Music

Spring of 2022 brought out the superstars: Over the course of three consecutive weeks, Future released I Never Liked You, Bad Bunny put out Un Verano Sin Ti, and Kendrick Lamar returned from a five-year break with Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers. Future and Lamar launched four songs apiece in the Billboard Hot 100‘s top 10 during their albums’ debut weeks, while Bad Bunny scored three.

But few of these tracks endured. Nine of them fell out of the top 10 in their second week on the chart. A month later, Future’s “Wait for U,” a melancholy hip-hop ballad with Drake and Tems, served as the only lasting reminder of this blockbuster spurt in the top 10.

That July, Steve Lacy carved out a notably different path on the Hot 100. He is not nearly as well-known as Future, Bad Bunny, or Lamar; as a result, his breezy new wave single “Bad Habit” debuted on the Hot 100 in the lowest possible position. It climbed the chart for five weeks before reaching the top 10. It then remained there for 18 weeks, ultimately peaking at No. 1.

Songs like “Bad Habit” are becoming hard to find — 75% of 2024’s top 10 hits debuted in that lofty environment as of the third week of July. Ironically, though, the tracks that launch on the upper reaches of the Hot 100, like Future’s “Puffin On Zootiez” and Lamar’s “N95,” tend to be easy come, easy go. They don’t remain as long as the hits which take time to get into that exclusive atmosphere.

Since 2000, the average single that debuts in the top 10 hangs there for roughly six weeks. In contrast, tracks that take two to eight weeks to ascend to that position linger for more than 11 weeks.

This dynamic has become more extreme in the heart of the streaming era. Since 2015, singles that start out in the top 10 last 6.3 weeks on average, while tracks that take two to four weeks to reach the top 10 last more than twice as long — 12.7 weeks. And songs that take five to eight weeks to ascend to the top 10 do even better, lasting for an average of 13-plus weeks. 

Singles that erupt high on the chart and then sink immediately are maybe thought of as viral one-offs — tracks plucked out of obscurity, usually by the masses on TikTok, incorporated into millions of videos, streamed by curious listeners, and then discarded. In truth, most of these short-lived top 10 hits are album cuts from superstars like Taylor Swift and Drake. 

When artists with large followings release new full-lengths, it’s now common for many of the tracks on the album to debut immediately on the Hot 100 — as devoted fans engage with it for the first time and play it all the way through, sometimes more than once. Listeners have always been eager to devour new releases from their favorite acts, but this activity wasn’t trackable on a song level before the adoption of streaming, other than via sales or occasional radio play courtesy of individual DJs who happened to like a particular album cut. 

The initial burst of post-release-week enthusiasm — the thrill of the new — is very difficult to sustain, however, and many of these songs depart the upper reaches of the Hot 100 rapidly. From 2000 to 2015, around 13% of top 10s fell out of the top 10 after one week; that number has rocketed upward, topping 40% in each of the last four years. 

Gaining listeners’ interest is hard enough at a time when there is unprecedented competition for attention. Holding on to that attention for extended periods, or building it over time, may be even harder. 

Songs that manage this tend to look a lot like singles from the pre-streaming era, in that they have sustained promotion campaigns behind them. The influence of radio on their trajectory is often especially noticeable. 

While streams and sales of sought-after projects typically bunch up near a release date and then diminish, airplay tends to rise over time, as more stations see a song working and start to play it, and then play it more often, in tandem with label promotion. A similar progression happens with radio formats, which will often plunder successful tracks from each other, further amplifying their impact on the chart. 

“A lot of times, the pop format will just look at other formats and see what’s bubbling up — like a Hozier or a Noah Kahan — and then say, ‘You know what, that feels like a pop record, let’s give it a shot,'” explains Tom Poleman, chief programming officer at iHeartMedia. “Then you can make something a super mass record.” 

Many young executives believe airplay has little to no impact on streaming levels, but radio’s slow-burn timeline helps songs climb the Hot 100 — and sustain their position near the top. In fact, from a label’s point of view, this is one of airplay’s primary remaining benefits, as radio continues to face increased competition from streaming services and short-form video platforms. (Some executives also believe airplay can help artists sell tickets and earn brand deals.)

Take Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy):” When it skipped from No. 2 to No. 1 on the Hot 100 dated July 27, streams and sales were down — 6% and 24%, respectively, according to Luminate — but radio listening was up 11%. Shaboozey’s hit drew 77.2 million in airplay audience, as compared to 39 million official streams and 16,000 sales. 

For the next two weeks, streaming and sales kept slipping, while airplay audience kept growing, albeit at a declining rate — up 10% in week three, and 6% in week four — and “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” stayed at No. 1. “Radio can still very much move the needle,” says J Grand, an A&R veteran. “Certainly not as much as a decade ago, but I don’t think the fall off is as precipitous as people are making it out to be.”

Promoting songs to radio is costly, however, and radio generally plays fewer current tracks than it used to. It’s good for commercially minded artists, then, that airplay is not the only way to extend a song’s life high on the charts. While the influence of music videos has lessened considerably in the age of TikTok, Reels, and YouTube Shorts, a well-placed clip can still ignite a single. (Though videos can be expensive too.) 

Lamar’s “Not Like Us” sprang back to No. 1 nine weeks after it initially came out thanks to its music video, which was widely anticipated due to the avalanche of attention around his nasty public feud with Drake. Streams of “Not Like Us” jumped 20% and sales climbed 16% at a time when they would typically be falling.

And adding a star collaborator to a remix remains a tried-and-true technique for counteracting decaying chart position. Wizkid’s “Essence,” a swaying, flirty collaboration with Tems, grew gradually for months during 2021. “The people connecting first with the song in the States were largely either from Africa or the diaspora,” says John Fleckenstein, COO of RCA Records, which released and marketed the track. “We literally went city by city, focused on targeted radio and digital campaigns to get to those populations.”

But the big boost for “Essence” came when Justin Bieber joined the fight, appearing on a remix that August which bolstered streams, sales, and airplay all at once. Bieber’s presence catapulted the song from No. 44 on the Hot 100 to No. 16. In October, “Essence” glided into the top 10 — again with help from airplay, which kept climbing even as streams and sales decreased. 

Engineering the long climb that eventually made “Essence” — or “Bad Habit” — inescapable is increasingly a lost art. But while the majority of top 10 Hot 100 hits now debut on the upper reaches of the chart, the danger of flaring brightly is burning out quickly. As Nick Bobetsky, who manages Chapell Roan, likes to say, “there’s much more meaning in momentum than in a moment.”