The Week in Number Ones

The Week in Number Ones: The Weeknd, Lizzy McAlpine, and The Four Seasons

Thu 9 March 2023 20:30, UK

Welcome back to The Week in Number Ones, where all the biggest chart movers from the US and UK charts get condensed into one article. Last week, we re-entered the nepo baby conversation with Coi Leray, wondered about the oddities of featured credits with Ice Spice, and revisited a time when the Billboard chart was stupid enough to block No Doubt from getting a number-one single because of a technicality.

Well, friends, it’s Oscar weeks. I’ve done my due diligence by seeing most of the ‘Best Picture’ nominees (our own Calum Russell permanently put me off of seeing Avatar: The Way of Water), but this year’s Academy Awards have got me thinking more about the ‘Best Original Songs’ that are competing for Oscar gold.

There’s only one real “hit” in the mix this year: Rihanna’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever contribution, ‘Lift Me Up’. Although it missed out on topping the charts (it peaked at number two in the US), ‘Lift Me Up’ is the closest we’ll get to this year’s version of ‘We Don’t Talk About Bruno’ or ‘No Time to Die’. ‘We Don’t Talk About Bruno’ famously wasn’t even eligible to win an Oscar, something that ‘Lift Me Up’ doesn’t have to worry about this time around.

Rihanna’s biggest competition is probably ‘Naatu Naatu’ from RRR, the Indian blockbuster that somehow didn’t get any other nominations this year. I don’t see Lady Gaga’s Top Gun: Maverick love ballad ‘Hold My Hand’ or Diane Warren’s ‘Applause’ from the totally real movie Tell It Like a Woman putting up much of a fight, and even though I really like, the David Byrne/Mitski/Son Lux banger ‘This Is a Life’ will probably miss out on the award as well.

It’s not surprising that the Oscars are lacking in major music storylines this year. It is, after all, a film awards show. But most years at least have something fun and musically-adjacent to tear into Lady Gaga potentially winning ‘Best Actress’, ‘Bruno’ not being nominated for ‘Best Original Song’. This year – nothing. Congratulations to whoever takes home the Oscar for ‘Best Original Song’ this year, but it won’t be the ceremony’s highlight.

This week, we investigate the latest TikTok hit single with Lizz Alpine’s twisty-turny ‘Ceilings’. We’ll also track the long road that The Weeknd took to get ‘Die For You’ to number one and revisit how Frankie Valli made an unlikely comeback with a brand new version of The Four Seasons on ‘December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)’. All that and more as we round up the best chart news of the modern-day and recent past.

Current UK Number One: ‘Flowers’ – Miley Cyrus

Welcome back to our weekly segment: what TikTok trend is Tyler confused about today? If there’s a recurring theme to these columns, other than my unquenchable desire to know where The Killers’ ‘Mr. Brightside’ is every week, it’s me not getting TikTok. I’m officially on the platform and close enough to the age bracket that uses the app to understand it, but I’m also mentally 100 years old because I’m crotchety every time I talk about a new song that has blown up on TikTok.

I’ve already spent quite a bit of time talking about people like ThxSoMch and PinkPanthress, two artists who owe their biggest hits to TikTok, and today I’m going back into the abyss to check out what Lizzy McAlpine has to add to the platform. And folks, I think I’ve finally found it: a TikTok trend that I don’t hate.

Or, at the very least, I don’t hate ‘Ceilings’, the new hit song that came to prominence thanks to TikTok. Basically, all you need to know is that ‘Ceilings’ is what would happen if Phoebe Bridgers co-wrote a song with M. Night Shyamalan. That was enough to kick off a whole new trend featuring some solid takes on the plot twist and the end of the track.

McApline is coming onto the scene at a not-great time: people are inevitably going to compare her to someone like Bridgers, just like I did above. Is she talented enough to side above these basic comparisons? We’ll see, but a top ten hit is nothing to scoff at, and ‘Ceilings’ is at least doing something that I don’t hear anyone else playing with: the surprise ending.

UK Singles Top Ten (Week of March 8th, 2023):

‘Flowers’ – Miley Cyrus
‘Boy’s a Liar’ – PinkPanthress
‘Kill Bill’ – SZA
‘Die For You’ – The Weeknd
‘Sure Thing’ – Miguel
‘Calm Down’ – Rema
‘Ceilings’ – Lizzy McAlpine
‘As It Was’ – Harry Styles
‘Players’ – Coi Leray
‘10:35′ – Tiesto & Tate McRae

Current US Number One: ‘Die for You’ – The Weeknd & Ariana Grande

I love when old songs become hits. Time means nothing in the streaming age, and once Covid-19 caused everyone to hide inside their houses, the lines between the modern day and the recent past became increasingly blurry. Hell, even the line between the modern day and the far-off past became blurred: how else do you explain Kate Bush scoring a major hit with a decades-old song?

This week’s new number one doesn’t quite have that much time attached to it, but it’s still another case of a delayed chart-topper. The Weeknd, a massive pop star and current HBO controversy magnet, originally released his third studio album Starboy back in 2016. Toward the tail end of that album was a catchy little song called ‘Die For You’, which was eventually released as a single in 2017. It originally peaked at number 43 on the Billboard Hot 100, got featured on The Weeknd’s greatest hits album The Highlights, and then mostly disappeared.

Cut to today, where a remix of ‘Die For You’ featuring Ariana Grande is currently the number-one song in America. How did this happen? I’m sure you can guess: it’s our old friend TikTok. It also benefitted from a bit of canny timing. ‘Die For You’ was already climbing the charts when someone (The Weeknd, the record company, possibly both) rush-released the new remix featuring Grande. That was the push that ‘Die For You’ needed in order to leap up to number one.

As more and more songs defy the notion that contemporary hits have to be… you know, contemporary… ‘Die For You’ adds to the foundation that makes up streaming’s stranglehold on modern music. Any song can be a number-one hit – it doesn’t matter when it was originally released. Nobody cares about “new music” anymore, and it’s honestly for the best. There’s now a more level playing field for what can rise and fall from the charts, even though only superstars like The Weeknd and Ariana Grande are currently seeing the benefits of that change.

Billboard Hot 100 Top Ten (Week of March 11th, 2023):

‘Die For You’ – The Weeknd & Ariana Grande
‘Flowers’ – Miley Cyrus
‘Kill Bill’ – SZA
‘Boys a Liar, Pt. 2’ – PinkPanthress & Ice Spice
‘Last Night’ – Morgan Wallen
‘Creepin’ – Metro Boomin, The Weeknd, and 21 Savage
‘TQG’ – Karol G and Shakira
‘Unholy’ – Sam Smith & Kim Petras
‘Anti-Hero’ – Taylor Swift
‘Cuff It’ – Beyoncé

This Week in Number Ones: ‘December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)’ – The Four Seasons (#1 on the Billboard Hot 100, March 13th, 1976)

Frankie Valli had seen his time come and go from the pop charts. As one of the dominant forces in pop music during the pre-Beatles boom of the early 1960s, Valli scored four number-one hits with his vocal group, The Four Seasons. It took a few years with songwriting partner and Four Seasons co-founder Bob Gaudio, but Valli found solo success with ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’. But apart from a fluke number one with ‘My Eyes Adored You’, Valli had largely faded from view in the 1970s.

Privately, Valli was struggling with otosclerosis, a medical condition that affected his hearing. With a severely diminished ability to find a proper pitch and hear his backing musicians, Valli struggled throughout the early part of the 1970s. A lack of major hit singles caused The Four Seasons to get washed out of the legendary record label Motown. Things were looking bleak for Valli, but he managed to sneak away with ‘My Eyes Adored You’ before attempting a rebuild.

The Four Seasons decided to hire two new lead singers to help ease the burden placed on Valli’s failing hearing. Bassist/vocalist Don Ciccone helped replicate Valli’s iconic falsetto range, while drummer/vocalist Gerry Polci had a high tenor range that had a passing resemblance to Valli’s. Along with guitarist John Paiva and keyboardist Lee Shapiro, The Four Seasons transformed from a doo-wop vocal group into a traditional rock band lineup, complete with Valli as the frontman. However, because of his hearing problems, Valli wasn’t always the band’s lead singer.

The division of labour also came with a new sound. Fitting into the burgeoning sounds of disco and R&B, The Four Seasons paired layered harmonies with dance music for the first time. There was no promise (or expectation) that the subsequent studio album, 1975’s Who Loves You, would be a success. However, the album’s title track became a number-three hit in the US. The rest of the band provided the harmonies that fill out the song’s chorus, but Valli is still largely the lead vocalist on ‘Who Loves You’. That would change for their next single.

Gaudio originally wrote ‘December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)’ about the repeal of prohibition in 1933, but Valli stepped in and requested that the song take on a new theme: a young man losing his virginity. With an updated time frame, Gaudio took inspiration from his own courtship with his wife, Judy Parker. Parker helped Gaudio flesh out some of the lyrics and got writing credit for her trouble.

Whether it was because of his ongoing hearing issues or because the updated year would have made him too old (Valli would have been nearly 30 in December 1963), lead Polci handled vocal duties for the song’s verses. His mix of innocence and joy helped sell the song, with Polci simultaneously keeping a rock-solid disco beat behind the track. During the pre-choruses, Valli’s familiar voice pops up and settles into the lead vocal spot. The two trade off throughout the track until the song reaches its bridge sections, at which point Ciccone takes over with falsetto.

It was something completely new from The Four Seasons: wah-wah guitars, disco beats, and different lead singers should have put off what remained of the band’s original core fanbase. Instead, ‘December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)’ represents one of the most successful reinventions in pop music history. An entirely new audience who had no connection to ‘Rag Doll’ or ‘Sherry’ was embracing a 40-year-old man and his band of nobodies. It was a remarkable feat.

Polci took the lead on most of the singles that followed, but nothing landed with the surprising force that ‘December, 1963′ had. Valli maintained a parallel solo career and was tapped to sing the title track to the 1978 film Grease. It was a strange mix of a song: a 1950s storyline featuring a famous 1960s singer written by a 1970s powerhouse (Bee Gees’ leader Berry Gibb). That haphazard mix of decades obviously didn’t matter because ‘Grease’ hit number one when the film became a phenomenon, giving Valli his final chart-topping song.

In 1980, Valli had successful surgery that restored most of his hearing. With their services no longer required, both Polci and Ciccone departed in 1982, with Polci making a brief return before leaving for good in 1990. Years later, Polci, Ciccone, and Shapiro formed their own band, The Hit Men. Ciccone died of a heart attack in 2016.

Valli and Gaudio continue to own the rights to The Four Seasons name, and at 88 years old, Valli continues to join a new (and completely anonymous) group of musicians who continue on as The Four Seasons. The band’s songs were officially canonised with the 2005 musical Jersey Boys, which got the dubious honour of being adapted by none other than Clint Eastwood. Considering the unlikely and downright strange staying power of The Four Seasons, it was just another part of the group’s ongoing legend.

Billboard Hot 100 Top Ten (Week of March 13th, 1976):

‘December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)’ – The Four Seasons
‘All By Myself’ – Eric Carmen
‘Love Machine (Part 1)’ – The Miracles
‘Take It to the Limit’ – Eagles
‘Dream Weaver’ – Gary Wright
‘Lonely Night (Angel Face)’ – Captain & Tenille
‘Theme From S.W.A.T.’ – Rhythm Heritage
‘Love Hurts’ – Nazareth
‘Sweet Thing’ – Rufus ft. Chaka Khan
‘Junk Food Junkie’ – Larry Groce