Forever No. 1

Forever No. 1 is a Billboard series that pays special tribute to the recently deceased artists who achieved the highest honor our charts have to offer — a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single — by taking an extended look back at the chart-topping songs that made them part of this exclusive club. Here, we honor the late Crazy Town frontman Shifty Shellshock by looking at their lone No. 1 as a group: the surprisingly nice and sweet rap-rock staple “Butterfly.”

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By 2001, rap-rock and nu-metal had long since taken over the world. From the mid-’90s peak of Rage Against the Machine and instruments-era Beastie Boys through the late-’90s takeover of KoRn and Limp Bizkit and the eventually diamond-certified breakthrough of Linkin Park’s 2000 debut LP Hybrid Theory, bands mixing loud guitars with aggressive rhymes and copious record-scratching grew into a truly massive piece of the music industry. They infected TRL and dominated Woodstock ’99 and terrified your Backstreet-and-Britney-worshipping younger siblings. But they didn’t get to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 until Crazy Town.

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To some extent, that’s not surprising. The dawn-to-dusk of the entire nu-metal era transpired when radio was still king on the charts, and top 40 airplay in particular formed the shape of the Hot 100. Many of the genre’s biggest bands were heavy and abrasive enough that they struggled to even secure regular alternative rock airplay, let along crossover playlisting on the pop stations. These groups often outsold the pop hitmakers at the top of the Hot 100, but they weren’t a particularly imposing threat to their supremacy on the airwaves. That was particularly true because, unlike in the hair metal era of the late ’80s and early ’90s — the prior period where hard rock played an obviously central role in music’s mainstream — few, if any of these bands made room for power ballads or love songs between their ragers, the kind of songs that could expand both their radio reach and their demographic appeal. In other (highly reductive) words, none of these bands of angry young dudes wrote songs for women.

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Crazy Town did, though. Or at least, they wrote one, for one woman: “Butterfly,” co-penned by group frontman Seth Binzer — known professionally as Shifty Shellshock, who died this week at age 49 — was inspired by a new girlfriend who made him take a second look at his traditionally misogynistic lyrical content. “I was in love [with her,] and she was asking, ‘What’s up with all these lyrics? Is that what you’re like?’” Shellshock recalled to Fred Bronson in The Billboard Book of Number One Hits. “So that made me come up with the concept of writing a song to her. Instead of writing a male chauvinistic song, I was going to write something nice and sweet to a girl I cared about.”

The lyrics to “Butterfly” are indeed nice and sweet — particularly compared to distinctly un-Hallmark prior Crazy Town singles like “Toxic” (“F–k the critics, we leave them hanging like INXS”) and “Darkside” (“Unearthin’ untamed perversion/ My bad brain’s workin’, circle-jerkin’”). Rather, “Butterfly” celebrates the titular love interest with a series of straightforwardly romantic and decently heartfelt verse tributes (“I used to think that happy endings were only in the books I read/ But you made me feel alive when I was almost dead”) and a chorus hook (“You’re my butterfly, sugar baby”) worthy of The Archies. A few questionable couplets, namely one from co-lead Brett “Epic” Mazur comparing him and his intended to storied punk lovers Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen — who died by murder-suicide at the former’s hand — invariably opened the song up to Awesomely Bad-type ribbing. But as far as 21st century mainstream rock love songs go, it’s actually pretty touching.

More critical than the lyrics, though, was that the song sounded especially nice and sweet. Whereas the overwhelming majority of signature nu-metal anthems were confrontational head-bangers, the beat to “Butterfly” is a slow-and-low shuffle, with the record-scratching mostly contained to a background flourish. And while no one would mistake Shellshock’s rapped lead for one of 98 Degrees, his come-ons wisely hew closer to gentle invitation than yawped insistence; the most striking vocals on the entire song come via the complementary toneless backing whispers on the hook (“You make me go CRAZY….“)

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But what really gives “Butterfly” its wings is the Red Hot Chili Peppers sample. In fact, in terms of both inspiration and utility, you could make the case for it being one of the 10 most important pop samples of the entire 21st century — it’s hard to think of too many other hits this big where the lift was this crucial to both the makeup of the song and the reason for it taking flight. Especially because its source is at once both incredibly obvious (a mostly shirtless bunch of SoCal rap-rockers finding kinship with an RHCP track, duh) and remarkably obscure: The percolating bass, weightless guitars and rising-sun horns of “Butterfly” are looped not from one of the Chili Peppers’ hits, but from a pre-crossover 1989 deep cut called “Pretty Little Ditty,” a disorientingly gorgeous four-measure pattern that briefly materializes mid-song and disappears for good immediately after.

While the mini-groove was just a flash of divinity in the original “Ditty,” it makes up the whole musical spine of “Butterfly,” running throughout the entire track. Mazur admitted to Bronson he never expected to get the sample cleared, given the band’s traditional reticence for approving such recycling of their songs, saying, “If we had to fight to get it cleared or they didn’t like it, we would have come up with some other music.” It’s utterly impossible to imagine any version of “Butterfly” without the full “Ditty” sample, though — everything about the song’s particular alchemy depends not only on the sample’s melodies and sonics, but in the built-in (and lived-in) Chili Peppers reference point.

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However, with the heavenly sample elevating Shellshock’s sealed-with-a-kiss mash note lyrics — and a perfect accompanying visual in the lush, pleasantly psychedelic music video, co-starring his eventual wife Melissa Clark — “Butterfly” flapped higher than even any RHCP hit. While the latter band’s generational power ballad “Under the Bridge” stalled at No. 2 on the Hot 100 (behind Kris Kross’ “Jump”), Crazy Town’s breakout smash got all the way to No. 1 on the chart dated March 24, 2001, replacing Joe’s “Stutter” on top. It then gave way to Shaggy and Rayvon’s “Angel” — another romantic ode based around a lovey-dovey-all-the-time rock lift — before reclaiming the top spot, then ceding it for good to Janet Jackson’s seven-week No. 1 “All for You.”

“Butterfly” was not only Crazy Town’s only visit to the Hot 100’s top spot, it was their sole cameo on the entire chart. Gift of Gab follow-up “Revolving Door” made the Official UK Singles Chart’s top 40, and “Drowning” (from 2002 sophomore LP Darkhorse) earned some rock airplay, but the group was never interested in attempting another “Butterfly,” and they broke up shortly after Darkhorse. Shellshock had better fortunes outside of the group, scoring another sublime summery smash with the Paul Oakenfold-led dance-rock skate-along “Starry-Eyed Surprise,” peaking just outside the Hot 100’s top 40 and making the U.K.’s top 10. He scored one more minor hit with the solo “Slide Along Side” (as just Shifty), but his music career was largely sidelined by substance abuse; when he returned to music television in the late ’00s, it was as a cast member on VH1’s Celebrity Rehab.

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But even if “Butterfly” was the lone pillar of Shellshock’s musical legacy, it would still be a sturdy one. The song’s sun-drenched, genre-blending composition and unmistakably of-its-time sound and vision have made it an enduringly iconic snapshot of its era — further helped by its extensive usage in early-’00s comedies like Saving Silverman and Orange County and TV shows like Daria and Undeclared. And while later smashes from Linkin Park, Evanescence and Staind all were able to reach the top five of the Billboard Hot 100, “Butterfly” remains unaccompanied on its perch, still the only nu-metal song to top the chart in its history.

Forever No. 1 is a Billboard series that pays special tribute to the recently deceased artists who achieved the highest honor our charts have to offer — a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single — by taking an extended look back at the chart-topping songs that made them part of this exclusive club. Here, we honor the late Shangri-Las frontwoman Mary Weiss by looking at their lone No. 1 as a group: the spellbinding tragi-pop classic “Leader of the Park.”

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By the time “Leader of the Pack” hit No. 1 in late 1964, the first golden age of girl-group pop was already nearing its end. Groups like The Shirelles, The Angels and The Orlons had seen the hits dry up, while super-producer Phil Spector — who had set much of the sonic and structural template for the era with outfits like The Crystals and The Ronettes — was enjoying his final hits with the latter trio before turning his attention to The Righteous Brothers and Ike & Tina Turner. The Supremes would dominate throughout the ’60s, and their Motown labelmates Martha & The Vandellas and The Marvelettes were able to successfully evolve their sound to the changing era, but they were increasingly the exceptions to the rule. The Beatles were in the midst of modernizing the music world, scoring six Hot 100-toppers in ’64 alone, and the Brill Building pop production model that powered most of the girl group era suddenly didn’t seem quite so fresh.

What was fresh, though, was The Shangri-Las. Making their name with a street-tougher image and more emotionally complex songs than the glammed-out girl groups of the early decade, the quartet fit in just fine with the British-invaded pop world of the mid-’60s — touring with rock hitmakers The Animals and Vanilla Fudge and even performing with proto-punks The Sonics as their backing band. Betty Weiss sang lead on the group’s earliest songs, but she was soon eclipsed as frontwoman by younger sister Mary, whose more expressive and adaptable voice was better suited for the increasingly dramatic songs and rich productions given to the group by George “Shadow” Morton — who brought the Shangri-Las to Red Bird Records as teenagers and ultimately wrote and produced the majority of their hits. (Weiss died earlier this month at age 75.)

“Remember (Walkin’ in the Sand)” was first up for the group in the summer of ’64. Its mix of pounding piano chords, tempo switches, histrionically belted and tensely sung-spoken vocals, despairing lyrics and evocative sound effects proved a perfect introduction to the teenage mini-operas that would ultimately became their signature. It also made for one of the most striking pop singles of its era, as “Remember” peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100, establishing the group as stars. But it would turn out to just be the warm-up for the group’s biggest hit, and the one they remain most known for 60 years later: The tearjerking story song “Leader of the Pack,” a doomed wrong-side-of-the-tracks romance that ends with its titular rogue speeding off to his tragic death.

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Tragedy was nothing new in the pop music of the time: So-called “death discs” had made for one of the most bankable top 40 themes of the turn of the ’60s, with smashes like Ray Peterson’s “Tell Laura I Love Her” and J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers’ “Last Kiss” hinging on such fatalities. The overwhelming majority of these hits were male-sung, however, and a girl group had yet to find major success with one. But with several such groups singing songs in praise of the misunderstood Bad Boy — The Crystals’ Hot 100-topping 1962 gem “He’s a Rebel” being the most obvious and popular example — it made perfect commercial sense to mix such a star-crossed lover ballad with a teen tragedy song, delivered from the girl-group perspective.

But “Leader of the Pack” really revved up the melodrama — somewhat literally, in the case of its recurring motorcycle-engine sound effects — from its opening seconds, with one of the most show-stopping intros in pop history. A single, thundering piano chord is repeatedly struck, as backing vocals hum elegiacally in the background, and intra-Las spoken dialogue introduce the song’s central narrative, first through side gossip (“Is she really going out with him?”) and then through direct questioning (“Betty, is that Jimmy’s ring you’re wearing?”). It establishes everything about the song’s tone and content before the first verse, and also makes it clear that despite its obvious influences, “Leader” doesn’t follow in the path of any pop song before it.

And yes, despite “Betty” being the name of the “Leader” narrator, it was in fact Mary singing lead on the single, and delivering one of the unforgettable vocal performances of ’60s pop. Just 15 years old at the time of recording, there was a rawness and unguardedness to her wailing vocal (“He stood there and asked me wuhhhhh-eyyyyeeee“) that even brilliant young pop peers like Ronnie Spector and Diana Ross were a little too polished for. That was by design, according to legendary songwriter Jeff Barry (who composed the song along with Morton and usual songwriting partner Ellie Greenwich), telling Fred Bronson for The Billboard Book of Number One Hits that he sat close to her while recording “Leader” to give her stability and allow her to “feel free to let it out emotionally.” He notes that her emotional connection to the song is audible on the final product: “She was crying, you can hear it on the record.”

It’s almost unfair to evaluate Weiss’ performance on “Leader” strictly in musical terms, since it was every bit as much a theatrical performance. The single was structured less like a pop song than a radio play — with the backing Las prodding the narrative along with further questioning (“What’cha mean when you say that he came from the wrong side of town?“) and bombastic sound effects providing the necessary punctuation to the story when needed. But it all pivoted on Weiss as its leading lady, torn between her parents and her Jimmy, selling the combined devastation of both young heartbreak and young loss. “I was asking her to be an actress, not just a singer,” Morton later said.

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Of course, Weiss was helped in her star vehicle by having pro’s pros as screenwriters and director. Barry and Greenwich were among the most accomplished songwriters of their era (“Be My Baby,” “Doo Wah Diddy Diddy,” “Chapel of Love”), and they establish the teen-soap story and feelings of “Leader” with maximum lyrical efficiency: “They told me that he was bad/ But I knew that he was sad.” Meanwhile, the song’s melodic instincts are sharp enough that the song never feels too stagey for the top 40: Note how after Weiss spends the verse waxing nostalgic with long, over-drawn phrases and her Las classmates answer her with clipped, staccato responses, they all come together at the end of the refrain to punch in the title phrase with maximum sing-song clarity and impact.

And Morton’s production is what brings the whole song together. It clearly follows from Spector’s Wall of Sound pocket symphonies, but with the added stakes of “Leader,” the song’s sonics are heightened to near-operatic levels: drum thumps approximate loudly echoing heartbeats on the chorus, reverb-soaked, minor-key piano gives the feeling of an impending thunderstorm on the bridge, and the group is elevated to an angelic choir on the heavenly outro, singing the fallen Leader home. And of course, there’s that incessant motorcycle engine: one of the all-time on-record sound effects, as crucial to the song’s pop appeal as any of the more obviously melodic hooks, and also serving as a much-needed act break following each emotionally exhausting verse and refrain. Throw in an unsettlingly vivid crash scene on the bridge — complete with skidding sounds, chilling “LOOK OUT! LOOK OUT!” cries from the backing La’s, and (of course) a climactic key change — and “Leader” was very likely the most action-packed pop single ever released to that point.

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Appropriately, “Leader of the Pack” was received like a late-season blockbuster. It debuted at No. 86 on the Hot 100 dated Oct. 10, 1964, and was No. 1 just seven weeks later, ending the four-week reign of the ascendant Supremes and their second Hot 100-topper “Baby Love.” It spent just one week on top, before being replaced by a very different sort of story song, Lorne Greene’s “Ringo.” The Shangri-Las would never return to the chart’s top spot again, but dizzying follow-up “Give Him a Great Big Kiss” reached No. 18, and 1965’s “I Can Never Go Home Anymore” returned them to the top 10, peaking at No. 6. Even several Shangri-Las singles that failed to reach the top 40, like 1965’s heart-rending “Out in the Streets” (No. 53) and 1966’s absolutely harrowing “Past, Present and Future” (No. 59) made huge impressions not just on fans of the time but future generations of pop listeners, playing a large part in the cult fandom the group inspires to this day.

Indeed, though the Shangri-Las would only be major hitmakers for a couple years, their influence would be widespread for many decades to come. Several key figures from the first generation of punk rockers in the ’70s would cite the Las as formative influences, with The Damned even borrowing the “Is she really going out with him?” intro from “Leader” — which would also title famed angry young rocker Joe Jackson’s breakthrough hit just a couple years later — on their debut single “New Rose.” Later noise-pop merchants like Sonic Youth and The Jesus and Mary Chain similarly found inspiration in the group’s edgy melodrama, and retro-minded 21st century pop stars like Amy Winehouse and Lana Del Rey venerated their fashion, attitude and still-shattering songs. And while the girl group would be less impactful on the top 40 of the late ’60s than it was in the decade’s first half, there would be additional golden ages to come, with the Shangri-Las enduring as one of the gold standards of the form. Despite being perhaps the defining “death disc” of them all, “Leader of the Pack” has proven thoroughly eternal.

Forever No. 1 is a Billboard series that pays special tribute to the recently deceased artists who achieved the highest honor our charts have to offer — a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single — by taking an extended look back at the chart-topping songs that made them part of this exclusive club. Here, we honor the late David Soul by looking at the TV star’s lone major U.S. hit as a recording artist: The ’70s soft-rock ballad “Don’t Give Up on Us.”

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“My name is David Soul and I want to be known for my music.”

The mid-to-late ’70s were a peak period for television’s impact on the Billboard charts. With primetime TV modernizing and diversifying under the influence of innovators like Norman Lear and Aaron Spelling, the biggest shows were crossing over into all parts of popular culture, with theme songs for such hit shows as Happy Days, Welcome Back Kotter and S.W.A.T. all becoming Billboard Hot 100 smashes. What’s more, the stars of the shows themselves were starting to launch pop careers: John Travolta, then best known as Kotter high-school lunk Vinnie Barbarino, had a top 10 single in 1976 with the soft ballad “Let Her In”; a few years later, actor David Naughton reached the top 5 with the discofied title theme to his starring vehicle Makin’ It.

David Soul, star of hit ’70s undercover-cop show Starsky & Hutch — he was Hutch — also benefited from the TV-pop boom of the times. But unlike the aforementioned actor-artists, Soul’s recording career wasn’t just some dalliance or cash-in on a popularity that had simply grown too big for a single medium: He had actually started out as a musician. Soul went the folkie route in the Midwest in the mid-’60s before trying to make it in New York by performing masked and billing himself as “The Covered Man,” finding some success as a guest on variety shows like The Merv Griffin Show, where he would regularly deliver that line up top about wanting to be recognized for his music. Once he revealed himself to be a handsome, blond young man, the novelty of his anonymous routine wore off — but he started attracting the attention of producers in film and TV, who cast him in small guest roles on Flipper, Star Trek, The Streets of San Francisco and more big shows of the late ’60s and ’70s.

His big break came with Starsky & Hutch in 1975, as the action drama won viewers over with its cool cars, hip style (at least by mid-’70s TV standards) and likeable characters. With the show a success and Soul a primetime heartthrob, he saw the opportunity to relaunch his music career — signing to Private Stock records, with promises that he’d be taken seriously as a musician. In 1976, he released his self-titled debut album, and in early 1977, its breakout ballad “Don’t Give Up on Us” started climbing the Hot 100, becoming Soul’s first hit single.

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But “Don’t Give Up on Us” wasn’t actually featured on initial pressings of David Soul. In fact, the dead-center top 40 love song doesn’t sound much like anything else on the album, which is much more in line with the acclaimed work of sardonic ’70s singer-songwriters like Randy Newman and Harry Nilsson — maybe with a bit of ’60s psych-pop mad geniuses like Brian Wilson and Syd Barrett thrown in — and even features a cover of Leonard Cohen’s signature ballad “Bird on a Wire.” But the album had received only limited release by the time Soul had recorded “Give Up,” and sensing hit potential, Private Stock quickly recalled and re-pressed the album to include the new song.

It’s not surprising that the label saw potential in the song, or that they were ultimately validated for doing so. “Give Up” was penned and co-produced by veteran hitmaker Tony Macauley, who helmed a number of major pop hits of the late ’60s and ’70s — even including two of the Billboard staff’s 500 Best Pop Songs of the Hot 100 era, The Foundations’ “Build Me Up Buttercup” and Edison Lighthouse’s “Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes).” “I talked to Tony from the stage of Starsky and Hutch,” Soul told Fred Bronson for The Billboard Book of Number 1 Hits of Macauley trying to sell him on meeting to record a couple songs. “I liked the way he talked to me on the phone so I just said, ‘Sure, come on over.’”

“Give Up” carries Macauley’s deft and delicate touch in its tender melody, with a satisfying and unpredictable chord structure and arrangement reminiscent of Burt Bacharach. The lyrics are mostly sappy and a little silly throughout (“Can’t we stay the way we are?/ The angel and the dreamer/ Who sometimes plays a fool”), but a mysterious bridge where Soul admits, “I really lost my head last night/ You’ve got a right to stop believing,” does introduce a little drama and complexity to the narrative. And the refrain, which weaponizes its title plea by putting it right at the top each time, gets its hooks in you from the very start — leading off the song and appearing consistently enough throughout it to never really let you go from there.

It’s never less than a professional pop production, and one that Soul himself is more than capable of selling with his lilting baritone — particularly when his voice gets double-tracked for some gorgeous self-harmonies on subsequent choruses — which grows just mighty enough to handle the money note on his climactic “We can still come through” insistence. It’s not the most demanding or challenging song, certainly, but it was a perfect fit on late-’70s AM radio, and a natural smash on the Hot 100 in the era of pillow-soft romantic-strife ballad No. 1s like Mary McGregor’s “Torn Between Two Lovers” and Chicago’s “If You Leave Me Now.”

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The song debuted at No. 74 on the Hot 100 dated Jan. 29, 1977, about two-thirds of the way through Starsky & Hutch‘s second season. A little less than three months later, it topped the listing dated Apr. 16, replacing ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” on top before giving way to Thelma Houston’s “Don’t Leave Me This Way” just a week later — with the dancefloor classics on both sides of its No. 1 run portending the complete disco takeover that would nearly consume the chart in the final years of the decade. The song also topped the Official Charts in the U.K., where Soul was even more of a teen idol, and began an impressive run of hits for the singer that also included a trio of top 10 hits from his sophomore album, 1977’s Playing to an Audience of One, led by a second No. 1 hit in the more prowling “Silver Lady.”

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But in the States, “Don’t Give Up on Us” was Soul’s lone visit to the top 40. No additional singles were pulled from David Soul, and while both “Lady” and the Manilow-esque “Going In With My Eyes Open” hit the Hot 100 from Audience of One, neither made it past the 50s. Soul got lost in the MOR shuffle of the late ’70s — it was probably never particularly natural terrain for the former folkie to begin with — and perhaps subsumed a little on radio by disco’s growing dominance. Starsky & Hutch only lasted another couple seasons, as ratings declined and co-star Paul Michael Glaser wanted off the show. By the ’80s, Soul was largely a Me Decade relic in the U.S., starring in a couple failed TV series (including an ill-fated small-screen adaptation of Casablanca) and eventually moving to the U.K. to successfully pursue theater work.

Becoming a ’70s pop one-hit wonder — especially with such a massive one hit — probably isn’t what Soul would have guessed would be his primary musical legacy when he was first starting out in the mid-’60s. But David Soul wanted to be remembered for his music, and if nothing else, “Don’t Give Up on Us” ensured that every obituary published about him in the past month had to get in at least one sentence in the lead paragraph about it.

Forever No. 1 is a Billboard series that pays special tribute to the recently deceased artists who achieved the highest honor our charts have to offer — a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single — by taking an extended look back at the chart-topping songs that made them part of this exclusive club. Here, we honor the late Sinead O’Connor with a look back at her lone No. 1: “Nothing Compares 2 U,” a timeless pop peak at the center of one of the most unusual before-and-after careers in popular music history.
Plenty of artists — plenty of great artists, even — have only one major Billboard Hot 100 hit over the course of their careers. But few, if any, one-hit-wonder stories have ever gone quite like Sinead O’Connor and “Nothing Compares 2 U.” After becoming a critic’s darling and college radio fixture at the end of the ’80s, she pole-vaulted into the top 40 with “Compares,” a Prince-penned cover that was both unanimously acclaimed and overwhelmingly popular, showcasing the enormity of O’Connor’s talent while not being particularly representative of her sound or artistry. And then, just as quickly and spectacularly as she entered the mainstream, she exited it, with a series of creative, personal and political decisions that all but ensured she would never score a hit anywhere near that size again.

While “Compares” bears an unfortunately outsized proportion of the public’s memory of the extraordinary O’Connor today, it also remains one of the most brilliant musical moments of the early ’90s — a song that stands alone, both within her catalog and within all popular music, as without obvious peer or precedent. The number of “greatest” lists it can claim a rightful place on is significant: greatest ’90s songs, greatest covers, greatest breakup songs, greatest music videos. And yet, the fact that O’Connor (who died on Wednesday at age 56) never matched it again — never even tried to — is ultimately more blessing than curse, allowing a singular artist who was never meant for compromise to continue to operate her career (and life) outside of the trappings of the unlikely pop stardom that “Compares” brought her in 1990.

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“Nothing Compares 2 U” was written and first demoed by Prince in 1984 — busy year for the man — and inspired, according to his longtime engineer Susan Rogers, by the departure of his housekeeper Sandy Scipioni. (The fact that the seemingly despairing love song was actually inspired by a non-romantic relationship was “probably why he felt comfortable giving the song away,” Rogers theorized.) Give the song away he did, as the first version appeared as an album cut on the 1985 self-titled debut of The Family, a Prince-formed outfit spawned from the splintering of his prior collaborators The Time. The song was suggested to O’Connor as a cover possibility by Fachtna O’Ceallaigh, her friend and manager who she had also been dating. (O’Connor’s relationship with Prince himself was contentious, and in her 2021 memoirs Remberings, she accused him of behaving violently during their one meeting; the Nelson estate would later block usage of her version of the song in the 2022 Nothing Compares documentary about O’Connor.)

O’Ceallaigh and O’Connor’s romantic relationship was disintegrating around the recording of “Compares,” which many involved credit as the reason her vocal take on the song comes off as so raw and visceral. (“She came into the studio, did it in one take, double-tracked it straight away and it was perfect because she was totally into the song,” engineer Chris Birkett told Sound on Sound. “It mirrored her situation.”) The combination of O’Connor’s alternately mighty and fragile delivery and Prince’s typically vivid and right-brained songwriting made the song indelible from its sighing opening lines — “It’s been seven hours and fifteen days/ Since you took your love away” — and pierces through with the unpredictable bends O’Connor’s vocal takes it through on each verse (“I can eat my dinner in a fancy REST-AU-RAAAAANT,” “I went to the doctor, and guess what he told me, GUESS what he told me”).

It helped O’Connor’s version that The Family’s left clear room for improvement. The arrangement of the original was both too sparse and too busy, lacking in drums and guitars, but still smothered by claustrophobic-sounding keyboards and over-pronounced “oh-oh-oh-oh” backing vocals. And that version’s chorus arrives like an anti-climax: just the title sung twice, without much adornment. With help from Soul II Soul maestro Nelle Hooper, O’Connor’s version instead gets a sturdy but unobtrusive drum shuffle to anchor it, turns down the “ah-ah-ah-ah” backing vocals to a gentle exhale, and smooths the blanketing synths into a soft pillow for her to cry on. And O’Connor’s vocal adds punctuation to a hook that badly needs it: she spikes the final syllable of her second “no-THING!” insistence, and chokes out a rushed “…to you….” like she can feel the knife twist in her heart as she says it.

It also helped, at least in a commercial sense, that the start of the ’90s was essentially ballad-central times for pop music on top 40 radio. The year started off with back-to-back ballads at No. 1 — Phil Collins’ “Another Day in Paradise” and Michael Bolton’s “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You” — and racked up double-digits’ worth by year’s end: Taylor Dayne’s “Love Will Lead You Back,” Mariah Carey’s “Vision of Love” (and “Love Takes Time”), Roxette’s “It Must Have Been Love,” the list goes on and on. “Compares” in particular built from the success of two No. 1 ballads from the end of the ’80s: George Michael’s “One More Try,” whose opening synth washes are a near-dead ringer for “Compares,” and Martika’s “Toy Soldiers,” another moody slow song with booming drums and a volatile vocal — sung by another ’90s Prince collaborator, no less.

But what really put O’Connor’s “Compares” over the top, both artistically and commercially, was the accompanying video, directed by John Maybury as a sort of impressionistic painting come to life. In it, shots of a hazy Parc de Saint-Cloud are cut with uncomfortably close close-ups of a lip-syncing O’Connor, looking almost like a disembodied head in her black turtleneck, filmed against a dark backdrop. The entire thing feels like a painful, distant memory — and O’Connor makes the hurt particularly palpable in the third verse, when her eyes begin to well up, with tears streaming down her face by the start of the final chorus. (She’s since explained that the tears were genuine — inspired not by any breakup-related memories, but thoughts of her then-recently passed mother, brought about by the “all the flowers that you planted, Mama, in the backyard/ all died when you went away” lyric — and watching, they certainly felt it.)

The combination of top 40 readiness and instant MTV iconicity made “Nothing Compares 2 U” a quickly undeniable sensation. The song debuted on the Hot 100 at No. 63 in March of 1990, and five weeks later, it replaced Tommy Page’s “I’ll Be Your Everything” (another ballad, natch) atop the Hot 100 dated April 21 — a jaw-droppingly rapid ascent for the time period, especially for an artist with no prior history on the chart. It stayed on top for four weeks, tied with “Vision of Love” and Stevie B’s “Because I Love You (The Postman Song)” for the longest-running No. 1 of the year, before being replaced by Madonna’s “Vogue” (a rare club-friendly No. 1 for the year). “Compares” would make history at that year’s MTV Video Music Awards, becoming the first video from a female artist to win video of the year, and was also nominated for record of the year at the 1991 Grammys, losing to “Another Day in Paradise.”

In the meantime, the song’s parent album — I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, O’Connor’s second LP — also topped the Billboard 200 albums chart, staying there for six weeks. But while the album was a stunning collection of protest songs, personal statements, relationship dissections and, well, “Compares,” there wasn’t a particularly obvious choice for a follow-up single. That was well-evidenced by the song her Chrysalis label ultimately went with: “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” an up-tempo number about O’Connor’s frustrations over being told what to do by family, friends and interested business partners after becoming a young mother and young industry sensation at nearly the same time. It had a fun groove and clever lyrics, but it also had difficult subject matter, no proper chorus, and a title that didn’t show up until the very last line of the song. Unsurprisingly, it stalled at No. 60 on the Hot 100.

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More surprising was that she would never visit the chart again in her lifetime. Her discomfort at being part of the mainstream was quickly clear; in August of 1990, she refused to play a concert at New Jersey’s Garden State Arts Center if the venue followed its tradition of playing the National Anthem before shows; local backlash was immediate and Jersey icon Frank Sinatra threatened to “kick her in the ass.” The next year, she would refuse the Grammy she won for Haven’t Got — the first-ever Grammy for best alternative music album — while decrying the “false and destructive materialistic values” within the industry that she felt the ceremonies helped promote. Most famously, in 1992, she ripped up a picture of Pope John Paul II live on Saturday Night Live, stating “fight the real enemy” — a message she later clarified to be in protest of his purposeful ignorance regarding sexual abuse in the church. While such protests would likely receive support as well as backlash now, in the early ’90s O’Connor ended up getting it from both sides, targeted by the right as a heretic and agitator and mocked by the left as a kook.

O’Connor’s musical output was hardly any more likely to steady her stardom: In 1992, weeks before the SNL protest, she released Am I Not Your Girl?, a covers album of jazz and vocal pop and country standards, released at the height of grunge, R&B and house music. Compounded by her off-court controversies, the album underperformed, peaking at No. 27 on the Billboard 200 and spawning only minor alternative radio hit singles. She continued recording throughout the ’90s — returning to the top five on her Ireland home country’s singles chart with her 1994 Gavin Friday collab for the In the Name of the Father soundtrack, “You Made Me the Thief of Your Heart” — and remained productive in the ’00s, releasing four studio albums. But her time in the mainstream was over.

This was a loss that O’Connor cried no tears for, however. “I feel that having a No. 1 record derailed my career,” she wrote in her 2021 memoir, Rememberings, “and my tearing the photo put me back on the right track.” As she continued to record and perform up until the early 2020s, she believed that those who thought her career had gone off the rails in the early ’90s were focusing on the wrong track altogether: “They’re talking about the career they had in mind for me,” she told The Guardian that same year. “I f–ked up the house in Antigua that the record company dudes wanted to buy. I f–ked up their career, not mine.”

And though her relationship with the song that did “derail” her career has seen its bumps — she stopped performing it for a few years in the 2010s, explaining that she’d lost any emotional connection to it — and the hurt between her and the Purple One never healed, she always held tight onto her signature hit: “As far as I’m concerned,” she told the New York Times in 2021, “it’s my song.” It always will be.

Forever No. 1 is a Billboard series that pays special tribute to the recently deceased artists who achieved the highest honor our charts have to offer — a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single — by taking an extended look back at the chart-topping songs that made them part of this exclusive club. Here, we honor the late Tina Turner with a look back at her lone No. 1: her career-rebooting smash and eventual signature song, “What’s Love Got to Do With It.”

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Pop historians remember 1984 as one of the greatest years in U.S. top 40 history — a time when, powered by the new commercial and artistic possibilities afforded by MTV, a new class of solo superstars ascended to a previously near-unimaginable plane of success. Multi-platinum-certified albums. Sold-out stadium tours. Unavoidable music videos. Madonna. Prince. Michael. Bruce. And another mononymously recognized icon who no absolutely no one could have predicted being back in that pop inner circle just a few years earlier: Tina.

Tina Turner‘s name was a strange fit on the marquee for a year of pop music that was so much about the future. For one, she was already middle-aged by that point — at 44, practically a full generation older than the 25-year-old Madonna and MJ — and for another, she’d been out of the limelight for the better part of a decade, having broken free of abusive on-stage and romantic partner Ike Turner, but failing to that point to achieve much in the way of solo chart success. In 1984, she staged one of the era’s greatest comebacks, armed with a new contract with Capitol Records, a new set of rock and pop collaborators, and most importantly, one of the most perfect pop songs of the late 20th century: “What’s Love Got to Do With It.”

“Love” wasn’t the first single from Turner’s 1984 album Private Dancer; that was actually her cover of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.” Her rendition of the 1972 Billboard Hot 100-topper served as a sort of soft launch for New Tina, putting the focus back on her inimitable pipes (and in the video, her singular style) while also showing off an updated synth-soul sound, courtesy of producers Greg Marsh and Martyn Ware — the latter one of the co-founders of then-cutting-edge synth-pop outfit Heaven 17. It was a modest success, peaking at No. 26 on the Hot 100 and becoming her first top 40 hit since 1973 — but it was just the table-setter for what would come next.

“What’s Love Got to Do With It,” produced by U.K. hitmaker Terry Britten and co-written by Britten and Scottish folk-rock alum Graham Lyle, is simply the kind of song any veteran pop performer would kill for. It’s mature without being staid, it’s catchy without being cheesy, and it’s got an obvious soulfulness and wisdom to it without sounding explicitly retro or old-fashioned. It was a quintessentially grown-up single, one befitting of Turner’s age and stature, but even while arriving amidst the biggest pop explosion since peak disco (or maybe peak Fab Four), it still sounded very much of its time — a song that could be playlisted in between Footloose soundtrack singles and new wave hits by Duran Duran and Frankie Goes to Hollywood on top 40 radio and not feel out of place.

It helped that the groove of “Love” was amorphous enough to allow the song to fit just about anywhere. The song’s subject matter and melody — and Turner’s pedigree — probably made it most easily slotted into R&B, and the song did hit No. 2 on Billboard‘s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs (then Black Singles) chart. But Turner herself was more interested in rock music, and the production’s soupy, cinematic mix of choppy guitars, throbbing bass and bubbling synths on the intro and verses is more reminiscent of Foreigner’s big ballads of the time than anything else. And while the big pop hooks are the most attention-grabbing parts of the chorus, the most inspired bit of it might be how the rhythm shifts from the tense melodrama of the verse to a much looser, almost reggae-like shuffle for the refrain. It’s an incredibly versatile song, and much more of a shape-shifter than it seems at first.

But none of it works without Turner behind the microphone. Unlike the chops on display with her “Together” cover, she’s noticeably restrained on “Love,” showing more of her power in what she holds back than what she lets go. She croons like someone who’s a little embarrassed to be singing what she’s singing — like she’s not sure she should be admitting any of this to us — which makes sense, given that the song is all about attempting to disavow love as a “second-hand emotion,” and putting a strictly-physical framework around a relationship that’s clearly revealing itself to be much more.

It’s not that Turner doesn’t bring the goods with her vocal, as you can still hear her unleash with her peerless might on the first “OHHHH, WHAT’S LOVE…” following the mid-song key change. But even then, she quickly pulls back for the rest of the “got to do with it” phrase, as if she’d let her emotions get the better of her for just a quick second before remembering herself. It’s a performance of spellbinding control, texture and feeling, the kind that a less-skilled, less-seasoned belter simply couldn’t be trusted to pull off.

Helped by a popular music video that featured a high-heeled, leather pencil-skirted Turner encountering various strangers on the streets of New York, “Love” took the Hot 100 by storm in May of 1984, bounding up the chart and hitting the top 10 that July. It finally hit No. 1 on the chart dated Sept. 1, replacing Ray Parker, Jr.’s “Ghostbusters” and lasting for three weeks before being deposed by John Waite’s “Missing You.” A couple weeks later, she would perform the song at the first-ever MTV Video Music Awards — though the video itself would not be eligible until the next year, when it beat out Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, Sade and Sheila E. for best female video. The song also dominated at the 1985 Grammys, taking home statues for record of the year, song of the year, and best pop vocal performance – female.

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Turner would never reach the Hot 100 apex again, but she would remain a fixture in its top tier for years to come. Private Dancer spawned two more top 10 hits in the rocking “Better Be Good to Me” (No. 5, Nov. 1984) and the theatrical title track (No. 7, March 1985), and before the next year was out, she added a third in the No. 2-peaking “We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome),” from the soundtrack to Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. Her 1986 follow-up Break Every Rule wasn’t quite the blockbuster Private Dancer was, but it spawned another No. 2 hit with lead single “Typical Male.” And though 1989’s “The Best” would reach only No. 15 on the Hot 100, it was one of her biggest global successes, and would endure as one of Turner’s signature numbers.

“I Don’t Wanna Fight,” released in 1993 from the soundtrack to her Angela Bassett-starring film biopic — unsurprisingly titled What’s Love Got to Do With It — would mark her final visit to the top 10, hitting No. 9. From there, she mostly shifted to the legacy phase of her career, racking up career accolades (including a pair of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions, with Ike in 1991 and as a solo artist in 2021) and remaining a major touring draw until she got off the road for good in 2009. “What’s Love Got to Do With It” has continued to endure in popular culture, inspiring the chorus to Fat Joe and Ashanti’s No. 2-peaking 2002 smash “What’s Luv,” and becoming a hit once more with Turner’s original timeless vocal via a globally successful Kygo remix in 2020 — proving that even 60 years after her debut (and a decade into her retirement), Tina Turner was still never far away from her next comeback.