No one older than 22 has topped the Hot 100 since April. If singer-slash–nonthreatening boy Shawn Mendes got to choose a day in his life to relive over and over—as a wistful, horny Bill Murray longs to do in Groundhog Day—I’ll bet he would choose Monday, Aug. 26, 2019. Mendes’ awesome day climaxed on the MTV [...] Read more

The 17-year-old singer followed the new rules for pop success—and held on till X couldn’t no more. Does anybody remember Jay Sean? Ten years ago, this British singer, born to Sikh parents, blended Bhangra and R&B and topped Billboard’s Hot 100 with a chirpy, Auto-Tuned hip-hop ditty called “Down.” Featuring a bridge rapped by the [...] Read more

  Music It wasn’t just the controversy, the memes, or all those remixes. By Chris Molanphy July 29, 20194:34 PM Tweet Share Comment In the nearly four months since I last had a new No. 1 hit to write about for Slate, there have been moments, I’ll admit, when I wondered whether Lil Nas X’s [...] Read more

  Music The debate about Lil Nas X’s No. 1 hit is only the latest sign that Billboard’s methodology is broken. By Chris Molanphy April 12, 20194:23 PM <img src="https://compote.slate.com/images/6f8b3507-72bb-4d74-928b-46a983211fe4.jpeg?width=780&amp;height=520&amp;rect=1560x1040&amp;offset=0x0" alt="Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus" /> Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus. Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Columbia Records; Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty [...] Read more

Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s journey to the top of the charts is virtually unprecedented. By Chris Molanphy Years from now, when pop critics and cultural historians write about the phenomenon that was Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s “Shallow,” it will be tagged as a Billboard chart-topper, but I’d wager that few, if any, of [...] Read more

Writing about popular music is lousy with obnoxious words. Indeed, there are so many—jangly, crunchy, seminal—that there is a whole book of them (and shamefully, I have used my share). Making things more complicated, much of this language is also subject to a generational divide—words coined by the young are understood to be off-limits to [...] Read more

A pop singer, living out the old maxim to “write what you know,” records a song about heartbreak and the spiteful feelings it engenders. Rumors abound that the raw lyric is directed at a high-profile former paramour. (The singer denies it, not entirely believably.) The singer has been around a while and even topped the [...] Read more

Why “Sicko Mode” sits atop the Hot 100. In early 1984—as Michael Jackson’s Thriller was nearing the end of its epic run at No. 1, about 15 months after its release—a non-album single appeared on the radio that sounded like a Jackson bonus track. It was clearly Michael’s voice, singing the chorus, sounding paranoid about [...] Read more

The single’s chart-topping success is the culmination of years of resilience in the face of tragedy and heartbreak. As if Saturday Night Live hadn’t already been sucking up enough oxygen since President Donald Trump took office, 2018 may go down as the year the NBC institution set the agenda for the pop charts, too. For [...] Read more

The band’s new No. 1 is only their latest collaboration with the song factory. The Beatles. Led Zeppelin. The Clash. Talking Heads. The Police. Nirvana. All of these hit-making, Hall of Fame–level rock bands recorded together for fewer years than Maroon 5, who have now been releasing hit albums and, especially, hit singles for 16 [...] Read more