The Quest For Stats By Any Means

“Am I kinda desperate for doing this now? I don’t care, I don’t care, cause this album is so… rare.” These are the words Selena Gomez said with her chest as she was on her way to multiple stores such as Target and Walmart, to buy her own new album “Rare,” in a quest to beat Roddy Ricch’s “Excuse Me For Being Antisocial” for the number one spot on the Billboard 200. This comes on the heels of Justin Bieber’s request from his fans to essentially create streaming farms for him by asking them to stream his single “Yummy” on a loop to beat Roddy’s “The Box” for the one spot on the Billboard 100. Kudos to Roddy who has been taking all this in stride, tweeting for fans to stream both artists’ music, however, these attempts at reaching number one on the charts by any means necessary highlight a negative trend in music. 

 Firstly, Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez are easily two of the top artists in the world, successfully navigating the pop world to reach the top of their genre. However, everything about how they’ve tried to manipulate fans and the charts to chase a stat makes them both look like anything but the pop superstars they are. In my opinion, both artist’s attempts to fudge the numbers to beat Roddy Ricch’s music for the number one spot on the charts show a bit of insecurity in both artists. Theoretically, two of the biggest pop stars of the 2010s should be able to easily beat a Hip-Hop artist in Roddy Ricch, who has only recently started gaining popularity from music fans. So why are Selena and Justin so hasty to pull out all the tricks to ensure that they beat Roddy in the stats competition that has become music? Possibly both artists have financial stakes written into their contracts in which they planned on cashing in on during this musical dry period. They may have planned to release music at this time because their numbers would have been the best, only for the Roddy train to surprise us all.

 Secondly, I find both attempts to be super disrespectful to Roddy Ricch who again has taken everything in stride. I’m not saying that I don’t want music to be competitive, because we all win when music is a competition. Artists are forced to consistently test their musical limits and fans get better music as a result. However, in this scenario, we haven’t gotten music that is unanimously “better” than what Roddy Ricch has put out. Instead, the race to number one for Selena and Justin has become a popularity contest, and when it gets to this point, you lose me as someone who respects the stats that artists earn musically. If both artists went on to beat Roddy Ricch off the strength of more people enjoying their music, good game and kudos to them. However, the use in both cases of what could be looked upon as forms of streaming farms completely strips the legitimacy from whatever numbers Selena and Justin can accumulate. It's important to note that Justin Bieber’s attempted coup of Roddy Ricch’s number one slot on the Billboard Hot 100 list failed, while Selena Gomez’s attempt for the number slot on the Billboard 200 has reportedly been successful. 

Lastly, what happened to allowing the music to speak for itself? I think we’re approaching a dangerous space in music if artists can half-ass their music knowing it’s going to sell because the artists are who they are, then become outraged when it doesn’t sell as much as it does and then start taking shots at other artists. We’ve seen this movie before (however, I’m not going to name names all I’ll say is google “DJ Khaled and Tyler the Creator” and see what you find) and the optics for raging against another artist because their numbers are better are horrific. 

The thing about music is that it’s unpredictable. Fans are fickle, artists change their sound and the overall landscape of the sound of a genre can seemingly change overnight. That’s why I like music. However, if we end up in a spot where music loses all of its unpredictability in favor of a popularity contest that would favor artists who have been in the game longer than others, the evolution of music will simply stagnate. I’m not sure about you but I couldn’t live in a music world where the same song is remixed in twenty different ways because it’s been popular for years.