By 1982, the amount of black music on the Hot 100 was down by almost 80%. How dramatic was the decline of black music on the pop charts in that period? In 1979, nearly half of the songs on the weekly Billboard Hot 100 pop chart could also be found on the urban contemporary chart. This backlash was greatly magnified by the demise of AM mass appeal Top 40 radio at the hands of FM, which led to black artists being ghettoized on urban contemporary radio, while disappearing from pop radio, which focused on a more narrow white audience. As the 80’s dawned, programmers increasingly stayed clear of rhythm-driven black music out of fear of being branded “disco,” even when the black music in question bore little resemblance to disco. This was partially due the virulent, reactionary anti-disco backlash that resulted in the implosion of that genre at the end of 1979. If that prognosis wasn’t enough to give CBS Records executives sleepless nights, one aspect of radio’s fragmentation was particularly scary: Since the start of the decade, black music had been increasingly banished from most white-targeted radio stations. According to Newsweek, Elvis and the Beatles were “Phenomena produced by a nation responding in unison to the sounds on every Top 40 radio station.” The magazine went on to predict that “In today’s fragmented music marketplace, no rock star can hope to have that kind of impact.” Newsweek concluded their article on what they called “rock’s doldrums” by reminiscing about the “good old days” when Elvis Presley and the Beatles created excitement by providing an identifiable center to the pop music world, recording music that the various segments of the pop music audience could all share. This situation led Newsweek, in an April, 1982 article titled “Is Rock on The Rocks?” to assert that increased fragmentation had drained most of the excitement from the pop scene, as there was no longer much cross-fertilization between musical styles. Failure to do this would lead to listener “tune-out,” the fatal turning of the dial. Precision targeting of audiences meant that radio stations needed to avoid playing anything that fell outside their target listeners’ most narrowly-defined tastes. He added “Those who enjoy a-little-bit-of-this-and-a-little-bit-of-that….constitute a minority.” In fact, by 1982 many markets, including major ones like New York City, didn’t even have a mass appeal Top 40 station anymore. The result of this shift was that each audience segment had only limited exposure to the music played on the formats targeted to other audience groups.īillboard columnist Mike Harrison noted in 1981 that “No longer is there an exclusive Top 40 anything, but rather an ever-changing multitude of Top 40’s, depending upon the genre one wants to research or focus on. Instead of listening to stations which offered “the best of everything” as they had on the old AM Top 40’s, the abundance of choice on FM afforded listeners the luxury of hearing only the musical sub-genre they liked on more narrowly formatted stations, without having to wade through everything else. Consequently, a mass pop music audience that crossed demographic lines could not be sustained. By 1982, FM commanded 70% of the audience-and among the 12-24 year old demographic, it was 84%. What really had happened over the previous three years was a seismic technological shift that had torn apart the very idea of the mass audience upon which pop hits depended: By the end of the 70s, 50.1% of radio listeners were tuned to FM, ending AM’s historical prevalence and hastening the demise of the mass-audience Top 40 stations that had dominated the radio ratings since the 1950s. But that trendy theory was, to say the least, inadequate in explaining the industry’s malaise. Stories circulated in the press about how the slump in the business stemmed from kids feeding their money into the coin slots of video game arcades instead of spending it on music. GALLERY: Michael Jackson’s Life In PhotosĪBOUT THE AUTHOR OF THIS ARTICLE: Steve Greenberg ( is the founder of S-Curve Records and a Grammy winning record producer who had an integral role in developing the careers of Hanson, Joss Stone and the Jonas Brothers, among many others.REVIEW: ‘Thriller’ At 30, Track By Track.(4) “Thriller” became the first album to generate seven Hot 100 top 10 hits. 1s “Billie Jean” and “Beat It” are two of Jackson’s 13 Hot 100 leaders, the most of any solo male artist. Only the “West Side Story” soundtrack (54) has reigned longer. (2) “Thriller” has spent the most weeks (37) atop the Billboard 200 of any album by a single artist. The set is tied with the Eagles’ best-of collection, “Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975.” (1) With sales of 29 million, according to the RIAA, “Thriller” is the best-selling studio album in U.S.
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