Back Home Again Hot 100 Chart History
Did Taylor Swift Just Brand Billboard Nautical chart History?
She's given The Beatles and Don McLean a 10-infinitesimal run for their money.
"Then, are y'all gonna be writing most Bob Dylan'southward No. one song?" my rather giddy begetter asked me on the phone ane day, a little over a year and a half agone. "Isn't that what you write about?"
I had to patiently explain to Dad that, no, I would not exist writing most Mr. Zimmerman, despite all the headlines trumpeting Dylan'south first! ever! No. 1 song! The chart that Dylan's "Murder Virtually Foul" topped in April 2020 was not Billboard's flagship Hot 100, merely rather Rock Digital Song Sales. That chart, which is non even published in the magazine, is a niche of a niche: It ranks, among that week's acknowledged downloads, but the songs Billboard says qualify every bit "rock," which tin can mean anything from REO Speedwagon to Coldplay. And it'due south only downloads, non streams; given how deeply the dollar-download has declined since the mid-'10s, a few chiliad copies are plenty to tiptop this chart. For that ane week early in the pandemic, Bob the Bard sold nearly 9,800 copies of his quirky, JFK-conspiracist epic at iTunes, plenty to requite Dylan his first No. 1 on whatsoever Billboard song nautical chart, e'er—a chart that didn't even exist when he was flipping signs in an alleyway next to Allen Ginsberg.
As I was clarifying this minutia and utterly killing Dad's buzz, I said something to this effect: "Slate just has me write nearly No. 1s on the Hot 100. And trust me, Dad, songs over 10 minutes don't summit the Hot 100."
For Thanksgiving this year, I'm eating a chip of humble pie. Maybe a 17-infinitesimal vocal past Bob Dylan, musing virtually JFK, the Eagles and Billy Joel, doesn't peak the Hot 100. But a 10‑infinitesimal song by Taylor Swift, musing about Jake Gyllenhaal and a scarf? No. ane across the USA.
A very bespoke combination of factors aligned to make "All Besides Well" (I'll get to its full title shortly) our new No. 1 song. Beginning, information technology's by one of music's über-stars. This star was pissed off enough almost her storied vocal catalog being sold out from nether her to reassert control of it by rerecording her early albums. Said star non only has the resources to do this but likewise happens to be a marketing genius, able to present this prosaic copyright gambit every bit a sales-juicing cultural issue. It so happens that i of these rerecorded, culturally ubiquitous albums contains a fan-favorite song that had never lived up to its commercial potential (and was initially not even perceived as commercial) but had quietly grown in estimation over the course of a decade. That vocal also happens to exist a juicy roman à clef about a dramatic breakdown with a movie star, spiked with a immature-woman-wronged storyline that has taken on new, postal service–#MeToo resonance. Further, in that location's a semi-secret version of this vocal that has never before been revealed, one that's twice as long—and that extra 5 minutes of vocal contains deep-cut lyrics implying new revelations about the decade-old breakup with the glory dude (who, BTW, is yet a pretty major star 10 years later—that doesn't hurt).
Finally, our marketing-genius music star pours gasoline over the unveiling of her supersized song with a well-timed Saturday Night Live performance—she has the clout to command x solid minutes of NBC airtime, playing the entirety of the rebooted tune live on the air—while standing in front of a glossy music video of the new version that she herself directed, which she has dubbed All Too Well: The Short Film.
NBC should have flashed a subtitle while Taylor performed on SNL, as a disclaimer to other musicians: "Professional Driver ON A Closed Form. Exercise NOT ATTEMPT." Because I'm not sure everyone as well her could pull this off. Maybe not fifty-fifty Adele: The British thrush was expected to boss all calendar week thank you to her feverishly predictable album 30, her Oprah special–cum–televised concert and her chart-dominating smash "Easy on Me," which had already allowable the Hot 100 for iv weeks and looked to keep doing so through the holidays. Nope—Swift ejected Adele from the Hot 100's perch. That volition probably only last a calendar week; 30 is already dominating in sales before its offset week is fifty-fifty over, will height the Billboard 200 anthology chart handily when it's announced next week, and will likely pull "Easy" support the Hot 100 in its wake. But still: Taylor interrupted Adele's march through the center of our cultural conversation. That'south a major flex.
Even among Swift's deep trove of songs, "All Too Well" has long been unique. Not in terms of subject field thing—the fact that its lyrics searingly capture a breakup makes it one of many Tay-Tay compositions to mine that topic. No, it's unusual in that even the self-aware Swift appeared not to fully appreciate its potential at first. It'due south beautifully crafted, with a irksome-growing anthemic quality, a memorable melody and a lyric even more incisive than her usual; "Yous call me up once more just to break me like a promise/ So casually cruel, in the name of being honest" still doubles me over. But "All Too Well" went relatively unremarked upon when Swift's 2012 album Red arrived. (Props to critic Brad Nelson, who recognized in a 2012 Atlantic feature on Red that the song was "Swift'south finest narrative" and the infamous scarf its narrator leaves at the boyfriend's sis'due south firm was "a Chekhov's gun.")
[Read: How Taylor Swift's all-time song went from secret favorite to ten-minute masterpiece.]
"All Besides Well" was not issued as 1 of the album's official radio singles in 2012–thirteen. Information technology was neither fish nor fowl at a moment when Swift was carefully pivoting from land to pop— sturdy like a country story-vocal, but built like a popular-stone canticle. Produced not past her new collaborator Max Martin (who co-wrote Cerise'due south leadoff smash "We Are Never Ever Getting Dorsum Together" and the dubsteppy follow-up "I Knew You Were Trouble"), "All Too Well" was instead helmed by her stalwart Nashville producer Nathan Chapman and co-written past her longtime country-hitmaking collaborator Liz Rose. As an unpromoted album cut, it only reached No. 80, unremarkable at a fourth dimension when Swift'southward digital songs would regularly spend a week or 2 on the Hot 100 cheers to dollar downloads by rabid fans. Even the fans hadn't homed in on information technology yet.
But they began to scream loudest for information technology in concert, years later on Swift had moved onto other albums and bigger hits. The earliest indication that Swift recognized what a heartbreak-banger it was came at the 2014 Grammy Awards, where Red was up for Anthology of the Year (it didn't win), and Taylor gave a head-thrashing, piano-pounding performance of the vocal. Critics at the time regarded the fiery rendition equally lovably peculiar.
"All Too Well" then became that rare matter—what "Vienna" is to Billy Joel, or "Landslide" to Fleetwood Mac: the deep cut anointed by fans, a stealth striking everyone assumes was a existent hit all along. By the late '10s, it was routinely topping rankings of Swift's all-time songs. In a way, it was no surprise Swift would give it special treatment when she selected Blood-red as the next in her serial of early-album re-recordings. And when she revealed that information technology was originally several minutes longer—with many more than verses that she ultimately pared back, equally if information technology was her take on Leonard Cohen's originally 80-verse "Hallelujah"—the yearning to hear the total-length version took on its own momentum. Of form, it was widely expected that Reddish (Taylor's Version), the re-recording of Swift'south 2012 blockbuster, packed with bonus tracks "from the vault," would sell like crazy, and predictably it did. But a new No. one song, one so long most Pinnacle twoscore radio stations won't play it? Yes, I wouldn't have bet on that. Merely here we are.
I wasn't exactly wrong when I told Dad x-minute-plus songs don't top the Hot 100. Until now, none has. Only in nearly means that matter when information technology comes to the charts, Taylor is the exception. That's a discussion that the great, out-of-print documentary The Compleat Beatles used to describe "Hey Jude," the start supersized single to top the Hot 100 way back in 1968. "At vii minutes, it was more double the length of most singles," Compleat narrator Malcolm McDowell intones. "Radio stations normally refused to play a tape that lasted more than than 3. But once once again, the Beatles were the exception to the rule: 'Hey Jude' became their largest-selling unmarried of all." Indeed, "Jude" spent nine weeks at No. ane on the Hot 100, longer than any Beatles single both in chart dominance and running time. And amidst all No. i hits, until this week, "Hey Jude" was the largest undivided song to top the Hot 100.
I include that qualifier because, technically, another No. 1 hit was fifty-fifty longer: Don McLean's 1972 stemwinder "American Pie." No i disputes that McLean's song, in its canonical version, ran longer: "Jude" was 7:11, "Pie" was 8:37. The debate arises over which single version topped the Hot 100. A nearly nine-minute song wouldn't fit on one side of a 45-RPM vinyl single. And then the retail version of "American Pie" was issued as a split single, with "Part I" of the song (running 4:11) on the A side and "Role Two" (4:23) on the B side—and strictly speaking, this is the single that topped the Hot 100. Radio stations hardly always play one-half of the song, though. The full LP version of "Pie" is basically a radio staple. Nevertheless, equally recently as 2019, when I asked a couple of chart historians on Twitter to settle the question of what the Hot 100 No. 1 with the longest track length was, at that place was no consensus; Billboard Book of No. 1 Hits writer Fred Bronson admitted it was a "grayness area."
Then Taylor's new boom, running 10:13, should settle the contend, right? More or less, although there's still another asterisk. Similar to "American Pie," we can't attribute all of the Taylor song'south chart points to its fullest-length version. Equally it routinely does with remixes and radio edits, Billboard combines sales, streams and airplay of both the five-infinitesimal and 10-minute editions of "All Also Well (Taylor'southward Version)"—also as the make clean version that eliminates Swift's newly revealed F-bomb, and the "Sad Girl Autumn Version." (In case you're wondering, Billboard nautical chart tabulator MRC Data tracks the 2012 original version separately; the new Hot 100 berth is for all flavors of the Taylor's Version rerecordings but, which I'm sure Swift feels is just.) Among all of the versions, Billboard reports that the longer mixes of "All Besides Well" handily outsold and outstreamed the short versions—to be exact, 62% of streams and 78% of the download sales were for the ten-infinitesimal editions. On the Hot 100 itself, Billboard shows the chart-topping title only equally "All Too Well (Taylor's Version)." But the thrust of the song'south success is that of "All Also Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor'south Version) (From the Vault)"—and yes, that is the total name. (Fellow chart geeks are now debating whether this triple-parenthetical is a record.) So … if the official version of Taylor's No. 1 hitting is an amalgam of all versions, brusque and long, but the 10-minute version sold and streamed the most, does Swift finally beat Don McLean and the Beatles for longest No. 1 striking? A qualified aye, I'd say.
In any case, it's clear that marvel about the supersized version was what collection Taylor's reboot to the pinnacle. Its No. 1 debut was overwhelmingly driven by digital consumption. "All Besides Well (Taylor'due south Version)" sold nearly 59,000 digital tracks, which is not a BTS number but is blockbuster-level by the current diminished standards of the dollar-download. It racked up 54.4 million streams, driven not only by Spotify consumption simply tens of millions of views of the video—err, The Brusque Film. The strength of these two metrics was essential, because the song's radio airplay is bloodless: a first-week radio audience of only 286,000, a fraction of a typical meridian-ranked airplay hitting. (For comparing, this week's Radio Songs leader, the Kid Laroi'due south "Stay" featuring Justin Bieber, racked upwards an audition of 87million.) If yous're wondering what kind of radio station in 2021 would spin a rail whose new flagship version is longer than "Stairway to Heaven," Billboard reports that just four pop stations nationwide put it in annihilation resembling a rotation. Y'all probably won't hear the 10-minute "All Too Well" at the drugstore anytime soon.
And does that matter? The Hot 100 functions best when its elevation slot aligns with the vocal that feels like the nearly dominant—whether that'southward "WAP" or "One-time Town Road" or "Shallow"—even if a lot of that chatter is extramusical. And last week, it did experience like everybody, about especially the Very Online, was talking nearly "All Also Well": both the Jake of it all (and the Maggie of it all) as much every bit the song's graceful popular hooks. Of class, a large faction of Taylor Swift fans has spent much of the terminal decade thinking and talking about "All Too Well." Equally far as they are concerned, this No. 1 ranking only ratifies what they've long believed: this vocal is a smash. Only really, that'south a bonus—it's important to continue in listen that the Billboard charts measure out popularity ane week at a time. They're not meant to rails the tiresome coalescing of popularity over the course of years or decades. (Despite everything that's happened to it in the 21st century, Journey'due south "Don't Cease Believin'" is still recorded in chart histories as a mere No. 9 hit in 1981.)
Maybe "All Too Well's" command is just a brief interregnum in the pop chat surrounding our prodigal pop overlord Adele. But give it upwards for Taylor: She played the game ameliorate than anybody last week. And as she says, we beloved the game.
Source: https://slate.com/culture/2021/11/taylor-swift-all-too-well-10-minute-billboard-hot-100-chart.html
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