Hot 100 First-Timers: Richy Mitch & The Coal Miners Debut With 7-Year-Old Viral Hit ‘Evergreen’

Richy Mitch & The Coal Miners earn their first career entry on the Billboard Hot 100 dated Aug. 24 thanks to the group’s seven-year-old viral hit, the aptly named “Evergreen.”

Released in May 2017 on the group’s debut studio album RMCM, the track launches at No. 83 on the Hot 100 almost entirely from its streaming sum: 5.7 million official U.S. streams (up 22%) Aug. 9-15, according to Luminate. The song was boosted by a new remix, featuring Caamp, released Aug. 9. (Caamp is not credited on the Hot 100 as the remix did not account for the bulk of the song’s consumption in the tracking week.)

The single also re-enters the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart at No. 14 after reaching No. 11 in March.

Richy Mitch & The Coal Miners and Caamp performed the new remix together for the first time at the FairWell Festival in central Oregon on July 20. “This is 7 years in the making and we’re fortunate enough to have a band that we’ve looked up to from the beginning on it,” the group shared on Instagram. “Excited for you all to finally hear it and excited that this song will finally be out in the world.”

“Evergreen” has been growing in popularity since its original release thanks in large part to TikTok, where its official audio has soundtracked over 300,000 clips to date. The song is typically used in inspiring and wholesome videos using the #hopecore hashtag.

“Evergreen” also became the band’s first overall chart entry in January, when it arrived on Billboard’s Hot Rock Songs and Hot Rock & Alternative Songs charts.

At just 1 minute and 26 seconds long and encompassing only two verses, “Evergreen” is also one of the shortest Hot 100-charting songs in history. In fact, it’s shorter than the shortest No. 1 song (in terms of run time): Maurice Williams & the Zodiacs’ 1960 leader “Stay” (1:38). The shortest song ever on the Hot 100 ever is Kid Cudi’s 37-second-long “Beautiful Trip” in 2020, followed by Piko-Taro’s 45-second “PPAP (Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen)” in 2016. (The new remix of “Evergreen” with Caamp clocks in at 2:57.)

Richy Mitch & The Coal Miners — from Colorado Springs, Colo. — is comprised of lead singer Mitch Cutts, Jakob Ervin, Nicolas Haughn and Ryan Lavallee. The band released RMCM the same day that its members graduated high school. Since then, the act has released two additional albums: Solstice in 2018 and Subliming in 2019.

The band’s upcoming October Moon Tour kicks off in October and runs through November.

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