WASHINGTON— A Senate subcommittee convened yesterday to investigate the suspicious velocity behind the latest Ariana Grande Pop Airplay record. Investigators suspect a coordinated campaign drove the single "Hate That I Made You Love Me" to the top of the charts. This milestone marks her 11th number-one single. It also makes her recent release, Eternal Sunshine, her seventh consecutive album to yield a chart-leader. Legal experts believe the achievement violates several laws of acoustic physics.
PROSECUTOR RICHARD VANE: Please state your name and occupation for the record.
WITNESS DR. THADDEUS MBEKI-RANSOME: I am Dr. Thaddeus Mbeki-Ransome. I serve as Chair of Applied Hype Studies at the Institute for Trending Phenomena.
Q: Dr. Mbeki-Ransome, did your firm analyze the data for this Ariana Grande Pop Airplay record?
A: Yes. We tracked the digital footprint of "Hate That I Made You Love Me" across 4,000 terrestrial radio stations.
Q: And what did you find?
A: The numbers are impossible. No human ear can consume this much whistle-tone without suffering permanent inner ear damage. Yet, the data shows citizens listening to the track during dental surgeries, military tribunals, and sleep.
Q: Are you suggesting the radio stations played the track to empty rooms?
A: Worse. We discovered that the Republic Records promotional team bypassed human listeners entirely. They beamed the single directly into smart appliances.
Q: Explain how that affects the Ariana Grande Pop Airplay record.
A: Samsung refrigerators accounted for forty percent of the streaming data in Ohio. Smart blenders in Miami played the song on a loop to simulate high rotation. The appliances loved it.
Q: Is the entire music industry complicit in this automated chart inflation?
A: Every major label uses it. We found that ninety percent of modern pop hits are just signals designed to keep smart thermostats from freezing. The human audience is purely ceremonial at this point.
