American Idol on the charts

[Sounder]

On the night of the Billboard Music Awards show hosted by season one winner Kelly Clarkson.....I thought I'd go over some Idol chart facts:.  Dim the lights and here we go.

There have been 60 singles charted on Billboard's Hot 100 ....... David Cook has charted 11 of those to lead the pack.   Five Idol singles have gone all the way to number one.   "A Moment Like This"  by Kelly Clarkson......"This Is The Night"  by Clay Aiken......"I Believe" by Fantasia....."Inside Your Heaven" by Carrie Underwood...... and "Do I Make You Proud". by Taylor Hicks.

Five Idol singles have achieved Gold certification,. four have gone Platinum 

Philip Phillips.... Season 11 winner has to date the biggest selling singles in terms of units sold......5.4 million making it four times platinum..... it peak position was #6.

Season 12 winner Candice Glover has to date the lowest charting single to actually make the 100..... peaking at number 94....... two years later season 14 winner Nick Fradiani made number 93.

The two most recent Idol winners ... Trent Harmon and Maddie Poppe have not yet charted.

So it seems the show is losing steam in it's hit making power.... but make no mistake..... it has had a major impact on American music.

[Sounder]

The Philip Phillips single you may know very well....."Home"..... even if you never heard of the guy..... you've heard the song...... It was the pitch song for American Family Insurance.... as well as the theme for the USA women's gymnastics team during the 2012 games in London.

[MarkHB]

9 hours ago, Sounder said:

The Philip Phillips single you may know very well....."Home"..... even if you never heard of the guy..... you've heard the song...... It was the pitch song for American Family Insurance.... as well as the theme for the USA women's gymnastics team during the 2012 games in London.

The irony that an Idol single was driven into being a hit by NBC.... (I'm not sure, but I think it was the theme for their women's gymnastics coverage, and not necessarily one adopted by the Fierce Five themselves at the games.)

[Sounder]

Now let's compare that to NBC's "The Voice".

It is currently in it's sixteenth cycle..... here are the stats..... It won't take long.

Only six artist from the voice have charted on Billboard's Hot 100...... a total of nine songs altogether.....the highest was from Cassadee Pope who managed a peak position of #37.   No one else even made the top 40 portion.   Meaning if Casey Kasem were still alive and counting down the hits..... he would've never played a song by a Voice artist.

[Sounder]

They would probably like to brag about the fact that season 16 American Idol winner Maddie Poppe appeared on the Voice just months before auditioning for Idol....... she did not get a chair turn.... meaning instant elimination.    While Maddie's post Idol song "Going Going Gone" .....a song I really like,  failed to crack the 100...... her first full album comes out soon so we'll see how it does.   Keep in mind I'm not including any other billboard chart.

[Sounder]

The week that Carrie Underwood's season four coronation song "Inside Your Heaven" reached number one...... runner up Bo Bice's version peaked at #2.   Again a runner up.   Those were the days when every Idol episode drew 25 to 30 million viewers giving these artists a much bigger exposure than the contestants now..... when the show is averaging 7 to 8 million.   So it isn't that America has run out of singing talent.   Plus since billboard made streaming an element of tabulating the chart.... it's gone nuts.   When an Ed Sheeran or a Drake or a Post Malone puts out a new release..... every single song is made eligible to chart whereas in the days when Lionel Richie was charting regularly.... only a physical single release would be eligible.   That's how Drake was able to smash the long held Beatles record of 14 charting songs at one time in 1964..... by placing 30 songs on the chart at once in 2017.

[MarkHB]

I think, though, that Billboard has to meet the listeners where they are for its charts to have any meaning.  When I was a kid and Lionel was a force, the way to listen to a song on demand was to go to the store and buy the 45.  That transitioned to cassette singles for a little while, particularly as CDs took over for vinyl albums, but once Diamond came out with the Rio MP3 player it was off to the races.

[TheGreenKnight]

I was confused at first, since there are many more multi-platinum, platinum, and gold singles from artists that were on the show over the years, until I realized this seems to be only concerning coronation songs.

[kassandra8286]

Same here!