Happy 10th Anniversary, American Idol! 345 Billboard No. 1s

By On 06/11/2012 · 55 Comments · In American Idol

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On June 11th, 2002, a new competitive reality show debuted on FOX. That little show, called American Idol, has since gone on to impact popular culture and the music business in ways we could not have imagined at the turn of the century.

Chart guru, Fred Bronson, has written a piece for Billboard outlining the huge impact American Idol alums have had on the charts.

So far, there are 345 Billboard No. 1′s spread out over 29 Idol finalists and one non-finalist, William Hung.  Just five Idols are responsible for almost two-thirds of those songs. Kelly Clarkson has 73 No. 1s, followed by Carrie Underwood (62), Daughtry (38), Fantasia (31) and Ruben Studdard (16).

Season 2′s Josh Gracin had the 1st #1 hit in country, followed by Carrie, Bucky Covington, Kelly and Scotty McCreery. Lauren Alaina, Danny Gokey, Casey James, Kristy Lee Cook and Michael Sarver have also appeared on the country charts.

On the R&B charts, Ruben, Fantasia, Tamyra Gray, Jordin Sparks and Jennifer Hudson have had #1s

On the Christian charts, chart toppers  include Clay, Mandisa, Chris Sligh, Jason Castro, Kris Allen and Carrie.

On the dance charts, Kimberley Locke was the first Idol to reach No. 1, followed by Kelly, Jennifer, Jordin, Blake Lewis and Adam Lambert.

On the Adult Contemporary and Adult Top 40 charts, Kelly was the first to top charts in both formats, followed by Daughtry.  Kimberley  (3 holiday songs),  Carrie,  Elliott Yamin, David Cook, Jordin and David Archuleta.  Kris and Adam have  reigned on the Adult Top 40 charts.

Every single Idol winner has had at least one No. 1 on the Billboard charts, from Kelly to Phillip Phillips, winner of season 11.  Phil’s coronation song,  “Home” debuted on top of the Rock Digital Songs chart two weeks ago.

For more chart stats on all the American Idol winners, and more read the stat-fillled article at Billboard.biz.  The mountain of numbers in the article makes it clear the indelible presence American Idol alums have had on popular music in the past decade.

 

 
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  • Barth

    “I’m a firm believer that Kelly’s win on S1 set the bar – not only for
    the contestants that followed, but also all these “copycat” singing
    shows.

    Had she not won. . . well, we probably wouldn’t be celebrating it’s 10th B’Day!”

    I don’t think so. Kelly didn’t even release her first album until April 2003 when season 2 was almost over. She had not made any kind of mark yet and season 2 was a runaway hit before she sold her first cd. The season 2 finale remains the most watched showdown in AI history. I think that is when Fox knew they had a hit on their hands.

  • Kirsten

     

    ETA: oopy oops…when did a year have 356 weeks…me bad. so the
    number is 560 for one category for 10 years and 5600 for 10 categories
    and about 12000 for 2 dozen categories. But still 345 out of 12,000
    ain’t no big deal. And you can all laugh at my horrible math skills but
    damn, nobody corrected me!

    Pssst….there are 52 weeks in a year.

    There are a lot of number ones available if you look at it over 10 years, but there are a few factors that help to make it more impressive:

    1) No other singing show has come remotely close in the US

    2) The market is very competitive. It’s not like it was a cake walk to get some of those number 1s.

    3) Some people will just not move out of the number one spots. And that includes Idols. When Fred quotes his numbers, each number one in a category per entity only counts once. So, when Kelly topped the HAC chart for something like 6 weeks, that counts as 1 number 1. Carrie’s topped the Country Album chart for several weeks with her latest album (and her earlier albums) and each album only gets to count once. If we looked at the number of weeks Idols have held number 1s, it would actually be much, much higher. Back in the day when they released physical singles, the Idols would dominate the top of that chart for months.

    4) The diversity of those number ones is amazing. So many Idols have made names for themselves in different formats.

    5) If there was an easy formula to get a number one, everybody would be getting them.

    IDK. I’m INCREDIBLY impressed with these numbers. I think most labels would be thrilled with an A&R exec who could rack up these kind of stats for 10 years.  That’s 345! Woo!

  • Anonymous

    A little belated here, but….Congrats and Happy Anniversary/B-Day(Yeah…A T.V. show can have a birthday. lol)Idol!!<3 I hope that I'll be enjoying Idol for another ten years. WOWZA at all of those Billboard number one hits too.

    I was aware that AI1 aired at a different time of the year compared to the seasons that followed, but I never knew the exact date of it's debut until now. Glad that MJ and others here and elsewhere cared about Idol's 10th anniversary. I'm still waiting for that "special show" that was supposed to occur during AI11. Come on Idol crew. Loyal fans come back year after year to continue with their musical obsession. The least you could do is properly acknowledge your show's anniversary. And no…That hit's album and the design of AI10's tour merch do not count. :P

    Oh, and I'm also forever grateful to this show for introducing me to so many
    talented guys and gals over the years. KELLY, Melinda Doolittle, Carly Smithson, David Cook, David Archuleta, Allison Iraheta, Kris Allen, Siobhan Magnus, Haley Reinhart, and Hollie Cavanagh. To name a few. Not to mention. Seasons 7, 8, and 10 as a whole. I've found some of my all time fave singers,(and people in general)and ended up listening to a ton of great music thanks to this show. To think that I could've been watching Idol since I was 11/12 is pretty insane. I'm still a little sad that I missed seeing the first five seasons(Idol Rewind was cool and all, but not the same as watching those seasons when they happened.),but I've seen six seasons since then though so it's all good. :)

  • http://twitter.com/avrohama aj rabin

    I dont know why I dont hear from many idol alums on the radio. I think this is why many tank. Just from last years alums I never heard Pia Haley James Stefano or Lauren ever on the radio and they all produced great music so far.

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/7LS7KC5AHEOV5R27XD7GCWBHFU J

    FOX knew they had a hit on their hands before Season 1 was over. Season 1 made Idol a hit.  Season 2 never would have been greenlighted if Season 1 hadn’t been a success.  It started slowly in the summer as a joke to most people and by the finale it was a bonafide hit with celebrities turning up to see Kelly win .  Season 2 just benefited in the ratings from the hype that Season 1 generated.  The media attention by the end of S1 was huge so, of course, people started tuning in for S2 and the media focus became even bigger.  Kelly was already all over the news and already had success with her single sales.  She also hit #1 with her album in April, before the S2 finale so SHE showed people that success could come from this show.  And her sustained success for ten years proves that she was integral to making Idol what it became.  She gave the show it’s credibility.  As Simon himself said, Kelly wasn’t lucky to find Idol, Idol was lucky to find Kelly.  S2 had big ratings, but it didn’t have anyone who became a worldwide superstas like Kelly and it did not start the Idol machine on it’s way.

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