Picture a young pop act selling a rare 10 million copies of an album: “diamond” status in America, a major career pinnacle. This is a remarkable feat, especially considering that the act originally launched in the shadow of another genre-defining artist. Our young act reached the diamond level the old-fashioned, solid-and-steady way: never selling a [...] Read more

A crucial part of being a star is knowing how to make an entrance. Perhaps no one knew this better than golden-age movie stars. They made entrances that pretended to be about the material but were really all about them. Picture Rita Hayworth, flipping her hair and issuing a mock-surprised “Me?” in 1946’s Gilda. Or [...] Read more

Shouldn’t the most talked-about, most-memed song of the week be on top of the hit parade? I mean, what’s a pop chart for? From “Call Me Maybe” to “Harlem Shake” to “Wrecking Ball,” this decade has brought us a raft of No. 1 hits that got to the top thanks to a combination of musical [...] Read more

It’s always a mug’s game to try to predict which songs will wind up atop the Billboard Hot 100, but let me just establish this up-front: I did not see The Weeknd’s “The Hills” coming. In fact, I am on record, here at Slate, on that very point. Six weeks ago, when The Weeknd’s infectious, [...] Read more

Here’s a list of No. 1 hits from the last half-dozen years of Billboard’s Hot 100. What do they have in common? Britney Spears, “3” (October 2009) Eminem, “Not Afraid” (May 2010) Ke$ha, “We R Who We R” (November 2010) Britney Spears, “Hold It Against Me” (January 2011) Lady Gaga, “Born This Way” (February 2011) [...] Read more

A singer steps in front of a glittery curtain on a tiny stage at a seedy nightclub. As he begins to sing, he leans hard into the mic, closing his eyes and throwing down his best Michael Jackson splayed-leg dance moves. The crowd at the club looks on passively—a woman smiles coyly, but the rest [...] Read more

Well, America, you certainly are consistent. One year—to the week—after the Hot 100 was topped by the frilly, reggae-based, down-on-one-knee “Rude” by Canadian jammers Magic, Billboard’s flagship pop chart is topped by another border-crossing, reggae-derived tune ending in a popped question. Only this time the act actually hails from Jamaica: Clarendon native Omar Samuel Pasley, [...] Read more

“Every movie in every cinema is about death,” a wise man once said. “Death sells.” Of course, Spinal Tap manager Ian Faith was saying this about an album with a none-more-black cover, featuring songs with titles like “Hell Hole.” But as history has shown time and again, if you combine death with a hopeful melody, [...] Read more

On Billboard’s Pop Shop podcast a couple weeks ago, the magazine’s associate editor Jason Lipshutz and associate director of charts Keith Caulfield were politely debating whether the new album at No. 1 had had a great week or a meh week. Imagine Dragons’ Smoke + Mirrors opened at No. 1 on that week’s album chart [...] Read more

Maybe it’s the exclamation point! I’m talking about the official, fully punctuated title of “Uptown Funk!” That’s the spirited new No. 1 song in America, according to Billboard’s flagship Hot 100 pop chart. The jamming, horn-inflected single is indeed exclamatory. Like a sexy Ginsu pitchman, the peacocking singer insists, over and over, that his hot-damned [...] Read more