Throwback Thursday: Mariah Carey – “Breakdown” (featuring Krayzie Bone & Wish Bone)
While current chart rules make it a little too easy for fake hits to climb up on and even top the charts, they also make it easy for songs that are truly impactful to dominate (no matter how long after their release).
In case you’re wondering, a “fake” hit is one that, for example, debuts at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 one week and is out of the top 10 two weeks later. A hit that is purely built on the star power of the performing artist has zero traction outside of the artist’s stans, and therefore, does not maintain “popularity” after the first week or so of its release. But I digress.
Back to the chart rules.
While album cuts and years old songs can chart now due to prevailing rules, back in ’98, a song couldn’t chart unless a physical single was issued for the song — even if a music video had been released for the song in question. As you can imagine, this basically shut independent artists out from the Hot 100, but it also made it impossible for songs that were popular at radio to chart. And in special scenarios where, for instance, an artist’s record label was run by her estranged soon-to-be ex-husband, the chart rules circa ’98 created a perfect opportunity for sabotage. Such is the story of multiple Mariah Carey songs from the Butterfly album.
The couple had separated before
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