Krista Henry, Staff Reporter
Damian 'Junior Gong' Marley at the launch of 'Welcome to Jamrock' in September. - Winston Sill/Freelance Photographer
Smash hit, record sales hitting top heights, everyone's talking about it and everyone's playing it.
A 'good' record pops but how does one know when it has reached the height of popularity?
Persons have different standards on how to measure a hit song or a hit record. Junior Gong's Welcome to Jamrock and Sean Paul's The Trinity both broke record sales, with Jamrock garnishing more critical success than TheTrinity.
Certified gold
According to soundscan, as of August 27 The Trinity has sold 1,174,289 copies. Welcome to Jamrock is a certified gold selling over 500,000 copies. In their debut weeks according to www.eurweb.comTheTrinity stormed the billboard 200 with first week sales of over 107,000 copies. It was the biggest first week sales of any reggae artiste on the billboards. Welcome to Jamrock did not do badly either, holding the record three weeks before that with a debut of 86,000 copies sold.
Welcome to Jamrock features outstanding lyrics, and a keen message. However, The Trinity is an undisputed hit, having sold millions of copies, with songs being heavily rotated abroad and locally. In their own ways there are hits, but can one be deemed more successful than the other?
For many industry insiders, chart success seems to be a deciding factor. Businessman Jerry D says "a hit is a song that would be regarded a success from the masses and from the charts. It has to be validated from the charts."
CEO of Shocking Vibes Clyde McKenzie agrees that hit records are chart toppers. for him, a record that hits the top 10 or 20 charts and garners a certain level of airplay is deemed a hit.
According to Gerry Cagle in an article featured on http://www.radiodiversity.com/landscape.html, record companies define a hit by sales. He says "Sales, of course, have always been the lifeblood of record companies. Sales reports have become so immediately important to the success of a record. However, record sales are tough to calculate."
Best sellers
With Jamaica's well-publicised low-record buying community, record sales may not be the way to decide what is a hit locally. Jerry D acknowledges that record sales are not big in Jamaica, there are few best sellers here. thus in Jamaica he says, critical acclaim should be the deciding factor.
However, Clyde McKenzie disagrees: "Critical acclaim is important, but it might not say it's a hit until you translate it to a great level of popularity. A hit also has to be in the streets like Ghetto Story which is played everywhere, or Longing For, Dude and Buju's Deportee' on a local level. On an international level is Sean Paul's Gimmethe light or Temperature which are big billboard hits."
Audiences are the lifeblood of the entertainment industry, they buy the records and they choose what they like. If they don't listen to a song, then it won't get played. Producer Cordell 'Scatta' Burell agrees, "I deal with the streets, a number 1 song is a hot song, people dictate whether you make it or not."
