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Race, gender, and the Billboard Top 40 charts between 1997 and 2007

2017; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 41; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03007766.2017.1377588

1740-1712

Marc Lafrance, Casey Scheibling, Lori Burns, Jean Durr,

Race, History, and American Society

An earlier study published in Popular Music and Society examined the gender-related trends on the Billboard Hot 100 music charts between 1997 and 2007 (Lafrance, Worcester, and Burns). Taking frequency distributions as indicators of gender equality, the authors found that male hits on both the sales and the airplay charts outnumbered female hits by a wide margin. More specifically, their findings demonstrated that male artists had more extreme highs and less extreme lows than female artists; men's worst showings of the decade were often just a few hits away from women's best showings, and most gender-related trends were not consistent across the sales and airplay charts. Using the same data sets, this paper extends the earlier study by combining the variable of race with the variable of gender. In doing so, it describes the race-related trends on the charts in question while considering them within the context of the gender-related trends reported by Lafrance, Worcester, and Burns. Our key findings indicate that black artists chart more often than white artists; black male artists have more chart success than both black and white female artists; most race-related trends are consistent across the sales and airplay charts, and musical genre must be taken into account in order to understand fully the relationship between race and chart success. In addition to providing a critical assessment of our findings, the paper presents a reflection on two unexpected methodological issues encountered over the course of our research: first, the conceptual complexities of coding for race, and, second, the problems associated with taking frequency distributions as indicators of equality.