At this point, online stan armies are the main driving driving forces on the Billboard Hot 100. Over the past 20 years, pop music has lost its cultural centrality, the monoculture has sputtered and died, radio has lost its power, and stans have used the internet to organize.
We’re now in a strange reality where fans proudly adapt the term stan to describe themselves. Late-period Eminem gave us “Crack A Bottle,” one of the worst chart-toppers in Billboard history. Eminem and Britney Spears are basically the same person, but at least late-period Britney gave us some pretty good songs. Both string together series of late-career chart-toppers when they’re long past their creative primes. Eventually, both stars come out of their personal crises with #1 hits in the late ’00s. Both stars deal with failed marriages, custody battles, addiction, rehab. Both stars exist at the center of perpetual media circuses, and the attention quickly turns toxic. When they’re at their peak, both of these blonde kids score #1 hits, though you’d expect both of them to top the Hot 100 much more often. Both of them come to represent the dangerous power of pop stars, and both of them cause moral panics simply by existing. Both of them become cultural phenoms who sell millions upon millions of CDs and who star in hit movies specifically conceived as vehicles for their star personas. Consider: Two photogenic blonde white kids of modest means, both of whom have troubled relationships with their parents, come blasting out of flyover country in 1999, teaming up with visionary producers and conquering TRL. One of Em’s favorite targets is Britney Spears, so it’s a little eye-opening to consider just how much he has in common with her. Since the moment that his career began, Eminem has talked so much shit about pop stars.
In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present.
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