Chris Molanphy: One Chart to Rule Them All

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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