Hit Songs Are Lasting Longer on the Charts – But Why?

Yahoo

2 days ago

Teddy Swims makes history on this week's Hot 100: 'Lose Control,' the singer-songwriter's soulful pop-rock anthem, spends its 92nd week on the chart, breaking the record that it shared with Glass Animals' 'Heat Waves' as of last week and setting the new longevity mark for the nearly 67-year-old song chart.
After debuting on the Hot 100 back in August 2023, 'Lose Control' only topped the chart for 1 week, back in March 2024. Yet the song remains in the top 20 more than a year later (coming in at No. 11 on the latest chart), after spending a record-setting 63 weeks in the top 10.
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'The burn has been minimal,' Alex Tear, Vice President of music programming at SiriusXM + Pandora, tells Billboard of the breakthrough hit's maintained momentum. 'The audience reaction is something that we completely adhere to — subscribers tell us what they want to hear, and how often they want to hear it… And ['Lose Control'] is still undeniable, pure mass appeal.'
Swims' smash hasn't been alone in spending months upon months in the Hot 100's upper tier. Before Morgan Wallen's new album I'm the Problem cleared out a sizable chunk of the chart this week with its 29 new debuts, the top half of the Hot 100 was littered with hits that had spent months — and in some cases, over a year — on the tally.
Some of them, like 'A Bar Song (Tipsy)' by Shaboozey, 'Die With a Smile' by Lady Gaga & Bruno Mars and 'I Had Some Help' by Post Malone and Wallen, have stuck around after logging multiple weeks at No. 1; others, like Benson Boone's 'Beautiful Things,' Gigi Perez's 'Sailor Song' and Sabrina Carpenter's 'Espresso,' never reached the top spot, but have lingered near it since mid-2024. Kendrick Lamar and SZA's 'Luther' may have just spent 13 straight weeks atop the Hot 100 before being dethroned by Wallen and Tate McRae's 'What I Want' this week, but even that smash collaboration spent 12 weeks on the chart before reaching its peak in late February.
The Hot 100 always includes a wide swath of ubiquitous hits — but rarely have so many of those hits endured at once. On the Hot 100 dated May 24, zero songs in the top 10 had spent a single-digit number of weeks on the chart. The average number of weeks spent on the chart by the songs in the top 20 was 30.35 weeks; five years ago (on the Hot 100 dated May 30, 2020), that average was 18.75 weeks. On the recent Hot 100, a total of nine songs in the top 20 had spent 30 weeks or more on the chart; 10 years ago (on the Hot 100 dated May 30, 2015), that total was one song in the top 20.
What's causing this period of smashes that last forever on the chart? Part of the explanation for the lack of 2025 chart movement is the glut of new pop voices from 2024 spilling over into a new year, says Spotify editorial lead Talia Kraines. 'I think that 2024 was such a crazy year for pop music, and incredible new songs and artists, that was years in the making,' she says.
Kraines points to artists like Chappell Roan, whose 'Pink Pony Club' is approaching 50 weeks on the Hot 100, and Charli XCX, whose 2020 song 'party 4 u' is just now hitting the chart, who helped define the mainstream last year while also boasting ample back catalogs for fans to explore on streaming services. 'They were fully formed propositions,' says Kraines. 'I feel like a whole new generation found their new favorite artist and their new favorite song, and they're digging in on that.'
Chart longevity may also be a product of post-pandemic timing, says Michael Martin, SVP of programming at Audacy. After all, before 'Lose Control' logged 92 weeks on the chart, The Weeknd's 'Blinding Lights' and Glass Animals' 'Heat Waves' were quarantine-era anthems that previously set the record in April 2021 and October 2022, respectively.
The fact that the record has been reset three times in the past five years nods to how the lifespan of a mega-hit changed to account for audience appetites. 'Everybody wanted comfort food, right?' says Martin of pandemic-era pop. 'People wanted things they knew, like their favorite TV show that they binge-watched again. There's something about that familiar song that they loved and wanted to keep hearing.'
Yet Kraines points out that the key difference between the music industry of five years ago and the industry today is how viral hits are located and promoted by labels to set up longer chart runs. At the dawn of the TikTok era, unknown artists with a viral spark were quickly signed and pushed to radio programmers and streaming services; now, artists like Swims (who was signed to Warner Records in late 2019 after some YouTube covers made noise) are often developed for years before a single receives mainstream promotion.
'We're seeing that the whole nature of artist development takes time,' says Kraines. 'And songs that maybe don't come out of the gate super hot are definitely growing.' Case in point: 'Lose Control' debuted at No. 99 on the Hot 100, then spent 32 weeks climbing to the top of the chart. 'People are taking more time to sit with music and enjoy it — they're not just one-and-done,' adds Kraines.
Meanwhile, the streaming era has included less distinction between singles being actively promoted by artists and album cuts that have no shot at extended chart runs. Last year, Billie Eilish launched her Hit Me Hard and Soft era with 'Lunch' as the focus track, but quickly pivoted when fans embraced 'Birds of a Feather' on streaming services. Demand for 'Feather' has remained strong across platforms since its release — so radio programmers kept playing it, streaming services kept it high on their flagship playlists, and the song just crossed the one-year mark on the Hot 100.
One key to that type of extended run, says Tear, is the smart deployment of follow-up singles — songs from a popular artist that prevent listeners from getting tired of their mega-hit, but don't necessarily get in its way, either. A generation ago, radio stations couldn't feature multiple songs by the same artist in heavy rotation, but now that streaming has blurred those lines, programmers can balance a handful of songs by the same artist and ultimately extend the life of a smash.
'The audience wants to hear more than one song being played over and over again,' Tear explains. 'I'm now able to go two, three, four songs deep [per artist], like we do with Sabrina Carpenter, Benson Boone and Teddy Swims. That relieves a little bit of the fatigue, and they stay around longer.'
Paradoxically, the fragmentation of popular music — and how the streaming era has affected the number of songs that reach cultural ubiquity — may be the reason why we now have so many smash hits that stick around forever. Veteran radio programmer and consultant Guy Zapoleon has spent his career chronicling 10-year music cycles of popular radio, and says that modern 'lack of consensus' caused by the proliferation of music platforms means that, when a song does become huge, it stays huge for longer.
'Because there's so many different sources to go to, it's difficult for songs outside the very biggest songs to become hits,' says Zapoleon. 'And because of that, those songs take a while to become hits, and then they stay there for the longest period of time — longer than we've ever seen in the history of music.'
The good news is that this industry era of extended chart runs emphasizes hit songs regardless of who they're coming from. While A-listers like Kendrick Lamar, SZA and Morgan Wallen have topped the Hot 100 in recent months, the top 10 has been rife with new artists scoring their first chart hits in 2025, just as it was last year.
'You can keep delivering listeners songs like 'Lose Control' that they're just not tired of, but you can also deliver the new artists that they're asking about — Doechii, Sombr, Alex Warren, Lola Young, Ravyn Lenae,' Martin points out. 'So I don't think there's stagnation in new product, or in new artists.'
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