Hit Parade: The Twerking and Chatrouletting Edition

Slate Culture

Slate Podcasts

Arts, Tv & Film, Music

4.4 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 25 May 2018

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Even before the launch of MTV, the music video has been making pop songs buzzworthy. And since the early ’80s, it has transformed also-rans into hitmakers—from the Buggles and Duran Duran to Peter Gabriel and a‑ha. But until the early 2010s, watching a video didn’t count on the Billboard charts. That all changed thanks to YouTube—and the biggest immediate beneficiary from the addition of video to the charts was a rising pop star, incubated on the Disney Channel, but looking to change her image. Miley Cyrus was born into hitmaking, line-dancing, multimedia royalty, and she used video titillation—and even the social site Chatroulette—to top the charts. But what did all that provocation mean for…y’know, the music? And how is video still making hits—including the song that’s No. 1 this very week in 2018? Chris Molanphy explains it all. [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	This episode is brought to you by ITVX.
0:03.0	Whatever is you're looking for from hard-hitting drama to side-splitting comedy,
0:08.0	ITVX marks the spot.
0:11.0	There's so much to discover, like the Total Comedy Genius Show. the new relationship show, my mom, your dad, hosted by Devina McCall. Stream free with ITVX, the UK's
0:27.7	freshest streaming service.
0:30.6	Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart History from Slate magazine about the hits from
0:36.2	Coast to Coast.
0:37.7	I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst pop critic, and writer of Slate's Why Is This Song Number One series.
0:47.0	Hot Night, Wind was Blowing.
0:49.0	Where you think you're going, baby.
0:51.0	Hey, I just made here. On today's show, five years ago in the late winter of 2013.
1:00.0	On today's show, five years ago, in the late winter of 2013, Billboard made a pivotal change in how it
1:07.5	formulates its charts. They added YouTube data to the Hot 100, more than seven years after the launch of the online video service,
1:16.4	and more than 30 years after the launch of MTV.
1:20.6	For the first time in its history, the flagship US pop chart would count not only the songs Americans bought or heard on the radio, but the ones in their favorite music videos.
1:33.0	In MTV's heyday, video rotations on the music channel
1:36.8	never counted toward the Hot 100, but now playing a music video
1:41.4	on YouTube or the YouTube affiliated all music channel Vivo
1:46.2	could help power a song up the charts. As you can imagine, this meant that more than ever,
1:52.4	a hit record could be fueled by all sorts of things
1:55.2	besides the music from explicit visuals to songs that accompanied comical clips,
2:05.0	or even viral means.
	...

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