Since the first Billboard Hot 100 chart was published in August 1958, 44 songs have debuted at the top spot; since April of this year, nine singles, just over a fifth of all songs to accomplish this debut, have done so. The increased rate of No. 1 debuts can be attributed to the decline of the physical sales era that came with the prevalence of streaming services. As a result, debuting at No. 1 no longer holds the same merit as it did back in the 1990s when the first few top debuts occurred.
Mariah Carey became the first woman to debut at the peak of the chart in 1995 with “Fantasy.”She would go on to debut two more songs — “One Sweet Day” (1995) and “Honey” (1997) — at the top before 2000, setting the record at the time as the artist with the most debut hits.As time went on, this occurrence became increasingly common. When song sales began to drop in the 2000s and streaming popularity grew in the 2010s, sales metrics were readjusted to determine which songs were the best-selling of each week.
Carey’s “One Sweet Day” with Boyz II Men held the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for 16 weeks,becoming the longest running No. 1 at the time. Their record was eventually tied by Luis Fonsi, Daddy Yankee and Justin Bieber for “Despacito” (2017) and broken by Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus in 2019 when their hit “Old Town Road” claimed the top spot for 19 weeks. In the streaming era, it is much easier to sit in comfort at home streaming a song on Spotify than to have to drive to the record store to purchase the track.
As a result, the merit of a No. 1 debut is rapidly diminishing. While a highly publicized song can vault itself to the top in its first week, its success is not sustainable. “TROLLZ” by 6ix9ine and Nicki Minaj, for example, debuted at the top in June and fell to No. 34 in its second week. The song would stay on the Hot 100 chart for a mere four weeks while Carey’s “One Sweet Day” held the top spot for four times that length.
Plenty of Carey’s records have been broken, like her No. 1 debut recordby Ariana Grande in 2020. But the hard work it took for earlier artists to achieve these feats must be recognized. Are today’s No. 1 debuts songs that audiences would go out and buy consistently for months like previous hits, or are they simply popular due to the convenience of streaming?
In this case, it is definitely the latter. Promotion draws audiences to check out a song in its first week, but once they realize it lacks the true quality of a hit, the song inevitably plummets from the top spot. As this trend continues, the once coveted No. 1 debut loses its value.
