Top 40

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

see also Top 40 (radio format) or Contemporary hit radio for information on the radio formats itself

The Top Forty or Top 40 is a music industry shorthand for the currently most-popular songs in a particular genre. When used without qualification, it typically refers to the best-selling or most frequently broadcast pop music songs. According to legend, the Top 40 radio format was created by Todd Storz in Omaha in 1955 after observing customers at a bar playing the same handful of songs on a jukebox over and over again. Storz realized that treating the radio station's playlist as a jukebox would ensure that listeners would always hear popular songs, regardless of what time of the day they tuned in, if the station made an effort to play a smaller group of songs. The music ranged anywhere from country & western, to pop music, rock & roll, even instrumentals and novelty songs.

Jaaangles, contests, listener dedications, news updates, traffic, and other features were designed to make Top 40 radio particularly attractive to car listeners. By early 1964, the era of the British Invasion, Top 40 radio had become the dominant radio format for North American listeners, and quickly swept much of the Western world. Some stations tried even "tighter" radio playlists, going with the Top 30 or even the Top 20 songs, but most industry experts felt that listener fatigue would set in more quickly with smaller lists. Top 40 quickly became the dominant radio format of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1990s, though as music formats began to fracture, most stations began to specialize in certain restricted kinds of popular music, usually playing specific types of rock such as mainstream, soft rock, or other music charted by radio industry trade publications.

Other lists of hit songs may include a different number of entries, such as a "Top 50" or "Top 100".

The current top songs are tracked by a variety of trade publications, such as:

Top 40 Mainstream, a chart of current popular songs in the United States compiled by Billboard Magazine, and its various predecessors
Radio & Records magazine, recently purchased by Billboard
UK Top Forty, a British version of the same concept.
Dutch Top 40, the Dutch music chart.

Radio programs that highlight currently popular songs also refer to the "Top 40":

Top 40 (radio format), a radio format based on playing the top 40 popular songs of the week (may or may not be based on Billboard's chart), also known as "contemporary hit radio" or "CHR"
American Top 40, a weekly syndicated countdown radio show originally created and hosted by Casey Kasem from 1970-1988, and again from 1998-2004, and hosted by Ryan Seacrest as of 2004.

[edit] The Top 40 Debate

Even though Top 40 songs are considered the best selling music at a particular time, it does not necessarily mean that it is necessarily the best music of a certain genre at any time. Many believe that Top 40 music is determined not by the listeners themselves but by one or more of the following:

Large record labels with large marketing budgets to continually push what the label thinks is a potential hit.
Seasoned song writers who are paid to study previous hits in order to duplicate previous successes.
Tightly connected Music Producers and Entertainment Lawyers who push certain kinds of music for the sake of receiving money for the success of an act.
Industry consultants who influence radio stations and radio groups, sometimes with payola and other means to convince them to play newly-released songs.

Many consider popular music an exercise in business and not art where the music artist writes, performs, and enjoys the profits from his or her success. However, some popular culture experts argue that Top 40 music can nonetheless be enjoyed in its own right, and that some mass-market musicians have proven to have both commercial and artistic success (particularly The Beatles, arguably the most influential music group of the 20th century).

[edit] Further reading

Durkee, Rob. "American Top 40: The Countdown of the Century." Schriner Books, New York City, 1999.
Battistini, Pete, "American Top 40 with Casey Kasem The 1970s." Authorhouse.com, January 31, 2005. ISBN 1-4184-1070-5.
Douglas, Susan, "Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination," New York: Times Books, 1999.
Fong-Torres, Ben, "The Hits Just Keep On Coming: The History of Top 40 Radio", San Francisco: Backbeat Books, 1998.
MacFarland, David, "The Development of the Top 40 Radio Format", New York: Arno Press, 1979.
Fisher, Mark, "Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution That Shaped a Generation", New York: Random House, 2007.
Goulart, Elwood F. 'Woody', "The Mystique and Mass Persuasion: Bill Drake & Gene Chenault’s Rock and Roll Radio Programming", 2006.