Today’s thread is brought to you by the number 4, 10, 70 and 17M.
X-Factor may be gone in the US, but it has staying power on the charts landing two acts in the top 10 of the Hot 100 this week.
Zayn from X-Factor UK landed the number one album this week and saw his chart position on the Hot 100 improve from 8th to 4th. When it debuted “Pillowtalk” was number one making Zayn one of three artists to debut their first single and album at number one (the other two are Lauren Hill (in 1988) and Idol’s Season 2 runner-up, Clay Aiken (in 2003)). Zayn’s streaming numbers were up 18% this week to 17M. BTW, you know you’ve arrived when Jimmy Fallon lip-synchs to your song in a battle with Melissa McCarthy (McCarthy won with a take-no-prisoners version of “Colours of the Wind”. How she caught that otter, I do not know).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saOHKFWW3tU
From the other side of the Atlantic is Fifth Harmony from the US version. “Work from Home” featuring Ty Dolla $ign becomes their first top 10 Hot 100 song. They debuted at 12th, dropped and started surging again last week as their airplay got high enough to support sales.(89K in sales (+22%), 14.4M in streams (+20%) and 49M AI (+22%)). Their next album will be titled 7/27 which is the day that they were formed as a group on X-Factor.
Rihanna’s “Work” featuring Drake continues to top the Hot 100 for its 7th week tying her previous record with “Umbrella”. Will she hold on for another week or is time for surging “7 Years” from Lukas Graham (2) or Meghan Trainor’s “No” (3) to take over the top of the chart. If “7 Years” tops the chart, it will extend the length of time non-Americans have topped the chart to 40 weeks. If “No” topples “Work”, the streak will be broken. At number 2, “7 Years” ties a chart high for Danish artists.
As mentioned before, Zayn’s “Pillowtalk” is 4th followed by Justin Bieber’s “Love Yourself”. “Love Yourself” has spent 20 weeks in the top 10 since it’s debut and has one more week to tie the all-time record for number of weeks in the top 10 since debut. He would tie himself because he managed to last that long with both “What Do You Mean” and “Sorry” along with Maroon 5’s “Sugar” and Nicki Minaj’s “Starship”> Can he make it to 22 and set a new record? He’s been topping the radio airplay chart for 8 weeks and nobody is close to toppling him this week.
Flo Rida’s “My House” is 6th, twenty one pilots are 7th with “Stressed Out”, G-Eazy and Bebe Rex’s “Me, Myself and I” is 7th and “I Took a Pill in Ibiza” from Mike Posner takes spot number 9.
Speaking of the Hot 100, here is an interesting story from Fred Bronson (chart guru). He tells of how he pitched a theme night to Nigel where Billboard editors would choose songs for the Idols to sing back in Season 2. ‘Lythgoe smiled and said, “Absolutely not. We learned a lesson in the U.K. If you choose the songs for the finalists, when they go home, it’s your fault. So they must choose their own songs.”‘ Fred racked his brain during the industry event and pitched a new idea to Nigel at the end – Number one Hits on the Hot 100. Nigel thought it was a great idea, but all the themes for that season had already been picked. But, a few weeks later, a theme fell through and they went with Fred’s idea. Billboard related themes would go on to be a popular theme for Idol and was one of the few time we got to hear modern songs in many of the years. Thanks Fred!
Fred tells the story of the Idol’s visit to BB headquarters in preparation for that theme.
Billboard has another article aboutthe history of the show as well. Producers were sure Justin or Tamyra would win. Over 70 artists from the show have hit the BB charts. Lots of great stuff in the article.
