THE BIG IDEA

As both an artist and a competitive person, I’m usually a little ambivalent about anything that makes something as subjective as art into something as objective as a horse race. Or for that matter when subjective criteria are applied to a subjective medium … you end up with things like Grammys or Oscars that designate certain things as greater than others in the ultimately random frame of a year, and a lot of those judgments end up aging poorly.

And I know that even the semi-concrete nature of reaching #1 on a chart based on sales and airplay is less airtight than the aforementioned horse race. How much industry lobbing and biased reporting and solicited scale-tipping goes into a #1 hit, whether we’re talking about 60 years ago or today? Plus over the years, with more promoters and label big shots and international media conglomerates like Clear Channel in the mix, the general public’s influence on things in terms of record sales and radio request lines dwindled down to not a hell of a lot. Even before unpaid file piracy and shitty-royalty streaming came along to wreck the boat, it had already been pretty rocked by the gradual death of vinyl. Cassette and CD singles never really caught on (probably not a bad thing, environmental-wise) so once the radio DJs aren’t taking requests anymore, doesn’t that kind of seem like the hits are whatever the industry decides are going to be hits?

I don’t know when or where exactly we hit the difference between “we must play all the time this because it’s popular” and “this must be popular because we play it all the time.” I do know that sticking to a discussion of #1s is going to inherently minimize some really important artists (Dwight Yoakam and Roger Miller come to mind) or leave them out entirely. I see plenty of flaws in what I’m doing here, but I get a lot of enjoyment out of it too. I like lists and rundowns and countdowns and what-have-ya. I like talking about music and pop culture in general not only on its own merits but also in how it reflects the time in which it was made and the context in which it managed to catch on and possibly even endure. It’ll be obvious that I don’t love every country song or artist that ever broke through but the great outweighs the bad by so much that I think it at least averages out to me being able to say I love country music. And I love writing about it, so if you’ll humor me on this I guarantee you I’ll give you plenty to read.