From Miley Cyrus to Bob the Builder: Best-selling singles of the 21st century, year-by-year
This century has seen many historic chart-topping music moments so far. There’s Madonna achieving a US number-one single in a third different decade with ‘Music’, and Arctic Monkeys storming the UK charts with their debut single as teenagers freshly signed to an indie label.
Or how about Rage Against the Machine pipping the X-Factor winner to Christmas Number One? Or Daft Punk’s triumphant return with the global smash ‘Get Lucky’, featuring the legendary Nile Rodgers on guitar?
Well, forget all that lowly one-week fodder. We’re here to talk about the real cream of the crop. The toppermost of the poppermost, as The Beatles would say. Every single which sold the most copies during each year of the 21st century, as recorded by Billboard in the US and the UK Official Charts Company.
Check out the full lists of US and UK year-end number one singles in the 21st Century below.
Which singles won out in Y2K?
Without further ado, let’s go all the way back to the dawn of the new millennium. Back then, Faith Hill outsold anyone else by reassuring Americans with the simple yet profound advice to “just breathe”. Her single ‘Breathe’ was Billboard’s Year-End number one for 2000.
Across the pond, Bob the Builder topped the lot by posing the most burning question of the 2000s with his single ‘Can We Fix It?’. It appears Barack Obama may have drawn inspiration from Bob’s answer to that question for the slogan of his 2008 Presidential Election campaign.
Novelty’s not so novel
Bob the Builder, the star of an animated children’s TV show, became the first of many novelty singles to capture the year-end number one spot on both sides of the Atlantic. Counting Macklemore’s ‘Thrift Shop’ and Pharrell’s ‘Happy’ (the novelty value of which certainly counted towards their success), no fewer than seven different novelty songs have topped year-end singles rankings in the past 24 years.
Moving away from less serious entries, Lifehouse and Nickelback’s deadly serious interpretations of post-grunge won over US listeners in the early noughties. Meanwhile, country pop has remained popular stateside throughout the century, as Billy Ray Cyrus and Morgan Wallen’s appearances in the lists.
The scourge of reality show stars
Over in the UK, the singles chart was beckoning us into a new era. A grim era of humiliating auditions, talentless judges, premium phone lines and bad karaoke. That’s right: the reality music star was upon us. Three of the UK’s year-end number ones in the noughties came courtesy of Simon Cowell. And if it weren’t for Mr Cowell, Harry Styles wouldn’t have topped 2022’s chart either.
As well as Pop Idol and X-Factor winners, the British year-end number ones reflect a longer-running trend of singer-songwriters coming up trumps. Adele’s ballad ‘Someone Like You’ led the way in 2011, while Lewis Capaldi did the same in 2019 with a track using a similar title and theme and the same basic chords. And let’s not forget the king of mainstream singer-songwriters, Ed Sheeran, whose transition into dance genres has only increased his commercial appeal.
Club anthems: From hip-hop to disco
As with generations gone by, chart music during the first two and a half decades of this century has been dominated by what people are dancing to. In the noughties, this meant rap and R&B with pounding hip-hop beats, as the US year-end top singles list reflects.
From 2009, however, we saw the beginning of a trend that emerged in which songs drawing on nostalgia for the dance music of the past rose to the very top of the charts. In the UK, we saw Lady Gaga’s ‘Poker Face’, which has robotic ’80s synths that outsell the rest.
From there, the dance nostalgia craze grew and grew. Disco revival songs ‘Blurred Lines’, ‘Uptown Funk’, ‘Blinding Lights’ and ‘Levitating’ all feature at the top of year-end lists.
The arrival of streaming
In 2014, a revolution took place in the music of charting music sales. In recognition of the exponential growth of the streaming platform Spotify and its competitors, the US and UK chart compilers created a new system that factored song streams into singles chart rankings.
This change of system effectively drew a line under Cowell-era reality TV’s impact on the charts. It meant that while more tracks had the chance to rank overall through direct discovery by a listener, even fewer songs would have the chance to get near the top of the charts.
Major streaming platforms in their current form have only further concentrated the consumption of music on the widest-reaching, most commercial artists. The most streamed artists on Spotify, such as Drake, The Weeknd, Ed Sheeran, Harry Styles, Dua Lipa and Justin Bieber, now show up at the top of year-end lists time and again. Within a given year, these top-streaming artists typically have multiple or even several songs in the top 10 and top 20 singles.
The great convergence of chart-topping tastes
By removing what little gate-keeping and taste-making the radio was still responsible for, in theory, streaming platforms have allowed listeners to make their own choices with full access to their own tastes.
In practice, listeners are now more beholden than ever to the influence of commercial interests through social media, direct advertising and, most of all, the streaming companies themselves. Spotify is funded by and run for major record labels and top-selling artists, and it gives them a direct line to their listeners in ways the pre-streaming era never could.
The US and UK year-end number one singles were never the same between 2000 and 2013. Since the charts started counting streaming in 2014, the US and UK year-end number singles have been the same song four times. This trend is set to continue as long as streaming works the same way.
There are exceptions to the rule, though. ‘Heatwave’ became a mega-hit in the US for British indie band Glass Animals, precisely through interest building organically in social media. In this way, the Oxfordshire group followed in the footsteps of Gnarls Barkley’s radio-driven 2006 smash ‘Crazy’ by breaking the big-artist domination of these lists in recent years.
US Billboard year-end number one singles
- 2000: ‘Breathe’ – Faith Hill
- 2001: ‘Hanging by a Moment’ – Lifehouse
- 2002: ‘How You Remind Me’ – Nickelback
- 2003: ‘In Da Club’ – 50 Cent
- 2004: ‘Yeah!’ – Usher
- 2005: ‘We Belong Together’ – Mariah Carey
- 2006: ‘Bad Day’ – Daniel Powter
- 2007: ‘Irreplaceable’ – Beyoncé
- 2008: ‘Low’ – Flo Rida featuring T-Pain
- 2009: ‘Boom Boom Pow’ – The Black Eyed Peas
- 2010: ‘Tik Tok’ – Kesha
- 2011: ‘Rolling in the Deep’ – Adele
- 2012: ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’ – Gotye featuring Kimbra
- 2013: ‘Thrift Shop’ – Macklemore & Ryan Lewis featuring Wanz
- 2014: ‘Happy’ – Pharrell Williams
- 2015: ‘Uptown Funk’ – Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars
- 2016: ‘Love Yourself’ – Justin Bieber
- 2017: ‘Shape of You’ – Ed Sheeran
- 2018: ‘God’s Plan’ – Drake
- 2019: ‘Old Town Road’ – Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus
- 2020: ‘Blinding Lights’ – The Weeknd
- 2021: ‘Levitating’ – Dua Lipa
- 2022: ‘Heat Waves’ – Glass Animals
- 2023: ‘Last Night’ – Morgan Wallen
UK Chart year-end number one singles
- 2000: ‘Can We Fix It?’ – Bob the Builder
- 2001: ‘It Wasn’t Me’ – Shaggy featuring Rikrok
- 2002: ‘Anything Is Possible / Evergreen’ – Will Young
- 2003: ‘Where Is the Love?’ – Black Eyed Peas
- 2004: ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ – Band Aid 20
- 2005: ‘Is This the Way to Amarillo’ – Tony Christie featuring Peter Kay
- 2006: ‘Crazy’ – Gnarls Barkley
- 2007: ‘Bleeding Love’ – Leona Lewis
- 2008: ‘Hallelujah’ – Alexandra Burke
- 2009: ‘Poker Face’ – Lady Gaga
- 2010: ‘Love the Way You Lie’ – Eminem featuring Rihanna
- 2011: ‘Someone Like You’ – Adele
- 2012: ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’ – Gotye featuring Kimbra
- 2013: ‘Blurred Lines’ – Robin Thicke featuring TI and Pharrell Williams
- 2014: ‘Happy’ – Pharrell Williams
- 2015: ‘Uptown Funk’ – Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars
- 2016: ‘One Dance’ – Drake featuring Wizkid & Kyla
- 2017: ‘Shape of You’ – Ed Sheeran
- 2018: ‘One Kiss’ – Calvin Harris and Dua Lipa
- 2019: ‘Someone You Loved’ – Lewis Capaldi
- 2020: ‘Blinding Lights’ – The Weeknd
- 2021: ‘Bad Habits’ – Ed Sheeran
- 2022: ‘As It Was’ – Harry Styles
- 2023: ‘Flowers’ – Miley Cyrus
