Some Years are Just Better than Others. The Importance of Public Consensus in Record Ranking

Abstract

ABSTRACT Two periods, October 1973 through April 1976 and January 1986 through December 1989 – one-quarter and 40% of their respective decades – curiously lack strongly charting records. This is not a statistical anomaly nor an artifact of one national chart; records in those periods spent less time at their peaks, thus scoring less than records in closely matched comparator high-scoring adjacent periods. The lack of enduring peak popularity, churn at the top of the chart, and the absence of a dominant genre indicate a lack of public consensus as to “what’s good right now,” accounting for the anomalously low scores in those eras.