The Lost Factor Comes To Country

A guest appearance on one of 2019’s most phenomenal songs. A daughter who became a successful multi-format hitmaker. A renewed interest in the hits of the ‘90s, including some that had been off the radio for a while. None of these were enough to put Billy Ray Cyrus and “Achy Breaky Heart,” the No. 1 Country song of 1992, back on the radio. When I wrote about Cyrus two years ago during his renewed success with Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road,” “Achy” was getting 37 spins a week, according to BDSRadio. Last week, it got fewer than 30.

So it should be no surprise that when we brought our “Lost Factor” calculations to Country hits for the first time that it’s two of Cyrus’s follow-up singles atop the list. “Lost Factor” measures the distance between hit status then and obscurity now by calculating year-end chart points divided by the number of spins a song received over the last seven days. So far, we’ve used it to look at the songs on Billboard’s Hot 100 between 1960 and 1995. 

Over the last 10 months, we have been asked how “Lost Factor” would look in Country. That format, with its “rotating door” at the top and fewer opportunities for older titles to be exposed on the radio, compared to Top 40 oldies, would seem to be a likely generator of lost hits: songs that hit No. 1 for a week, but never really seemed to be No. 1, now proven by time not to be real hits. And yet, when we looked at Lost Factor for Billboard’s Top 75 Country songs of 1993, spurred by the arrival of Country Radio Seminar next week, we found that it didn’t look so different from the Hot 100 hits for that year.

We chose 1993 because it was the epicenter of Country’s early ‘90s boom years. The explosion of second and third Country stations in a market was just wrapping up. Mainstream Top 40 was on the ropes, buffeted by Alternative and R&B/Hip-Hop radio as well. As Country gained stations, many markets lost their only Top 40. We also went for the ‘90s because Classic Country stations are more focused on the ‘90s; in the ‘80s, between Urban Cowboy and Garth Brooks, Country’s audience is smaller and songs are less likely to be known, even from the wellspring year of 1987.

I wondered if there would be enough Classic Country airplay for the measurements to work. Even on current Country reporting stations that play library, there’s little airplay for the early ‘90s. But when I measured airplay at BDSRadio’s U.S. reporters for the previous seven days, I found nine songs getting more than 100 spins. Only eight of the Country top 75 were getting no airplay; by comparison, eight of the year-end top 100 pop songs (meaning all genres that made the Hot 100) had no airplay.

Other metrics are similar, although Billboard’s year-end Country chart was shorter (75 songs, not 100). The range of Country’s top 15 highest “Lost Factors” is between a 65 score for No. 1 and a Lost Factor of nine. In pop, it was a range between 68 spins (No. 1) and eight spins (No. 15). There are 43 Country songs out of 75 above a 1.0 share, our definition of “lost” or not played proportionately to its success. There are 44 pop songs at a 1.0 or higher.

As with the Hot 100 in 1990-94, Billboard’s Country chart was also several years into monitored (rather than self-reported) measurement of airplay, something which seemed to minimize the number of songs proven by time to have been barely legit in the first place. That said, our “Lost” leaders do include several songs by superstar artists that now seem to have become hits largely on career momentum. Then there’s Cyrus, who appears here with singles from both his first and second albums — songs that were both less polarizing and less galvanizing than “Achy.”

Here are the top “lost factor” Country hits of 1993, based on points for their standing for the year divided by the number of plays they receive now. In parenthesis is the “lost factor,” followed by the number of spins the songs received in the U.S. according to BDS in the week prior to my calculations. 

1. Billy Ray Cyrus, “In the Heart of a Woman” (lost factor 65, spins for the week 0)
2. Doug Stone, “Made for Lovin’ You” (31, 0)
3. Vince Gill, “No Future in the Past” (29, 1)
4. Alabama, “Once Upon a Lifetime” (22,1)
5. Larry Stewart, “Alright Already” (17, 1)
6. Billy Ray Cyrus, “She’s Not Cryin’ Anymore” (16, 0)
7. Garth Brooks, “Learning to Live Again” (15, 2)
8. Steve Wariner, “If I Didn’t Love You” (14, 0)
9. Mark Chesnutt, “Ol’ Country” (13, 0)
10. Doug Supernaw, “Reno” (13, 3)
11. Hal Ketchum, “Hearts Are Gonna Roll” (13, 4)
12. Collin Raye, “That Was a River” (12, 0)
13. Reba McEntire, “It’s Your Call” (11, 3)
14. Mark Collie, “Born to Love You” (10, 0)
15. Wynonna, “Only Love” (9, 5)

When we look at “Lost Factor” on the Hot 100 side, we’ve found a number of running themes — teen idols, female pop stars without rock radio support, new songs that were meant to sound older, songs by comeback artists. The common threads are harder to find looking at one year’s Country data, but a few seem to be worth noting:

• Eleven of the top 15 “Lost Factor” songs are ballads — many of them relatively somber/stately ones;
• Only two of the top 15 are by female artists, compared to 21% of the year-end top 75 overall;
• Two of the top 15 are songs with a particularly retro/traditional feel, at least compared to the mix of new and old that typified many of the biggest Country hits of that boom era;
• Two of the top 15 are by ‘80s hitmakers who were starting to struggle as a new group of artists became prominent. I’m counting Alabama and Steve Wariner, but not Reba McEntire, whose currency was at its peak in 1993 and who remained a chart presence for many years;
• Despite the concerns of many a Country PD at the time, there is almost no representation here of the dreaded “ditty,” the frivolous uptempo dance-floor filler that thrived after “Achy Breaky Heart.” Only “Alright Already” can be possibly be described that way. (To be fair, many of 1993’s numerous ditties were songs that didn’t quite make the year-end charts to begin with.)
• As with most years on the Hot 100, there are major artists represented here by their lesser titles, including format leader Garth Brooks, who was just starting to lose his “shock of the new” value in 1993. In the case of McEntire and Vince Gill, those artists are represented by songs that were along the lines of bigger, earlier hits. “When I Call Your Name” is more likely to be the Gill song in a gold library than “No Future in the Past.”

And here are the songs with more than 100 spins that now receive airplay disproportionate to their year-end placement at the time.

1. Vince Gill, “Don’t Let Our Love Start Slippin’ Away”
2. Toby Keith, “Should’ve Been A Cowboy”
3. George Strait, “Heartland”
4. Garth Brooks, “Ain’t Going Down (Til The Sun Comes Up)”
5. Alan Jackson, “Chattahoochee”