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.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).