Volatility is high: many small spikes instead of one studio-era wave.
Influencer babies add gossip without adding a statistical office.
Cycles
- Franchise coinage boom — Then a quiet decade.
- Athlete after a tournament — Short attention, local files.
- Royal baby bump — A dated, checkable event.
- Scandal souring — Association reversal.
- Retro star revival — A 1950s actor becomes a 2020s “classic” — still fashion.
Signals
- Aligned release year + file jump — The real signal.
- Lookalike cluster without a star — Lieberson wins.
- Search interest vs registrations — Google is not a birth file.
- KOSTAT vs export fame gap — Scale mismatch signal.
Outlook
- Smaller spikes, more of them — Harder headlines, same method.
- Persistent over-credit — Stars are easy to write about.
- No live baby leaderboard here — Still.
More celebrity, more need for Lieberson, more need for a year stamp.