Securing a top 40 chart placing, even in the streaming era, is still something to be celebrated. To do so represents your track breaking through, ‘going viral’ and – fingers crossed – perhaps even making you (dare we say it) some money. However, to earn the big bucks you need not just to stick around for a week or two but sit as a chart resident for years.
So how does one do that, exactly?
That’s what a new study aims to find out, examining the songs with a new-found bizarre staying power and seeking to locate a common strand that modern music makers aiming to ape their success could conceivably copy.
The streaming effect
It turns out that during the Billboard Hot 100’s 66-year history, the sum total of all the hits that have ‘made it’ have spent somewhere between just one and 57 weeks in the top 10.
To break down those figures from the popular number-crunching broadsheet further, of the more than 5,200 top 10s they’ve logged to date, almost 600 scored only a single week in the top 10 before crashing and burning. Hardly surprising considering the volatile nature of the pop chart’s’ acts, trends and fans.
What’s more interesting is the increasingly present and lasting effect that streaming is having on bands' and artists' ability to pull up a chair and never go away.
With songs no longer limited through physical availability (being deleted or packed back to the record company to make room for new stock on the shelf) songs now effectively last forever, and the effect on the Billboard Hot 100 has been profound - to the extent that the top three hits for Top 10 longevity are all recent songs, outlasting and outgunning any of the multi-million selling ‘classics’ of old.
Top of this chart? The Weeknd’s Blinding Lights from 2019, a record which has – so far – scored an incredible 57 weeks in the top 10.
Second and third? Teddy Swims’ Lose Control with 54 weeks and Shaboozey’s A Bar Song (Tipsy) with 45 weeks – both songs released as recently as 2024.
The new study also found that a song’s average Top 10 stick-around time – over the chart’s entire history – is 6.5 weeks. Using songs only released from 2000 onwards that number becomes 5.6 weeks, but since 2024 it’s up to 7.2…
Looks like we’re growing increasingly lethargic in our quest for new music.
The secret sauce
So what makes a song stick around… And what… doesn’t?
Hit Songs Deconstructed’s 2024 Staying Power Report states that 82% of songs that spent 10 or more weeks in the Hot 100’s top 10 in 2024 featured a love/relationship lyrical theme.
Taking into account all of 2024 top 10s, the share of tracks getting lovey dovey (and then throwing things and having a good cry) is 52%.
And looking at number ones only, an impressive 44% were all about all kinds of getting it on (and letting it go).
Certainly Teddy Swims’ number two for staying power Lose Control hits that target. Likewise more songs with impressive 2024 top 10 runs including Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso, Benson Boone’s Beautiful Things and Billie Eilish’s Birds of a Feather, all of which spent more than 20 weeks in the top 10.
Looks like the old songwriter adage still rings true: If you want to score a hit, go get your heart broken.
And what about genres. We’re always hearing that Hip-Hop is king of the hill for scoring hits these days, right?
Not so.
“Pop songs had the greatest staying power in 2024, with 36% remaining in the Hot 100’s top 10 for 10 weeks or more,” Hit Songs Deconstructed notes. “Country songs followed at 23% and R&B/soul rounded out the top three at 18%.”
Yup. Country on the rise again.
Hip-hop down. Hoe-down up
And Hip-Hop? The world’s favourite genre? Looks like following a downturn in 2023, 2024 has only followed suit. “Hip-hop/rap – while it was the most popular primary genre in the overall top 10 – came in fourth in terms of staying power, accounting for 14% of songs.”
Want more evidence that pop is on the up?
Using analytics that perhaps aren’t wholly scientific, the report concluded that the pop genre was a “common influence” in 95% of the songs that had featured in the Top 10 for more than 10 weeks in 2024. That’s pretty conclusive (if a little wooly).
And when you look at songs that stuck around for nine weeks or fewer, pop was deemed ‘an influence’ in two thirds of them.
OK… So we’re writing a love/relationship-based pop song. How fast should it be?
Well, it seems that faster songs were slower to leave the Hot 100’s top 10 in 2024… With the exact opposite also being true. That is, slower songs were faster to leave the Top 10.
Looking at the numbers 65% of songs that charted in the Top 10 for at least 10 weeks last year had a tempo of over 100 BPM, with the most common range being 100-119 BPM.
Of songs that spent between one and nine weeks in the Top 10, 62% had tempos under 100 BPM, with most in the 80-99 BPM range.
OK… You got that? You need to write a pop song about love over 100 bpm.
You can thank us later. Just remember. When that big cheque lands, ours is a pomegranate mojito.
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