#1 With a Bullet

Depending how you count, either Elvis Presley (below) or the Beatles had the most #1 hits

Earlier this summer, hip-hop artist Lil Nas X broke another record, when his country-rap hybrid “Old Town Road” netted eighteen weeks as number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It couldn’t happen to a better guy, or a better song: though it isn’t something I’d personally seek out, it’s a genuinely good track, with fairly complex hooks and lyrics you could read like literature. Which is saying something in today’s aggressively bland Hot 100.

“Old Town Road” beats the previous record-holders for most weeks at number one, a tie for sixteen weeks between 2017’s “Despacito,” by Luis Fonzi and Daddy Yankee, and 1995’s “One Sweet Day,” by Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men. “Despacito” is, again, a pretty good song, which I don’t mind when it plays on a shared radio. “One Sweet Day,” however, is so bland and forgettable, I had to Google it to write this essay.

That represents how meaningless the pop charts have become for understanding our culture. More songs stay at number one longer. At this writing, 38 songs have stayed at number one for ten or more weeks, a number likely to change. Of those 38, 24 have been since January 1, 2000, which we can roughly designate the beginning of the download era. If we expand our horizon to January 1, 1990, the number jumps to 36.

This happened, paradoxically (not really), as more artists have more opportunities for wider audience reach. Inexpensive on-demand CD manufacturing in the 1990s, and almost-free digital distribution in the 2000s, have turned more struggling garage artists into professional recording artists than ever before. But during that same time, radio charts have become less likely to roll over. It’s almost like the major labels and the radio industry have a handshake deal to protect major-label prerogative. Almost.

As more artists and studios become capable of producing more music at less cost, the peak of commercial musical accomplishment has incongruously become less diverse. Before 1990, only two songs perched at #1 for ten weeks: Debby Boone’s “You Light Up My Life,” in 1977, and Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical,” in 1981. Let’s be honest, these aren’t good songs. Neither are most others on this list. The longest stints at #1 belong to the blandest songs.

Whenever I talk about music, I inevitably come back to Charles Duhigg. Late in his book, Duhigg talks about how the music industry manipulates listeners’ fondness for tracks which resemble music they already know to create new hits. Read that again: the biggest hits are those which resemble something we already like. We embrace songs which sound familiar, not those which take artistic risks or break new ground. And the business feeds us that repeatedly.

Despite my comments about “Despacito” and “Old Town Road,” the songs which remained atop the Billboard charts longest have preponderantly been the blandest songs ever recorded. Los Del Rio’s “Macarena,” Mariah Carey’s “We Belong Together,” and The Chainsmokers’ “Closer” are songs so pugnaciously banal, one wonders whether they aren’t self-referential performance art. You may broadly remember these songs, especially if they were hits while you were in high school, but you probably don’t like them.

Even the genuine hitmakers on this list aren’t represented by their best songs. Elton John’s “Candle In the Wind 1997,” Santana’s “Smooth,” and Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” are crinkum-crankum radio fare churned out late in the artists’ career. Though sometimes played on radio for nostalgia, these songs, the biggest hits of their artists’ respective discographies, aren’t very good, especially played against “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” “Evil Ways,” or “How Will I Know.”

It bears repeating, the artists we consider “classic” didn’t have this kind of chart authority. The Beatles’ longest stay at #1 was nine weeks, for “Hey Jude.” The Rolling Stones’ “Honkey Tonk Women” lasted four weeks at #1; the Supremes’ “Love Child,” only two weeks. These are the biggest hits of pop’s greatest artists. Ernie K-Doe, Paper Lace, and Milli Vanilli all have #1 hits. Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and Creedence Clearwater Revival do not.

At a time when American public life is known for strife, controversy, and infighting, “Old Town Road,” though good, is also altogether uncontroversial, a commercial bid for valuable airtime that holds audiences by not challenging them. Which is a pretty good description of the most widely heard Top-40 hits altogether. We might argue that having America’s #1 hit mattered back when Elvis and the Beatles dominated the charts. But those days, sadly, are long gone.