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

Eminem and Rihanna have been here before. YouTube “The Monster”—America’s newest No. 1 single, according Billboard’s flagship Hot 100 chart—is the umpteenth example of one of the most durable pop tropes of the last two decades: the rough-and-smooth pairing of a gruff rapper and a hook-belting singer. It’s flawlessly constructed—machine-tooled, really—for radio dominance, a stew [...] Read more

On Monday here at Brow Beat, Forrest Wickman wrote about President Obama “singing” (in supercut form) Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky,” and declared that the single “seems more and more destined to be the song of the summer.” The only question, he wondered, was whether it could “topple its nearest competitor, Robin Thicke’s Marvin Gaye–inspired ‘Blurred Lines’ ” [...] Read more