I started thinking about this when Olivia Rodrigo released “drop dead”, the lead single to her upcoming album. By all accounts, this should be one of the biggest events in music this year. Olivia Rodrigo had previously made one of the biggest breakout hits of the decade with “drivers license”. Her first song stepping out of the Disney Channel bubble had become an overnight phenomenon, going viral on social media platforms and spawning a huge fanbase that adored the storytelling and theatrical scope that Olivia had seemingly already mastered on her first attempt. Since then, she’s become one of the definitive breakout artists of the 2020s, delivering further with subsequent singles such as “deja vu” and “good 4 u”, the latter showing that on top of her gift for pop music, she was also a very credible rock star. Her second album maybe wasn’t as dominant, but it was still an undeniable success, with a #1 hit and artistic improvements across the board. It only seemed natural that after a few years out of the spotlight, Olivia would return to deliver an even bigger, more exciting album that cemented her legacy with one of the greatest starting trilogies in pop music history. She just needed one more #1 hit, and a big sweeping pop ballad like “drop dead”, complete with a big video shot in Versailles. It was foolproof. What could go wrong?

Well, nothing! “drop dead” went to #1, as expected, and that third album, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love has a million pre-saves on Spotify. On the surface, the single has been a big success. But that’s not really the whole story.

See, one of the biggest shifts in popular music, mostly relegated online and through social media fandom, is the presence of chart projections. People who have cracked the code on Billboard and Luminate’s formula can tell you how many “points” a song has and where that places them on the Hot 100. The main organization known for this is Talk of the Charts, who midway through the week of “drop dead’s” release projected that it would only end up at #2 on the Hot 100. There was still time to make up the margins, but if nothing changed within the next two days, it meant that “drop dead” would not be Olivia Rodrigo’s third #1 lead single debut in a row, perhaps calling into question whether Olivia Rodrigo is still the it girl she was merely five years ago. We can’t let that happen.

Just a few hours after Talk of the Chart’s projection, Olivia Rodrigo and her team released two alternate music videos, which were respectively exclusive to Spotify or Apple Music (this is due to YouTube views no longer applying to Billboard stats. Long story). The next day, they would release “alternate versions” of the single, ranging from an acoustic version, the instrumental, a slowed and reverbed version for the TikTokers, a sped-up version also for the TikTokers, etc. LiviesHQ, a fan account driven by people on Olivia’s team, posted detailed instructions on how to make the most of these alternate versions (It was posted on Insta stories but trust me it did happen). Make sure every stream and purchase counted so that Olivia could get that #1 spot! After all, don’t you want to see your fav succeed? Don’t you want the world to know that this is the biggest pop event of the year? And that years from now this era will be part of the history books?

As annoying and cheap as this method is, it’s nothing new for the Hot 100 or pop music as a whole. BTS and Taylor Swift did it earlier this year, with their songs “SWIM” and “Opalite” respectively. BTS and their stan ARMY have perfected this formula for years, organizing to buy every single version of the song and get their boys to the top. It’s a win-win for everyone, as BTS gets to bring their music to a market that previously would never pay them a second thought, and the ARMY gets to show how dedicated and passionate they are about their favorite musician that they can game the system in their favor. Taylor Swift, meanwhile, has a habit of putting out “exclusive” CDs and bundles for the die-hard fans who have plenty of income and a cultish love for Taylor. A gift for the fans that just so happens to give Taylor and her team a lot of money and record-breaking chart momentum. She just did it again for her Toy Story 5 soundtrack song.

I don’t like this method. I find it to be really dishonest and manipulative, actively trying to write history in one’s favor while disguising what is obviously financial manipulation as “fan-driven success”. But at the same time, I can’t fault these artists for playing the game that Billboard has set up for them. We’re long past the days of Billboard being solely a catalog for industry folks to determine who’s hot in music and which newcomers to invest in. It’s a public entity now. People can look at the Hot 100 every week and learn about how it works through these projection accounts. We see how the sausage gets made, try as they might to hide it or take down people like Talk of the Charts for making this public information. I’m less concerned about the ethics of this and more the lie that the industry and the fans tell themselves by indulging in these practices. If Olivia can’t get to #1 without using Billboard’s loopholes to bolster its stats, is it really the biggest song in the country? Did “drivers license” and “vampire” need that to reach the #1 spot? Does the fact that “SWIM” had to resort to its old methods to reach #1 mean BTS’ moment has passed? They were gone for quite a while, it’s not hard to believe the world beyond the fanbase has moved on from them. Does Taylor fucking Swift need another #1 hit that badly? Is the four million copies sold in one week not enough?

What was going to be #1 the week “drop dead” did anyway?

Oh right, “Choosin’ Texas” by Ella Langley. The undisputed biggest hit song of the year. That’s not up for debate either (at least in the US). “Choosin’ Texas” has been kind of unprecedented as not only a #1 hit, but a consistent one. It’s the first time we’ve had a woman in country music hit #1 on the all-genre Hot 100 since Dolly Parton’s “9 To 5” in 1981. And she got there pretty much on her own, without any help. She has a Morgan Wallen collab and while that song has been a big hit, it’s never once eclipsed “Choosin’ Texas”. It debuted at a strong #39 and only kept climbing from there, eventually hitting #1 in early February of this year, where it has since been on and off over the following four months. In fact, both “SWIM” and “Opalite” also had “Choosin’ Texas” as their closest competition for #1 in their respective weeks. “Janice STFU” by Drake managed to beat it without the sale method, but “Choosin’ Texas” is already back in the lead ahead of it. Olivia, BTS, Taylor, and now Drake. All falling to Big Langley. Ariana Grande is next.

Now, you can make some arguments against the dominance of “Choosin’ Texas” through various factors. For one, “Choosin’ Texas” has a big advantage that the other artists don’t have, and that’s access to both pop radio and country radio. The two biggest radio formats in the country, and with how radio tends to be favored in Billboard’s formula, that’s going to give it not just big numbers, but consistent momentum. While this is true to some extent, country radio also moves really fast in comparison to pop music, to the point where they’ve already moved on from “Choosin’ Texas” and have instead been putting their focus on her follow-up single, “Be Her”. Worth noting as well that “Be Her” has peaked at #2 while “Choosin’ Texas” was at #1. That’s not nothing! Morgan Wallen couldn’t even do that without an album bomb. On the other hand, you can argue that 2026 has been a slow year for music anyway. “Choosin’ Texas” is mostly getting by on a lack of momentum from the industry as a whole. But that’s the problem, isn’t it?

It’s been a sluggish decade for pop music. Even with 2024’s seeming promise for a new golden era in pop, that’s looking more and more like a fluke driven off of trends rather than genuine interest in the pop music scene. Even when the numbers go up, interest isn’t that strong. Hip-hop is doing even worse. We’ve only had two #1 hits that are even related to hip-hop since the Kendrick and Drake beef, and it’s… Kendrick and Drake. Again. Only one other Top 40 hip-hop hit right now and it’s a Dababy song that barely even feels like his. Even country music is in a weird split between the country artists who are legitimately popular (Ella Langley, Morgan Wallen, Riley Green) and the Nashville slop that only gets industry-mandated radioplay and nothing else. The whole music industry’s in a shitty place and it has been since the pandemic lockdown.

As movies, television, and even video games have dominated the pop culture of the 2020s, this has become a difficult thing for anyone invested in popular music to really grapple with. This year especially has seen songs become hits more due to their ties with other media rather than the song itself. Micheal Jackson is all over the Billboard charts because of the recent biopic, even with songs that aren’t featured in the film like the posthumous cut “Chicago”. Djo’s “End of Beginning” made the Top 10 this year almost entirely thanks to the Stranger Things finale. Even songs like PinkPantheress and Zara Larsson’s “Stateside” needed a memorable performance at the Olympics to be one of the year’s defining hits. The thing is, those industries haven’t exactly been stable either, but at least they’ve kept their grip on the culture of the decade. If there’s any artist this decade who can claim to be on that cultural level, it’s not Olivia Rodrigo, or Sabrina Carpenter, hell, maybe not even Morgan Wallen or Taylor Swift.

The Super Bowl Halftime performance alone should be proof enough that Bad Bunny is the decade’s biggest star. He may have started in the late 2010s, but starting from YHLQMDLG onwards, Bad Bunny has had dominant album after dominant album, and it’s obvious whenever you look at any global chart within the past five or six years. As of right now, “DtMF”, which went to #1 earlier this year, is still one of the most streamed songs of the current moment. I’d argue it’s the second biggest hit of the year behind “Choosin’ Texas” if you live in the US. And if you don’t… well it’s the biggest hit of the year, hands down. Worth noting that “DtMF” was actually a #2 hit on the Hot 100 a year ago, getting there a week after the album came out. It contested for #1, but ultimately lost to Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga’s “Die With A Smile”. Bad Bunny never did anything to push the song up to #1. No sales bundles, no campaign, not even any attention to projections posted that week. Fate decided that it simply wasn’t its time. Which made it all the more rewarding that one year later, as Bad Bunny became the big winner of both his Super Bowl Halftime show and winning the Grammy for Album Of the Year, “DtMF” finally reached #1 a year after its release. You could probably argue that doing the Super Bowl and the Grammys within the same week isn’t exactly a “natural” path to #1 but it’s not like Bad Bunny was guaranteed the AOTY win at the Grammys. Nor was it a done deal that the Halftime performance would go well, it had a whole backlash cycle to it, especially from the US government led by Donald Trump. The reason sales bundles and fan campaigns are so disillusioning is because they’re practically cheat codes, leaving nothing up to chance and bypassing the rules so the win can be guaranteed. Thus the narratives of these songs and artists suddenly feel artificial and self-congratulatory. If Bad Bunny was a worse performer, the album and the show wouldn’t have resonated as much as it did.

Part of me worries that I’m being naive looking at the success of Ella Langley and Bad Bunny with the idea that this is “the right way” to be successful as opposed to how Olivia, BTS and Taylor are doing it. But it’s less the belief that those artists’ rises to #1 are more “authentic” and more that the way they got there was more principled. Both of these artists have systems in place to get them to where they are. Bad Bunny may be independent, but he’s still a part of the industry through his distribution, marketing, negotiation to even be in consideration for the Halftime Show. Ella Langley may have a huge fanbase, but she got there in part thanks to her connection with Morgan Wallen, and while Nashville has always been bad at managing the careers of women, Ella is savvy enough not to make any sudden moves so their rigid support will keep her afloat even if the audience isn’t there. That’s how the industry works, and the only way for a genuine nobody with a guitar and a dream to make it to #1 without those connections is by freak accident. So rather than looking at this from a “grassroots” perspective, I see these rises to #1 as how these artists play the game. Do they let nature take its course and trust in the long game, or do they go for that instant satisfaction regardless of how they get there? Me personally, I like seeing songs get there on their own merits rather than by self-imposed birthright.

To tell you the truth, I actually think “drop dead” is one of Olivia Rodrigo’s best ever songs. As is her follow-up single, “the cure”. Part of why the #1 campaign really disappointed me is because it felt like I was seeing truly exciting and incredible art compromised by capitalistic greed. It’s impossible to separate the capitalism out of pop music, but at the very least I have learned to value the craft and passion behind the music regardless of the system it participates in. I probably won’t be thinking about this at all years from now when the album cycle ends and all that’s left is a genuinely great song from an artist I think is getting better and better. Still, I can’t help but look at where Taylor is right now, so business and empire-driven to the point where it overshadows her own music for some people, and worry about the same happening to Olivia. I didn’t care much for The Life of a Showgirl, but I have a lot of love in my heart for Midnights and The Tortured Poets Department for being some of Taylor’s most thoughtful and interesting albums of her career. None of it relates to her marketing empire that only seems to grow with every album. I hope Olivia is grounded enough to let her music be what speaks about her career and not the headlines and records that Taylor is constantly chasing. “drop dead” and “the cure” are still doing really well, and her album will likely be the biggest pop release of the year. Let that work and dedication speak for itself. A temporary Billboard stat will never be the cure to your insecurity.