Billboard’s ‘Hot Country Songs’ chart and the curation of country music culture

Authors

  • Jada Watson University of Ottawa Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.39428

Keywords:

Billboard charts, curation, country music culture

Abstract

Billboard charts are curators of popular music culture. As Will Straw observes, Billboard charts bring order to otherwise chaotic consumption behaviors, by processing, archiving and transmitting a musical product’s commercial activity to radio programmers, streaming services and record labels, thus creating a cyclic relationship between Billboard and these actors. Through this process, charts document and shape a genre’s culture. Theories of social remembering offer a critical framework for considering the credibility of such record keeping within a culture that disadvantages and systematically ignores women. Influenced by the work of Catherine Strong, this article explores the role of Billboard charts in the process of ‘remembering’ and ‘forgetting’ in country music culture. In this context, Billboard charts function as curatorial instruments that systematically ‘remember’ some artists, while ‘casting away’ others. Drawing on the results of a data-driven analysis of the Hot Country Songs (HCS) chart, this article argues that Billboard’s new methodology has contributed to the radical extinction of variety and erasure of women’s narrative voices within country music culture.

Author Biography

  • Jada Watson, University of Ottawa

    Jada Watson is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Ottawa, where she teaches in the School of Music, School of Information Studies and in the Digital Humanities. Her research focuses on the development of genre cultures and communities, with an interest in issues related to gender, race, class, identity and politics. Her research has appeared in Popular Music & Society, Journal of the Society for American Music, American Music, Popular Music and Music, Sound and the Moving Image. She also has chapters in The Oxford Handbook to Country Music and The Cambridge Companion to the Singer-Songwriter.

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Published

2021-02-05

How to Cite

Watson, J. (2021). Billboard’s ‘Hot Country Songs’ chart and the curation of country music culture. Popular Music History, 13(1-2), 168-190. https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.39428