Playing the Numbers

And a No. 1 album is no guarantee of long-term success, anyway. While Slave to the Grind is still charting in the lower 60s, Motown act Boyz II Men, whose album came out even earlier, has now sold twice as many copies as Skid Row and remains firmly ensconced in the top 10. They've never hit No. 1, but hey, who would you rather be?

Where Billboard's new chart is really making history, though, is in its accurate reporting of things we never knew before. That acts like N.W.A and Ice Cube — on small labels that can't kick in a half-million promotional dollars when the spirit moves them — have a huge and very loyal following who'll drop a dime on them in an instant. That missing — and presumed sleeping — artists like Neil Diamond and Barry Manilow still have a considerable record-buying audience. And most prominently, that a country star like Garth Brooks can have three albums charting at the same time in the Top 40, and stand unexpectedly revealed as the dominant pop success of 1991 — thus confounding the mainstream pop world and especially pop radio, which still has no plans to play him until, maybe, the day he replaces John Lennon in the reunited Beatles.

Tenure at the Top
Some say Billboard's shift to the new SoundScan pop-album charting system means there'll now be oodles of No. 1 albums. And while that may be true to some extent, it's still too early to know for sure.

In 1989, thanks to chart-hogging blockbusters like Paula Abdul's Forever Your Girl and Milli Vanilli's Girl You Know It's True, there were only 13 No. 1 albums. And in 1987, courtesy of the ultrasuccessful Dirty Dancing soundtrack (18 weeks at No. 1), there were only 7. But the SoundScan era, which began late last May, has seen 13 No. 1's in only 8 months.

Still, despite remarkably fierce competition, Garth Brooks' Ropin' the Wind has spent 10 weeks at No. 1; Natalie Cole's Unforgettable held on for 5. Michael Jackson's Dangerous already spent 4 weeks at the top, even before its second single was released. And while the new system has seen some chart toppers fade after a single week at the top — Skid Row and N.W.A, for example — this only happened in the summer, before superstar product, held in reserve for the profitable Christmas season, was released.

The staying power of Brooks and Cole suggests that oodles of No. 1's may only be a nice fantasy. We won't be seeing 52 No. 1 albums this year.