Adult Contemporary (Billboard chart)
The
Adult Contemporary chart (formerly known as
Adult Contemporary Singles) lists the most popular songs weekly calculated by airplay and occasionally sales.
Billboard magazine publishes this listing which includes
Adult Contemporary and
pop songs played on "lite-pop" and adult contemporary radio stations and available for sale in stores across the
United States.
Like most other
Billboard charts since
1998, airplay-only songs are allowed to enter the Adult Contemporary chart besides commercially available singles. The first song to reach the AC chart without being available as a retail single was
Stevie Wonder's "Isn't She Lovely" in 1977.
As noted in the above history of the chart, although some people would assume that
The Billboard Hot 100 and the Adult Contemporary (AC) chart are the same thing, they are not. The AC chart lists only pop/contemporary songs, while the Hot 100 includes songs from every genre.
This situation has created some notable chart listing comparisons between the AC chart and the Hot 100 over the years. Pop songs generally tend to chart higher on the AC chart than the Hot 100 chart since on the Hot 100 they are competing with songs from other genres, such as country or hip-hop. One example of this was pop singer
Amy Grant's
1991 single "That's What Love Is For" from her
Heart In Motion album. The single topped the AC chart but reached the #7 position on the Hot 100. In fact, every one of Grant's singles have done better on the AC chart than the pop chart, and some have even charted solely on the AC chart.
There are exceptions to this, however. In
1988 the Beach Boys topped the Hot 100 with their pop single "Kokomo." "Kokomo" did not make it to the top spot on the AC chart, however, and it peaked at #5, even though "Kokomo" was a pop/contemporary song.
Other notable singles by adult-appeal artists which reached #1 Pop while coming close but falling short of the top spot on the AC chart have included "
Wind Beneath My Wings" by
Bette Midler, "Top Of The World" by
The Carpenters, "You Needed Me" by
Anne Murray, "
You Don't Bring Me Flowers" by
Barbra Streisand and
Neil Diamond, and "Don't Wanna Lose You" by
Gloria Estefan.
In other instances, an artist with an established AC track record may release an uptempo song that becomes a big pop hit but is not widely accepted at AC radio. One example is that of
Madonna. Of the 11 #1 Hot 100 hits she scored between 1984 and 2000, only two ("Live To Tell" and "Take A Bow") reached #1 AC as well. Three others ("Crazy For You," "Like A Prayer," and "This Used To Be My Playground") reached the AC top 10 without going to #1, four others made the AC chart but fell short of the top 10, and two ("Justify My Love" and "Music") did not chart AC at all. Two other Madonna singles - "La Isla Bonita" and "Cherish" - have reached #1 AC while falling short of #1 Pop.
Olivia Newton-John was an AC staple for much of the 1970s, charting nine #1 AC hits from 1974 to 1980, but her biggest pop hit, "Physical," stopped at #29 AC while topping the Hot 100 for ten weeks, and some of her other early 1980s pop hits, such as "Heart Attack" and "Twist Of Fate," failed to chart AC.
Billboard has published an adult-music chart since July
1961; it was originally called "Easy Listening" and was simply a listing of the top singles on the Billboard Hot 100 excluding those with rock and roll overtones. The #1 song on the very first Easy Listening chart was "The Boll Weevil Song" by
Brook Benton; the first female artist to top the chart was
Connie Francis with her version of the standard "Together." In the early years of the Easy Listening chart, the top song on the chart was generally always a Top 10 pop hit as well. The methodology for compiling the chart at that time allowed some teenage-appeal artists to have Top 10 Easy Listening hits with their softer or ballad releases (for example,
Shelley Fabares with "Johnny Loves Me" and
Lesley Gore with "I Don't Wanna Be A Loser"), regardless of whether Easy Listening and Middle-of-the-Road radio stations were actually playing those songs. Over the next several years, the chart went by a variety of names, including "Middle-Road Singles" and "Pop-Standard Singles."
In
1965, Billboard revamped the Easy Listening chart to better reflect what middle-of-the-road stations were actually playing, and the composition of the chart changed dramatically. As rock music continued to harden, there was much less crossover between the Hot 100 and Easy Listening chart than there had been in the early half of the 1960s. Several #1 Easy Listening hits of the late 1960s, such as
Andy Russell's "It's Such A Pretty World Today" and
John Gary's "Cold," made the Hot 100 in only minor positions, "Bubbled Under" the Hot 100, or failed to show up on the pop music radar entirely. In 1967, only one single reached #1 on both the Easy Listening and Hot 100 charts - "Somethin' Stupid" by
Frank Sinatra and
Nancy Sinatra. Many of today's AC radio listeners may be surprised to learn that a great number of the 1960s songs played on modern-day AC and oldies radio, such as "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" and "Unchained Melody" by the
Righteous Brothers, "Brown-Eyed Girl" by
Van Morrison, "Respect" by
Aretha Franklin, "Downtown" by
Petula Clark, and "California Dreamin'" by
The Mamas & The Papas, were considered too hard-edged by adult-oriented radio stations when they were originally released and never made the Easy Listening chart (or, in the case of "Unchained Melody," did not chart AC until they were re-released years later). Even the
Beatles and
Supremes had to wait until 1969 for their AC chart debuts (with "Something" and "Someday We'll Be Together," respectively). Songs that
were popular on Easy Listening radio during the 1960s have, for the most part, been relegated to
Music of Your Life and other
pop standards radio formats.
This situation began to change toward the end of the 1960s and into the early and mid-1970s. By then, the audiences that middle-of-the-road stations were trying to attract were those who were more likely to identify with rock and roll than with the music of their parents' generation. They gravitated toward so-called "chicken rock" stations, which played a mix of softer Top 40 hits and rock oldies. In addition, contemporary artists who recorded adult-appeal music, such as
The Carpenters,
Bread,
The Fifth Dimension,
Barry Manilow,
Anne Murray,
Olivia Newton-John,
Helen Reddy,
Barbra Streisand and
John Denver began to be played more often on Top 40 radio. Much of the music recorded by singer-songwriters such as
Carole King,
Carly Simon,
James Taylor and
Janis Ian got as much, if not more, airplay on Easy Listening stations as Top 40 stations. Easy Listening radio by then had also begun to open its airwaves to artists who had begun in the rock and roll or R&B fields, such as
Elvis Presley,
Neil Diamond,
Diana Ross, and
The Vogues, along with individual singles released by the former Beatles (such as
John Lennon's "Imagine" and
George Harrison's "
My Sweet Lord"). Once again, there was a good amount of crossover between the Easy Listening and Hot 100 charts, and many more songs reached #1 on both charts.
Billboard changed the name of the Easy Listening chart to the younger-sounding "Adult Contemporary" in
1979, by which time, like most other music formats, the format had transitoned from the AM dial to the FM dial. Since then, the amount of crossover between the AC chart and the Hot 100 has varied based on how much the passing pop music trends of the times appealed to adult listeners. Not many
disco or
new wave songs were particularly successful on the AC chart during the late 1970s and early 1980s, and much of the hip-hop and harder rock music now featured on
CHR formats would be unacceptable on AC. But in the 1980s and 1990s and into the new millennium, artists like
Elton John,
Cher,
Hall & Oates,
Mariah Carey,
Rod Stewart,
Whitney Houston,
Eric Clapton, the
Backstreet Boys,
Celine Dion, and
Shania Twain appealed to both CHR and AC listeners. More recently, AC radio has come to embrace more artists and songs from the softer side of pop rock and alternative rock (i.e.
Sheryl Crow,
Kelly Clarkson,
Daniel Powter,
Natasha Bedingfield,
Lifehouse and
James Blunt).
Crossover from the country charts has also been common on the AC chart since the chart began. Among the country stars who had a number of singles cross over to the AC chart (and the pop chart as well) from the 1960s through the 1980s included
Brenda Lee,
Patsy Cline,
Eddy Arnold,
Roger Miller,
Ronnie Milsap,
Dolly Parton,
Eddie Rabbitt,
Crystal Gayle,
Willie Nelson, and
Juice Newton. The huge growth of country music as a radio format in the 1990s brought a number of new country crossovers onto the AC airwaves, including
LeAnn Rimes,
Shania Twain,
Faith Hill,
Lonestar,
Lee Ann Womack (whose "I Hope You Dance" reached #1 AC as well as Country), and
Garth Brooks. More recently, a new wave of country performers have been crossing over to AC, including
Tim McGraw,
Keith Urban, the
Dixie Chicks (who topped the AC chart with their cover of
Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide"),
Martina McBride, and
Rascal Flatts.
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Adult Contemporary radio panel
