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Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Hit Songs Are Lasting Longer on the Charts – But Why?
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. More from Billboard Zak Starkey Rubbishes Reports He Retired from The Who, Insists He Was 'Fired' Lorde Makes Surprise Appearance at Aotearoa Music Awards Bone Thugs-N-Harmony Perform 1996 Hit 'Tha Crossroads' on 'Everybody's Live' '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.' Best of Billboard Chart Rewind: In 1989, New Kids on the Block Were 'Hangin' Tough' at No. 1 Janet Jackson's Biggest Billboard Hot 100 Hits H.E.R. & Chris Brown 'Come Through' to No. 1 on Adult R&B Airplay Chart
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Teddy Swims' ‘Lose Control' Notches Record-Breaking 92nd Week on Billboard Hot 100
The endurance of Teddy Swims' 'Lose Control' hits new historic heights as the song logs a record-breaking 92nd week on the Billboard Hot 100. The single surpasses the run of Glass Animals' 'Heat Waves,' which ran up 91 weeks in 2021-22, for the most time spent on the chart dating to its Aug. 4, 1958, inception. More from Billboard Mariah Carey Celebrates 20 Years of 'The Emancipation of Mimi': Stream It Now Miley Cyrus' New Album 'Something Beautiful' This Way Comes: Stream It Now Beéle Wins Big at 2025 Heat Latin Music Awards: Complete Winners List 'Lose Control' debuted at No. 99 on the Hot 100 dated Aug. 26, 2023. It led for a week in March 2024, and became the year's No. 1 song. It ranks at No. 11 on the latest list, dated May 31, 2025. The soulful smash has also amassed a record 63 weeks in the Hot 100's top 10. (Songs have generally logged longer runs on the chart, and at No. 1 and in the top 10, since the survey adopted electronically tracked Luminate data in November 1991.) Along the way, 'Lose Control,' on SWIMS Int./Warner Records, has also ruled the following Billboard charts: the all-format Radio Songs and Digital Song Sales surveys, Adult Contemporary, Adult Pop Airplay, Adult R&B Airplay and Pop Airplay. It also hit No. 2 on Adult Alternative Airplay and the top five on both the Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. U.S. 'Lose Control' has even outlasted two follow-up singles that each hit the Hot 100's top 40: 'The Door' (No. 24 peak, last October) and 'Bad Dreams' (No. 30, earlier this May). Both songs also reached the top 10 on Adult Pop Airplay and Pop Airplay. Another of Teddy Swims' hits, 'Are You Even Real,' with Giveon, topped Adult R&B Airplay in April. 'Teddy Swims is a once-in-a-generation talent who defies genres, making him truly unique in today's music landscape,' Warner evp of promotion and commerce Mike Chester told Billboard last year. 'When we began promoting 'Lose Control,' our journey was carefully planned. From the start, we noticed that the song was resonating in various pockets of culture, creating a strong and diverse fanbase.' The artist born Jaten Dimsdale, in Conyers Ga., in 1992, and who made his overall Billboard chart debut in 2021, was nominated for best new artist at the Grammy Awards this year. 'I love always watching your updates,' he mused of Billboard News' weekly recap of the Hot 100's top 10. 'It's like, 'Here comes Teddy Swims!' I hope you never stop saying that. I'm grateful.' Below, browse a rundown of the longest-charting hits in the Hot 100's history. No. 1 Hot 100 peak (one week), March 30, 2024(still charting as of May 31, 2025) No. 1 Hot 100 peak (five weeks), beginning March 12, 2022 No. 1 Hot 100 peak (four weeks), beginning April 4, 2020 No. 3 Hot 100 peak, July 6, 2013 No. 17 Hot 100 peak, Oct. 12, 2013 No. 2 Hot 100 peak, May 22, 2021 No. 6 Hot 100 peak, Sept. 20, 2008 No. 1 Hot 100 peak (18 weeks), beginning Dec. 21, 2019 No. 2 Hot 100 peak, Oct. 7, 2023 No. 2 Hot 100 peak, March 30, 2024(still charting as of May 31, 2025) No. 1 Hot 100 peak (two weeks), beginning May 8, 2021 No. 2 Hot 100 peak, Dec. 13, 1997 Best of Billboard Chart Rewind: In 1989, New Kids on the Block Were 'Hangin' Tough' at No. 1 Four Decades of 'Madonna': A Look Back at the Queen of Pop's Debut Album on the Charts Chart Rewind: In 1990, Madonna Was in 'Vogue' Atop the Hot 100
Sydney Morning Herald
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘We have our sights set on world domination': How Spacey Jane became Australia's biggest band
In August 2022, Caleb Harper was sitting in his underwear in a sweltering room in Los Angeles, willing the air-conditioner to work. The Spacey Jane frontman had just begun scribbling down the first lines of a song that would become August, the first track to emerge from their third album. But it wasn't coming easily in the 40-degree heat and the song ended up sitting on the shelf for about 18 months, Harper occasionally pulling it down to tweak a line here or there. Other songs came and were put to tape, the album was nearly tied up, but August remained out-of-reach. 'I had a counter melody that wasn't working,' Harper says over Zoom from Los Angeles, air-conditioning working this time. 'I ended up writing it on the last morning, and Peppa [Lane, bassist] and I went in and sang it that day.' That final counter melody carries out the track with the floating refrain 'if that makes sense?', which the band then lifted for the album's title. 'It really bookends that period,' Harper says, noting its meaning shifted considerably over the writing period, from a meditation on leaving Australia to predicting the beginning of a breakup. 'It's a hard listen, honestly.' August, like the rest of If That Makes Sense, was written and recorded over two years in LA – the first time the Perth band had recorded outside Australia. It was a big deal for the quartet (Harper and Lane are joined by drummer Kieran Lama and guitarist Ashton Hardman-Le Cornu), who have been synonymous with the Australian indie rock scene since their jangly, vulnerable 2020 debut album Sunlight. Sunlight was borne from the runaway single Booster Seat, which reached #2 in that year's Hottest 100, behind Glass Animals' Heat Waves. The band would become frequent Hottest 100 lurkers: in the 2022 countdown, following their second album Here Comes Everybody, they featured six times, three of those coming in the top 10. In 2022, the band was the third-biggest seller of vinyl for the year, behind Taylor Swift and Harry Styles. They've ridden this wave of popularity on numerous sold-out tours of the country, and are comfortable standalone headliners for the biggest local festivals. There aren't many bigger bands in Australian music right now, if any. Following the gruelling touring schedule for Here Comes Everybody (which had really stretched back years to the start of Sunlight), the band's management stepped in and told them to take a break. 'It started as quite a difficult thing,' Harper says. 'It was almost counterintuitive … We are a band that considers our job to play shows. It was almost like the music served that. Now we've gone through a process of unlearning that and figuring out how to focus on making this record and pulling this world together first. And also giving the market a bit of space, from a business perspective. 'But once we hopped off that train, we were all freaked out. Especially, because we were living all around the world, we didn't see each other as much.' Like many Australian artists before him, Harper landed in LA and endured the merry-go-round of songwriting sessions – a process he called 'f---ing terrifying'. 'I'd always been protective of the songwriting process, and it always has been in my bedroom,' he says. 'I didn't know how to advocate for ideas that I liked, and I didn't know how to say no to things I didn't like. I would often not put forward ideas at all because I was just like, 'If they don't like it, that's embarrassing'. But now I find it's liberating to have that conflict of ideas. I'm grateful that I went through that transition.' It's easy to understand Harper's apprehension. His lyrics have always been intensely personal, and the songs on If That Makes Sense feature some wrenching moments. On the churning single All the Noise, Harper reflects on his upbringing: 'And that was the way that they gave to me … A promise that I would hurt everybody that I ever meet'. Then there's the shouted, tortured mantra in So Much Taller: 'You'll never be enough and you'll never be loved, and the fact you tried is embarrassing enough'. Recent single Through My Teeth obliquely references Harper shedding his religious upbringing and throwing himself headlong into partying at university. A lot of the album pulls in this direction and sifts through the various answers to the question: what happens when you have to drag your trauma into adulthood? 'Being out here,' Harper says after a pause, after we bring up Through My Teeth, 'it's almost like pulling myself out of my present life in Australia made the past compress, like the last 26 years of my life were all just in one accessible bank in a way that they hadn't been before'. 'All of a sudden things didn't seem as far away – not that they were any clearer,' he says. 'I still have trouble recalling much of my childhood, as I think a lot of people do, especially if they have negative things associated with that … Your brain tends to bury things or contort them. But I think a lot of it became far clearer or more in my face than it had been before.' Being away from Australia pulled some things into focus, but it also brought with it a lot of homesickness and guilt. 'I think family is the main one,' Harper answers, when I ask where the guilt comes from. 'There's already a host of issues and contentious things there. Being away is an interesting escape from that. 'But sometimes I take too much liberty when it comes to escaping things back home. Like I'm really bad at messaging my friends back, I'm really bad at calling my dad … and that's just something that weighs on me a lot. Relationships suffer, and you feel like it's your fault.' 'We'd be kicking ourselves if we didn't try [to break overseas].' Caleb Harper, frontman of Spacey Jane Sonically, If That Makes Sense doesn't deviate wildly from the Spacey Jane playbook, but the band have beefed things up considerably with undercurrents of synths and layers upon layers of guitars and vocals. It's the result of taking a longer time in the studio, and the presence of big-time producer Mike Crossey (Arctic Monkeys, the 1975, Wolf Alice). 'We didn't shy away from producing it, like really producing it,' Harper says. 'It was like, 'Let's put everything in here that we like and make it feel as big and wide as possible'.' The band also ran the entire record through tape at the end, a process that rounds out the sound and makes it feel richer, warmer (like the difference between an MP3 file and a vinyl record). Loading The four members of the band have been scattered in the wind over the past few years – Hardman-Le Cornu and Lane in Melbourne, Lama in New York, Harper between LA and home. If That Makes Sense represents a big step outside their Australia-sized comfort zone, and Harper says the band is feeling the pull overseas. 'Australia still feels like home for us in every way, and we still feel like that's where our strongest support base is,' he says. 'But at the same time, we have our sights set on world domination, and we want to do what we've done here in Australia. That's why we've put ourselves out here so much and why so much focus is on the rest of the world. 'We'd be kicking ourselves if we didn't try [to break overseas]. We're very hungry to see how far we can take this thing, so we're just going to keep going.'
The Age
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
‘We have our sights set on world domination': How Spacey Jane became Australia's biggest band
In August 2022, Caleb Harper was sitting in his underwear in a sweltering room in Los Angeles, willing the air-conditioner to work. The Spacey Jane frontman had just begun scribbling down the first lines of a song that would become August, the first track to emerge from their third album. But it wasn't coming easily in the 40-degree heat and the song ended up sitting on the shelf for about 18 months, Harper occasionally pulling it down to tweak a line here or there. Other songs came and were put to tape, the album was nearly tied up, but August remained out-of-reach. 'I had a counter melody that wasn't working,' Harper says over Zoom from Los Angeles, air-conditioning working this time. 'I ended up writing it on the last morning, and Peppa [Lane, bassist] and I went in and sang it that day.' That final counter melody carries out the track with the floating refrain 'if that makes sense?', which the band then lifted for the album's title. 'It really bookends that period,' Harper says, noting its meaning shifted considerably over the writing period, from a meditation on leaving Australia to predicting the beginning of a breakup. 'It's a hard listen, honestly.' August, like the rest of If That Makes Sense, was written and recorded over two years in LA – the first time the Perth band had recorded outside Australia. It was a big deal for the quartet (Harper and Lane are joined by drummer Kieran Lama and guitarist Ashton Hardman-Le Cornu), who have been synonymous with the Australian indie rock scene since their jangly, vulnerable 2020 debut album Sunlight. Sunlight was borne from the runaway single Booster Seat, which reached #2 in that year's Hottest 100, behind Glass Animals' Heat Waves. The band would become frequent Hottest 100 lurkers: in the 2022 countdown, following their second album Here Comes Everybody, they featured six times, three of those coming in the top 10. In 2022, the band was the third-biggest seller of vinyl for the year, behind Taylor Swift and Harry Styles. They've ridden this wave of popularity on numerous sold-out tours of the country, and are comfortable standalone headliners for the biggest local festivals. There aren't many bigger bands in Australian music right now, if any. Following the gruelling touring schedule for Here Comes Everybody (which had really stretched back years to the start of Sunlight), the band's management stepped in and told them to take a break. 'It started as quite a difficult thing,' Harper says. 'It was almost counterintuitive … We are a band that considers our job to play shows. It was almost like the music served that. Now we've gone through a process of unlearning that and figuring out how to focus on making this record and pulling this world together first. And also giving the market a bit of space, from a business perspective. 'But once we hopped off that train, we were all freaked out. Especially, because we were living all around the world, we didn't see each other as much.' Like many Australian artists before him, Harper landed in LA and endured the merry-go-round of songwriting sessions – a process he called 'f---ing terrifying'. 'I'd always been protective of the songwriting process, and it always has been in my bedroom,' he says. 'I didn't know how to advocate for ideas that I liked, and I didn't know how to say no to things I didn't like. I would often not put forward ideas at all because I was just like, 'If they don't like it, that's embarrassing'. But now I find it's liberating to have that conflict of ideas. I'm grateful that I went through that transition.' It's easy to understand Harper's apprehension. His lyrics have always been intensely personal, and the songs on If That Makes Sense feature some wrenching moments. On the churning single All the Noise, Harper reflects on his upbringing: 'And that was the way that they gave to me … A promise that I would hurt everybody that I ever meet'. Then there's the shouted, tortured mantra in So Much Taller: 'You'll never be enough and you'll never be loved, and the fact you tried is embarrassing enough'. Recent single Through My Teeth obliquely references Harper shedding his religious upbringing and throwing himself headlong into partying at university. A lot of the album pulls in this direction and sifts through the various answers to the question: what happens when you have to drag your trauma into adulthood? 'Being out here,' Harper says after a pause, after we bring up Through My Teeth, 'it's almost like pulling myself out of my present life in Australia made the past compress, like the last 26 years of my life were all just in one accessible bank in a way that they hadn't been before'. 'All of a sudden things didn't seem as far away – not that they were any clearer,' he says. 'I still have trouble recalling much of my childhood, as I think a lot of people do, especially if they have negative things associated with that … Your brain tends to bury things or contort them. But I think a lot of it became far clearer or more in my face than it had been before.' Being away from Australia pulled some things into focus, but it also brought with it a lot of homesickness and guilt. 'I think family is the main one,' Harper answers, when I ask where the guilt comes from. 'There's already a host of issues and contentious things there. Being away is an interesting escape from that. 'But sometimes I take too much liberty when it comes to escaping things back home. Like I'm really bad at messaging my friends back, I'm really bad at calling my dad … and that's just something that weighs on me a lot. Relationships suffer, and you feel like it's your fault.' 'We'd be kicking ourselves if we didn't try [to break overseas].' Caleb Harper, frontman of Spacey Jane Sonically, If That Makes Sense doesn't deviate wildly from the Spacey Jane playbook, but the band have beefed things up considerably with undercurrents of synths and layers upon layers of guitars and vocals. It's the result of taking a longer time in the studio, and the presence of big-time producer Mike Crossey (Arctic Monkeys, the 1975, Wolf Alice). 'We didn't shy away from producing it, like really producing it,' Harper says. 'It was like, 'Let's put everything in here that we like and make it feel as big and wide as possible'.' The band also ran the entire record through tape at the end, a process that rounds out the sound and makes it feel richer, warmer (like the difference between an MP3 file and a vinyl record). Loading The four members of the band have been scattered in the wind over the past few years – Hardman-Le Cornu and Lane in Melbourne, Lama in New York, Harper between LA and home. If That Makes Sense represents a big step outside their Australia-sized comfort zone, and Harper says the band is feeling the pull overseas. 'Australia still feels like home for us in every way, and we still feel like that's where our strongest support base is,' he says. 'But at the same time, we have our sights set on world domination, and we want to do what we've done here in Australia. That's why we've put ourselves out here so much and why so much focus is on the rest of the world. 'We'd be kicking ourselves if we didn't try [to break overseas]. We're very hungry to see how far we can take this thing, so we're just going to keep going.'
