I'll Never Smile Again

[00:01] Jason, you got some for us this week.
[00:14] Ooh, we doing under Googles?
[00:16] That was the play of Super Excited.
[00:19] Told us we had to.
[00:22] He said we signed up for it.
[00:26] In the end, it's going to be better and more true
[00:28] than Google can give you.
[00:30] Oh, yeah, so I got a long list here.
[00:35] And the one that has been bugging me the most
[00:38] is we do a lot of phrase origin type things on here.
[00:41] And I hear this phrase every now and then,
[00:44] and I've never known what it's meant.
[00:47] I've had some idea, but maybe you guys can help me out.
[00:50] And it is the phrase with a bullet.
[00:54] In the context of, say, like, this person or this song
[00:59] was number one on the charts with a bullet, blah, blah, blah.
[01:04] Or this person is the, you know,
[01:07] this team has been the best at this ranks number two
[01:12] in the standings with a bullet, or whatever.
[01:16] Any idea?
[01:18] Are you guys familiar with this terminology or phrasing?
[01:20] I've definitely heard that pretty much
[01:22] in the same usage that you're saying.
[01:26] Right.
[01:27] When I hear that phrase, I think of the-
[01:28] No idea what the bullet is.
[01:31] The phrasing that I hear, specifically,
[01:33] it's about record charts.
[01:35] That's what I hear it most associated with.
[01:38] That's like, when I hear that, that's what I think of,
[01:40] at least I'm sure there's other usages for it,
[01:42] but that's the one I think of.
[01:44] Sure.
[01:46] And I guess, so it's always about like a high ranking,
[01:49] you know, it's like it's top of the charts
[01:50] kind of thing, right?
[01:52] Right.
[01:53] Yeah.
[01:54] The connotation that I have always had in my brain
[01:57] is that it's somebody shooting up the charts.
[02:00] Yeah.
[02:01] Like they've been flying up there, or whatever.
[02:03] And so that, intonating like an actual,
[02:06] like a bullet from a gun, right?
[02:08] That's going super fast.
[02:11] But I've also wondered if maybe it has to do with like,
[02:14] you know, when you make a list in a Word document,
[02:16] you can bullet your list or whatever,
[02:18] like with bullet points.
[02:20] And so I wonder if like it's a,
[02:23] that's the bullet thing?
[02:25] I don't know.
[02:26] Yeah.
[02:27] I guess I'm not really familiar with it.
[02:29] So now I'm wondering if it's not maybe
[02:31] regional or something too,
[02:33] but you would think if it was meant to,
[02:39] you know, to mean like meteoric rise,
[02:42] you would have just said like a bullet.
[02:45] Right.
[02:46] Right.
[02:47] Implying speed of movement, right?
[02:50] So yeah, the with a bullet thing,
[02:51] I would have thought more of a numerical ordering
[02:55] bullet point sort of connotation.
[02:58] And you know, the charts,
[03:00] I guess you do have like top 40 charts.
[03:02] So maybe you bullet the top 10 or something.
[03:07] I don't know how that works still.
[03:10] Yeah.
[03:11] It seems odd that you would like,
[03:12] they're already ranked.
[03:13] Like, why do you need to know them?
[03:16] Unless it's like the bullet is a different form
[03:19] of like an asterisk and the asterisk,
[03:23] you know, indicate something about that,
[03:26] that whatever it is in the rankings,
[03:28] like that they've been on the charts for 10 weeks
[03:32] or something like that.
[03:33] Or maybe the first week.
[03:36] Maybe.
[03:37] Maybe it's an entry point.
[03:39] Yeah, maybe they're the first.
[03:41] Yeah, yeah.
[03:42] Interesting.
[03:42] Yeah, that could be it too.
[03:48] So I guess we have no idea the origins of this.
[03:51] Like, I agree with you, Joey.
[03:53] My thinking of it, or my first introduction to it
[03:57] has been associated with like musical charts
[03:59] or something like that.
[04:00] So maybe there's something with the way that billboard
[04:02] like put out their charts or something like that.
[04:09] When do we think the billboard top 100
[04:12] or whatever like started?
[04:19] I'm not, I'm thinking like,
[04:21] I mean, I guess I would sort of associate that
[04:23] with like fifties or so.
[04:25] Yeah, I'm thinking the onset of like pop music,
[04:28] quote unquote, if you will, or whatever.
[04:30] I would've thought so too, rock music, yeah.
[04:32] Certainly.
[04:33] Post World War II.
[04:34] I mean, in order to have a top 40,
[04:37] you've got to have a lot of music out there, right?
[04:39] And I just, I feel like it was so homogeneous
[04:42] until really even the mid fifties probably
[04:45] before you really had enough music
[04:47] to even warrant such a chart.
[04:49] And you've got to have ubiquitous radio stations.
[04:51] Like you've got to have enough radio stations
[04:53] in like enough cities and towns
[04:57] that there's like at least one station
[04:59] that's playing popular,
[05:02] quote unquote, popular music or whatever.
[05:04] It's not just some people with tiny little,
[05:08] 300 meter reaches on their radio towers.
[05:11] Right, exactly.
[05:12] Or like the national broadcasting company
[05:15] sending you the latest radio teleplay
[05:19] or whatever, like every week.
[05:22] The Annie Oakley show or whatever.
[05:26] Okay, so we're thinking fifties,
[05:28] we're thinking this is America.
[05:31] And I obviously have not heard it anywhere
[05:34] outside of America, but we're thinking it's American.
[05:39] Interesting, okay.
[05:40] Well, I think Americans respond well to bullets, you know?
[05:43] Yeah, any ammunition or weapon-related nomenclature
[05:47] I assume is American.
[05:53] Like other places, like Canadians,
[05:57] they have that stuff,
[05:58] they just don't make a big deal about it, you know?
[06:02] Oh, this is gonna be really straightforward.
[06:06] Okay.
[06:07] From the magazine Cashbox's practice
[06:09] in the 60s and 70s of putting a red bullet sign
[06:12] on the chart position of potential climbers.
[06:15] As said on the page itself,
[06:17] red bullet indicates sharp upward movement.
[06:22] Interesting, okay.
[06:23] I've never heard of Cashbox.
[06:25] Not ever, yeah.
[06:28] Urban dictionary says Billboard Magazine.
[06:32] I'm on idioms.something.thefreedictionary,
[06:37] and it says the bullet,
[06:38] in this phrase refers to an icon placed next to a song
[06:42] that makes rapid progress in the charts.
[06:51] And then by extension, far better than anything
[06:53] or anyone else, having rapidly become the best,
[06:56] most authoritative or most dominant,
[06:59] among others in a certain group.
[07:01] So I guess that, yeah, if there's a,
[07:04] on the sheet, if there's a bullet,
[07:06] a red bullet next to it, the DJ knows,
[07:09] hey, this is the.
[07:10] The old up and comer.
[07:12] Yep, they don't have to know.
[07:15] So this one's with the bullet.
[07:18] Wow, Billboard Magazine?
[07:20] 110 years.
[07:22] I have 127, I've got 1894.
[07:25] What? Wow.
[07:28] Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, this article is from 2005.
[07:31] Wow.
[07:32] Well, Cashbox Magazine, by the way,
[07:37] ran from 1942 to 1996
[07:42] and was revived in 2006 as an internet-only version.
[07:47] It's a music industry trade magazine, Harper.
[07:50] That's why you don't know it
[07:50] because you're not in the music industry.
[07:52] Because I'm not cool enough to be on the inside.
[07:55] Nope.
[07:57] So they published their first music hit parade in 1936.
[08:04] Wow, hmm.
[08:05] What was the first Billboard number one song?
[08:12] Happy birthday.
[08:15] Are you serious?
[08:15] No, no, not at all.
[08:19] Poor Little Fool by Ricky Nelson.
[08:22] Wait, hold on.
[08:24] Oh, that was at the Billboard Hot 100 in 1958
[08:28] is when that started.
[08:29] Gotcha.
[08:32] That's, I feel like the modern iteration of the thing.
[08:35] That's the thing that matters, right?
[08:37] Yeah.
[08:43] I have to subscribe to Billboard
[08:44] and I have to do the article about them.
[08:47] Yeah, no, not Billboard.
[08:49] Self-promote yourself.
[08:50] Yeah, this is what happens
[08:51] when your magazine subscription is 17,000
[08:54] after 127 years.
[08:57] There's a paywall.
[08:58] Oh, man.
[09:00] They're hanging out for dear life.
[09:02] Well, if you want to save a little money,
[09:03] Cashbox magazine's only 20 bucks a year.
[09:06] Ooh, ooh, okay, okay.
[09:09] But it's bi-monthly.
[09:13] It means it's twice a month every two months.
[09:19] It's just every other month.
[09:23] Oh, here we go.
[09:25] July 27th, 1940,
[09:29] Tommy Dorsey with I'll Never Smile Again.
[09:33] Mm-hmm.
[09:35] 12 weeks at number one with a bullet.
[09:38] With a bullet.
[09:42] Jason, I've started digging into the Questlove book
[09:47] that you got me.
[09:49] Oh, nice.
[09:49] Good.
[09:52] I'm going slow
[09:53] because he basically just keeps mentioning all this music
[09:57] and I want to listen to it as he mentions it,
[09:59] but there's just a lot.
[10:00] Oh, cool, yeah.
[10:01] It's good though.
[10:03] A lot of stuff I've not heard before my time
[10:05] or just in genres that I don't listen to as much.
[10:11] That's awesome.
[10:12] But it's cool.
[10:13] It's real cool.