I love MADGE and I love the BOSS and I quite like each of their new albums, the weird pop one and the country-inflected rock one, but I'm under no illusion that they're the two most popular albums in America at the moment, as the BILLBOARD 200 chart would have you believe. She's at #1 with the lowest streaming figures of any chart-topping album this year and tens of thousands of physical CD sales that most buyers probably don't remember buying—they were bundled with concert tickets they bought five or six weeks ago and may or may not have arrived yet—and he's at #2 with fewer streams and, to be fair, 62,000 albums that his fans presumably bought on purpose (and well done on that score). Behind them is BILLIE EILISH, who has four of the top 50 songs in SPOTIFY at the moment, which is four more than either Madonna and Bruce Springsteen, and one of 2019's most significant pop albums in WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? Chances are good they'll slide next week and she won't, which is fine, I wish all of them well and I have a feeling I'll be seeing at least two of them when the GRAMMY ALBUM OF THE YEAR nominations are announced later this year. But does anyone outside of Billboard and Nielsen have a clear idea of what exactly is being measured here and what it means? Everyone who cares to know does know the metrics that are being used; that's not what I'm asking. But does everyone know how those metrics relate to real life? To actual consumer behavior? Does anyone truly understand, in tangible terms, what a track equivalent album is? Meanwhile on the HOT 100 songs chart, the formula remains as opaque as ever but the result is crystal clear in a way that the album charts, and only the album charts, used to be. The charts have traded places. LIL NAS X and BILLY RAY CYRUS's "OLD TOWN ROAD"—the country-inflected weird pop one—is #1 for a 12th week, and we've stopped thinking in terms of whether or not it will be the so-called Song of the Summer and moved on to wondering whether it's "en route to becoming the most significant commercial release of the decade." This is a chart result that I'm pretty sure we can all understand, one that matches most of our instincts. You may or may not love "Old Town Road" and you may or may not want to end your decade with that exact taste in your mouth, but you're aware of its domination of airwaves, streets and bar-mitzvahs. Is there a way to make the album chart results equally satisfying, or is that one beyond help at a moment when few people outside of 62,000 Bruce Springsteen fans is record shopping anymore? Having grown up reading the charts like a day-trader reading stock tickers, I'd like to think they still have a place. And though I don't agree with all of his ideas—in the name of simplification, he adds a handful of complications—TRAPITAL's DAN RUNCIE recently laid out as a clear a manifesto as I've seen for rethinking the top 200. He's specifically addressing the controversial topic of bundles, which have become a sore spot for artists including DJ KHALED, NICKI MINAJ and HILLSONG UNITED in the past year, but he goes on to suggest a number of edits to the overall chart formula. Count streams more and CD sales less, stop separating ad-supported streams from paid streams, devalue bundles, etc. Basically, recognize the primacy of streaming in the music economy, and do what you can to make it at least a little harder to game the system. On the bundles issue, if you ask me, I'd say you can level the playing field by either counting every bundled album, period, or, alternatively, counting none of them unless the CD/download is priced separately from whatever it's bundled with, that the price is at least a few bucks, and that the buyer has the option to say no. Either let it be a free-for-all, or make the fan actually buy the music. These are complicated times. The more we can simplify our understanding of them, the better... The power of music to conquer the symptoms of dementia, if only for the length of a song, is an amazing, beautiful and mysterious thing, and this video left me with a chart-topping smile. And a few tears... LIVE NATION buys out SUPERFLY's remaining piece of BONNAROO... Give the producers of WOODSTOCK 50 credit for trying... RIP NATURE GANGANBAIGAL.