Which rock songs have spent more than 100 weeks on the charts?
Trends come and go, but for as long as the UK charts have existed, there have been two genres that have largely performed the best for extended periods: the old staples of pop and rock.
The identities of both of these genres have significantly shifted over the years, often incorporating influences from other emerging styles as they’ve taken on a path of constant growth and evolution. However, just because there hasn’t always been a completely uniform approach to both in the last three quarters of a century, they’ve still managed to remain the two most consistently dominant genres when it comes to reappearing in the charts.
Of course, hip hop, R&B and various commercial strands of electronic music have managed to become more prominent in the latter half of this period, but that doesn’t necessarily equate to longevity in the charts, at least not in terms of a single song spending an unprecedented total amount of weeks among the best-selling tracks of a given week.
If we take a moment to think about it, the average lifespan of a chart reign tends to be around four to eight weeks, with new entries pushing releases that have spent this amount of time in the chart down and eventually out of the top 100 after a month or two, especially if an artist releases something else as part of a wider album campaign. If you can last beyond this amount of time, you’re evidently onto a winner.
With that in mind, for anything to survive over 100 weeks in the chart is a monumental achievement, given that it’s almost two years spent mingling with the most popular songs of any given moment in time. Audiences are famed for having a short attention span, and it takes something special for people to want to remember a song or revisit it after a certain amount of time, especially if you’ve already been overexposed to it.
For a pop song, this is perhaps a little more expected due to how the very nature of the genre is to stick to its audience, but for a rock song to achieve this is a little more unusual. Only a small handful of songs that fit into the genre have managed to pass this milestone, but those that have managed to outlast their welcome in the UK charts are undoubtedly all songs that have cemented themselves as all-time classics.
How many rock songs have spent over 100 weeks on the charts?
Interpreting the term ‘rock music’ as loosely as possible, only 13 rock songs in history have achieved this feat in the UK, with 37 being the grand total of songs that have registered a metric ton of weeks within the top 100.
Perennial indie disco floorfiller ‘Mr Brightside’ by The Killers has been there for a total of 514 weeks, meaning that almost half of its lifespan has been spent loitering around the upper echelons of the UK charts. This is considerably higher than its closest competitor in the rock world, Goo Goo Dolls’ 1998 hit ‘Iris’, which has been there for just 187 weeks.
Fleetwood Mac, Oasis and Kings of Leon all have two entries each, while Journey, Snow Patrol, Coldplay, The Pogues and Slade round out the others, the latter two being examples of festive songs that re-enter the charts on an annual basis. Remarkably, many of the songs here never even peaked at number one, but have inexplicably found themselves becoming regarded as late-blooming classics in the UK, with their popularity and performance significantly boosted by the decision to include streaming figures in official chart data.
13 rock songs that have spent over 100 weeks on the charts:
- The Killers – ‘Mr Brightside’
- Goo Goo Dolls – ‘Iris’
- Coldplay – ‘Viva La Vida’
- Fleetwood Mac – ‘Dreams’
- Fleetwood Mac – ‘Everywhere’
- Snow Patrol – ‘Chasing Cars’
- The Pogues & Kirsty MacColl – ‘Fairytale of New York’
- Kings of Leon – ‘Sex on Fire’
- Slade – ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’
- Journey – ‘Don’t Stop Believin’’
- Oasis – ‘Whatever’
- Oasis – ‘Wonderwall’
- Kings of Leon – ‘Use Somebody’
