Music Charts

100 & Single: Three Rules To Define The Term "One-Hit Wonder" In 2012

You could hear the sigh of relief among pop fans a couple of weeks ago, when Carly Rae Jepsen's single with Owl City, "Good Time," broke into the Top 10 on Billboard's Hot 100. In his weekly chart roundup, veteran columnist Paul Grein remarked, "'Good Time' is an appropriately positive title for a ... More >>

Crossing Over: Michael Jackson, Ne-Yo, and the Sound of Pop in 2012

100 & Single: fun., Gotye, Carly Rae Jepsen, And The Era Of The Snowball Smash

If you're a pop fan, I'm going to guess you like at least one of the last three No. 1 songs in America. In many ways, 2012 has been an entertaining year for discriminating chart-watchers, as a slew of left-field singles have made strides on Billboard's Hot 100. I've met people who love fun.'s "We A ... More >>

Radio Hits One: Kelly Clarkson, Lionel Richie And Countrified Pop Tunes

After Kelly Clarkson went to No. 1 on Billboard's Country Songs chart last year with the Jason Aldean duet "Don't You Wanna Stay," I wondered hopefully if the Texas-born pop star would finally go country with her next album. So I was a little disappointed a few months later, when she debuted the bla ... More >>

100 & Single: The R&B/Hip-Hop Factor In The Music Business's Endless Slump

Here are a few recent data points from chart bible Billboard and data provider Nielsen Soundscan as we move into the second half of 2012: • In its midyear music-industry report card, Soundscan reports a return to the dismal album sales climate; year-to-date disc sales are off 3.2% from the sam ... More >>

Radio Hits One: Will Grouplove And Walk The Moon Follow fun. And Gotye On The Crossover Path?

Both fun.'s "We Are Young" and Gotye's "Somebody That I Used To Know." topped the Hot 100 and the Alternative Songs chart, and did so in quick succession. The success of both those songs after a number of years when songs from the Alternative Songs chart seemed to be almost completely absent from po ... More >>

100 & Single: "Call Me Maybe," Justin Bieber, And Teenpop Idols' Ongoing Love-Hate Relationship With Radio

After three weeks of patiently waiting at No. 2 on Billboard's Hot 100, Carly Rae Jepsen this week became the first solo female Canadian since Céline Dion to top America's premier song chart. Right on schedule for the start of summer, the ubiquitous "Call Me Maybe" finally climbs into the penthouse ... More >>

Radio Hits One: Bruce Springsteen And Mick Jagger Stop Making Pop Hits, Start Inspiring Them

It's been a busy year for Bruce Springsteen. In March, he released Wrecking Ball, his seventeenth studio album and tenth release to top the Billboard 200, and after packing in arenas across America throughout the spring, he took the E Street Band to Europe. His name is also in a top-40 entry on the ... More >>

100 & Single: Answering Questions On Adam Lambert's Historic Chart-Topping Album

I've never been happier to be wrong about something. Two weeks ago, the last line of my column read: "Probably won't happen. But wouldn't it be fun if it did?" The event I didn't think could happen was Adam Lambert scoring a No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 album chart with his second disc, Trespas ... More >>

100 & Single: Buy An Adam Lambert Album, Strike A Tiny Blow For Gay Rights

About a year ago, the movie Bridesmaids opened in the U.S. and was the subject of a rather unusual awareness campaign. Female movie fans, largely independently of the film's producers, compelled women to go see the film in its opening weekend and defy common Hollywood wisdom that non-rom-com movies ... More >>

Carly Rae Jepsen: Crush Patrol

The singer infatuates the charts

Radio Hits One: Dan Wilson, Linda Perry, And Other Pop Footnotes Turned Hitmakers

It's a familiar scene to anyone who's seen VH1 programs like Behind The Music or Where Are They Now?, or the channel's endless lists of 'one-hit wonders' of the '80s and '90s: a musician whose brief fling with stardom is well behind them sits at the mixing desk of a studio, while the voiceover detai ... More >>

100 & Single: Gotye And fun. Help Alternative Rock Go Pop Once Again

Consider this six-pack of rock acts: Siouxsie and the Banshees, Big Audio Dynamite, the Psychedelic Furs, U2, R.E.M. and Julian Cope. My dream Rock & Roll Hall of Fame? Not quite—it's a list of the first six artists to go to No. 1 on the chart Billboard launched in the fall of 1988, then call ... More >>

100 & Single: Madonna's Chart Transformation Into A Classic-Rock Act

Whatever you thought of her performance at this year's Super Bowl, Madonna's halftime appearance had the desired effect: It drummed up awareness for her first album in four years, the longest recording gap of her career. When the Billboard 200 album chart is tallied in the middle of this week, Madg ... More >>

100 & Single: fun., Gotye, M83, EDM, And The Beginning Of The Hot 100's Spotify Years

How do you know when you're at the dawn of a new pop era? It's not like someone sends a memo. Sure, occasionally there's a well-timed cultural event that offers a hint—the disastrous Altamont festival in December 1969, which signaled that the flower-power dream was over, or Comiskey Park's Di ... More >>

Radio Hits One: "Baby Got Back" And 20 Years Of Ass-Themed Hits

20 years ago, the Seattle-based rapper Sir Mix-a-Lot was doing pretty well as a mid-level star of the burgeoning west coast hip-hop scene, coming off of two successful albums and a series of rap radio staples like "Posse On Broadway" and "My Hoopty." In February 1992 he'd just released his third alb ... More >>

100 & Single: Of Monkees, Michael, and "Maria"—The History Of The Chart-Dominating, Lifestyle-Accessory Album

Cassandra (Tia Carrere): You've heard it? Wayne (Mike Myers): Exqueeze me? Have I seen this one before? Frampton Comes Alive?! Everybody in the world has Frampton Comes Alive. If you lived in the suburbs you were issued it. It came in the mail with samples of Tide. —Wayne's World 2 (1993) Fo ... More >>

Radio Hits One: Drake, Lil Wayne, Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry, And The Era Of The Hit Bonus Track

Superstar pals and Young Money labelmates Lil Wayne and Drake released two of the biggest albums of 2011—Tha Carter IV and Take Care—and both are still spinning off hits well into 2012. But a look at the singles charts reveals something odd: the biggest current hits off both albums aren' ... More >>

Radio Hits One: fun.'s "We Are Young" Brings Indie Pop To The Super Bowl And The Hot 100

Last week Billboard published the Hot 100 chart covering the post-Super Bowl week, and unsurprisingly the most notable leap on the chart was made by a song featured on the telecast. The surprise was that it wasn't "Give Me All Your Luvin'," Madonna's new single, performed during her halftime show pe ... More >>

Whitney Houston, R.I.P.

Whitney Houston, the big-voiced belter who dominated radio in the 1980s and '90s and whose cover of Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You" spent 14 weeks at the top of the Hot 100, passed away tonight at the Beverly Hilton, where Clive Davis's annual pre-Grammy party was about to take place. (Her c ... More >>

Radio Hits One: Flo Rida's Accidental Posthumous Tribute To Etta James

The late Etta James remained an active recording artist right up to the end, releasing her final album, The Dreamer, just two months before her death on January 20. But she hadn't been on a Billboard singles chart since the '70s, when a cover of Erma Franklin's "Piece of My Heart" from her 1978 come ... More >>

100 & Single: Adele's Focus-Grouped Chart-Topper And The Demise Of The "Deep Cut"

Remember the album cut—the track deep on a disc that fans knew best, that only cool radio stations would play? Like so many cherished things from before the iTunes era, it's essentially extinct. My evidence for this bold and seemingly facile statement isn't the steady, well-chronicled disappe ... More >>

Radio Hits One: Foster The People, Cage The Elephant Lead The Charge Of New "The" Bands

Back around 2001, a Transatlantic cabal of music critics led a media hype machine declaring that rock was "back." To further this thesis, it grouped together a disparate set of bands offering variations on the stripped-down "garage rock" template who were often cheekily referred to as the "The" Band ... More >>

100 & Single: LMFAO's Pair Of Chart-Toppers Suggest Stardom, Guarantee Nothing

​The national star-making machinery only begins to take you seriously when you command the field more than once. Just like, say, GOP presidential candidates, pop acts can't chart one strong number and assume dominance is permanently theirs. They've got to come back on top, week after week, sur ... More >>

Radio Hits One: Hot 100 Peaks Only Tell Half The Story For Cee Lo, Britney Spears, And Other Year-End Winners

One of the most frustrating things about discussing the Billboard singles charts is how a song's peak position—the highest spot it occupied on a chart during its run—is almost universally regarded as the permanent measurement of its success or popularity. Any song that reaches No. 1 is e ... More >>

100 & Single: Can Katy Perry Turn The States' Post-Christmas No. 1 Race Into Something UKrazy?

​Thanks to her husband, Katy Perry considers herself as an honorary Brit. But as the most frequent current inhabitant of the Billboard charts, she must wish we were all anglophiles. If only America had a Christmas No. 1 competition as rabid and media-fueled as Old Blighty's! Katy would have t ... More >>

Lady Gaga, Born Superstar

Rewriting the pop record at Jingle Ball

100 & Single: A Dozen Contenders For Billboard's Year-End Top 10, And Their Fight Against The "Last Christmas Effect"

​Later this week, Billboard is expected to announce its tallies for the biggest hits of 2011. And what a year for music it's been. Remember all those big hits: "Like a G6," "We R Who We R," "Raise Your Glass," "Fuck You!" and "What's My Name?" What's that—you say the songs I just rattle ... More >>

Radio Hits One: Cee Lo Green's First Urban Radio Hit, 16 Years In The Making

​One of pop music's biggest Cinderella stories in recent memory has been that of the man born Thomas DeCarlo Callaway, better known to the public as Cee Lo Green, or simply Cee Lo. After debuting as a member of the pioneering Atlanta rap group Goodie Mob in the mid-'90s, the MC/singer spent a ... More >>

100 & Single: Rihanna's Post-Millennial Strategy For Setting Chart Records

​Pop-chart record-keeping can be as contentious as baseball's, and we've got quite the steroids-style asterisk forming atop Billboard's Hot 100. On the most recent chart, the most pervasive radio star of the last half-decade brushed past a couple of legends into the hall of fame. And like Barr ... More >>

100 & Single: You Can Keep Your EGOT; Adele's Going For A 2011 PB&G

​The lady sitting atop both of Billboard's major lists this week has made enough news in 2011 that I'm tempted to rename this column "This Week in Adele." The British thrush is certainly making enough sad news these days, canceling her tour and preparing to undergo much-needed throat surgery. ... More >>

100 & Single: The Erratic Chart Fortunes Of TV-Crowned Idols, From Kelly To Scotty

​Scotty McCreery—winner of the 10th edition of American Idol, and owner of the new No. 1 title on Billboard's album chart, Clear as Day—sets a handful of chart records this week that certainly sound impressive. As Billboard reports, McCreery is the first country act to debut at No ... More >>

Radio Hits One: The Always Exciting, Sometimes Difficult Climb Back To The Top Of The Charts

Following up a hit song, especially a big chart-topping hit, can be one of the best moments in a pop act's career. But it's also one of the most difficult; you could be Katy Perry, scoring five No. 1s in a row, or you could be Daniel Powter, who missed the Hot 100 entirely with the follow-up to "Bad ... More >>

100 & Single: The Increase In Hot 100 Rebounders, And The iTunes-Radio Tug Of War

​The first week I remember ever hearing American Top 40 with Casey Kasem on the radio, back in the summer of 1981, the No. 1 spot was a real cliffhanger. As Kasem explained, the week before, Kim Carnes's synth-pop smash "Bette Davis Eyes" had ceded the top spot after about a month, to a song ... More >>

Radio Hits One: Adele Brings The Ballad Back To No. 1

​Adele's 21 has ruled the American charts for most of 2011, and it's done so almost entirely on the back of one song: the lead single "Rolling In The Deep." While the British singer was topping charts in her homeland and several other countries with the follow-up single, the ballad "Someone LI ... More >>

100 & Single: Considering The Album-Chart Class Of 9/11, 10 Years Later

​A king of hip-hop, retaking the penthouse of the album chart with his latest blockbuster. A middle-of-the-road rock band, reviving a turn-of-the-'90s "alternative" sound that's now squarely mainstream. A sexagenarian legend who debuted in the '60s and who still captures Boomers' hearts and ... More >>

Radio Hits One: Raising The Bar For "YouTube Platinum"

Justin Bieber and Ludacris: Congratulations. A lot of people watched your video.​On August 28, MTV will throw the 2011 installment of its Video Music Awards, honoring achievements in the art form that used to make up the majority of its programming. While it's all too tempting to note the iron ... More >>

100 & Single: Is It Okay For Katy Perry To Bum-Rush Her Way Into The History Books?

​Chart fandom makes strange bedfellows. Six months ago, if you'd asked me what act I'd root for in a head-to-head chart battle between pop princess Katy Perry and electrodance goofballs LMFAO, I'd probably have picked Perry, whose song catalog includes at least one or two gems. Her current hit ... More >>

Radio Hits One: Reality TV Propels Aging Stars Back Into The Top 40

​ When I heard that Jennifer Lopez was leveraging her new position as an American Idol judge to launch her new single, premiering the video for "On The Floor" on one episode and performing the song on another, I rolled my eyes at what I thought was her hubris. It'd been less than two years sin ... More >>

100 & Single: The Dawning Of The MTV Era And How It Rocket-Fueled The Hot 100

​What was the first rock and roll song? Ask music historians and you'll get a range of '40s and early '50 candidates, from "Good Rockin' Tonight" to "Rocket 88." Ah, but when did the Rock Era begin? That's easier. Everybody knows that Bill Haley and His Comets' rendition of "Rock Around the C ... More >>

100 & Single: How Digital Changed The Charts, From Gwen To GoonRock

Spotify's top tracks (left) and albums on Friday, July 15.​The headline-grabbing music story of the week isn't on the Billboard charts—it's the U.S. debut of Spotify. With the streaming-music service less than 48 hours old here, it's a bit too soon to analyze what songs are getting the m ... More >>

Radio Hits One: Adele Achieves the Crossover Hat Trick

​It wasn't all that surprising when Billboard crowned Adele's 21 as the top-selling album of the first six months of the year—the next-highest seller, Lady Gaga's Born This Way, is still trailing it by nearly a million copies. The British diva missed out on having the biggest-selling dig ... More >>

100 & Single: Pitbull Turns The Hot 100 Back Into A Boys' Club (For Now)

​If, like me, you've been putting together your annual summer playlist to pump at block parties and barbecues, you may have found yourself with a historically odd problem: a relative dearth of hits this year by dudes. After you've rounded up buzzy tracks by the Queens of Pop—from Adele t ... More >>

Radio Hits One: The Foo Fighters Foster The Alternative Generation Gap

​ The Foo Fighters' seventh album Wasting Light became the band's first No. 1 on the Billboard 200 upon its release in April, following a mountain of pre-release hype that included some of the best reviews of the band's career, a documentary about the making of the album, and the inevitable pu ... More >>

100 & Single: Late Bloomer Nicki Minaj Scores Summer Smash Off Aging Album

​Imagine if People named an actor "Sexiest [Gender] Alive" months before he or she had released a hit movie or TV show. It's not unthinkable, certainly—think back to the '90s and the Julia Ormonds and Skeet Ulrichs who scored Next Big Thing magazine covers before face-planting in a flop ... More >>

100 & Single: Lady Gaga Gets Ready To Join The Million-Weeker Club

​The phrase "the calm before the storm" appears in virtually every chart-related story this week. That's because the latest edition of the Billboard 200, which covers sales from the week ending May 22, is topped by Adele's 21. That album is No. 1 for the ninth and (presumably) final week befor ... More >>

Will An Army Of Beyoncés Save "Run The World (Girls)" From Chart Oblivion?

​Last night's Billboard Music Awards handed out popularity-contest trophies to the likes of Eminem, Justin Bieber, and Katy Perry, all of whom were rewarded for the copious amounts of radio play and sales they racked up in recent months. But the evening's real winner was probably Beyoncé, who ... More >>

Radio Hits One: Shinedown's Marathon Of Rock-Radio Domination

​ One of Billboard's biggest recent chart records was set last week, when Katy Perry marked 52 consecutive weeks in the top 10 of the Hot 100. She became the first artist to stay there for the entire year thanks to four singles from her sophomore album Teenage Dream, all of which peaked at No. ... More >>

100 & Single: How Adele, Not the Beatles, Is The Music Biz's 2011 Redeemer

​ The music business spikes the football over its gradually improving sales the same week a certain U.K. chanteuse completes her conquering of the U.S. pop charts. Coincidence? Maybe not. The omnipresent Adele takes control of Billboard's Hot 100 this week; "Rolling in the Deep" finally evict ... More >>

Radio Hits One: The Disappearing Urban Crossover Hit Says "Look At Me Now"

​Chris Brown's "Look At Me Now" has topped Billboard's R&B/Hip-hop Songs chart for seven weeks in a row, and it recently peaked at No. 6 on the Hot 100. In terms of Brown's career, it's notable for being the singer's first top 10 hit in the two years since that whole violent incident with then ... More >>