Who was the first musician to have a number one single as a solo artist and a band?
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart in 2008, a 100 best-performing ranking was released documenting the biggest-selling songs in the publication’s history. After frequent revisions, the 60th anniversary and an up to 2021 amendment, other than Bobby Darrin’s 1959 ‘Mack the Knife’ and Chubby Checker’s ‘The Twist’ a year later, the top ten are dominated by singles dropped less than thirty years ago.
Representing the 21st century is The Weeknd’s diamond-certified ‘Blinding Lights’, overtaking Ed Sheeran’s ‘Shape of You’ streaming record with over four billion Spotify plays, as well as The Black Eyed Peas, Mark Ronson, and LMFAO. Entries from the 1990s consist of LeAnn Rimes’ monster hit, ‘How Do I Live’, Santana’s jump into Latin restaurant muzak for 1999’s ‘Smooth’, and, specifically, Bayside Boys’ remix of the Pontins terror ‘Macarena’ by Los Del Rio.
It’s either a band, or a dance group, or a solo artist without any number ones in previous projects that’s on the list. If looking at Billboard’s biggest-selling artists of all time, only Michael Jackson sits in the top ten as a star boasting Hot 100 top spots in a prior group, four with his Jackson 5 sibling pop troupe.
While it does happen that Sting, Diana Ross, Phil Collins, and Don Henley enjoyed number ones after previous top spot hit machines, there’s less prevalence of boasting a number one in both a former band and in a subsequent solo career than one might think.
Boasting 20 Billboard number ones and a pair of songwriters set to score the 1970s with certitude, The Beatles’ Paul McCartney grabbed several Hot 100 toppers as a solo artist and with Wings. John Lennon fares better critically but commercially he only won one US number one in his lifetime, discounting his collaboration on David Bowie’s ‘Fame’, 1975’s ‘Whatever Gets You thru the Night’ with Elton John and 1980’s ‘(Just Like) Starting Over’ shooting to the top spot posthumously in light of his assassination.
So, who was the first?
Ever the dark horse, it was George Harrison who nabbed the first number one and entered the record book as the first solo star to top the Billboard Hot 100 charts both in a band and after going at it alone.
Building up to The Beatles’ demise, Harrison was giving the Lennon-McCartney primacy a serious run for their money, conjuring enduring Fab Four cuts such as ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’, ‘Here Comes the Sun’, and ‘Something’, the latter albums’ standout tracks. Yet, with songs still rejected by the principal songwriters, Harrison had accrued a wealth of material and demos as far back as 1966’s Revolver.
Now free to let loose his vault of gems, Harrison issued his first post-Beatles solo record, All Things Must Pass, the 1970 triple-LP opus led by ‘My Sweet Lord’. Issued that year Stateside with ‘Isn’t It a Pity’ as a double A-side, then in the UK the following year as a sole single, ‘My Sweet Lord’ would beat all The Beatles for the number one spot both in America and the UK.
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