How The Billboard Charts Actually Work w/ Keith Caulfield

28:06Eventually, everyone caught up and everyone buys music off the internet now. Streaming is the same way. You start off with certain genres that tend to do well initially before it expands to everyone else. And I think we're at the point where a lot of people and a lot of genres, almost all the genres, are doing very well with streaming services. But you are correct that certain genres over-index with streams before they eventually equal out across all the genres. Yeah. So we just mentioned that, you know, Zach Bryan is one of those artists that's a little hard to define in terms of what genre he is.

28:36There's plenty of artists that kind of fit that category where maybe you could say they're country, but also maybe you could say they're a million other things. We do have genre-specific charts. Got tons of them. Tons of them. Tons of them. So how do you guys determine who goes where on these genre charts when someone is kind of in between genres? Well, most of the time, categorizing an album or a song by genre is usually simple. Like 95 % of the time, it's pretty simple. Sometimes though, an artist may make a song or an album that kind of straddles genres, or maybe is kind of hard to define. Typically, we rely on what the artist and the label, how they define the album, and also like what it just sounds like.

29:22And also an album or a song can be more than one genre. Like it can be like something can be a like a rap dance electronic record, you know, or something can be a country and R &B record. Like it can be multiple things. That's, I think, different than maybe it has been in decades past. Think like in the 1980s. The only way that you really listen to music was either on the radio, and most radio stations were formatted to particular genres, or you purchased a physical piece of music in a store. That was the only way you could really listen to something on demand, so to speak, at home. Or maybe you watched MTV or BET or VH1 or something.

30:04And all those things were highly categorized and siloed off. Even if you went to a record store, there would be a whole section of just country music, a whole section of rock music. There wasn't just A to Z, have at it. There's like the opera singer next to the country singer. Like, no, like everything would be categorized. And generally that was done just so that people could organize things, just so it's like easier to find things. And I think, you know, today, the way people consume music, the algorithm is telling me that I should maybe be listening to this song, which may not be a genre that I typically listen to, but the algorithm suggests maybe I should.

30:42So I don't know. It's just really different today and how people consume music. And so that's why I think more artists are willing to kind of go outside whatever box they may have been put in initially. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, I definitely think that the decline of radio coupled with the rise of algorithmic recommendations has kind of led to people just listening to whatever. It's all over the place. But that's also something I wanted to talk about. So I think that these days we are all kind of in our own silos on the internet. This is true across music, across the content we're receiving on TikTok, whatever.

31:18Whatever the algorithm has determined we're interested in, it takes us further down that rabbit hole. For that reason, I feel like I'm increasingly hearing people say, oh, that's the number one song in America right now. I've never heard of that. I've never heard of it. And it's like a giant Morgan Wallen song or it's a giant K-pop Demon Hunters track. And I'm wondering, how do you respond to those kind of comments like that? I mean, you literally just laid it out in the question. I mean, like my running joke is that I'll see a post on Billboard's Instagram about, you know, Morgan Wallen being number one for like a millionth week.

31:55There's inevitably going to be a comment that says, I don't know who this Morgan Wallen man is. Who is this guy? Like, I'm like, are you just a troll? Are you a bot? Like, how could you not know? That is possible. Like, how could you not know who Morgan Wallen is? Even if you don't listen to his music, how could you not know that he exists? And I guess there is some conceivable way that maybe the algorithms have never showed you a Morgan Wallen song ever. It just seems weird to me. It's sort of like me thinking like in the early 1990s when Garth Brooks was like really breaking out in an enormous way.

32:32And every album that he put out was like number one. And he was playing Central Park in New York and playing stadiums. And he was just like country became incredibly cool and popular in the early 1990s. He didn't have pop hits on like Top 40 radio. But everyone knew who Garth Brooks was, even if he didn't listen to his music. I'm like, that's sort of the way I think of Morgan Wallen. I'm like, even if you're not listening, actively trying to listen to his music, you must know that he exists and he's really popular. At this point, if you don't, then you're just really shielding yourself or you're just being a troll.

33:02Yeah. But yeah, I think it is interesting to think about how the algorithm can, you know, on streaming services can shape how we become aware of people or are completely unaware of people. which is just annoying to me that like I was looking at the streaming service that I use on a regular basis and I was looking at their new releases that came out on that Friday yeah and I was talking to someone on staff and they said oh the new so-and-so album is out today I'm like it is now obviously I worked at Billboard I should know these things off the top of my head but I I didn't momentarily remember that the album came out that day and I looked at the new releases on my app it was not listed like i scrolled scrolled and there were like you know a dozen releases none of them were there and this was like a significant artist a very significant artist yeah and i was getting like albums that were two weeks old as a new release for me because clearly the algorithm was like oh you're not really interested in this album i'm like you know there's something to be said for people just knowing about what is the newest music that is out totally because i don't You know, I just, it's helpful.

34:15It's nice to know what's out. I guess that's like maybe what New Music Friday is for. Although it won't tell you that an album is out. It'll tell you what the focus track or the single is from that album, maybe. If it made New Music Friday. Yeah, that's true. Because it's still a panel of people or an algorithm showing you what's on a list. I mean, really, is the algorithm and all the playlists in New Music Friday on whatever service you're on, is this really that much different from, you know, the days of MTV and VH1 and radio stations deciding what to play and in what rotation and what they're going to premiere when.

34:48I mean, it's just a different way. It's just a different, I mean, there's like a greater amount of music that's on these services now. But in a way, there's still people that are deciding what you're going to listen to and an algorithm that is trying to think what you might want to listen to. Yeah, I think editorial playlists are still kind of, you know, in the same old school tradition of gatekeepers in the industry. You know, they're trained people who know everything that's coming out and they make editorial decisions. Also, gatekeeper is such like a like it has such like a negative tone. It's like we're keeping things away from you.

35:22It's like, well, I mean, think of it as like someone that's in theory helping you learn about music that they think that you might like. Kind of like if you, Kristen, were showing me like you made me a mix CD or a mixtape back in the day. It's like, hey, would I call you a gatekeeper or would I just say you're just showing me like music that you've curated a list of music that you think that I might like and you made it specially for me. It's like Keith's mix. Keith's like party mix yeah I guess you're a gatekeeper yeah well very true I mean I think that you know gatekeepers and curators used to be people and sometimes they still are in the case of editorial playlists they are controlled by real people yeah but I mean how is the algorithm any different from that I mean it's still guiding you and curating you into a certain you know right uh rabbit hole that they think that you'll like I will say the algorithm is like I've learned about a lot of music that I probably wouldn't have found.

36:15Same. You know, initially. So I'm like, you know, it's great in lots of ways. Like, but you know, I'm still annoyed where like, I can't see what a major new album is that came out that day and the app didn't show me. I'm like, come on, guys. Yeah. You should know me better by now. Apparently not. Yeah. So I mean, it does feel like there are less like kind of monocultural touch points in music. We're oftentimes not listening to the same five radio stations in town. I wonder what that, you know, means for the charts. It happens across all media. Like it's like when you watch the Emmy Awards or you watch the Oscars, it's like, well, how many of these shows have you seen or even heard of?

36:51Like, I don't know. Like maybe there are some like crazy like TV stands and movie stands are like, I've seen them all. I watch them all on every service. I'm like, I don't know. Like every like media sort of format has the same challenges we do in terms of music. I still think there obviously are like big like monoculture moments. It's like the Huntrix song Golden from K-pop Demon Hunters. K-pop Demon Hunters is like a pop culture moment. The release of Taylor Swift's The Life of a Showgirl. You could not avoid that album. It was everywhere. Everything. Everywhere. Everyone was talking about it.

37:24You could even argue that that was maybe even a bigger moment than, I mean, with the internet and the hive mind of the internet. That album has had more heft to it than many other moments in the past. I mean, it helps that it's from Taylor Swift, who's like the biggest star on the planet. Yeah, I mean, but like you could arguably say that she's potentially bigger than any artist has ever been able to be, given. I don't know. Is that crazy to say that? I don't know. You just said it. It might be crazy that I just said that, but I do think it kind of feels that way. She is so in a league of her own.

37:59Oftentimes it's many artists' goal to get a number one on the Hot 100 or the Billboard 200 charts. And people kind of do anything they can to get there. I'm sure there are some people who savvily try to like get around chart rules. I'm wondering, have you seen any kind of instances where people have tried to use a loophole in the chart rule system? And how did you deal with that when it happened? We love that the charts are popular and we love that there is passion for the charts. It's a double edged sword. But we, in theory, we would love the charts just sort of represent here's what's popular without kind of a bunch of like sort of, you know, influences to sort of tinker with what is just sort of measured popularity.

38:51But, you know, that's never really been the case. Like there's always been, you know, things that have like, you know, tipped the scales or pulled levers. That's just the way marketing and promotion works, you know, the record labels. obviously there are many artists that would love to be number one or be on the charts or it's important for them to be top 10 and we love that um we also love the fact that some artists just like i don't really care where i chart i'm just making music and like we tell people that all the time like if something like isn't necessarily chart eligible because we have lots of rules that you know certain kinds of products may not be eligible for our charts we always tell people like you should still make what's best for your fans like do whatever you do want to do um you know just that that particular thing maybe you can't chart but we always tell managers and labels like you should do what's best for the art and for the artist like okay like it doesn't matter if it's on the chart like it matters but I'm like you should do what's best for the art um so all that said like yeah some artists care passionately about being number one or in the top 10 or on the chart and lots of folks will find you know crafty ways to be on the charts you know and I think you know some people may argue that the idea of having multiple variants of an album is kind of a interesting way to find success in the chart but there's nothing stopping anyone from having multiple versions of an album for someone to purchase yeah I mean we could go back to like the the 2000s and there were lots of instances where in order for you to get all of the bonus tracks for an album let's say you'd have to go to target to get a cd that had one bonus track go to best buy to get another cd with a different bonus track go to walmart to get another cd with maybe a different cover and a bonus track that that kind of concept doesn't really exist as much today you don't think so i think that like it's it's in a different way now it's like vinyl variants and CD variants.

40:50Yeah. Like, and, you know, maybe the bonus tracks are, you know, maybe parsed out in a different fashion. I'm just thinking like there used to be a time where you'd have to go from store to store to pick up all the different versions of an album. Yeah. So have you ever evolved the chart rules to try to close some of those loopholes? I mean, we're always looking at like how we can evolve the charts and the rules and the methodology, like to make sure that we're not completely out of step. Like the idea is that we're supposed to be like, you know, in step with how people consume music in America.

41:24And so we're always, you know, looking at the rules of the charts and working with the industry to find ways to tweak the charts, to change the rules accordingly, to be more inclusive of new technologies, to maybe invent new charts that cover genres that maybe we didn't have before or new forms of consumption. Yeah well something that I've noticed this summer is that it felt like the Hot 100 was fairly stagnant in the top 10. It felt like a lot of the same songs were coming back week after week after week. Lose control. Lose control more than 100 weeks on the chart. Something like that. A record amount of time on the chart.

42:02So much time on the chart and I don't know if this is a new phenomenon or not but is is it a new phenomenon? is the Hopin' Phenomenon stagnating a bit? I mean, it's, I wouldn't say the, well, I mean, I guess it depends on how you look at it. I think it's just the Hopin' 100 is measuring how people consume music. And people were playing certain songs a lot, endlessly, for months. Die With a Smile, Beautiful Things, Lose Control, Espresso, like, you know, like tons of songs that have been around for like months and months and months and months and months. it's both streaming activity and radio play like both of those things like keep those songs around for a very very very long time shabuzi uh you know all those songs like hung around for a very long time but believe it or not there are still people discovering those songs months after the fact because the algorithm for some reason maybe didn't show them i don't know i would love to know i would love to know if there's like a metric that shows like when people first heard a song like someone should like do a survey being like what was the first time you heard loose control like was it on the grammy awards when he performed it was it after the fact was it on a tv show was it when it came out like because we don't live in like the monoculture you know society anymore like you and i think god that song's been around forever to some people they're like oh i only heard it a few weeks ago you're like how is that possible we just talked about it like a little while ago about Morgan Wallen.

43:29People haven't heard Morgan Wallen songs. Do you live under a rock? No, it's just the way music consumption works now. Another thing I wanted to ask you about is, I imagine if I was an artist and my dream was to get a Billboard No. 1 album, and I was like, okay, I'm going to release my album on, let's say, October 1, because I want to release my album on October 1. And then you figure out that a much bigger artist is going to release their album also on October 1. Do you see a lot of artists switch up their release dates because they're trying to make sure they have a more open week for a possible number one album on the Billboard 200?

44:06That happens sometimes. It's usually not messaged out in such a way. Yeah. It's not like, hey, everyone, I'm moving my album because so-and-so. Taylor Swift is coming. Right. It really depends on a lot of factors. I think that can still happen and does occasionally happen, though no one will ever actually say that I'm moving away from this date because so-and-so is coming out. But, like, you'll hear things where, like, hey, we're aiming for this date, but we hear that so-and-so might drop an album that week, so, you know, maybe we might avoid that week. When I say they, I mean, like, record label people.

44:42Yeah. I think today in 2025, you can be nimble and move your album around if you haven't announced it. If it is a streaming heavy album and maybe you don't have any physical product in the actual like brick and mortar marketplace. Like maybe it's only on your D2C store. because then you can control when the album ships out and when you drop it to streaming services. So like I fully expect that when Drake drops his next album, we will not know that it exists until it arrives on streaming services that Thursday night, Friday morning. Because he will probably deliver the album to his label partners that Thursday before it goes up that night.

45:30God bless the label people who get that the same day. And he probably won't have any physical music, like, you know, at least in record stores. like you know target or walmart or wherever now if you're someone like taylor swift where you have physical product in the marketplace you have to ship that album out in time to get into all the warehouses for target and for brick and mortar and for walmart that all has to be in the pipeline days or weeks like if you want to be on amazon your album has to be at amazon like i think it's a couple weeks before the album comes out yeah also the the lead time for creating a vinyl record it's pretty long it's like what six months it's shortened there are instances where i know that people have created a vinyl album in less than two months uh i'm not i think there are there are certain there are certain manufacturers in certain countries that do very quick work um i think typically you typically you hear about physical like albums that have physical product being delivered to the label like usually six months in advance um of course that that can change depending on when they've scheduled the album to be manufactured, blah, blah, blah.

46:34There's all sorts of timelines that could be different for who the artist is. In terms of just, hey, I'm going to move my album because someone dropped an album that day, it can still be done. But it really depends on who the artist is. And that's why it always feels like today we know less about what's on the release calendar because most people aren't announcing their albums that far in advance anymore unless they do have a physical campaign. and then if you have a physical campaign and you have physical product in the marketplace and you have your pre-order up it's harder to kind of push the brakes it's like if someone suddenly surprises everyone and drops an album that same day you're kind of screwed yeah like there have been a couple examples in the past like year or two where someone had staked out a date with an album that had physical product and they were probably they were going to debut at number one and then out of the blue, like either like a few days before or like maybe a week or so before, a big album drops out of the sky that's only on streaming services essentially.

47:38And that debuts at number one instead. Yep. Like a really good example is when Usher was going to headline the Super Bowl and he announced his album coming home months before the Super Bowl. Like when he announced that he was going to be on the Super Bowl, he announced that the album was coming. You could pre-order it now. It's going to come out. I think he announced like the weekend of the Super Bowl. like Super Bowl Sunday. Eventually it came out on the Friday before the Super Bowl when most albums come out. And he had that weekend all to himself. And his album debuted at number two because the long-awaited Vultures 1 album from Ye and Ty Dolla Sign, which had been talked a lot about when it was going to come out.

48:21Is it going to come out in December? Is it going to come out in January? When's it going to come out? Finally, I think it was that Saturday of Super Bowl weekend. Like, Ye was like, album's coming out today. And then it debuted at number one. So best laid plans, you know, sometimes can get sidelined a little bit. Yeah, I mean, I think the bigger the artist is, the more likely it is to see kind of a surprise album drop, like your Beyonce's Lemonade example. Or the Beyonce self-titled album, which sort of turned everything in its head. That's the one that like really changed things, right? The first visual album, yeah.

48:54One of the other things I wanted to ask about, we mentioned drake earlier and i'm not trying to single out drake here so no one get mad at me for this but drake does release really long albums yeah um there are a lot of artists that are increasingly released long albums i'm wondering is that some way to help chart performance because there are so many tracks and so you'd have to stream all you know 20 30 35 five tracks um does that help chart performance i mean certainly if you're streaming all the songs from an album repeatedly yeah of course it can there's more songs to play i do think that it's it's not just there's not one answer for this it's not just you need to make as many songs as you can for an album because that helps us from the charts like i don't think that's really what's that's that's not the discussion that's happening i don't think i think what's happening is that the artists themselves has a lot to say.

49:49I think maybe the byproduct of that is like, oh, and that can also help you on the charts. Yeah. So, but, you know, look at Taylor Swift's The Life of a Showgirl. There were 12 songs. Yeah, but her last one. Yeah, Tortured Post Department, the deluxe edition had 31 songs. Yeah. In its first week. Yes. And Midnight's before that had, I forget what it was, like 20 something songs in its first week in the deluxe edition with the 3 a.m. edition if you added it on. I think there's always, you know, you have to weigh the question of, well, how many songs do I want to put on an album? You know, what does my art need to say?

50:21Combined with just sort of the business of it, like, should we put this many songs on here? Should we maybe reserve some songs for a deluxe edition later, bonus tracks for certain retailers? I do feel like we're seeing more albums that have more and more songs than before, but that happens throughout time. Like, when vinyl was the only way to consume an album you had one lp that contains like what 43 minutes 44 minutes if you count both sides like 20 something minutes on each side like an actual physical limitation there was a literal physical limitation to how much music you could on it unless you wanted to make a double album or a triple album that's the idea like we're like a triple album means there were like three pieces of product inside an album um it wasn't just sort the amount of content.

51:09It was the literal pieces of content, triple, double album. But then CDs come along. CDs can hold like 80 minutes. And then we have digital downloads. It can hold as much as you want. Streaming, you can put as many songs as you want. So I think with certain artists, they will put as many songs as they want on an album because that is their art. Some artists are just like, you know what? I've got 12 songs and that's the body of work for this. Like, I don't think that Adele's next album is going to have 30 songs. But this is the way that Adele operates. As an example. Yeah, very true. And so if an artist's release, I feel like one of the things I'm also seeing right now is a lot of artists are releasing deluxe versions of their records.

51:47Well, they will just add on. Actually, Tortured Poets Department is a great example of this. These kind of deluxe albums like Tortured Poets Department are very common now where you have an initial release that has a pretty normal number of songs on it. But then the deluxe kind of almost doubles the length of the record. Does that all get looped in into the same album for the Billboard charts? Generally speaking, yes. Okay. Like we have a set of rules about what can be combined together. Generally speaking, when you see a deluxe edition of an album, it almost always is combined with the original version.

52:22And I think we've seen lots of instances where it's like an unusual deluxe in the sense where it's almost like it's operating as a second album. an example of this would be SZA's SOS where she deluxed it like what was it like a year and a half later as SOS Deluxe Lana and when you looked for that deluxe edition it had a new cover the new tracks were sequenced as the first tracks on it so that was now the Lana body of work and then the tracks at the end of the album were the original SOS album but for us the title of the album still starts with SOS it still has all the original songs from SOS. You've added music to it, but it follows all of our chart rules to combine it with the original SOS.

53:09So on our charts, it's just SOS. There is no Lana album on our chart. But yeah, it does feel like that's happening more in like a different way where people are deluxing albums with even more and more songs, almost like it's a whole second album. Yeah. And I mean, of course, with Streaming's Infinite Shelf, you can do whatever you want. I often tell people, you really have to consider the method of consumption that is most popular at a time period when an album comes out to really explain why the album is the way it is. Like we were saying before with Final, there's really a limited amount of space.

53:41Now you can do whatever you want. So the idea of what an album is, I think, is evolving and becoming a little bit more amorphous. It's just a collection of however many songs you feel like fits what you're trying to say at that moment like an album is still an important statement for an artist yes to be able to make a artistic statement where they have a concept or a message like a through line um versus just standalone singles that said there's still a lot of artists that will put out like mini eps just standalone singles like two packs of songs um for whatever reason because it makes sense for their business model and how they're delivering their art it really there's no like perfect like uh concept of how to release music for each artist there's a overarching like you know uh way that most artists most big artists do but that doesn't mean that it has to be applied to every artist and to end off our conversation i wanted to do a little bit of a rapid fire of big chart moments okay great because i had to research these things so i actually have answers i i must to admit, I did brief Keith on this because I know you're probably not able to recall every moment off the top of your head.

54:53God, you'd underestimate me, but yes, I cannot. What is the longest running Billboard 200 number one album? It is the West Side Story film soundtrack. Wait, really? I love that look on your face. It spent 54 weeks at number one. Okay. And then the album by a singular artist with the most weeks at number one is Michael Jackson's Thriller with 37 weeks at number one. okay so West Side Story is like a multi-artist you know it's a soundtrack to a movie but the the album that is by like one artist that has the most weeks is Thriller. Wow okay the Thriller one makes sense I did not know West Side Story was that big of a phenomenon.

55:31It was enormous back in the day. Wow interesting okay what is the longest climb to receive a Billboard 200 number one album? Okay a little bit tricky so because of the way the Billboard 200 works now and we allow older albums to chart an album can come back from being off the chart completely many many years after it initially came out and then go to number one so the most recent example of this is uh toby keith's 35 biggest hits which hit number one in 2024 15 years eight months and 24 days after it first debuted on the chart um prince is the very best of prince also had a similar situation it went to number one in 2016 nearly 15 years after it first hit the chart now last thing i'll say about this the the album that had the longest continuous climb because prince and toby keith both left the chart and then they came back years later the album that debuted on the chart and then just kept climbing or lingering on the chart until it finally went to number one the record for that in terms of the best weeks is paula abdul's forever your girl oh wow which took 64 weeks to get to number one in 1989 from its debut, never left the chart, and then hit number one 64 weeks later.

56:47Wow. Do you have any understanding as to why that happened? No. Aside from it was like a slow growing album and had to wait its turn. Yeah. And it had tons of hits on it. Yeah. Wow. That's surprising. Okay. So who is an artist who's never had a number one on the Billboard 200 that I would be surprised by? I think it would be, I try to look at this in the most sort of like neutral, even way. So I was looking at artists with like a lot of top 10 albums, but never a number one. So the rock band Rush has 12 top 10s, no number ones. Sting has 11 top 10s as a solo artist, no number ones. The Police did have a number one album, like Synchronicity.

57:32And The Who, they've had 11 top 10s, but no number ones. I'm surprised most by the Who. Yeah. Wow. Interesting. Okay. Who is an artist with the most Billboard 200 number ones? The artist with the most Billboard 200 number ones as of this recording in October of 2025 is The Beatles with 19. The artist with the second most as of this recording right now is Taylor Swift with 15. Okay. By the time you hear this, Taylor could have 16, 17. who knows how many albums she'll release by the time you hear this podcast or watch this podcast wow okay so she's really coming up on that record that's very interesting so although i mean every album that she puts out typically is number one and she had a lot of re-records like re-recording taylor's versions to help her as well in recent oh that helps too all those are separate from their original versions and i guess as a final question i'm wondering does fandom play a bigger role than ever in songs that chart on the billboard charts how do you define fandom fandom meaning like i think we often see on the internet fans congregating and talking about how can we help our favorite artists get a number one album or a number one song like stan army situation yeah so how much do fans play a role in the charts these days i mean they can play a significant role um especially if there's like some big motivating factor for people to turn out and like let's buy a song this week because we want to you know help it into the top 40 or whatever like that can still happen um like streaming parties and you know uh those sorts of things like can always help and it's always like fun to see like fans like like cheering on and rooting on their faves on the charts like certainly i probably would have been one of those people like back in the ye olden days for madonna maybe i don't know i'm wearing a hoodie that says madonna on it, you tell me.

59:26But that didn't exist in the old days. But I always think, I always try to put myself in like that sort of situation. Like, oh, I wonder like, had like the internet, like sort of had social media, the internet existed when I was younger. I had to shake my cane at the sky. Had like social media existed in the way that it does now, like when I was sort of a teenager or like in college like would i have been like a person to like organize fans and like mobilize the fans like oh she you know she's number 11 like on we gotta get her to number 10 i'm like i mean i called into radio stations to request songs yeah my faves like that was a way at the time you thinking that you could help more people learn about a song by calling in and asking the DJ to play it, not really understanding that the DJ, like, wasn't does not care, and like, the thing that you're requesting was probably the thing they were going to play anyways, but you just happened to be the lucky person to ask for the song.

1:00:27I always remember a time when I called into a radio station and asked if they could play a song, and they said, we'll get to that one, but could you ask to play this one instead? And then I did, and then they played that one, and then they never played the song that I wanted them to play. I'm like, it's all a shady scam. Anyway, my point was, I do think, like, you know, fandom and fan armies can be like sometimes a motivating factor um i'm not exactly sure if there's like always a direct correlation but sometimes you can see examples where like oh there was like a little bit of a sort of a movement on social media this week to help so and so maybe hit the top 40 or whatever yeah and you know sometimes it helps it's always fun to see that though yeah i mean so that's not illegal or it's not wrong to you know say hey everyone buy five albums this week or if if the fans are doing it that's fine we we we don't want there being like an incentive from like the artist or the label or the manager being like hey everyone like if you buy five copies of the album you might win like a phone call from the artist like no but if you want to organize something on you know tiktok be like come on guys we got to support our girl and like you know let's all buy an album like that's that's different that's just sort of like this organic situation yeah so sometimes is it ever possible that the charts reflect the strength of a fan army more than it's like wide breadth of popularity across you know all of america i think it depends on the project like i mean i think i think if you look at certain albums they might over index or have a huge first week because there was like months of pre-orders from like a diehard fan base that maybe doesn't have like a conventional stan army like if you say like okay the rolling stones new album debuts in the top five on the billboard 200 from like months of pre-orders of physical music the rolling stones have a very passionate and large fan base but it's not a fan base that typically engages in like stan wars on social media whereas like some other artists like do so i think it i think you can look at almost any artist and say well they have a passionate fan base that turned out in the first week of the album because they had pre-orders they showed up in the first week they went to brick and mortar stores they shared the music with their friends they told people about the the music and it doesn't really matter who the artist is everyone always has passionate fans that fandom can just sort of present itself in different ways.

1:02:58Got it. And at the end of every episode of On the Record, I ask people to help me make a playlist. Does this playlist exist in the universe? It actually does exist. It is on Spotify. But I ask the same questions every week to my guests. And so I will ask you first, can you pick a song that you can no longer gatekeep? This group is not incredibly well known in America, but they're well known in the UK. It's Girls Aloud. It's a pop girl group. They had a really big hit. I mean, they had lots of hits they had like 20 top 10s in the uk but probably their most like iconic number one was the promise uh it's a great song um you should listen to it perfect what is a favorite throwback of yours something that uh popped up a couple weeks ago and i'm like still annoyed that it wasn't a top 10 hit when it did come out it was like number 15 but it was tina turner's um one of the living which was the second single from the mad max beyond thunderdome soundtrack.

1:03:56And lastly, what is a guilty pleasure of yours? Recently, there has been a band that's been in the news because we lost one of their founding members recently, Kiss. And they have a song that was essentially a disco song. And it was, I think, unfairly judged at the time. It was a big hit at the time. And I do think that now, I think most people view it as a classic, but it's called I Was Made For Loving You. Oh, yes. Yeah. Can you sing it all for us as we go out? That's our exit music today. Take it away, Paul and Jean. Well, thank you so much for being here. It was so much fun talking about the charts with you.

1:04:39And we'll have to have you back again soon. Thank you. Another special thank you to Keith Caulfield for coming on the show this week to talk all things charts. Here's the top 10 countdown for the week of November 1. At number 10 is Mutt by Leon Thomas. Number 9 is I Got Better by Morgan Wallen. Man I Need by Olivia Dean is number 8.

1:05:087 is Daisies by Justin Bieber. Father Figure by Taylor Swift lands at number 6. Number five is Elizabeth Taylor by Taylor Swift. Coming in at number four is Opalite, also by Taylor Swift. This week's number three is Ordinary by Alex Warren.

1:05:36The second spot this week is Golden by Huntrix. And finally, number one this week is The Fate of Ophelia. This marks its third week at number one. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of On The Record. And another special thank you to this week's guest, Keith Caulfield, for coming on the show. If you liked the show today, please consider hitting us with a rating, a follow, a thumbs up, all those good things. They really help a new show like ours to grow and to reach new people. Again, I'm your host, Kristen Robinson, and tune in next week for another peek behind the curtain in the music industry.

1:06:09I'll see you then.

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