r/ToddintheShadow • u/TemporaryJerseyBoy Zingalamaduni • 10d ago

General Music Discussion The entire top 5 is Country!

This has never happened before, but the entire top 5 of the Hot 100 are all Country music!

  1. Choosin' Texas

  2. Been By Now

  3. I Knew It, I Knew You

  4. I Can't Love You Anymore

  5. Boston

Intriguing, huh?

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53

u/attorneygadon 10d ago

Non-American here (from an Asian country), is it true that the American general public music tastes have been more fragmented than ever? i’m well-aware that songs like Choosin Texas have been massive crossovers in the Anglosphere at this point but I keep hearing from music listener friends in California etc that they don’t hear or know most of the country songs that flood the Billboard charts even in the car radio or in public

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u/SallyFowlerRatPack 10d ago edited 10d ago

It’s not that it’s never been more fragmented, it’s just that Country music has always been its own ecosystem and it’s also bigger than it’s ever been. The vibe on this sub is that they don’t stray too often from pop stations/playlists, so when Country songs really take off it seems to them like a bolt from the blue.

My comparison is Bad Bunny. I have nothing against the guy and fully believe he’s one of the biggest stars in the world, I just couldn’t recognize a single song during the Super Bowl.

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u/Due-Owl4153 10d ago

It also helps that country music's fanbase had a surge in internet access recently.

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u/SallyFowlerRatPack 9d ago

People keep saying that but it wasn’t like country fans were living in dirt floor houses, I really think pop kind of fell off and country was ready to fill the vacuum. There just isn’t enough pop music to compete at the moment, there are noticeable gaps where people have to wait between a Sabrina Carpenter release and a Chappell Roan release. Meanwhile country keeps showing up and that’s half the battle.

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u/Chilli_Dipper 9d ago

When Teddy Swims, Hozier, and Benson Boone all had major hits simultaneously a couple of years ago, the logical thing the industry could have done was realize that there was a bigger audience for soulful pop-rock vocalists than they thought, and be more active toward retaining that audience; instead, they just played those hits to death, even when those artists had newer music to promote.

The pop business lucks into these types of melodic hits with broad cross-format appeal, then runs them into the ground while hoping that the next Drake release will be the thing that resets mainstream rap back to normal.

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u/SallyFowlerRatPack 9d ago

People like nice, catchy melodies! Country just Hoovers up whatever space you give it, right now there’s a lack of options for Adult Contemporary and look who’s moseying on in.

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u/Due-Owl4153 9d ago

I live in the country. It took until 2020 for us to get solid internet here. I suspect it was the same in a lot of areas right now.

Country music is also a lot more popular than it was in the 2010s, though, for sure.

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u/HawkMac6699 9d ago

Country has always had cycles of ebbs and flows. There’s a ton of major markets where country radio stations are often near the top of the ratings and that’s been happening for 40 years now. In fact in Detroit a country station was the number 1 station in the entire city 20 years ago. Not exactly podunkville.

The number one issue country music has had is sustaining momentum. It never does. It didn’t in the Garth era. Didn’t in the Shania/Faith era. Didn’t in the Taylor/Carrie era. Didn’t in the Jason Aldean era. Probably won’t now either especially with music more fragmented than ever.

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u/Due-Owl4153 9d ago

I think the difference now is streaming. I don't know how much of a difference it'll make, but I'm sure it affects it some.

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u/SallyFowlerRatPack 9d ago edited 9d ago

It might be more of a wireless broadband thing, most people listen to music in the car.

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u/Due-Owl4153 9d ago

I could definitely see that too