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This week, Kenya Grace’s global smash “Strangers” ascended to No. 1 on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs, marking the first time in the chart’s 10-year history that it’s been led by a track solely written, produced and sung by a woman.
Not bad for a song the 25-year-old artist wrote three months ago in her bedroom in Chandler’s Ford, England. A dreamy, sort of ominous ode to meeting people on dating apps who then ghost, “Strangers” marks a sort of belated pop breakthrough moment for drum’n’bass, the longstanding electronic genre that’s currently one of dance music’s backbone sounds, particularly in Grace’s native U.K.

“It’s really a huge part of young people’s lives here,” Grace tells Billboard over Zoom.

The song is also a milestone moment for Major Recordings, the flagship dance label from Warner Records that launched earlier this year. “I wrote ‘Strangers’ a week after I signed with them,” Grace says with a laugh.

“Strangers” is currently sitting at No. 71 on the Billboard Hot 100 (dated Oct. 21) and is also in the top position on the Dance/Electronic Streaming Songs and Dance/Electronic Digital Song Sales charts for a fifth and third week, respectively.

Below, Grace tells Billboard how she created her breakthrough hit.

How did “Strangers” come together?

I wrote it about two months ago in my room. I didn’t think too much into the full song, but I made a video of just the chorus. Nothing else existed at that point. I posted it on Instagram and TikTok and people seemed to really like it. I always find that I can write the chorus quickly, and then, like a week after, I get back into the head space and write the rest of the song. I finished writing, and then we worked on the production for a bit and got it mixed and mastered. We released it soon after that. It has been really fast.

How long did it take you to finish it?

It was pretty fast. I always find I can write the chorus really quickly. Then, like a week after, I get back into the headspace and write the rest of the song. Probably a week later, I finished writing [“Strangers”], and then we worked on the production for a bit and then got it mixed and mastered.

And it’s all happening in your bedroom. Paint a picture of that space.

It’s just a tiny room; I live in the countryside, in a tiny town an hour outside of London. My room is a really average room. The amazing thing about my house, though, is my window overlooks the woods. So I think that’s helpful with the deep thoughts or whatever.

The track has been hugely successful on TikTok. What’s your relationship with social media?

My favorite thing to do is make beat videos. I love writing a mini song and then making all the drum loops and everything, so TikTok and Instagram are like my perfect places. It has been a crazy year because last year, I seriously considered giving up music. Then, I posted a video on TikTok, and it changed my whole life. My socials are really different now — I think that’s the biggest thing, just the amount of people, the amount of love. It has blown my mind.

How do you feel about bringing drum’n’bass further into the mainstream?

It wasn’t a goal, [but] I really love dance music in general. Drum’n’bass is the first thing I went out to; it’s what all my friends go out to. It’s really a huge part of young people’s lives in the U.K. Liquid drum’n’bass I especially love — it’s basically a more emotional version of drum’n’bass. Like dance music, but a very soft version. I love that so much. I feel like it goes well with my voice. 

Are the lyrics based on actual events?

It’s a mixture of stuff that’s happened to me, stuff that’s happened to my friends and things I’ve noticed around me. It’s so common, in this day and age, that you’ll see someone for a bit, and you’ll speak all the time and then randomly one day, you just never speak again. It happens so much with Tinder and Hinge and things like that. It’s so easy to just give up and swipe on to the next person. It’s basically about that. It’s happened to me. It’s happened to all my friends.

What do your friends and family think about everything that’s going on for you?

My family is still in shock, to be honest. It’s just crazy. None of us have ever experienced anything like this, on this level. One of my friends said there was an article in the U.K. [Official Charts] — it was like, me versus Doja Cat. My friends were like, “Kenya Grace challenging Doja Cat? This sentence should not exist!” I was just like, “Yeah, I don’t know how it exists.” It’s so crazy.

A version of this story originally appeared in the Oct. 7, 2023, issue of Billboard.

Armed with just a microphone, a lion-like mane of warm brown curls, and her otherworldly voice, Whitney Houston sauntered onto the Radio City Music Hall stage at the 1990 15th anniversary celebration of Arista Records – ready to bless the packed audience with five minutes of unabashed pop music bliss. She delivered an unforgettable rendition of her ever-enduring pop smash “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Love Me),” the song that became her fourth single to top the Billboard Hot 100. 

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Of the three songs Whitney performed at the concert, “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” was her only selection that wasn’t a cover. This was the song chosen to best represent the contributions of Whitney Houston, the vocalist, artist and brand, to Arista’s legacy. In fact, the performance – which focused on the magnetism of Whitney’s stage presence, proving the single was still a stunner even unplugged – was a victory lap for the song’s success, which had been raging for over two years at that point.  

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Considering the song stood as the peak of Houston’s oft-derided crossover pop hits — the mid-late ‘80s were a period of Houston’s career where she was accused of “selling out” to the sounds of white pop music — choosing to perform “Somebody” was intentional. Instead of teasing the new jack swing-informed sound of her forthcoming I’m Your Baby Tonight (1990), a performance of “Somebody” cemented the song as bigger and more powerful than any discourse around it. “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” was and remains undeniable.

The performance was “a unique demonstration of why [Whitney] was the greatest contemporary singer we have ever experienced in music,” says music industry icon and Houston’s former Arista label head Clive Davis. “It was the most affecting of any of them, the most exhilarating and awesome performance of that song. She took Radio City by storm, the audience screamed for her, she was just raising the level higher than they could have ever imagined.” 

Whitney Houston recorded several contenders for the greatest pop song of all time throughout her storied career. While each of them has its own merits – including the ones that did not reach the top of the Hot 100 – the rest still pale in comparison to “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” with its singalong chorus, ebullient synths, and towering vocal performance. 

The track served as the lead single from her blockbuster sophomore album — Whitney, which spawned four consecutive Hot 100 No. 1 singles (starting with “Somebody”) and helped Houston become the first female artist to debut atop the Billboard 200. Topping charts in virtually every country that had them, the song was the beginning of a new phase of Houston’s career. The Newark, N.J. native was coming off her massively successful Whitney Houston debut album, and it was time to prove that not only was she here to stay, but that she could also compete with the big dogs — and win. 

“I wanted to be like, ‘OK, Michael Jackson; OK, Prince; OK, Aretha; OK, whoever’s hot — get back!” says “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” producer Narada Michael Walden. “[Whitney’s] gonna take over everything!” 

“I Wanna Dance With Somebody” went on to win Houston a Grammy for best female pop vocal performance, sell millions of copies worldwide and (decades later) become her best-performing song on streaming services. Over 35 years after its original release, Billboard talks to the key players behind “Somebody” about how our pick for the Greatest Pop Song of All Time came to be. 

Boys Meets Girl and the ‘Dance of Life’ 

The story of “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” technically begins with the story of another Whitney Houston Hot 100 chart-topper: a love-paranoid slice of jaunty ‘80s pop by the name of “How Will I Know.” Written by Shannon Rubicam and George Merrill – the artists behind pop-rock duo Boy Meets Girl — along with producer Narada Michael Walden, “How Will I Know” served as the third single from Houston’s debut album, and its success earned the songwriting partners new insight into writing more hits for the country’s hottest new star. 

“We tried our best not to freak ourselves out because we had to follow [“How Will I Know”] up, and that’s a little challenging because of all your self-doubts,” Rubicam says. “We knew that she could deliver something large.” 

First, Shannon and Rubicam had a false start with a song that Davis and Arista rejected – and that the duo ended up keeping for themselves. Shortly after hitting the top of the Hot 100 with “How Will I Know,” Merrill and Rubicam pitched “Waiting for a Star to Fall,” which Davis passed on, as did other label A&Rs. Belinda Carlisle even recorded a demo for it, but after the song stalled in publishing purgatory, the duo decided to record the song themselves as Boy Meets Girl in 1988 – and it ultimately became the outfit’s biggest hit, peaking at No. 5 on the Hot 100. “I can see why Clive thought it wouldn’t be good for Whitney,” Rubicam muses. “It’s more personal of a song, perhaps a little less universal, and I think it didn’t quite have her kind of melodies and verve.”

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Undeterred by the bumpy road for “Star to Fall,” the duo continued to write, eventually stumbling into their next Houston-sung smash. As the title suggests, “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” spawned from a moment of solitude. “We lived in Venice, CA, and we started making a habit of going out for a walk around dusk… because there’s something about that dusky hour that makes a person restless and uneasy, or a little isolated and estranged from the world in some ways,” Rubicam explains. “There’s this social pressure, like ‘I should be doing something right now.’”  

That feeling of restlessness and isolation led to Rubicam seeing “a visual in my head about going to the club and finding company. Then it morphed into finding someone to love who would love you back and do that dance of life with you.” That general idea carried Rubicam through the first verse, but she found a bit more difficulty with the second verse: “You’ve already got a structure established in the first verse rhythmically and melodically, so you’re sort of doing a crossword puzzle to make the new lyrics fit,” she elaborates. 

Rubicam’s method proved successful – and with finishing touches by way of a PPG Wave synth intro (which was “brand new” to the duo, according to Merrill) the demo for “I Wanna Dance Somebody” was ready to be pitched. “I think when we were writing the chorus, we had a really good feeling. We felt confident and certainly enough so to present it to Clive [Davis],” Merrill recounts. 

What followed was Merrill having to sprint through LAX to hand-deliver a cassette tape of his and Rubicam’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” demo to Davis before his flight took off.  

“We’ve made so many trips to LAX from our house in Venice, so we knew exactly how long it would take,” remembers Rubicam. “So, I headed to an airline that doesn’t exist anymore, it was Transworld Airlines.” Merrill adds, “It’s actually one of my favorite stories of all time, having that moment of running through the airport!” 

Clive Davis recalls the encounter similarly: “Sure enough, George met me at TWA, handed me a cassette of the demo with the lyrics to ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody,’ and I heard it on the airplane on my way back to New York.” Once Davis sat with the demo, he heard hit potential in the song’s chorus but felt there was “a lot that could be brought to the fore,” with the addition of a new vocal and track arrangement. 

For that, Davis handpicked “How Will I Know” writer-producer Narada Michael Walden to helm the new single. “Once Clive said yes to it, and we heard that Whitney was singing it, Narada was producing it, there’s not very much that could have gone wrong with that combination,” says Rubicam. 

Funk-ifying “Dance” 

The brilliance of “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” results from a combination of well-plotted studio precision and the divine ways in which Houston innately understood how to color a record with her inimitable voice. While Rubicam’s lyrics remained relatively unchanged from her and Merrill’s demo, Houston and Narada’s synergy culminated in an immediate pop masterpiece. 

Initially drawn to the “happy and infectious” chorus, Walden could “hear what Clive was liking about [the demo],” but he still felt that he needed to “funk it up” to make it the right fit for Houston. “Because I’m a Black cat, I know Whitney’s African-American, and we want our people to be down,” Walden says. “The demo was just too poppy and not grounded in the funk which it needed to be the smash for Whitney. Immediately, I’m listening to it and going, “Whatcha gon’ do, Narada, to Blacken this thing up and funk it up, so that the people in the ghetto and the nightclubs are jamming too?” 

To ground his transformation of “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” Walden looked to lessons learned from his mentor Quincy Jones. “My philosophy is the outhouse bottom with the penthouse view,” says Walden. “If it’s got nastiness on the bottom, which is really funky, but it’s very pretty on top, that combination is kind of irresistible.” 

So, Walden recruited Randy Jackson — of later American Idol fame — on synth bass, “lined up all different kinds of keyboards,” and employed a very particular approach to recording Whitney’s vocals. Just as Merrill and Rubicam had a new understanding of Houston’s abilities after working on “How Will I Know,” Walden understood that a post-debut Houston would have limited in-studio time because of her grueling promotional schedule. To work around those limitations, Walden and his crew would record the entire song sans Houston’s vocals, so she could easily envision what the end product would sound like. 

Following Houston’s debut album — which mostly relied on ballads for its singles, “How Will I Know” aside — Walden knew that “Somebody” had to prove that she could dominate with uptempo pop, and also fit alongside the most forward-thinking pop auteurs of the time.  

“Music had made a shift with synthesizers and drum machines,” reflects Walden. “The LinnDrum machines were all the new rage with the hippest cats like Prince, who was smacking us with Purple Rain and sounds we’ve never heard before. Then you have Quincy, who would hire the most death-defying brains to make Michael Jackson’s new sounds. The competition was really high to mastermind a new sound for Whitney.” 

With the help of an illustrious crew that included Walter Afanasieff, Corrado Rustici, Preston Glass, Marc Russo and Greg Gonaway, Walden remodeled the original demo in the image of a funky horn-laden anthem of human connection, which could get play in every corner of the world. Nonetheless, two of the most recognizable elements of “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” were far from predetermined. The track bursts open with explosive horns that are quite unlike typical analog brass, or even routine synth horns. Walden says the unique horn sounds were the result of an engineer “playing around” with a synth overdub that he had requested. “It was synth horns, but with a glizz on it that made it like something we’ve never done before,” he says. “We glizz the bass, we never glizz the horns!” 

Of course, it is Houston’s voice that makes “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” such a transcendent song. During the recording process, Walden was very particular about how Houston’s vocals were cut so that only the best possible takes were used to make the final version of the song. He would have her record the end of the song first, to ensure that the most vocally demanding portions of the track had Houston working at full capacity.  

“I would focus her on [the ending] to keep the energy high,” he explains. “Once we got the ending done, now let’s go back and look at that first verse. Now we can get a bit more methodical and technical… I’ve learned this with soul singers: If you get too technical too early, you suck the spirit out of them.” Houston took a few notes from Rubicam’s demo and expanded them into a freewheeling showcase of vocal fortitude. “[Whitney was] a true recording artist, because she just found her way into making a song her own when she liked it,” says Rubicam.  

In letting Houston get her fire out at her own pace, Walden helped foster an environment where she led with her spirit, which eventually resulted in her stumbling into the now-iconic “Say you wanna dance, don’t you wanna dance” vamp following the final chorus – the ultimate nod to her amalgamation of gospel, funk, soul and pop. That energy mainly came from a studio session the previous day, during which Houston had the pleasure of stacking her own harmonies for the very first time, boosting her with a new level of fire to finish recording her “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” vocals.  

“You’re hearing an excited Whitney on [that song],” Walden gushes. 

“When We Saw the Video… That’s When We Knew”

As undeniable as the song is on its own, the success of “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” is also highly indebted to its music video, which was helmed by “How Will I Know” music video director Brian Grant. In fact, Walden, Rubicam and Merrill all heard the final cut of “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” while watching the song’s Totally ‘80s music video for the first time. “When we saw the video and how dazzling she was, just captivating the camera, that’s when we knew ‘She’s going No. 1 with this’ — it was just so powerful,” remembers Walden. 

To bring “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” from record to video, Grant was tasked with the challenge of outdoing his clip for “How Will I Know” — Houston’s closest-sounding hit to “Somebody” and an MTV Video Music Award winner for best female video. He first had to tackle the hilariously ironic fact that his star could not, in fact, dance. Instead, he opted for “lots of little scenarios as if you’re turning a page in a magazine.” Even though the individual scenarios – which included Houston bopping along in a cloud of confetti and jamming out in front of a graffitied wall while decked out in a black leather biker jacket —  had “nothing to do with the song,” Grant says, he “just wanted to shoot Whitney from lots of different ways, and give her lots of different looks and surround her with dancers who could do most of the dancing.”

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Grant pulled from a few classic MGM musicals to inform the video, but his main goal was properly capturing the effervescence of both the track and Whitney’s vocal. He knew the song itself was dynamic enough because of how the dancers reacted to the music. “There’s something about the way they dance when they know they’ve got something really good,” he explains. “There’s an enthusiasm that you see in the dancers. We just knew it was gonna be a hit. I didn’t know how big a hit, but it was gonna be one.” 

Davis specifically tapped Grant to direct the “Somebody” music video, and the Arista boss remained involved in the creative process down to the final cut of the music video. According to Grant, Davis wasn’t too enamored with the initial cut of the music video, urging for a more dream-like version of the clip. To satisfy him, Grant shot a brief clip of Whitney finishing up a performance and then daydreaming of the proper pop video that comprised the original cut. Although he says he “could be wrong” about his hunch, Grant suggests that changes to the music video were spurred by flak Davis was receiving for making Houston’s image “too white.” Of course, “I Wanna Dance Somebody” topped the charts just one year before Houston was infamously booed at the 1988 Soul Train Music Awards.  

Davis, for his part, continues to point to the inimitable power of Whitney’s live performance as proof that her music and voice transcended such debates. “She was simply unique,” he says. 

“I Wanna Dance With Somebody” Forever 

Upon release, “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” catapulted Houston to an even higher level of pop stardom. The song became her highest Hot 100 debut in the 1980s (No. 38), reached the top of the chart in six weeks and spent nine cumulative weeks in the top 10 (more than any other single that year), while also topping the Hot 100 Airplay, Adult Contemporary and Dance/Club Play charts, and even hitting No. 2 on R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. Worldwide, the song went No. 1 in 14 different countries and has proven to be one of Houston’s most enduring hits, re-entering charts around the world following her untimely 2012 passing, including the Hot 100 at No. 35. Grant recalls hearing the song nearly every hour in Britain once news broke of Houston’s passing. 

The song remained a fixture on virtually every setlist Houston performed until her death, a testament to both how much she enjoyed singing the track, and the endless ways in which she and bandleader (and close friend) Rickey Minor were able to transform the song for different live settings. For many of Houston’s performances of the song in the early ‘90s, Minor crafted a “more orchestral and lush overture,” in which “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” is teased for a few minutes before “the curtain drops and [the band] starts playing” a version of the song closer to the studio recording. “She had a particular love for this song because it really catapulted her to stardom,” reflects Minor. “It just opened up a whole new era of music.” 

36 years after such a tornado of a song and video were unleashed upon the world, “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” remains one of the most seminal pop songs in history; the song’s title even became the subheading of the 2022 musical biopic based on Houston’s life and career. This year (Jul. 10), “Somebody” became Houston’s first and only song to amass over one billion streams on Spotify, just the second ’80s song by a solo female artist to do so (following Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill”). According to Luminate, “Somebody” still rakes in over two million official on-demand U.S. streams per week. Being named the greatest pop song of the Hot 100 era by Billboard also serves as new validation for its creators about the everlasting legacy the song has built — Walden answers a question about when he knew the song had been cemented in pop culture by replying: “Having this interview and answering this question.”

As for Merrill and Rubicam, they believe that the song has remained so magnetic because “everybody wants that feeling of connection,” citing events as disparate as New York City Pride parades and mid-lockdown Italian nights amid the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic as moments where they’ve seen the song give people the solace they’re searching for. The songwriting partners declined to specify how much they generate from “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” annually, but they do say that the song has helped sustain two separate households for two decades and counting.  

From its inception to its enduring reign as one of the most beloved and recognizable pop songs of all time, “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” remains synonymous with a uniquely human craving for connection and love. “I think it’s really just the feeling that keeps carrying it through another decade, which is amazing,” Rubicam says. “That’s what it’s about, and it’s more than we ever imagined.” 

It all comes back to pop music. Pop is the backbone not only of the music industry, but of culture in general: Nothing else connects people, defines moments and lives and passes down history from generation to generation the way pop does. It’s our shared language, our communal experience. It’s why wedding receptions are usually joyous and celebratory occasions even if the DJ doesn’t know a thing about the people they’re playing to, why karaoke can feel like a spiritual awakening in the right circumstances, why top 40 and oldies radio remain cultural staples a decade into the streaming era. There is no safer bet, no easier sell than pop music.

And yet, there’s been relatively little attempt to properly canonize modern pop’s greatest works and practitioners. While rock as a genre has been listed and anthologized to death over the past 50 years, and hip-hop and country are finally starting to catch up, such pop histories are relatively few and far between. There’s no official pop hall of fame, like there is for those other genres. It shouldn’t be possible for the biggest music on the planet to be overlooked, but it does feel that way sometimes.

So we here at Billboard have decided to take the occasion of the 65th anniversary of the Billboard Hot 100 — with the chart finally having lived a full-enough life to be at retirement age, though it’s still as vital as ever and certainly nowhere near hanging it up — to take our shot at listing the 500 best pop songs since the chart’s debut. Though songs had to hail from the Hot 100 era to qualify for our list, this isn’t a charts-determined ranking: Rather, these are the songs our staff felt were simply the greatest, most enduring pop songs of that 65-year period, the songs that we most think of when we think of what pop music could and should be. (Because 500 is a much smaller number than you think when talking about 65 years of pop music, and because we wanted to be able to include as many different artists as possible, we capped the number of pop songs per lead artist at three.)

How are we defining “pop songs,” you might ask? Well, that’s a little tough: One of the reasons pop can be hard to summarize is because there’s no real sonic or musical definition to it. There are common elements to a lot of the biggest pop songs, but at the end of the day, “pop” means “popular” first and foremost, and just about any song that becomes popular enough — whether it be rock, dance, rap, R&B, country, reggaetón or some combination — can be considered a pop song. So the only hard-and-fast qualification we laid down for songs to be eligible for our list was that they had to have hit the Hot 100 at some point, in some version. (The only exception we made was for songs that came during the ’90s period where many huge airplay hits were ineligible for the Hot 100; read here for more details on that.)

All that said, the “pop” part of this project was still essential when determining our ranking. We were looking for the songs that most fit our idea of pop music — catchy, tight, rousing, emotional, immaculately crafted, instantly memorable. If a song didn’t strike us as an obvious pop song, we might have ranked it lower on our list than most other all-time songs lists have in the past, or left it off altogether. Conversely, if a song makes us go “now that’s a pop song!” every time we hear it, even if it’s not the kind of critically revered song that often ends up on all-time lists, we made sure to give it a little extra love here. Our definition of pop might differ from yours — we couldn’t even all agree on every song ourselves — but even if we can’t do much better than “we know it when we hear it,” we’re confident you’ll hear it plenty yourself while reading through the songs on our list.

Here are our staff’s 500 favorite pop songs since the introduction of the Billboard Hot 100 on Aug. 4th, 1958 — from Lesley Gore to Carly Rae Jepsen, from Sam Cooke to SZA, from The Kinks to The Chainsmokers, from Chubby Checker to Rae Sremmurd. We’ll be counting down from 500 to 301 today (Oct. 17), then from 300 to 101 on Wednesday, with the final 100 being unveiled on Thursday (Oct. 19), along with more related articles you can read all about here.

Join us below all week, and feel free to sing along; we know you know the words.

500. Los Del Rio, “Macarena (Bayside Boys Mix)”

Image Credit: Evan Agostini/Liaison/Getty Images

Zach Bryan’s “Something in the Orange” spent six weeks atop Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart. But the track wasn’t recorded anywhere near Nashville — it was crafted alongside producer Ryan Hadlock, over 2,000 miles away at Bear Creek, the rustic barn-turned-studio that Hadlock’s parents had built in 1977 just outside of Seattle, not far from the birthplace of grunge. The genre-fluid song didn’t just top the country chart — it peaked at No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart, too.

“Even the term ‘country music’ is almost becoming passé in some ways because in working with Zach, in a lot of ways, he doesn’t really consider himself a straight-up country musician,” says Hadlock, who also produced Bryan’s “From Austin.” “He’s a singer-songwriter who happens to be from Oklahoma, has an accent and sings about the world he’s in… I think he will be doing amazing things for a really long time.”

Within Nashville, too, a similar genre-mashing ethos has bubbled up on hits such as Morgan Wallen’s muted, acoustic-based chart juggernaut “Last Night,” which spent 16 nonconsecutive weeks atop the Hot 100 in 2023. “He has one of those magical voices that allows him to span multiple formats, really,” says producer Joey Moi, who has worked with Wallen since his debut album. “He can sing a traditional country song, or over a hip-hop, contemporary production or a contemporary country production, and it still sounds like a Morgan Wallen song.”

As more and more country tracks have risen to the upper reaches of the Hot 100 this past year, many of the standouts — not only “Something in the Orange” and “Last Night,” in addition to other tracks by Bryan and Wallen, but also Luke Combs’ rendition of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” (which reached No. 2), Bailey Zimmerman’s “Rock and a Hard Place” (which hit the top 10) and Jelly Roll’s rock and country-blending “Need a Favor” (which broke into the top 20) — demonstrate an instinct for crafting sounds that appeal beyond the genre.

A mix of newcomers and veterans, they include Hadlock; Wallen’s “Last Night” producers, Moi and Charlie Handsome; Zimmerman producer Austin Shawn; Combs’ “Fast Car” co-producers, Jonathan Singleton and Chip Matthews; and Jelly Roll producer Austin Nivarel.

Notably, many of these studio creatives have résumés that extend beyond country. Before working with Big Loud artists like Wallen and Florida Georgia Line, Moi produced Canadian rock band Nickelback. Hadlock has worked with names ranging from Foo Fighters to Brandi Carlile, while Handsome’s credits include Post Malone, Kanye West, Juice WRLD and Lil Wayne.

For Wallen and Bryan, scaled-back production proved essential to the genre-traversing success of their respective hits. “We purposefully kept it simple,” Moi says of “Last Night.” “There are a handful of parts going on, but it’s more about the negative space and making it about the story, the vocal and the instrumental that runs throughout. It lends itself to being accessible by more lanes as far as radio formats; it was tougher to define as just a country song, or just a pop song or [adult top 40] song. It kind of fit everywhere.”

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Moi says the song’s sparse production partially resulted from Wallen’s own creative inclinations. “My natural instinct is to build these larger-than-life productions, and Morgan is great about coming behind me and being like, ‘Take this out and that part out,’ making sure I’m not doing too much on certain things,” Moi says. “I’d say he has had his best opportunity on the last two records to really imprint upon every aspect of it, from the songwriting to demos to our approach to tracking in the studio and postproduction. You can hear his contemporary, youthful thoughts over all of it.”

Similarly, Hadlock notes the minimal production on “Something in the Orange,” which utilized vintage mics and gear. “Sometimes old equipment is better at capturing emotion, and part of it is having a good room; I think people don’t always realize how much an instrument the room is that people are playing in,” says Hadlock, whose goal was a recording that sounded like Bryan was “playing right in front of you,” that would make “people listen to it and say, ‘Wow, that’s an amazing live recording.’ ”

For Shawn, the freedom to experiment was key in landing the right feel for Zimmerman’s “Rock and a Hard Place.” He and Zimmerman produced the song a half-dozen different ways before landing on the approach they used for the final recording. “We produced an almost John Mayer-esque, real smooth-sounding [version], then the acoustic version and one that was a dark piano ballad, with strings and fiddle that sounded almost like you were listening to a country Goo Goo Dolls song,” Shawn says.

As he did with “Fall in Love,” Shawn incorporated a “three-minute-long sample of just wind” into “Rock and a Hard Place.” “It feels like you are in a desert, and I wanted to feel that open style — we added fiddle and pedal steel, just subtly to bring out the emotive aspect. We wanted this song to feel like you could play it on acoustic guitar, but at the same time, it can still fit into a country radio modern format.”

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Shawn, who co-wrote Zimmerman’s “Fall in Love,” recalls the no-barriers approach he and Zimmerman took early on in developing his sound. “We thought about the kinds of songs he would want to hear and made the music as fans, just encompassing everything we love… There’s no gimmicks with this kid. His gift is making the music that defines him and his lifestyle.”

Ultimately, producers who encourage such experimentation — whether Combs’ cover of a 1980s folk-pop classic, Bryan’s poetic blend of country, folk and rock or Wallen’s country-to-hip-hop range — have shaped songs that are resonating with a multitude of listeners.

“He has always wanted to stay in the country lane, but we all knew he had a sort of contemporary side,” Moi says of Wallen. “If we planted our roots and built our foundation in a good spot, [we knew] we’d have the opportunity to explore other genres, and I think we’re in a sweet spot for that right now.”

This story originally appeared in the Oct. 7, 2023, issue of Billboard.

The growing popularity of Calle 24’s riveting corridos number “Qué Onda” with Chino Pacas and Fuerza Regida caught him by surprise — particularly because he didn’t initially intend for it to be his own track.
Born Diego Millán, he recalls that he wrote the foundation of the song for another group (who he declines to disclose), but when it ultimately didn’t work out for the band, he decided to keep the song for himself. He then showed the song to Fuerza Regida frontman Jesús Ortiz Paz (better known as JOP), and the two immediately decided to grow it even further with the addition of singer Chino Pacas.

The track’s horn-blaring, upbeat feel narrates a rendezvous both passionate and filled with debauchery, which has quickly resonated with listeners. Following its release on Aug. 30, “Qué Onda” has quickly become Calle 24’s biggest hit to date: it debuted at No. 61 on the Billboard Hot 100 dated Sept. 16, marking his first entry on the chart, and has reached a No. 8 high on Hot Latin Songs.

At just 20 years old, the Chihuahua, Mexico-born musician is signed to Street Mob Records — JOP’s record label (which recently inked a deal with Cinq Music) — and is now performing as a solo act, after Calle 24 first formed as a group of four. “The name stayed with me, but my friendship and camaraderie with the others continues,” he says. He’s also quickly becoming an extremely sought-after songwriter within the booming regional Mexican music scene, with credits on Fuerza Regida’s “Sabor Fresa” and “Igualito a Mi Apá,” featuring Peso Pluma. He’s involved in the San Bernardino band’s upcoming work as well.

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Below, Calle 24 tells Billboard about the success of “Qué Onda,” working as a solo artist, his relationship with JOP and more.

What’s your reaction to your first Hot 100 hit?

I’m very excited. I didn’t think this was going to happen to me, but thank God it did. I hope it’s not the [last] time.

How did the song come together?

[Another group] asked me to do the song. Me and my [writing] partner Miguel Armenta, who is also a co-writer for “Bebe Dame,” started working on the song about a month or so ago in California, and midway through it, we said, “It’s coming along very well.” That same day we recorded it, and it was something very impressive. Now that regional Mexican music is expanding, you know when songs are on another level — we thought this could go worldwide because of the lyrics, the rhythm, all of that.

So, the other project didn’t happen, and I was like, “Well, I’m going to take my song,” because I wrote it. [JOP] told me we should do it together, so we uploaded a Reel to Instagram, promoting the song. That day, we added the voices, and we did not imagine [the results]. That night it accumulated several million [streams]. It was something crazy.

Tell me about the other people that worked on the song.

Cristian Humberto, and Jonathan Caro, who is a co-writer on “Sabor Fresa.” JOP also participated a little bit in the lyrics. We are a team. We’d rather work together: they say that more heads think better than one, so we set out to do that. That’s how we come out with more quality work. We are like a family, really. It’s better when people get along well because things come out much better with more enthusiasm.

How did Calle 24 form?

I am now a solo artist. We used to be a group, but it disintegrated because I believe that my colleagues had their own visions and work plans — and it is understood. Calle 24 started here in Cuauhtémoc, where I live in Chihuahua, with me, Ezequiel Rodriguez, Santiago Castillo and Angel Rivera. When I started four years ago, I was a solo artist like now. But they knew how to record at home, and I was impressed because I had gone to record in a studio and my song sounded worse than theirs. I was one of the first ones who approached them, and we started working together. The name stayed with me [now that I’m a solo artist]. I am Calle 24. But my friendship and camaraderie with the others continues.

How did you meet JOP?

Me and Ezequiel were in Chihuahua, and [JOP] was looking for underground artists from California or Texas. He contacted a colleague called Güero X to do a song and we began talking. We didn’t know that Güero X had just signed with JOP, [but] we did the song we were going to release, and out of the blue Güero X said, “I just signed with Street Mob and Jesús wants to connect with you”. So I sent him a load of songs, and after a week, he said, “Sign them!” I was over the moon. That was in July 2020. Imagine, I was 17 years old at the time. It was this great opportunity. In January 2021, I wrote [Fuerza Regida’s] “¿Qué Está Pasando?”

Since 2021, you’ve done extremely well on streaming platforms.

The truth is that it has been very nice. It’s difficult, but little by little, people are accepting more of what we do. Since the first song we released, which was “¿Qué Está Pasando”, the reception has been very good and we try to improve every day. It has been an incredible process.

Did you always think you would do corridos or regional Mexican music?

Never. In my childhood, I never listened to corridos. My mom was more into country and pop, so I listened more to Luis Fonsi, Caballo Dorado, things like that. One day, when I was about 8 years old, a friend came and told me, “Check out this song,” and it was a corrido. I got that little itch for that music, and from then, I never let it go. I made my first song when I was 11 years old with the help of my parents. To this day, they still support me — that’s what motivated me the most. When I was 13, they bought me my first guitar on my birthday. I knew it was going to be something. The truth is that I always had that hunch. You have to believe in yourself. Now I see that it was not in vain.

A version of this story originally appeared in the Sept. 23, 2023, issue of Billboard.

The numbers are in for this week’s Hot 100! Did Doja Cat hold on to No. 1? Is country music still reigning over the charts? Plus, Katy Perry sold her music catalog to Litmus for a whopping $225 million. The deal includes rights to the singer’s five chart-topping songs off ‘Teenage Dream.’ BTS’ Jung Kook […]

Jamie Foxx

Image Credit: Larry Busacca/Getty Images

Entries:“Infatuation,” No. 92, July 30, 1994“Slow Jamz,” No. 1, Feb. 21, 2004“Gold Digger” by Kanye West feat. Jamie Foxx, No. 1, Sept. 17, 2005“Unpredicatable,” feat. Ludacris, No. 8, Feb. 11, 2006“Georgia” by Ludacris & Field Mob feat. Jamie Foxx, No. 39, Jan. 14, 2006“DJ Play a Love Song,” feat. Twista, No. 45, June 17, 2006“Please Excuse My Hands” by Plies feat. Jamie Foxx & The-Dream, No. 66, Oct. 4, 2008“Just Like Me,” feat. T.I., No. 49, Jan. 3, 2009“She Got Her Own” by Ne-Yo feat. Jamie Foxx & Fabolous, No. 54, March 7, 2009“Blame It,” feat. T-Pain, No. 2, May 16, 2009“Digital Girl,” feat. Drake, Kanye West & The-Dream, No. 92, Aug. 22, 2009“Winner,” feat. Justin Timberlake & T.I., No. 28, April 24, 2010“Fall for Your Type,” feat. Drake, No. 50, Feb. 19, 2011“You Changed Me,” feat. Chris Brown, No. 93, June 13, 2015“Jam” by Kevin Gates feat. Trey Songz, Ty Dolla $ign & Jamie Foxx, No. 97, Feb. 20, 2016

Over 30,000 songs have graced the Billboard Hot 100 in the chart’s 65-year history. Of those, 1,151 have reached No. 1 (as of the chart dated Aug. 19, 2023) — a select 3.8 percent.

One of the rarest feats, perhaps, is repeating at No. 1 on the Hot 100 10 times — as only 10 artists in history have earned the distinction.

The elite list features eight solo artists and two groups. The Beatles lead all acts, with a whopping 20 No. 1s — a record they’ve held since 1965, when they surpassed Elvis Presley.

Presley, who’s notably absent from the list below, scored seven No. 1s in the Hot 100 era. The start of Presley’s career predated the Hot 100, which launched on Aug. 4, 1958, meaning that some of his classics, such as “Don’t Be Cruel,” “Hound Dog” and “Jailhouse Rock,” preceded the chart’s existence. He did, however, reach the summit with “A Big Hunk O’ Love,” “Stuck on You,” “It’s Now or Never,” “Are You Lonesome Tonight,” “Surrender,” “Good Luck Charm” and “Suspicious Minds.”

As for the artists just outside the 10 No. 1 hits club: Bee Gees, Elton John, Katy Perry, Paul McCartney (solo and with Wings), Taylor Swift and Usher have all topped the Hot 100 nine times, while Beyoncé (excluding Destiny’s Child’s four leaders with her as a member), Justin Bieber, Bruno Mars, George Michael (excluding two billed solely to Wham!) and The Rolling Stones have eight each.

Here are the 10 artists who have tallied 10 or more No. 1 hits on the Hot 100:

Title, Weeks at No. 1, Peak Date

The Beatles, 20 No. 1s

Image Credit: Courtesy Photo

Happy birthday, Shawn Mendes! The pop crooner turned 25 years old on Tuesday (Aug. 8), and to celebrate, we’re looking back on some of his biggest hits. Despite his young age, Mendes has 17 songs that have made it into the Hot 100, with six hitting the top 10. His first top 10 hit was […]

Olivia Rodrigo’s “Vampire” sunk its teeth into the Billboard Hot 100 dated July 15, 2023, debuting atop the chart. The 20-year-old pop star took to Instagram on Monday (July 10) to celebrate her third leader on the tally, sharing a screenshot of the Hot 100 top 10 and writing, “AHHHHH IM SO EXCITED AB THIS!!! […]