Ella Langley has been the queen of the CC50 rankings for half a year now, and May was just another continuation of her “butterfly season” this spring. The rest of the Top 15 were remarkably unchanged, with the only position change being Wallen slipping ahead of Riley Green into 5th place. In fact, the biggest ranking change in the *entire* rankings was Luke Bryan falling 4 spots. He’s still comfortably in the top 40 and not in danger, but his contribution to May, “Fish, Hunt, Golf, Drink”, likely won’t do him any favors in next month’s voting. Ella Langley, Jason Aldean, and Noah Kahan all released albums in April, which netted them a total of -1.8% interest combined this month. All 3 of them had pretty big run-ups in interest before the release, though, so this is likely an instance of over-inflated expectations rather than true flops. Avery Anna’s March EP, forgive, forget, has received more favor with the CC50 voters, as she netted the second-largest Interest bump in May and her highest ranking ever at #20. Below are the full rankings for May:
Quick Hits
- As we mentioned earlier in this article, Avery Anna is finally picking up some serious traction in the CC50 after her release of forgive, forget. She first appeared in the rankings just over a year ago (wow, time flies!) with an Engagement% of 45% (meaning less than half of CC50 voters had an opinion on her) and an Interest% of 23%. In the year since then, she’s added 15% more in Engagement and 16% more in interest, which is not only an impressive increase, it also indicates that the voters who have learned of her over the past year (the gain in Engagement) have overwhelmingly become interested rather than disinterested in her music (in fact, the number of voters voting Disinterested in her music is actually lower now than it was a year ago, an impressive feat for an artist gaining recognition just as Zach Bryan and Meg Moroney, two of the most polarizing artists in the rankings, both have 30%+ Disinterest (compared to Avery Anna’s 22%). All in all, a very promising outlook for the young Arizonan!
- Speaking of artists with high Disinterest, who are they at the moment, and is it really a measure of unpopularity (as it might seem at first glance), or is it more a measure of how polarizing an artist they are? Conceptually, you can pretty quickly rule out the unpopularity theory, because if they are an unknown artist, people would be voting Unsure rather than Disinterested. If they are truly unpopular, they wouldn’t be in the CC50 at all. To be in the CC50 and have a high Disinterest score, you have to be popular enough to be in the CC50 and well-known enough to have a large chunk of voters who don’t care for your music, which sounds a lot like polarizing artists.
To test this explanation out, below are the top 5 Disinterest vote-getters this month. Sure enough, this looks a lot like a who’s who of polarizing popular artists right now. In fact, 4 out of the 5 artists receiving the most Disinteresteds are in the top half of the CC50 rankings. I don’t really need to explain why a large minority of voters don’t care for Bryan, Moroney, or Aldean; they all make a very specific style of music that doesn’t resonate with some people. Ashley McBryde is here, probably just because she had a rough month in the voting, rather than a unique dislike for her music. I, for one, am a big fan of her Southern rock sound, and while her May album Wild was by no means perfect, standouts like “Hand Me Downs”, “Ten to Midnight”, and “Creosote” make a more than worthwhile listen.
- The ACM awards added some color to an otherwise slower month in the headlines department, with their results falling remarkably close to y’all’s voting over the past year. Cody Johnson (#4 in the CC50) and Ella Langley took home the most impressive hauls, and even Parker McCollum’s self-titled album picked up a surprise win after giving him one of the strongest post-album CC50 voting surges last year. A big part of what we were trying to accomplish was to put a finger on the pulse of fans’ perceptions of artists faster than the awards shows and radio conglomerates can, so it is always gratifying to see confirmation of what we’ve been seeing in the CC50 for months already. Much like with Top last year, the CC50 has been screaming that Ella Langley is the name to follow for quite some time, and the Parker McCollum album gives some credence to the rankings’ ability to assess responses to albums as well as artists.
- Overall listener interest held steady in May, with an Interest percentage of 36.8% (indicating that the average artist on the CC50 has 3.7 in ten audience members interested in their releases), the third straight month at that number. The overall vote count was 251,740, a lower figure than in May.
Biggest Risers and Fallers
The combined Risers and Fallers chart last month looked great streamlined into a single chart, so we’ll keep it that way moving forward (I know formatting decisions are what y’all come here to read about). Looking at said chart, two things jump out. First, these deltas are really, really small. The largest gain (3.75%) and the largest fall (-2.1%) would have been the 5th- and 6th-highest gains and falls, respectively, last month. Part of this is probably the month; there wasn’t a ton that moved the needle between April and May’s voting, but likely there was a very similar voting base between the months as well. Second, there’s a lot of green on here. What little change there was came almost entirely at the top of the chart, with Luke Bryan being the only artist outside the top-25 here.
It is fun to see Jon Pardi’s name here after an extremely consistent, yet unmemorable, 2-year run in the CC50, without me ever having a reason to write about him in this column. “How Did You Know” was released just days before the May voting took place, and apparently, voters were as happy with it as I was. One classic-sounding single does not a comeback make, but it was fun to hear Pardi sounding like his old self, and it brings hope that he can recapture the magic we all loved in California Sunrise (and, to a lesser extent, Heartache Medication).
