Part 1: One Sweet Day, Despacito (Remix), Old Town Road (Remixes)
READING TIME: 20 MINUTES
Introduction
Billboard Magazine is a publication which informs its readership of the most popular music in the United States. The most popular rankings vary from the most popular work overall to breakdowns by genre or the type of component which makes up the rankings. These rankings are based on a formula which is made up of radio airplay, single/album sales and on-demand streaming. With technological advances the formula has had to evolve over time to keep up with how contemporary music is consumed across the country. So the weighting of the three aforementioned factors has had to shift in order to accommodate these changes. The most noticeable changes where the charts changed significantly were the introduction of Nielsen Soundscan (1991) and the introduction of streaming media (mid-2010s). The former was the introduction of a tracking system which collects sales and airplay numbers electronically rather than by human tallying. The latter is an on-demand audio platform where many artists discographies are stored for unlimited consumption. As artists and record labels know the United States is the world’s biggest music and entertainment market. Therefore if their music can perform well in the United States, via Billboard, there is a high chance their music will be highly influential and consumed in other countries too.
One of the most prestigious charts within Billboard Magazine is the Hot 100. It is a ranking of the top 100 most popular songs in the United States during a given week. One of the most significant records that artists and labels strive for is the title for the longest running number one song of all time. Previous title holders have included You Light Up My Life (10 weeks in 1977), End of the Road (13 weeks in 1992) and I Will Always Love You (14 weeks in 1992-3). Then Mariah Carey’s and Boyz II Men’s 1995 duet One Sweet Day broke the record for, at the time, an unprecedented 16 weeks. For the longest time in Hot 100 history they have been able to hold this record for 23 years. In 2017 Despacito (Remix) tied for the same record but in 2019 Old Town Road (Remix) broke the record again for 19 consecutive weeks. 18 of these weeks Billy Ray Cyrus was credited on the remix and for its entire run Lil Nas X was credited on both the original and remix.
As the weeks went on by both fans and the general population were excited about knowing if Old Town Road was a strong enough contender to break the record and in our social media age there was much push and support to do so. When it did in August 2019 there was a mixture of controversy and celebration surrounding with how this record has been broken. Some of these factors included the immense contribution and weighting of streaming, the release of multiple remixes and artist transparency via social media etc, but these factors are brought about due to changes in market consumption. Holding the top spot for 10 weeks is already an impressive feat so it is a tremendous effort to go on holding onto the number one position for 16+ weeks.
In Part 1 of this three part analysis of the longest number ones, I will investigate the background and the power each of these three singles had in their periods. This will help explore why they were able to dominate atop for so long. The three songs can be heard in snippets in the recording below.
1. One Sweet Day
Sony Music Entertainment - Columbia (1995)
Casette / CD / maxi
R&B
04:42
One Sweet Day was released at a time where two of the biggest artists of the 1990s had collaborated together. They were at their commercial peaks and both seen as radio darlings (the most important charting component of its time). Firstly, Boyz II Men were already partly responsible for bringing R&B back to the mainstream because their talent comprised of complex harmonies and they were able to have crossover appeal which led them to previous Hot 100 success. Aside from Mariah’s well-established vocal talent she was also coming back from a huge commercial period having previously released Music Box (28 million copies) and Merry Christmas (15 million copies). This already sets the potential for an extreme commercially successful collaboration. Secondly, the genre of R&B/Soul ballads was at its peak. Other huge songs in the same genre benefitted from long stays at the top. These included l Swear, I’ll Make Love To You (a previous Boyz II Men song), Take a Bow and Waterfalls. Therefore it makes sense that their R&B collaboration would be a mammoth hit on the Billboard Hot 100. Thirdly, their song is also about death which was inspired by both the loss of people who had recently passed away close to both of the artists and the prominent AIDS crisis at its time. It’s been proven time and time again that singles about death, by or about high profile artists, have a long charting period such as I’ll Be Missing You and Candle In The Wind. Also while death can be a disheartening song topic to some, it is a universal theme everybody can understand and come together to embrace through music. What makes this particular song stand out, unlike Despacito and Old Town Road, is that this song was released as a second single from an already released album. It was even able to chart simultaneously with the Billboard 200 for 3 weeks which many artists are not able to ever achieve. One benefit that ‘One Sweet Day’ was able to take advantage of was being released just before the Christmas freeze. This is when less material is released around the Christmas period because Christmas music is usually consumed more than regular music releases. Therefore songs that were already at the top of the chart before Christmas benefit from an extended stay in the charts with little competition.
In 1995 record labels had figured out they could chart a new song into the top 10 if they had built up the song high enough from airplay. In 1995 songs were ineligible to chart on the Hot 100 without sales. So labels would try to increase a song’s performance on radio, allow the song to get recognised to the public and then the label would release a high physical release sale of the single in retail stores. This would lead to a high, potentially even number one, debut on the Hot 100 which is exactly the case for One Sweet Day. Carey’s previous single Fantasy was falling on the charts because her label, Columbia, was discontinuing its physical release to increase album sales. This is because albums generated a higher revenue. Simultaneously, it was also a tactic to make room for the second single One Sweet Day to gain a high charting position just like its predecessor. One Sweet Day had 5 variations when its physical single when released. There was the album version, the live version, an acapella version, Chuckie’s remix and a Fantasy Def Drums mix. There was many controversial articles surrounding the aforementioned label practice which is why One Sweet Day has its own share of controversy. Investigations claimed that some labels would manipulate certain singles in order to get them to chart highly. Allegedly, Sony would mislabel many other distributed Sony catalogue singles with One Sweet Day’s barcode instead, they would slash singles prices to 49 or 99 cents (whereas a normal single costed an average of $2) and label representatives would come in undercover to purchase high numbers of these singles so that it appeared the song was popular so other people would buy it too (but they would later return them weeks later to make up for any financial losses of slashed prices). While Soundscan and Billboard were aware of these loopholes which could manipulate the chart, artificial hits were noticeable on the charts in 1995 where songs lasted longer than ever before. Artificial hits are known to usually rise and fall quickly. Therefore One Sweet Day stay was more than likely an organic hit through most of its chart run.
Figure 1. A chart representing the peak positions One Sweet Day reached in both formats sales and radio from its debut. The black arrows at the top represent when the single was leading both the radio songs chart and singles sales chart simultaneously.
Figures 2 and 3. On the left is a line graph showing the amount of sales One Sweet Day was achieving during its run at number one. The bar chart on the right shows the overall charting points One Sweet Day would be achieving using its sales. However, there is no collectible data on its radio airplay spins.
Figures 1, 2 and 3 help to show the chart run of One Sweet Day by its individual components. Figure 1 is based on a logarithmic scale where 20 stands for the number one position and then subsequent drops stand for number 2, 3, 4 etc in both radio and sales. Figure 2 and 3 show One Sweet Day’s chart run at number one based on its week-by-week sales*. On One Sweet Day’s first full charting week the single debuted at number one. It held the number 2 airplay songs position and it became the number one best-seller on the Hot 100 Singles Chart with 204,000 physical copies being sold in its first week. This combination generated enough power points to chart at number one on its first week. Then in its second full charting week (and seventh airplay charting week) One Sweet Day became the top airplay song too. From this point for 10 consecutive weeks the song remained at number one; this was by holding the top position of Hot 100 Singles Sales and Radio Songs as seen in Figure 1. During its chart run there were only slight drops (such as in week 4) and the song recovered quickly. One Sweet Day also knocked off and then held off Exhale by Whitney Houston which was the previous Hot 100 number 1, for 11 consecutive weeks. The driving force for keeping One Sweet Day at the top could have been due to Tommy Mottola on Sony Columbia and Clive Davis on Arista (who supported Whitney) were each other’s main competitors in the industry. During ‘Day's run there were reports of high sales of 200,000-300,000 physical sales every week until Exhale began losing strength in its chart power. In Week 7 of Day's reign it was certified by RIAA for 2 million sales showcasing its strong sales power. In Day’s 12th and 13th charting weeks at number 1 it fell to number 2 in sales but maintained the top position in airplay. After a certain point the physical sales dropped significantly, but it still held enough to be carried to number one by its power on the radio, still outdoing Arista’s other number 2 peak position singles Not Gon’ Cry by Mary J Blige and Sittin' Up In My Room by Brandy. The drop was mostly likely because Sony stopped distributing or discontinuing putting physical copies of the single on sale in an attempt to drive up Daydream’s album sales instead. It is possible to say that Sony/Columbia saw that Day was only three weeks away from becoming the longest number one single of all time, outperforming rival Whitney Houston’s previous smash I Will Always Love You. Therefore they decided to still keep promoting the single but by distributing it in lower amounts. Its lengthy reign was prolonged potentially by the help of its Grammys performance in Week 15 too. In Figure 1, 2 and 3 it can be seen that the Grammy performance gave a small rise in sales to the song and kept the song clinging onto the top spot.
It is conceivable that the song could have held the number one spot even longer had physical sales not been reduced to compensate for higher album sales as it was expensive for record labels to support both physical albums and singles of the same artist at the same time. This is probably one of the reasons why it dropped out of the top 10 within the next 3 weeks; whereas many long reigning number one songs nowadays still remain in the top 10 for an extended period of time after dropping from the top position. Also label mate Celine Dion was on the rise with her comeback song Because You Loved Me so the label may have preferred to support bringing a new song to the top rather than keep an overused song at the top.
[*not able to find a source which has the radio audience impressions numbers]
2. Despacito (Remix)
Universal Music Group Latin (2017)
Digital Download (CD single) / Streaming
Reggaeton / Latin Pop
03:48
Despacito was a sensational hit in Latin American markets in early 2017 with Latin stars Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee. However, the original single did not make much charting impact in North American and some European markets because Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee were not seen as popular artists. Meanwhile Justin Bieber’s career had skyrocketed since 2015 scoring three number one hits off his album Purpose (two of which landed the top 2 Billboard Year End positions in 2016) and he was featured on numerous chart-topping singles such as ‘Where Are You Now’ (#8), ‘Cold Water’ (#2), ‘Let Me Love You’ (#4) and ‘I’m the One’ (#1). It seemed by this point a Justin Bieber feature would help propel the popularity of any song by any artist. Furthermore the United States pop musical landscape was beginning to embrace other rhythmic catchy sounds, of any subject matter, other than urban or EDM which had ruled the Hot 100 this decade. Songs coming from genres in latin-reggaeton was on the rise partly benefitting from the rise of tropical-house (such as One Dance and Shape of You) or dancehall/reggae-pop (such as Cheerleader and Work) due to the rise in our increasingly-globalised world. It was a sound that did not resonate with the majority of American inhabitants at first and so songs of this genre barely charted high. The only other high profile latin song of a similar charting magnitude was the Macarena more than 20 years prior. The latin sound was a change in direction of what was currently popular on the charts and it served as a light-hearted dance song which is the perfect tone for the summertime. It can be said that for some it served as an outlet of positivity in a looming sociopolitical climate dominated with slower tempo pop songs. Lastly, to many people Despacito was viewed as just another meme song. Meme songs have been a popular tactic to keep a song atop nowadays. In our social media world overexposed popular culture, such as the Despacito song, is eventually embraced rather than being rejected. The support of this paradox keeps a song alive and longer than it would do otherwise on its own merit. So once Despacito took off firstly in January and then revived again in May, platforms such as YouTube and Spotify could constantly tell consumers what the top trending songs were and those songs can benefit staying atop much longer.
Despite the song being released in an era past the peak of digital sales and moving more into the streaming era, once Justin Bieber featured on the remix and was placed on iTunes the song’s position was able to rise quickly, stay atop on all formats and sell incredibly. Keeping up with a changing market, Billboard declared that in 2017 a song’s original composition and its remix could contribute to the overall charting position of a single. Bieber was credited on the song’s charting position as long as the Bieber remix received the majority of the charting points every week, which it did. The remix in fact contributed to 70-80% of every week’s sales which showcases the star power Bieber had and was able to bring to the song and its genre. On the same week Bieber’s previous debut #1 single ‘I’m the One’ made its mark on the Hot 100, the Despacito remix was released and quickly began rising on the Hot 100. It reached number one due to its immense high streaming numbers (the second highest numbers in streaming history at its time) and singles sales with high radio support coming later. While the original and the Bieber remix brought the song to number one, the ease of the digital age meant that numerous remixes throughout Despacito’s chart run could still be released which would also contribute charting points to Despacito’s chart run. Despacito had the original version, a pop version, salsa version, Bieber remix, Major Lazer and Moska remix, urban version, Portuguese version and Banda version. Singles in 2017 were much more accessible than in One Sweet Day’s time because song consumption can take place at the click of a button at home compared to a time where one had to physically go to a record store to make a purchase. Also unlike the time period One Sweet Day was released in, physical sales releases were an added and expensive cost to the label. Despacito benefitted during its run from being able to be available for purchase for a longer time period because sales and streaming were digitally released so the single can be listed on online platforms for a much cheaper price.
Figure 4. A chart representing the peak positions Despacito Remix reached in all formats streaming, sales and radio from its debut. The black arrows at the top represent when the single was leading streaming, sales and radio simultaneously.
Figures 5 and 6. On the left is a line graph showing the week by week streams (in millions), digital sales (in thousands) and radio audience impressions (in millions) Despacito (Remix) was able to achieve whilst it was at number one. The black square shows the period when the single was leading in all of its formats. The stacked bar chart on the right shows the combination of all of the single’s formats numbers to show its growth and progression throughout its chart run.
Figures 4, 5 and 6 help to show the chart run of Despacito (Remix) by its individual components. Figure 4 is based on a logarithmic scale where 20 stands for the number one position and then subsequent drops stand for number 2, 3, 4 etc in both radio, sales and streaming. Figure 5 and 6 show Despacito’s number one chart run based on its week-by-week radio support, sales and streaming numbers. The song reached number one in its third charting week. By looking at Figure 4, the song was able to hold the top positions in streaming and sales for an unprecedented consecutive 16 weeks. Figure 5 shows that the song was selling between 100,000-150,000 digital sales for its first 12 weeks and then this decreased to 80,000 sales on average in its latter weeks while reigning number one. Similarly it was being streamed between 50-70 million times during its first 12 weeks and then this decreased to 45-50 million times during its latter weeks. Unlike the 1990s, in the 2010s Billboard revised rules to allow a song to chart based on sales alone. Therefore radio support had to be built up over the weeks. Fortunately the rise of its support by radio helped contributed to its elongated chart run when its sales and somewhat its streams were beginning to decline. The song reached a radio peak of 149 million audience impressions in Week 9. Then for 5 weeks, from Week 9 to 13, Despacito held the top position in all three chart components. From weeks 14 to 16 its main competitor was Wild Thoughts by DJ Khaled (featuring Rihanna and Bryson Tiller) but its streaming and sales components were too strong for Wild Thought’s radio success to dominate. Seeing that Wild Thoughts was released through Sony/Columbia (Epic) it was of interest to Universal Music Group to hold off the top spot from its biggest competitor for as long as it could. Despacito’s only other competitors during its entire chart run was That’s What I Like by Bruno Mars and I’m the One by DJ Khaled. However, these songs had already reached the Hot 100 number one spot before Despacito’s dominance so it may not have been in Atlantic’s and Epic's interest to push these singles back to the top position but just to keep them comfortably near the top spot instead.
Instead of a gradual decrease in power points in Week [+1], Taylor Swift’s new song Look What You Made Me Do, also through Universal, had generated almost 1000 chart points and it easily dominated over the declining power of Despacito. Similar to One Sweet Day and Sony it makes more sense to financially support a label-mate’s new song over an already oversaturated song. Eventually digital sales began to plummet because newer singles were on the rise such as Taylor’s Look What You Made Me Do and Bodak Yellow by Cardi B.
3. Old Town Road (Remix)
Sony Music Entertainment - Columbia (2019)
Digital Download / Streaming
Country Rap / Trap / Southern Hip-Hop
02:37
It is rare for artists to find the type of success that Lil Nas X was able to achieve with his debut single. Time will tell in the quickly evolving music industry whether he will be another one-hit wonder or he will have a long lasting career. This is because most artists who receive his type of singles success are at the commercial peak of their career which can take five to ten years. Lil Nas X credits Young Thug for the revival of country trap which is the crossover genre he has applied into his own work. This was the potion perfect for a viral hit blending hip-hop's domination and country music's playfulness. Lil Nas X in 2018 was a struggling artist who then took advantage of his song that was on the rise due to its meme potential. Using his knowledge and power of Twitter and Instagram and his own personal interests of how labels push songs to the mainstream, the song was eventually picked up through the popular app Tik Tok. Soon after this he was signed by Sony Columbia. The original recording of Old Town Road did not contribute enough points to appear on the Hot 100 but it would have been enough to be positioned on the Billboard Country charts. Due to the sensationalised controversy surrounding whether the song should have appeared on the Billboard Country charts because of its deemed lack of country song elements, it jumped to the number one spot on the Hot 100 instead.
Figure 7 (the star marks Road’s highest chart points). A chart representing the peak positions Old Town Road (Remix) reached in all formats streaming, sales and radio from the debut of the remix. The white arrow at the top represent when the single was at its peak leading streaming and sales and reached its peak on radio. The black dotted line represents the timeline when the single surpassed One Sweet Day’s and Despacito (Remix)’s record length of 16 weeks.
Figures 8 and 9. On the left is a line graph showing the week by week streams (in millions), digital sales (in thousands) and radio audience impressions (in millions) Old Town Road (Remix) was able to achieve whilst it was at number one. The black square shows the period when the single was at its peak in its formats. The stacked bar chart on the right shows the combination of all of the single’s formats numbers to show its growth, troughs and progression throughout its chart run.
Figures 7, 8 and 9 help to show the chart run of Old Town Road (Remix) by its individual components. Figure 7 is based on a logarithmic scale where 20 stands for the number one position and then subsequent drops stand for number 2, 3, 4 etc in both radio, sales and streaming. Figure 8 and 9 show Old Town Road's number one chart run based on its week-by-week radio support, sales and streaming numbers. Once Lil Nas X partnered up with the highly admired and ever popular country star Billy Ray Cyrus the remix helped the song skyrocket. In Week 2 Old Town Road (Remix) reached approximately 900 chart points which only Look What You Made Me Do by Taylor Swift and Hello by Adele have able to surpass in recent times. In fact the song’s immense popularity held more than twice the chart points as the number two song for six weeks. This demolition was the result of a jump of 46.6 to 143 million streams in a week (the highest recorded number of streams in one week of all time). Single sales, again mostly coming from the remix, had also jumped from 27,300 to 124,000 sales jumping from the number 3 to number 1 on the digital sales chart. For its entire chart run it remained the number one streaming song for 20 consecutive weeks with streams over 100 million streams, which is a rarity for any song to achieve for even one week, for 10 consecutive weeks. During this time radio support began to increase and its short stint helped elongate the middle of Town’s chart run from week 6 to week 13. Town reached its peak on radio in Week 10 where it was at number 2 on radio with 98.3 million audience impressions, much weaker than Despacito. Its main radio competitor through its chart run was Talk by Khalid. Despite Town’s significantly declining support in radio from Week 14 onwards the dominance of its streaming and digital sales still allowed the song to cling onto the top spot for a further six weeks. This, and much of Town’s chart-run, has been linked to the timing of different releases of the song whereas One Sweet Day, and the Despacito (Remix) to an extent, only had one main original recording and sales were based on that release alone. Old Town Road had the original version, Billy Ray Cyrus remix, Billy Ray and Diplo remix, Billy Ray, Young Thug and Ramsey remix and Seoul Town Road (ft. BTS) Remix, the original music video release and the filler-free music video release, a 2019 BET performance and the EP-version which all gave regular boosts to Road throughout its chart run. The Old Town Road (Remix) was able to hold off two Taylor Swift songs Me! (featuring Brendon Urie) and You Need To Calm Down, Shawn Mendes’ If I Can’t Have You and I Don’t Care by Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber. These songs were released through Universal Music Group (who previously tied for the longest number one with Despacito) and Warner Bros (where Ed Sheeran previously held the Billboard Year End Number 1 song Shape of You and Billboard Year End Number 2 song Perfect). So it seemed crucial for Sony to keep this song at the top spot, away from its rivals, for as long as possible. Town’s dominance in streaming still allowed it to chart at number 1 despite its drop in sales to the number 2 spot when the aforementioned singles were released. However, Universal Music Group were not backing down and they were competitively promoting Señorita by Shawn Mendes and Camilla Cabello and Badguy by Billie Eilish (both songs eventually reached number one) which kept Sony and Old Town Road on its toes to try and dominate as long as they could without the song becoming tiresome. Eventually a lack of radio support and declining sales and streaming led to its rivals overthrowing it.
Old Town Road’s ‘charm’ is that it fits in today’s music scene perfectly. The song message does not take itself too seriously. It has no derogatory language or profanity unlike a lot of mainstream rap/hip-hop songs so this makes the song child-friendly lyrically. It also has a self-motivational message which is brought to life through its bouncy rhythm. This makes it a perfect song to appeal towards all generations. Furthermore the song is intentionally very short which makes it appeal to a younger demographic wanting the song to be played on repeat. In fact Lil Nas X intentionally used these factors to exploit the streaming loopholes which exist in the charts to keep his song at the top for so long. As a result Billboard might be rethinking their policy about what recordings of a song can contribute to its charting otherwise long number-ones may become more common than ever before.
CONCLUSION
Other than all three songs benefitting from charting loopholes the most common factor between them is that they each had immense crossover appeal for the time they were released. They were also all collaborations featuring at least one high profile star to carry the name of the song for an extended period of time. Firstly two artists with powerhouse vocals, then latin music royalty and American pop royalty and finally a rising social media star with a respected and established country star. As mentioned before most stars achieve this type of record years into their career so it will be interesting to see how Lil Nas X’s career will flourish in the future since he has achieved this on his debut release.
What makes One Sweet Day more special than the other two songs is that it was physically released, in a time when singles had production budgets, and it ran alongside its album-counterpart Daydream which also had multiple consecutive weeks at number one at the same time. Whereas the other two songs were ran initially as stand alone singles on digital platforms where they can be purchased or streamed repeatedly any time any place. Furthermore One Sweet Day had to rely on the public’s willingness to go to stores or request a song on radio based on the star power of its performers and the song matter. Nowadays meaningless viral meme hits, which have narcissistic undertones due to our social media world, can stay atop longer than ever before. Many commentators also critique Day and say it is a forgotten song. However, its recurrent YouTube and Spotify statistics do not agree and it is still played on adult contemporary radio today. These days it is more fitting for funerals rather than in a general setting. Also Daydream’s other two popular singles Fantasy and Always Be My Baby, sandwiched around Day’s success, have managed to overshadow it with their more upbeat nature. So it will be interesting to see in 20 years time whether Despacito (Remix) or Old Town Road (Remix) will be seen as popular as they were during their chart runs too with more viral hit songs to more than likely appear in the future.
Keep your eyes peeled for the next article Part 2 of 3. It will be an investigation looking at the longest running number one singles in Billboard history and analysing any trends or patterns during different charting periods.
***All Data was sourced from Billboard Magazine
