The obsession some people have with the top 40 singles and Kylie getting into it is weird. Literally nobody else cares if her lead single goes top 40, least of all probably Kylie. If the song goes top 40 because of multiple formats and then plummets out the next week, does that somehow make it successful? I mean she literally has a top 40 single at the moment which everybody has forgotten about, because it’s just not relevant to her career in 2021. Much better to focus energy on the album and making sure that’s a smash.
A few years back when a lot of great acts weren't getting hits but doing amazing music, I was worried when I saw them live those songs wouldn't get the same applause as the ones that were hits. And more often than not, those tracks were as loved as the hits by the fans so it really doesn't matter if Kylie never has another hit. These songs will go down as well as her classics.
The charts mean nothing. Dancing just scraped top 40 yet has outsold number one single Slow. Sure, it’d be lovely for her to be in the top 10 but it’s not essential at all.
Exactly, Dancing feels very much a modern day Kylie classic and think Say Something and Magic are getting that way too. The chart peaks mean nothing these days.
I feel like the phrase "the charts mean nothing" is thrown around too casually around here. Yes, the singles chart is probably less important to Kylie these days, but the singles chart is still an important measure of success. An artist wouldn't release a release with multiple formats if they didn't care about sales and the charts.
It really isn’t an important measure of success to an artist like Kylie because she’s pretty much blocked from getting a high position outside of a Christmas song. 7” vinyls are a cute bonus for the fans, but they did 2000 of them, which isn’t going to make a song a hit. I’d love it if the expectation was still that she would get top 10s from each new release but it’s just not going to happen, so I think it’s best to acknowledge that and move past it and focus on the charts she can and does do well in.
Something like Cher having a worldwide chart smash with Believe in her 50s, already a massive outlier even in 1998, would simply not happen now. It's just the way the charts work now, until whatever the next change is, and that probably won't favour older acts either. But it doesn't matter. I'm sure it'd be nice for Kylie to have another hit to add to the collection, but the beauty of being where she is in her career is that the collection is strong enough to stand on its own, and any new addition is a bonus. I said much earlier in this thread that her peers in career terms are the likes of Rod Stewart and Tom Jones, and I'd stand by that comment - but by producing new "fan favourites" as she has on Golden and certainly Disco, she sets herself apart even from them. She doesn't need to be number 28 or whatever on a chart most people barely understand in order to prove a point that has already been proven.
I mean, most pre-download singles have low sales because they didn't keep CD singles on the shelves forever. This is less about the charts meaning nothing and more about consumption methods changing. Now instead of scraping a Silver certification with your single on the Woolies rack for six weeks, you can achieve entire certifications years after the fact because the song is always available. Is this not a good thing?
Not to mention that they were riotously expensive. At one point in the late 90s or so they cost £3.99; adjust that for whatever today's equivalent is and it looks even more ridiculous. Comparing today's chart with that of 15-20 years ago is, well...a bit like arguing that TV ratings are shit when your benchmark is the number of people who watched Dirty Den serve Angie with divorce papers.
I don't know what's worse, people still clambering for a Top 40/20/10 in this day and age, or the praise heaped on such a nothingy song like Unstoppable.
A sneaker smash honestly especially after the explosion of Dance Floor Darling, think that’s why at first I didn’t pay much attention to it but it’s so good after hammering it more.
