The Week in Number Ones: Elton John, Britney Spears, and Marvin Gaye climb the charts
Welcome back to The Week in Number Ones, where all the biggest movers from the US and UK charts get condensed into one article. Last week, we continued to highlight just how massive Harry Styles is at the current moment with ‘As It Was’, wondered out loud whether anybody actually liked OneRepublic and their Top Gun: Maverick sunshine pop hit ‘I Ain’t Worried’, and remembered when Tina Turner cemented her legacy with ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It’.
Inexplicably, Muse’s Will of the People sits at the top of the UK Album Charts this week. Similarly, DJ Khaled’s God Did is on top of the Billboard Hot 200. Dear reader, believe me when I tell you that these albums have almost nothing in common except generic awfulness. Both are bloated messes stuck up their respective artist’s asses, yet both have established fanbases that eat up their work like candy. I simply don’t get it.
For what it’s worth, at least Khaled is smart enough to give over his albums to actually talented people like Future, Lil Wayne, 21 Savage and SZA. There’s also a Juice Wrld collaboration since it seems his estate is handing out scraps from his vault like crazy. Otherwise, it’s an overlong slog of a record that I would still rather spend more time with than Will of the People.
This week, we bring you the latest in Harry Styles Spitgate, figure out how much of Elton John and Britney Spears’ new hit is just ‘Tiny Dancer’ nostalgia, and dive into Marvin Gaye creating the sexiest song of all time. All that and more as we round up all the best chart news of the modern-day and recent past.
Current UK Number One: ‘B.O.T.A.’ – Eliza Rose / Interplanetary
First things first: congratulations to Eliza Rose on grabbing the number one spot with ‘B.O.T.A.’, the 1,400th number one single in the history of the UK Singles Chart. The era of house tracks continues on, and the track is a relatively smooth passing of the baton from fellow DJs LF System and the previous UK number one, ‘Afraid to Feel’. With that being said, we’ve already talked about ‘B.O.T.A.’, so let’s look instead at two previous number one artists: Elton John and Britney Spears.
As uber-famous lifelong pop stars, both John and Spears are number one chart titans: Spears has six number ones to her name while John has ten. They’re constant presences on the chart, and even though they’ve both had their fluctuations in popularity over the years, it should never come as a surprise to see either one floating around the top ten.
John is doing a superb job of collaborating with younger artists to keep his name relevant. Just look at ‘Cold Hearts’, his recent Dua Lipa duet that was a top ten hit on both sides of the Atlantic. These days, John doesn’t even have to put in much effort: he can have his classic hits remixed and sampled for new tracks, giving him a featured credit and continuing his eternal pop chart youth forever.
That’s what ‘Hold Me Closer’ is. In fact, the song is more-or-less half an original track and half a cover of ‘Tiny Dancer’, John’s classic Madman Across the Water single. ‘Tiny Dancer’ wasn’t actually ever released as a single in the UK and didn’t even crack the Top 40 in the US. Still, thanks to a long run on classic rock radio and a classic needle drop in Almost Famous, the track is now a central part of John’s legacy.
Like ‘Cold Hearts’, ‘Hold Me Closer’ mixes a couple of different John songs, including ‘Tiny Dancer’, ‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart’, and ‘The One’. Some might gripe about the lack of originality involved in crafting a new pop song out of old pop songs, but ‘Hold Me Closer’ is a catchy song that doubles nicely as a return for Spears to the top of the pop world, a place that the owned over the prior two decades. It deserves to return to at the moment.
UK Singles Top Ten (Week of September 8th, 2022):
- ‘B.O.T.A’ – Eliza Rose/Interplanetary
- ‘Afraid to Feel’ – LF System
- ‘Hold Me Closer’ – Elton John & Britney Spears
- ‘I Ain’t Worried’ – OneRepublic
- ‘Green Green Grass’ – George Ezra
- ‘Not Over Yet’ – KSI ft. Tom Greenan
- ‘I’m Good’ – David Guetta ft. Bebe Rexha
- ‘Ferrari’ – James Hype/ Miggy Dela Rosa
- ‘Crazy What Love Can Do’ – David Guetta/Hill/Henderson
- ‘Big City Life’ – Luude & Mattafix
Current US Number One: ‘As It Was’ – Harry Styles
Jesus Christ, what a time to be Harry Styles. Rarely does a singer get the kind of pop culture cross-pollination that Styles is getting. It’s not enough to be popular: you have to be ubiquitous to ride the wave that Styles is riding at the moment. You have to be a household name, with multiple products in multiple mediums out in the world, for people to give this much of a shit about you.
Case in point: Spitgate. Sure, the theory that Styles purposefully spat in the lap of his Don’t Worry Darling co-star Chris Pine has now been shot down by both actors’ respective camps, but this has easily been the biggest entertainment story of the past few days. Combined with the other mindless drama surrounding Olivia Wilde’s follow-up to Booksmart, the centre of the pop culture universe has been squarely focused on Styles.
And, weirdly enough, not even an alleged loogie could diminish the love (or maybe just the notoriety) that Styles has going for him. This is still the guy with the number one song in the US right now, and he’s all but guaranteed to have a number one box office film by the end of the month. It doesn’t matter that Don’t Worry Darling is getting middling reviews: people will shell out cash and put their butts in theatre seats to see what the hoopla is all about.
Suppose Styles can simultaneously grab the number one song and the number one movie in the country. In that case, it will put him in an elite tier of entertainers, including legendary names like Elvis Presley, Prince, and Madonna. That’s the kind of fame Styles is living through right now. It doesn’t appear to be stopping any time soon, with ‘As It Was’ sitting comfortably on top of the Billboard Hot 100 for its 12th non-consecutive week.
US Billboard Hot 100 Top Ten Singles (Week of September 10th, 2022):
- ‘As It Was’ – Harry Styles
- ‘Bad Habit’ – Steve Lacy
- ‘About Damn Time’ – Lizzo
- ‘Running Up That Hill’ – Kate Bush
- ‘Sunroof’ – Nicky Youre & Dazy
- ‘Hold Me Closer’ – Elton John & Britney Spears
- ‘Super Freaky Girl’ – Nicki Minaj
- ‘I Like You (A Happier Song)’ – Post Malone ft. Doja Cat
- ‘Break My Soul’ – Beyoncé
- ‘Wait For U’ – Future ft. Drake & Tems
This Week in Number Ones: ‘Let’s Get It On’ – Marvin Gaye (#1 on the Billboard Hot 100, September 8th, 1973)
It’s those first four notes. A slow-but-steady climb up the guitar neck signals something primal. It’s impossible to explain logically: those notes just sound like sex. They sound like turning the lights down, taking off your clothes, and getting hot and heavy simultaneously. Those four notes are the exact sounds of getting it on.
It’s a bit of a “chicken or the egg” problem: were those notes always sexy, or have we all just had our brains primed for them for too long to see them as anything but sexy? It’s hard to know for sure, but there’s a lot about ‘Let’s Get It On’ that’s easy, first and foremost being the effortless suave and allure of Marvin Gaye. From the minute he released ‘Let’s Get It On’ in the summer of 1973 to the minute he tragically died at the hands of his own father, Gaye was a sex icon throughout the entire world.
That wasn’t exactly his reputation in the decade prior. Starting as one of Motown’s premiere duet singers, Gaye took on the role of the socially conscious voice of black America with the success of 1971’s What’s Going On? He never fully gave up that position, but he did begin turning his attention toward more sensual topics. By 1973, he was ready to fully embrace sex as his songwriting topic of choice after years of putting it on the back burner.
‘Let’s Get It On’ might be incredibly overdone as the go-to sex song of the century, but it’s not a parody. From the start of those four guitar notes to the final fade, it’s a genuine force of nature. With every new turn of the melody, Gaye finds a new world to occupy and conquer. His exuberance and suaveness only seem to grow stronger as the song keeps burning. Every vocal ad-lib is an entire song in and of itself. Somehow Gaye never repeats himself throughout five minutes of love and lust. It’s pure, unadulterated erotica from start to finish.
But that doesn’t make it simple. Instead, Gaye frames ‘Let’s Get It On’ as an exploration of spiritual growth rather than just making it a bump-and-grind sex fest. Lines like “If the spirit grooves you / Let me move you” and “You know how sweet life can be” show Gaye as more than just a pickup artist. He’s striving for the same sense of freedom and emancipation he searched for in What’s Going On? This time, the focus is turned inwards to the self rather than taking on society’s ills.
‘Let’s Get It On’ probably shouldn’t have been a number one hit. It’s too complex, musically and lyrically, for mainstream audiences to fully grasp during casual radio listening. It’s too explicit in its depiction of sex to catch on in the still rather chaste 1970s. But there was something undeniable about Gaye’s allure and musicality, which was impossible to ignore. ‘Let’s Get It On’ was impossible to ignore and improbable in its popularity. Who could have pulled off that combination other than Marvin Gaye?
A whole century of love songs are directly indebted to ‘Let’s Get It On’, and Gaye’s impact on the future of R&B could only be measured in seismic waves. He was a singular visionary, even as his view of love and sex grew more complex through the trails of his personal life. Towards the end of his life, Gaye seemed ready to re-embrace the redemption that love and sex could provide, and just as he was getting warmed up, he was taken away. But that’s a story for another day.
Billboard Hot 100 Top Ten (Week of September 8th, 1973)
- ‘Let’s Get It On’ – Marvin Gaye
- ‘Brother Louie’ – Stories
- ‘Delta Dawn’ – Helen Reddy
- ‘Say, Has Anybody Seen My Sweet Gypsy Rose’ – Tony Orlando and Dawn
- ‘Touch Me in the Morning’ – Diana Ross
- ‘Loves Me Like a Rock’ – Paul Simon
- ‘Live and Let Die’ – Paul McCartney
- ‘We’re An American Band’ – Grand Funk
- ‘Gypsy Man’ – War
- ‘Here I Am (Come and Take Me)’ – Al Green
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