If you need evidence that America is having its ’90s-revival moment—right on the two-decades-later nostalgia schedule—look no further than “Rude” by Magic, the new No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 pop chart. “Rude” is essentially an amalgam of two smash hits that rode the Top 10 together in the spring of 1993: the Spin Doctors’ [...] Read more

Last week, Vulture’s Amanda Dobbins wrote a piece bemoaning the “default Song of Summer” status achieved by “Fancy,” the Iggy Azalea hit featuring Charli XCX. Now in its seventh week at No. 1, “Fancy” has topped Billboard’s Hot 100 since the start of June, essentially the whole summer to date. Since the Song of the [...] Read more

The “Song of the Summer” is an old concept but a fairly new sport. Pop artists since the ’60s have on occasion tried to score a self-conscious summer smash—but the media only began studying the horserace a decade or two ago. We’re barely into June, and already several outlets have offered predictions for 2014. But [...] Read more

Three decades ago, in an interview with chart-trivia master Fred Bronson for his Billboard Book of Number 1 Hits, Blondie lead singer Debbie Harry said the following about 1981’s “Rapture”—the song with the rap about the man from Mars who’s eatin’ cars, and the first Hot 100 No. 1 song to feature rapping. “It took [...] Read more

John Legend’s “All of Me”—the new No. 1 song on Billboard’s authoritative, all-genre Hot 100 chart—is a paean to crazy love, a passion that’s can’t be deterred by “curves” or “edges” or “imperfections.” Its lyrics pull the clever (or crass) trick of expressing universal relationship bromides in seemingly specific language, rather like a horoscope. Legend’s [...] Read more

Mark it: 14 months, three weeks. That’s the longest period in Billboard Hot 100 history without a lead black artist at No. 1—including all of 2013, as I noted a while back here on Slate. Fortunately, that drought has come to an end, as “Happy,” Pharrell Williams’ exuberant, irrepressible pop song, ascends to the top [...] Read more

Before we talk about the new No. 1 song in America—Katy Perry’s latest in a hit-packed, half-decade career—here’s a quick pop-music pop quiz. In 2010–11, Perry tied an impressive chart record when her album Teenage Dream generated five No. 1 singles on Billboard’s Hot 100. She matched a 23-year-old mark set by Michael Jackson, whose [...] Read more

“Timber,” the single currently topping Billboard’s authoritative Hot 100 chart, is America’s second consecutive No. 1 hit to mine the male-rapper-plus-female-hook-singer shtick, coming right on the heels of the Eminem–Rihanna pairing “The Monster.” It’s by Pitbull, the Cuban-American club-pop action figure, and features the gleefully trashy pop star Kesha. It’s also a quintessential wintertime hit, [...] Read more