Lets talk about the ADDS first. Beach House dominated. At one point I checked adds and out of 137 reporters 100 of them had added the record. Those that did not add Beach House looked a lot like this
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Where most of the records added were OLD. So I would not be shocked if Beach House gets even more adds next week. Someone asked me if it was that the record was that good or that the competition was that weak. I thought early on that Destroyer would be neck and neck with Beach House but it was never close. Some stations I asked even asked who is Destroyer. I thought that was absurd but reminded me of another conversation about "heritage" artists.
For as long as I can remember there are certain artists that dominate college radio. Anytime Bjork, Radiohead, Modest Mouse, Tom Waits and a few others had a record you could pencil it in at #1. Now it seems that the collective memory of college radio has become shorter. Matt and Kim were a #1 artist 2 records ago. Passion Pit went #1 just one record ago and both new records struggled to get past the top 20 marker.
One of the great things about college radio though is that it is ever evolving. Change happens every year or at least every other year as a new MD comes in and new DJ's come in. They naturally will be drawn to different records than the past music directors. Of course one of our jobs as promoters is to educate the new directors about music. Let them know who and why someone like Tom Waits is important if they don't know. In working the new Wilco record currently it should not surprise me when I have to explain who Wilco is. It does but me yelling YOU DONT KNOW WHO WILCO is does not really help. Instead taking 5-10 min to explain their history might be in order. I had a new MD the other day ask me who New Order was. I guess there really is that much new music that being exposed to heritage bands may not of happened. But that is our job. To help educate.
I expect there to be a lot of new MD's coming in soon and a lot of conversations about bands they may of not heard of and I am looking forward to it.
The charts this week were fun to watch. Going in we had a pretty good idea that the top 5 would be, in some order comprised of these 6 records, Tame Impala, La Luz, Mac Demarco, Wilco, Mynabirds, Titus Andronicus. You could early on separate them into two packs the only records with a clear shot of #1 this week were incumbent Tame Impala and then last weeks #2 Mac Demarco and you could see an early push from La Luz was happening. There was clear separation of those three above the others.
I thought early on Mac Demarco would take #1, but I changed my mind mid day on Tuesday when La Luz had more of everything it seemed. More #1's, more bigger stations. But fittingly the Mac Demarco supporters seemed to wait until the end to report and the gap got smaller and smaller and eventually they pulled ahead. It WAS very close with an argument either way. Had La Luz taken #1 I think I would of understood why. But Mac Demarco did take it and it still made sense.
It will be interesting to see what happens this next week with Beach House. I could see it going from ADD week to #1 in a single week. I could also see a push for La Luz, Mynabirds and Wilco. There are significant gaps but with a lot of new MD's on the way back there should be a larger pool of stations to draw from.
Seems like Fall is almost here and I am looking forward to more excitement on the charts!
Thank you for reading.
Doug
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