Billboard's Hot 100: Hits, History and Kinks (with Hit Parade's Chris Molanphy)
Pop Pantheon
DJ Louie XIV
4.7 • 630 Ratings
🗓️ 11 August 2022
⏱️ 74 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Every episode of Pop Pantheon contains at least some mention of the Billboard's iconic singles chart, the Hot 100. So for this week's B-Side, DJ Louie is joined by chart analyst, cultural critic and host of Slate's podcast Hit Parade to talk the 60 year history of the chart, the way its metrics have evolved over time, what role having hits on the Hot 100 plays in a pop star's mythology and legacy, whether or not we can compare current hits like this week's #1 "Break My Soul" to past ones given how Billboard's methodology has been altered to fit new data and music-consuming ecosystems, some weird kinks that have prevented massive hits like "I'm a Slave 4 U" from reaching to the top of the charts, and what fixes Chris might make to improve the Hot 100, still our best tool for measuring a hit record.
Listen to Chris Molanphy's podcast Hit Parade
Check out Chris' last appearance on Pop Pantheon, discussing The Supremes and Diana Ross
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Pop Pantheon, the podcast where we completely overanalyze all of your favorite pop stars and then rank them in the official Pop Pantheon. |
| 0:19.6 | This is your host, DJ Louis X.L.L.Eie the 14th, and this is another B-Side episode. |
| 0:25.1 | So before we get into everything, I want to remind everybody to please rate, review, and subscribe to Pop Pantheon, wherever you listen to podcasts. |
| 0:32.6 | I also want to say, please follow us on social media at Pop Pantheon Pod on Instagram and twitter and me at dj l-o-u-u-i-e |
| 0:39.9 | x-iv on both instagram and twitter hop in our discord channel as i mentioned it is beyond fun these |
| 0:47.1 | days there's so many people in there the links for that and for all our social media channels will |
| 0:51.4 | be in the show notes of this episode and i will will also post them on social media. Los Angeles, if you are in town this weekend, come see me, DJ at my new |
| 1:01.0 | queer and ally pop party in downtown Los Angeles. Gorgeous, gorgeous. It's at Resident. It is on |
| 1:07.3 | Friday night. That's tomorrow from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. |
| 1:14.1 | Tickets are in the show notes of this episode and also on social media. |
| 1:16.0 | Please come introduce yourself to me if you're there. |
| 1:17.1 | I'd love to meet you. |
| 1:20.1 | I love meeting listeners of the show at Gorgeous Gorgeous. It's a wonderful melding of my two favorite things in the world. |
| 1:24.4 | So hoping to meet some of you guys tomorrow night at Gorgeous, gorgeous. And lastly, |
| 1:30.8 | an announcement that we are starting to put together another of our listener mailbag episodes. |
| 1:36.1 | So this time, we really want to encourage you to drop us your questions by voice note. So this can be |
| 1:43.1 | questions on the Pantheon. It can be on Pop in general. It can be |
| 1:47.0 | quibbles with rankings or anything that's sort of tangentially related to Pop or the Pop Pantheon. So you can |
| 1:53.8 | email them in written form, but we're actually going to try to play some of your voices on air this time. |
| 1:59.3 | So drop us a voice note. |
| 2:01.2 | The email address is Pop Pantheon Pod at gmail.com. And I'd love to hear what you guys are |
| 2:07.2 | wondering about these days and anything you'd like me to address on air in a future listener |
... |
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