The Week in Number Ones: Harry Styles, OneRepublic, and Tina Turner hit big
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 highlighted the historical placement of Nicki Minaj and her most recent single ‘Super Freaky Girl’. We also shined a light on the ascent of British DJ Eliza Rose’s house track ‘B.O.T.A’ and remembered when The Beach Boys officially took their first step into becoming a tired oldies act with ‘Do It Again’.
I’m going to trot out a new segment this week (to go along with the crowd-favourite recurring segments like “Is the Glastonbury Bump Real?” and “Where Is ‘Mr. Brightside’ This Week?” [Editor’s note:#61!]). It’s called “Let’s Predict Next Week’s Number One”, and even though it’s way less specific than those other segments, this one is almost equally as arbitrary.
Listen, even though it’s my job to write about the singles charts, I’ve all but given up on trying to understand them. The formula that Billboard uses to determine its weekly rankings is notoriously convoluted. Frankly, I’ve been proven wrong every time I thought I knew what would happen on either side of the Atlantic.
But today could be a new day to try my hand at this particular exercise. So let’s give it a go. This might be a boring chalk answer, but I have my betting money on Harry Styles’ ‘As It Was’ staying at number one in the US next week. There don’t appear to be any major releases from chart slayers coming out this week, and ‘As It Was’ continues to keep ascending back to number one (more on that in a bit), so my money is on my boy Harry.
The UK charts are a bit trickier to judge. LF System’s ‘Afraid to Feel’ has reigned for a ludicrous eight weeks, and that track’s appeal continues to elude me. Do you Brits fancy pushing George Ezra to number one? Probably not. A return trip for Beyoncé? I’ve learned not to doubt her, but I foolishly will once again. I’m going to go with this week’s highest debut: Aitch’s ‘My G’ featuring the one and only Ed Sheeran. That ginger bastard practically lives at number one, so he’s the one who’s got my betting money next week.
This week, OneRepublic threaten to storm back to the top of the charts thanks to the power of Tom Cruise, Harry Styles and ‘As It Was’ reclaims its number one spot for a record fourth time, and Tina Turner takes control of her own narrative on ‘What’s Love Got to Do with It’. All that and more as we round up all the best chart news of the modern-day and recent past.
Current UK Number One: ‘Afraid to Feel’ – LF System
You saw Top Gun: Maverick, right? Of course, you have. Statistically, if you’ve gone to a theatre in the last three months, you have most likely sat and watched Tom Cruise return to the cockpit as Maverick. The film recently crossed the $1 billion box office mark and has made an astounding $100 million in the UK. Sorry, let me rephrase that: it’s made 86 million pounds!
So what do you get if you buy a Top Gun: Maverick ticket? Action, high stakes excitement, and shirtless dudes on beaches. Those were all givens, of course, but you also get two (count ’em, two) theme songs. One is the stereotypical love theme from Lady Gaga, ‘Hold My Hand’, and the other is the summery pop track originally written for the previously mentioned shirtless beach scene, OneRepublic’s ‘I Ain’t Worried’.
At just two and a half minutes, ‘I Ain’t Worried’ doesn’t have enough length or substance to be considered annoying. It’s just a brief slice of pop music nothingness: sunny, breezy, light, and utterly forgettable. But for some reason, ‘I Ain’t Worried’ is getting way more traction than Gaga’s ‘Hold My Hand’, which came and went on both the US and UK charts without making a dent.
Granted, something scratches at the back of your ears when you put on ‘I Ain’t Worried’. Chalk that up to super technician Ryan Tedder, who can make a memorable melody out of just about anything. ‘I Ain’t Worried’ is riding the jetstream of Top Gun: Maverick so hard that it’s practically tailgating Cruise midair (wait, planes don’t have tailgates. Whatever the equivalent is, I guess), so let’s see if it can go any higher than just squeaking into the top five.
UK Singles Top Ten (Week of September 1st, 2022):
- ‘Afraid to Feel’ – LF System
- ‘B.O.T.A’ – Eliza Rose/Interplanetary
- ‘Green Green Grass’ – George Ezra
- ‘Break My Soul’ – Beyoncé
- ‘I Ain’t Worried’ – OneRepublic
- ‘My G’ – Aitch and Ed Sheeran
- ‘Crazy What Love Can Do’ – David Guetta/Hill/Henderson
- ‘Doja’ – Central Cee
- ‘Ferrari’ – James Hype/ Miggy Dela Rosa
- ‘Super Freaky Girl’ – Nicki Minaj
Current US Number One: ‘As It Was’ – Harry Styles
Before the digital age, it was almost impossible for songs to reclaim a number one position. Occasionally, two songs with equal popularity would battle it out, but both would inevitably have their own shelf life that often only meant a brief return to number one. Pop radio stations didn’t keep songs in rotation for too long, and before you know it, a song had come and gone from the number one slot.
Between the establishment of the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1958 to the end of 199, only 32 songs hit number one, fell out of the top spot, and reclaimed it for another run at the top of the charts. Exactly 850 different songs hit number one in that same amount of time. That means that across four decades of music, only .03% of songs managed to accomplish the repeat feat.
That began to change at the start of the new millennium and kicked into high gear in 2008, a year that saw four songs make multiple trips to number one. Last year, six different songs came, left, and returned to number one. A returning song even bookended the year at number one: ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ by Mariah Carey. In the streaming era, return trips to number one aren’t all that uncommon anymore.
The first song to ever see multiple returns to number one was ‘Le Freak’ by disco pioneers Chic, which saw three distinct runs at number one. Last year, both BTS’s ‘Butter’ and The Kid Laroi’s ‘Stay’ made three trips to number one, and this year, Adele’s ‘Easy On Me’ did the same. But to my knowledge, no artist has ever had five separate runs at number one with a single song.
You know where this is going: Harry Styles, who has nabbed his (I believe) record-breaking fifth distinct ascent to number one with ‘As It Was’. At this point, ‘As It Was’ is beginning to transcend Song of the Summer distinctions and is going straight for Song of the Year. In terms of sheer popularity, I don’t even know what could compete with it. Everyone from Jack Harlow to Lizzo to Future to Drake to goddamn Beyoncé has knocked Styles down, only for ‘As It Was’ to get right back up to the top. It’s a singular song, making a singular run on the charts.
US Billboard Hot 100 Top Ten Singles (Week of September 3rd, 2022):
- ‘As It Was’ – Harry Styles
- ‘About Damn Time’ – Lizzo
- ‘Bad Habit’ – Steve Lacy
- ‘Running Up That Hill’ – Kate Bush
- ‘Break My Soul’ – Beyoncé
- ‘Sunroof’ – Nicky Youre & Dazy
- ‘Super Freaky Girl’ – Nicki Minaj
- ‘Wait For U’ – Future ft. Drake & Tems
- ‘Me Porto Bonito’ – Bad Bunny & Cencho Corleone
- ‘I Like You (A Happier Song)’ – Post Malone ft. Doja Cat
This Week in Number Ones: ‘What’s Love Got to Do with It’ – Tina Turner (#1 on the Billboard Hot 1000, September 1st, 1984)
Something pops out immediately upon hearing Tina Turner sing the first line of ‘What’s Love Got to Do with It’. After a supremely relaxed opening featuring gentle drums and airy synths, Turner’s entrance into the song does something that audiences hadn’t expected from a powerhouse performer like Turner: she remains quiet.
This was the same Tina Turner who blew audiences away with her sheer dedication to high energy throughout the 1960s and 1970s. This was the same Tina Turner who turned songs like ‘Proud Mary’ and ‘River Deep – Mountain High’ into all-time shout-alongs. This was the same Tina Turner who built her reputation on fiery passion, indefatigable determination, and robust defiance.
But the Tina Turner we meet in the first few seconds of ‘What’s Love Got to Do with It’ is at a near whisper. She’s wounded. You can hear it in the way that her voice quivers as she sings, “You must understand / Though the touch of your hand / Makes my pulse reaaaact“. Turner will eventually get her moment to belt out the anthemic chorus, but in the first few lines, Turner is breathy, languid, and even sheepish.
It’s impossible to know whether every listener who heard ‘What’s Love Got to Do with It’ in 1984 automatically saw the connection between the lyrics and what Turner had gone through in the previous decade. Still, it’s fair to say that her story had trickled into the public consciousness. Years of abuse at the hand of her partner Ike ended when Turner fled and filed for divorce. Turner famously claimed to have 36 cents in her pocket when she left Ike.
After years of working her way back up through club gigs and guest appearances, Turner signed to Capitol Records, who hooked her up with modern English pop producers like Rupert Hine and Terry Britten. Along with songwriter Sue Shifrin, Britten had written ‘What’s Love Got to Do with It’ years prior and had been shopping it around to artists as diverse as Cliff Richard and Donna Summer. The British pop group Bucks Fizz were set to release their version when Britten became involved in producing Turner.
Despite floating around to different singers before its release, it’s impossible to think of anyone other than Turner singing ‘What’s Love Got to Do with It’. Besides the real-life parallels, Turner’s husky voice and emphatic shouts give the song memorable qualities. Without Turner, ‘What’s Love Got to Do with It’ becomes just another mid-’80s ballad. In her hands, it’s a defiant and career-defining reclamation on an epic scale.
That’s exactly what it was too. Although she had her hits with Ike, ‘What’s Love Got to Do with It’ was Turner’s first (and only) number one hit. It came on her own terms, and when it ascended to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, Turner became the oldest woman ever to score a chart-topper (a record since broken by Cher and her 1998 number one ‘Believe’). It was just the start of an ascent that made Turner the legendary music icon she remains today.
Unsurprisingly, the dramatisation of her life story was also called What’s Love Got to Do with It. The song presented the perfect narrative for Turner to stage her comeback, and in turn, Turner gave the track the proper amount of emotional weight and impact. It was the perfect song at the perfect time for the perfect person. That kind of synergy doesn’t always get rewarded, but it was impossible to ignore Turner, and her return to glory with ‘What’s Love Got to Do with It’.
Billboard Hot 100 Top Ten (Week of September 1st, 1984)
- ‘What’s Love Got to Do with It’ – Tina Turner
- ‘Missing You’ – John Waite
- ‘Stuck On You’ – Lionel Richie
- ‘Ghostbusters’ – Ray Parker Jr
- ‘When Doves Cry’ – Prince
- ‘She Bop’ – Cyndi Lauper
- ‘Sunglasses At Night’ – Corey Hart
- ‘Let’s Go Crazy’ – Prince
- ‘If This Is It’ – Huey Lewis and the News
- ‘If Ever You’re in My Arms Again’ – Peabo Bryson
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