sXenester

Pretty much every major Billboard chart - from singles to albums to radio airplay in all formats - employs some rule forbidding records/songs older than, say, two years from charting once they fall below a certain threshold. For example, on albums, any disc more than two years (104 weeks) old that falls below #100 is automatically shunted to the "Top Pop Catalog" chart, and there it lives forevermore. If they didn't do this, Dark Side of the Moon and Zoso would be parked in the top half of the album chart every week, year after year. Part of me thinks it would be interesting to see where those old albums place against the new stuff every week; but the other part of me wants there to be enough room on the chart for the Postal Service to make the bottom rungs of the top 200.

On the adult-contemporary radio chart, songs move so friggin' slowly that they retire tracks that fall below the Top *10*.

Basically, if the Brits find their charts become too ridiculous and useless - i.e., no longer a useful yardstick for current music - they will employ similar rules. Some people will howl that this is artificial manipulation of the charts that's not reflective of the public's taste, and while I am sympathetic to the idea of a "pure" chart, believe me, seeing random old shit clog up the chart week after week gets old fast. I'm starting to see the wisdom of the Billboard approach.

Chris Molanphy

brasstax