Chris Molanphy: One Chart to Rule Them All
The pop-chart analyst and 'Hit Parade' host joins us to discuss what better data revealed about hit songs, the slow end of the monoculture, and the cultural rules that keep outsiders off country radio.
This week we're putting The Tonearm's needle on pop-chart analyst Chris Molanphy.
For almost a decade, Chris has hosted Hit Parade, Slate's monthly show on the history behind the Billboard charts. He also writes Slate's long-running Why Is This Song No. 1? column, and wrote a book on Lil Nas X's Old Town Road for Duke University Press.
We talk about how a Netflix episode can send a forty-year-old song back onto the charts, why he refuses to believe in a guilty pleasure, and what changes in an artist's career when they keep reinventing instead of repeating a formula.
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Dig Deeper
Our Guest:
- Visit Chris Molanphy at chris.molanphy.com and follow him on Bluesky
- Listen to Hit Parade on Slate
- Read the "Why Is This Song No. 1?" series
- Purchase Old Town Road, Chris's book on the Lil Nas X hit, from Duke University Press
Hit Parade Episodes Discussed:
- Feet on the Ground, Reaching for the Stars Edition — the 100th episode, on Casey Kasem and a life spent with the charts
- Dancing With Himself Edition — Billy Idol from the Bromley Contingent to MTV
- Country Roads and Summer Nights Edition — John Denver and Olivia Newton-John
- Starman to Blackstar Edition — David Bowie's chart career
- The Queen of Disco Edition — Donna Summer
- Near-Miss Hits: '70s Edition — the songs that stalled
- Legacy Hits Are Flops-Turned-Classics — the "Tiny Dancer" episode
- The "Angry Young Men" Who Turned Punk into New Wave — Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson, and Graham Parker
- How Britpop Ruled '90s U.K. Music
- The Christmas Music Edition — the UK Christmas number ones show from 2018
Chart History and Reference:
- Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business by Fredric Dannen
- Fred Bronson's The Billboard Book of Number One Hits [Link unverified — recommend manual check]
- Paul Grein's "Chart Beat" column at Billboard
- Casey Kasem's American Top 40
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- Dig into this episode's complete show notes at podcast.thetonearm.com
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