Talk:All About That Bass

58 countries

i am concerned about the accuracy of the statement that this song "reached number one in 58 countries". to be clear, i think the statement is strongly sourced, so i have no interest in bringing this matter up with wp:rs/p. (i even found a reuters article that mentions the number.) however, i am wondering if the sources are either somehow mistaken or have used questionable methodology to arrive at that count.

if the song really did top the charts in 58 countries, i would have assumed that there would have been earlier reports of the song being number one in fewer countries as the song's popularity spread across the globe. so i tried searching for these reports, and could not find any that mentioned the song being number one in more than 40 countries but fewer than 58 countries. most of the sources i did find mentioned a number of countries lower than 30. this seems a lot more believable, since the charts section of this article only lists 19 countries in which the song topped the weekly charts.

after i looked through a number of sources, i began to wonder if it was possible that someone, at some point, made up a number that sounded good without understanding what was within the realm of plausibility, and this number simply got parroted around. for comparison, according to this source, the international federation of the phonographic industry considers pharrell williams's "happy" to be the top digital single worldwide that year, and that article only claims that "happy" hit number one in twentysomething countries. even the article for psy's "gangnam style", which likely crosses international boundaries more easily as it appears to rely less on its lyrics for its appeal, only states that the song had hit the top of the charts in "more than 30 countries", so it is really difficult for me to believe that "all about that bass" has topped the charts in nearly twice as many countries.

i ended up doing a little more digging, and found this press release that appears to predate any relevant reliable source i could find that mentions 58 countries, so it is possible that this press release is the original source from which these reliable sources ultimately obtained the figure 58. this release states that the song "has topped the iTunes chart in 58 countries", which at least explains the origin of the number. however, this statement is alarming because the statistic is restricted to the data obtained by one retailer, and does not necessarily reflect any national charts. in fact, itunes charts are specifically enumerated in the list of deprecated charts at wp:badcharts, which states that "[c]harts pertaining to only one specific retailer should not be used". as the statement in this wikipedia article does not qualify the figure in any way (e.g., by stating "reached number one in the iTunes charts of 58 countries"), i think the statement heavily implies that the figure is for data reported by national charts, and that if this statement is true only for itunes charts, i believe it is currently very misleading.

would it be more prudent to either use a more believable number that can be reliably sourced, or qualify the statement to make it clear it only refers to itunes charts? the number of countries that was last used in this article before it was replaced by 58 is 19, which is the same as the aforementioned number of countries listed in the charts section, so that sounds like a reasonable and reliable option.

please note that i have previously brought up this issue on the talk page of fac nominator MaranoFan (here and here). if i am understanding MaranoFan correctly, MaranoFan has expressed here the opinion that, even if the 58 charts referenced are not national charts, there is no need to qualify such a statement "since we aren't claiming there were '58 national record charts', just '58 charts'". as a result, this may just be an issue of whether the statement needs to be qualified. personally, i think that, if even a press release, a non-independent source, qualified its statement about the charts of 58 countries, i think we should consider doing the same if we are going to use the same number.

as this assertion has also been repeated in the articles for title (ep), "lips are movin", and "dear future husband", i also plan to post a brief notice on the talk pages of each of these articles.

courtesy pinging fac nominator MaranoFan. dying (talk) 13:18, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

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