A Black former rapper is atop the country charts—and for once, even country listeners are embracing him. n popular music, the hype machine works in delightfully mysterious ways. You never know who will benefit from our fickle hit parade. A vice president turned presidential candidate gets a meme boost from a British pop star named [...] Read more

To understand how the “Espresso” singer got so big, you have to understand her history—and her controversies. In the summer of 1982, a rocker from Indiana was finally breaking on the charts after years of trying anything for a hit. Born John Mellencamp, he marketed himself, reluctantly, under his manager’s preferred sobriquet, John Cougar. After [...] Read more

The past two months have seen Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, and Morgan Wallen all duet with the same face-tattooed star. There’s a moment in an article I wrote for this No. 1 hits series a little over a year ago that today seems unwittingly funny. Explaining the appeal, or at least the wild popularity, of Morgan Wallen’s [...] Read more

With TheTortured Poets Department, she breaks even more sales records. But is a song like “Fortnight” a lasting smash? Quick pop quiz: Prior to this week, what was Taylor Swift’s last new No. 1 hit on Billboard’s Hot 100? I know, I know … it’s a little hard to keep up with her relentless output. [...] Read more

Rap beef records were once too inside baseball to touch the Hot 100. Now they’re topping it. Growing up listening to New York radio in the ’80s, I was exposed to a parallel universe of rap singles that missed the pop Top 40 but were treated by local deejays as if they were mainstream hits. [...] Read more

“We Can’t Be Friends” is a master class in how to ride backlash all the way to No. 1. Tweet Share Share Comment In the summer of 1997, Swedish songwriter and producer Max Martin scored his first Top 10 hit in America with a song co-written and fronted by a fellow Swede, a teenager who [...] Read more

The singer has the No. 1 song on Billboard’s country chart. That’s not the same as being No. 1 on country radio. In the summer of 1984, Lionel Richie, in the middle of an epic run of pop and R&B hits from his blockbuster album Can’t Slow Down, chose a fourth single from the LP [...] Read more

A 78-year-old has America’s biggest song. Here’s how she pulled it off. This installment of “Why Is This Song No. 1?” is momentous for at least a couple of reasons. First, as of this month, this Slate series is 10 years old. We launched it in December 2013 with an entry on the Eminem–Rihanna duet “The [...] Read more

2023 saw rap’s longest drought in decades. Is Jack Harlow the man to save it? The biggest story in rap this year was all about the past. Hip-hop’s 50th anniversary—timed to a DJ Kool Herc rec-room party in the South Bronx in August 1973, a somewhat arbitrary but reasonable musical marker—was a fine excuse to [...] Read more

How “Cruel Summer” assumed its rightful place at the top of the charts. What do you get for the woman who already has everything—a billion-dollar-grossing tour, the keys to several cities, a smash movie, a strapping boyfriend? Some collectors are completists about their Beanie Babies or their Dickens first editions. But the perfect matched set [...] Read more