shopping list. Luckily, when you use your Applecard, you can earn 3% daily cashback on everything in Apple, including the new iPad Air and the MacBook Pro. Apply for Applecard today and unlock the tools for a productive school year. Subject to credit approval. Applecard is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City branch, terms and more at Applecard.com. Okay, we're back. We are talking about the Billboard Hot 100, Halloweenly, the many songs that enter the Hot 100

25:50and never leave. Is it the real close-down of American popular music? We're just at this moment where our ability, this democratization of how we measure listenership and quantify it, it means that our listening habits are quite legible. So I think we should go through the top 10 songs of the Billboard chart week of September 12, 2026. Sure, let's do it. Number 10, be her, Ella Langley, that song. What a bummer. I just want to be hurt so bad, it hurts so bad, it hurts so bad. The song itself is like, you know, that girl's perfect. I would give an arm. That's Ella Langley giving us a bop. That's the closest thing. That's Ella Langley doing pop, not doing a pure country record. Unlike Choosing Texas, that's what makes Choosing Texas so unpredictable that this pure country record lasted that long.

26:51If I can read the minds of her label, they release that in the late winter early spring thinking, this is our song of the summer. Choosing Texas will fade away and be her, we'll go to number one and we'll have that in the running for song of the summer. Instead it peaks at number two behind what? Choosing Texas. So I happen to like be her, but you know, it's... I don't dislike it. Yeah, I know, it's a bop, I like it. Everything on this album is a b to me. Like, it's all a b. Number nine, Risk at All by Bruno Mars. Shake your warmly, watch me on a fly. I am just thankful that that Bruno Mars record is not the first single I just might, which I liked fine, but that thing was... Hello. ...at the top 10 for months and months. Stella Marr, they went their song back, Bruno. Um, nine, Risk at All by Bruno Mars, it's been there for 27 weeks. Number eight, man I need. Choosing Texas. Be the man that I need.

27:52Olivia Dean, 54 weeks. Number seven. So easy to fall in love, Olivia Dean. 49 weeks. Yeah. Number six, Dracula, Taiman Paula, and Jenny. 49 weeks. That is an exceptional record, because Taiman Paula was all formerly Mr. Indy Rock. I mean, never had a chart hit. Not like that. He's worked on records for pop stars like Doa Lipa, but he's never had a hit that big under his own name. Been by... Now Morgan Wallet. Number five. It's only been six weeks for him, but give that man some time. Yeah, and that is a warning that he is going to drop one of his... ...buy any... I got an album. ...buy any of the albums, probably next winter spring. Yeah.

28:54Hate that I made you love me by Ariana Grande. 14 weeks, former number one song. Number three is... I knew it. I knew you, Taylor Swift. It's been 13 weeks. And you can expect that one to sit around, because she is clearly going to do an Oscar campaign for that one. I get it. Taylor, I get it. I'm going to ask her to. Don't we all. She'll be three quarters of the weights for her e-gott. Then she's just got to write something that wins a Tony. Number two, Boston, by Stella Lefty. I mean, why America, why? Number one. Come on, baby. She was in Texas. It's been 46 weeks. And by the way, I just want to note that that column of,

29:55you know, how many weeks it's been on the chart. That's the whole Hot 100. Not the top 10, it's been the top 10. Not the top 10. However, if you're Taylor Swift, because she's Taylor Swift, that song debuted at number one has been knocking around the top five. So those weeks literally are all on the top 10. I am really fascinated by the fact that, you know, I've had to reorient my relationship to the chart clogging because the fact of what it signifies is kind of an upside if you believe in the truth about what's popular the way I do. Right. Right. This is an indicative of where we are right now, for a number of ways. I don't know. I just feel like we're at this very interesting moment where we want something that feels like I don't know declaratively emotional directness. A kind of emotional directness, yes.

30:56And I mean Olivia Dean is giving us that. Ariana Grande is giving us that. Bruno, I mean, that's his, that's the point of the rail. Yeah, right. You know, Taylor Swift, you know, I don't know. I just feel like even Boston, a song I don't even like. But I mean, it is, it is satisfying. I mean, it's got the simplest possible chorus line. I like it when you're nice to me. I mean, how, how much more emotionally plain and naked? Right. Diagram, that sentence, America. I feel like that's what we want. I think that part of the chart clogging is, I really don't know. I mean, we're saying it's active and it officially is. But it might also be reflexive. I think we don't want our mood, whatever this mood is, we don't want it to change. Well, I mean, Spotify and, you know, the digital services, they're all about programming moods. They're all about giving you back what you need,

31:57whether it's background music for studying or, you know, dinner party music or, you know, pleasant driving music. Like, they are all about giving you a vote. And if I, it's funny, before we had this, this country crossover boom, which I am now regarding as the cultural moment of the 2020s, I was calling the first half of the 2020s the decade of vibes because there were so many hits that were really viby. I'm thinking of glass animals, heat waves. The most inexplicably huge song, the number one song of 2022, by the way. Or Steve Lacey's bad habit. Yeah. That is a vibes record. Yeah. Yeah. You know, like, there have been a lot of number one hits, especially in the first half of the decade, they were all about the vibe. And, you know, I don't know if the country records

32:57that are now crossing over are a different kind of vibe, but they tell a story and they're to use your phrase emotionally direct. And maybe it turns out these streaming services are revealing that that's what we want. But it's interesting because it's not like that emotional directness is new. Right? I mean, it's ancient. It is fundamental to who we are as a people. And I think, I mean, it is interesting how we can rediscover things about ourselves, especially if you're a young person and you're, you know, the way I was for a lot of, nobody told me. I didn't know. Yeah. And I discovered it for myself and, oh my God, you know, I really love, I mean, this is, I love Dolly Parton. I didn't know. Yeah. Nobody, I'd never heard nine to five before. I love the clickety-clack of the typewriter that starts the song. By the way, Jo-Leen just became a top 40 hit for the first time in its history. I know. And, you know, to think about like what it means for a person like Dolly Parton, you know, a massive,

33:58I mean, you know, the world seemed to stop for one second when she died a couple of weeks ago just to pour one out for her. Yeah. That you wouldn't, I mean, to look at a chart and come to that conclusion you could never. Well, because she had very few crossover hits. This woman wrote a song a minute, by the way. Yeah, no, 3,000 songs, supposedly. Yeah, yeah. But like if you were looking at the pop charts, and again, this is about, you know, the way the charts used to work and the fact that she would have to actually actively cross over at top 40 radio to have a hit. So, you know, her handful of crossover hits, nine to five, here you come again, islands in the stream. You know, these are the records that actually crossed over with a pop audience, mostly Dolly charted country. But Dolly was always presenting that emotional directness, you know? I feel like we're at like part of this moment that I'm trying to describe in some ways is like, would Delilah play it? You know, am I calling Delilah with a story and asking her to play

35:01for the 20th time, die with a smile? Or, you know, choosing Texas, I'm just sad because, you know, I like the guy and he picks a mother person. I mean, there are still, there's a radio program called Live Line that still takes requests. And, you know, they track what, you know, a young audience. Believe it or not, there are still young people who will call a radio station. I know that sounds crazy. No, it does not to me. It does not to me. It does not to me. And they will request a song, you know, this year, sometimes they were requesting Michael Jackson songs because they saw Michael the movie. There is another, you know, proof of like the way that the chart can kind of reflect where the culture is more immediately. Yeah. Then probably before. Yeah, no, and Michael rechartered with songs like Billie Jean, you know, as a result of Michael the movie and it didn't take months, it happened in Centaneous Live. I mean, I have a question. So what we're talking about in some ways is the way that. Our tastes are more, are being more accurately reflected in something like this chart.

36:07And I guess what I'm wondering. Just looking at this list, thinking about how. Annoying it is to have a chart that never moves. Yeah. And it turns out it may be our fault. And it may be, and now we know, well, maybe. Yeah. I think it an all likelihood is our fault. We are choosing to not change. Because the data on this chart is frankly more transparent. Whenever I'm asked to, you know, I don't work for Billboard, but whenever I'm asked to defend Billboard's methodology, I remind people like the battle days of charts where charts were bought and sold, that was in the 20th century, you know. And I love that chart back then, you know, in the 1980s, I listened to American top 40, habitally every week, and I wrote down the chart and I loved it. That's what I do. But there was, thank you, brother. But, you know, that was a little bit of accuracy and a little bit of BS. Because, you know, there was a whole lot of machination going on there. And we did, some of that BS was not necessarily corruption. It was, it wasn't necessarily payola.

37:08It was a lack of good data. And the better data we get, the more we learn about. Oh, at Christmas, people really do play these records that much. Or, oh, it turns out that this, you know, song from an animated movie by Lin-Man Well Miranda's, you know, really that huge. Or it turns out running up that hill was always a hit waiting to happen. You know, or it turns out that, oh, rap disc records are not this little niche that actually one of them can be number one for several weeks. You know, you get these phenomena that are now reflected on the charts in a way they never were before. Well, so if we take that story and try to think about it culturally in some way, what does it mean that a genre of music that was the entire chart it felt like for years is barely on it now, especially at the top. Are we talking about hip-hop specifically? Yeah. Yeah. No, it's been an interesting decade for hip-hop. And frankly, it was already starting to wane even before this country crossover moment.

38:09You know, it isn't as if country kicked the hip-hop off. It popped off. It's almost as if there was some sort of handoff from Billy Ray Cyrus when he came on to Old Town Road of all the people, by the way, handing a baton of country to anybody. It's crazy, right? Little, little, little, little, little insects being of all the people in hip-hop to receive it. Right. Right. These two very differently fringe avatars of these respective genres coming together meeting and changing the way we think about two different things, but also, you know, the one genre is ascendant and the other is decent. Yeah. So I'm just sort of trying to think about like what? Some of its data, how that happens. Some of its data, but some of it is cultural cycle, you know, and with country in particular, once you have more country listeners providing this kind of data, and Billboard now has a rule

39:09that anything, you know, any radio station can be in the chart. I mean, this has been the rule for about 25 years. You kind of have a more democratized chart, and you can have something like Ella Langley kind of clearing the field, the way she did. I've got another question, though, and I don't know if you can enter this. Does country music radio play more songs per hour? Then a hot 97 does they cycle through more songs, certainly than top 40 radio does. And I'm not sure about hot 97, but probably hot 97 as well. I call country radio, and this is going to sound sinister and all agopoly because they, they don't, they kind of take their cues from Nashville, and they're like, we're going to give this number one for two weeks. If you look at the country airplane chart, the number one spot changes hands very regularly. Frankly, it was borderline corrupt in the battle days when, you know, they wanted to give everything a turn. You know what I mean?

40:10There was a period where on country radio, you would look at a country chart, and if a record like forever and ever, amen by Randy Travis spent two weeks at number one, that was considered remarkable. But it turns out when you actually pull the listeners, the folks going on streaming services, if they've decided they just love choosing Texas, they're going to keep playing, choosing Texas, and they are not going to follow the priorities of the record label, the radio station, who's like, well, we like to choose in Texas, but, you know, that's a recurrent for us now. Never mind. We didn't even get into the fact that country radio for a long long time. Oh, it was a misogyny question. The misogyny question was not playing women much at all. I mean, I've not uttered the word tomato gate in this conversation. Oh, no, not tomato gate. Okay, tomato gate, very briefly. The time of DJ, I don't know what city it was. A program where you was just like, you know, we should be thinking boys about women artists as something that you just like plays sometimes. The way you would have a single cherry tomato in your salad, perhaps.

41:13Women were likened to the tomatoes in a salad. If country radio is a salad, women were likened to tomatoes in a salad. This was about 10 years ago, yeah. And tomato gate has become a shorthand. Is that even a gate? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if it even qualifies as a gate, but, yeah. He just came out and said the thing. He said the quiet part out. I mean, but a gate. I mean, in all seriousness, one of the writers of choose in Texas, Miranda Lambert, kind of got robbed. She should have had multiple, you know, these country number ones. She had some, but she should have had more, frankly, given how popular she genuinely was. But I mean, I tend to keep track of when you hear, you know, when I do my big country radio listening sprees, I tend to keep track of how many women in a row. Oh, yeah. That, I mean, rarely happens. Rarely happens. And it somehow carries over into these streaming service playlists, where you can experience five guys

42:17with great songs in a row, and then you get a tomato. Yeah, exactly. And you're like, well, you know what? I like a tomato salad. Yeah. I'm a big, I'm a big Caprazi fan. I don't want any lettuce. Yeah. And this is one of the burdens folks are putting on Ella Langley is like, can she get more women on to country radio? But they've been saying this, this has been a question for years. For years now. There was a moment earlier this year where the number one single on the hot 100 and the number one album on the album chart were by Ella Langley, choose in Texas. One of the weeks it was number one. Oh, yeah. And Megan Moroni's album, Cloud 9 was number one on the album chart. That had never happened before, where a female artist from country music had the number one album in America. In America, by the way, not just 2026 people in 2026. And this even in the heyday of the 90s, you know, the Dixie Chicks never had the number one album while Shania Twain was number one on the hot 100. That never happened. So yeah, this. So a little bit of a breakthrough is starting to happen, but it's easy to overstate it.

43:20And you don't want to place that burden all on Ella Langley's shoulders. Like I said before, I don't believe that, you know, Ella Langley's label pictured, choose in Texas. Spending 22 weeks on top of the hot 100. I don't think they dreamed that I could be wrong, but I'm pretty confident. They could only have dreamed it. They could only have dreamed it. Yeah. And I love that we now have a truth about ourselves. We are really in the mood for some middlebrow shit that is not going to push too hard. Take us too far. Something that is just really easy to understand. And transparent, even if it's even if you're down on yourself the way Ella Langley is in some of her songs. It's a very self-pitying record, honestly. And I, that's one of the things I like best about it. It's very relatable. We've all had that moment. We might even be there, right? I mean, this is a real, this is an album of demise, a dandelion. You could be any flower, but you choose her album is called dandelion.

44:20You could choose any flower, but you choose this thing that is just scattered to the wind. Yeah. It's just, and all you're left with is like a little stem. I used to have something pretty on it. I don't know. I feel like this chart is a real indication that I think we're, we're hurting. We're in trouble. And we just, we just want a bath. Yeah, maybe. We just want, we just want to sit in some oatmeal. It's been a very vibesy decade, honestly. Like way more than the 2010s. And it wasn't as, as if the 2010s weren't stressful. But the 2020s has been a decade of vibes. And you know, as the zoomers have taken over the culture, they, they like their vibesy records. I often say that most decades, pretty much all decades have like not one mode, but two. You know, the, the tens, for example, was EDM and Megapop in the first half, hip hop and trap in the second half. You know, that, that's how I summarize it. And this decade, I don't know, we're, we're now at the halfway mark.

45:21And maybe the first half was vibes in the second half of this country. That might be the trend. I accept it. This chart is telling us where we are. You accept our chart over the lords. I accept the chart over the lords. I accept the chart constituents. The people who are ratifying these songs and saying, this is what I like. Yeah. Over and over and over. For months. For months. Chris Melanti. Wesley Mars. Thank you so much for doing this. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me. This was a lot of fun. I've been waiting a long time. Has I fun? I'm going to be a little bit more excited. I'm going to be a little bit more excited. I'm going to be a little bit more excited. I'm going to be a little bit more excited.

46:22I'm going to be a little bit more excited. I'm going to be a little bit more excited. Hey, what's up guys? It's Hayley Bailey. Okay, I need to tell you about something. I just got YouTube Premium. It's got tons of awesome features like offline downloads. So I can download my favorite videos before I travel and watch them whenever I don't have Wi-Fi. Because we all know airplane Wi-Fi is the worst. I get to add free, I get back room play, and there's like a ton more in there. You should try it. If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. Try it now for two months free at youtube.com slash premium. If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. Hi, I'm Sean Evans from Hot Ones and I want to tell you about YouTube Premium. It has offline downloads, so you can watch without Wi-Fi. Background Play. So you can lock your phone and it still plays, baby. Oh, and it is completely add free. Yes, I said it, add free. Try YouTube Premium for two months free at youtube.com slash premium. Trial eligibility varies, terms apply, cancel anytime.

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48:24It was edited by Austin Mitchell. This episode was engineered by Daniel Ramirez, which recorded by Samantha Winter and Nick Pittman. It's got original music by Dan Powell and Diane Wong. And our theme music is by Justin Ellington because it always is. Bobby Doherty. He took the photo for our show art and our audience team is Katie O'Brien and Maria Obdelkov. We'll be back next week. Uh, and listen. You think you were mad at the last list we talked about. You need to hear what happens when we talk about this list. You can't undo everything in life, but you can undo pre-diabetes. More than two in five adults in the US have pre-diabetes.

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