Billboard's Hot 100 This Week

Cafe Society
1

Normally I don’t know any of the songs in the Hot 100 any more. But this week, somehow, magically, I do:

#50 It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas - Perry Como
#47 Here Comes Santa Claus - Gene Autry
#40 Happy Holiday - Andy Williams
#37 Sleigh Ride - The Ronettes
#36 Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer - Gene Autry
#30 The Christmas Song - Nat King Cole
#28 Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow - Dean Martin
#23 Feliz Navidad - Jose Feliciano
#17 Last Christmas - WHAM!
#15 The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year - Andy Williams
#9 Jingle Bell Rock - Bobby Helms
#6 A Holly Jolly Christmas - Burl Ives
#2 Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree - Brenda Lee
#1 All I Want For Christmas Is You - Mariah Carey

Link: Billboard Hot 100 – Billboard

I know there wasn’t this much Christmas music on the charts in December back in the 1960’s-through-1980’s. I doubt there was this much back in the 1950’s.

What happened? Is there THAT much nostalgia? Has Billboard lost its touch?

2

They count streaming and widened the variety of songs which could hit the top 100.

3

Well I know that I personally listened to those specific versions of #1, #2, #6, #9, #23, #28 and #36 yesterday.

4

Streaming or creating playlists for their Christmas events.

5

Christmas music used to have its own chart separate from the Hot 100.

6

Streaming. ‘Alexa, play Christmas music’

7

“Why Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ Is Finally No. 1” by Chris Molanphy, posted on slate.com on Dec 20, 2019, goes into detail about the Hot 100 changes that made this all possible.

8

I knew something had to be very different about the Hot 100 these days when I heard that Mariah Carey song went #1.

9

Thanks. I hadn’t heard about them counting streaming. That makes more sense.

10

That’s going to open up all kinds of avenues for old songs to chart high on the Hot 100 now. Not a bad thing … just very different. Almost seems like the Hot 100 now tracks something more akin to “in-the-moment popularity” versus their old (old!) “singles sales + airplay” metric.

Going forward, maybe some 80s songs will get vaulted into the Top 10 for a week or two after getting exposure in show like Stranger Things, say. If the current Hot 100 metrics were in place in 2007 … I bet Journey’s 1981 song “Don’t Stop Believin’” would’ve hit #1 after the general-popularity bump it got in The Sopranos finale.

11

I was just at the grocery store earlier, shoved off to the side with the other Xmas sell-off stuff was a display of CDs labeled “Recent Releases”. A lot of Sinatra, Elvis, Andy Williams, etc.

Christmas music sells. And sells. And sells. Any artist who makes it reasonably big is soon pressured to put out a Christmas album. Free or cheap music rights, easy to record in a day or two, a lot of profit in those. And if that sells well (and it doesn’t take many sales), then you gotta do another one next year, right?