The consequence for pop music is that you get fewer total flukes like “Come on Eileen” by Dexys Midnight Runners or “Tubthumping” by Chumbawamba. Taylor Swift is Spider-Man in this analogy, I guess. It’s like how film people complain that Marvel movies are crowding out everything else. The hugest artists dominate more and more of the Hot 100 now-as I speak, on this week’s Hot 100 chart, the top 10 is Taylor Swift. Songs spend more time overall in the Hot 100 now-months as opposed to weeks. And it’s a steady downward curve from 1965 to 2015. A graph showing artists who only had one song ever chart in the Billboard Hot 100, the definitive American singles chart. In 2015, this data website Priceonomics went semi-viral with a post called “The Death of the One-Hit Wonder,” and they used, ya know, data. There are fewer One-Hit Wonders now than in the ’80s and ’90s. There is, here in 2022, growing concern that the very concept of the One-Hit Wonder itself is in peril.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |