Ariana Grande holds the top 3 on the Hot 100 - only time since the Beatles

Ariana Grande Breaks Record For Most Simultaneous Top 40 Billboard Hot 100 Hits by a Female Artist

The top of the Billboard Hot 100:
Ariana Grande - 7 Rings
Ariana Grande - Break Up With Your Girlfriend, I'm Bored
Ariana Grande - thank u, next

For reference, the only other act to pull this off were the Beatles, for the chart week of April 25, 1964, with "Can't Buy Me Love," "Twist and Shout" and "Do You Want to Know a Secret" in that order.

Drake came very close to the same feat last year when "Nice For What", "Nonstop", and "God's Plan" held number 1, 2, and 4 respectively.

That year he broke the record for most singles in the top ten, and this year Ariana Grande broke the record for most singles by a female artist in the top 40. In both cases, the songs were all off their latest record, the week they came out ("Scorpion" and "thank u, next").

I think what's really interesting is that these records could only have been broken because of the way streaming allows every track on an album to be a single at the same time. The blockbusters off of "Bad" and "Thriller" came out over a period of months, and the Beatles' glut of US singles were in no small part the result of Vee-Jay and Swan trying to cash in on the back catalog while Capitol tried to suck the oxygen out of the room (while the Beatles just... kept recording). Ordinarily having a bunch of singles is a recipe for oversaturation, but in this new world, it's as if "Pepper" was sold in a box of single-side 7" records.

I think the fact that this doesn't happen to every mainstream artist these days speaks to the consistency of the artists' output; it takes something special to be omnipresent without being inconsistent and exhausting.

Discuss! Has the album hijacked the single chart? What makes artists that can pull this off so special? Are recent accomplishments by contemporary musicians well-earned victories, weird abberations, or something in between?

 

This will be fun.

 

Calling @schnitzerphilip

 

Uhm, are you bored? Because this is asking for trouble!

 

By the way, I’m happy for her. Girl power!

 

Before, an artist would have to sell at least a million physical copies of their single, for it to hit #1.

Now, for any song to hit # 1, something close to having the capacity crowd at Yankee Stadium download the track would achieve it.

Apples and Oranges

 

Agreed. That's why what I think is interesting is the volume of tracks from the same album charting so high. It makes me wonder, had things been wired up this way in the 1960s, how surreal the singles charts would have been. "Revolution 9" and "Wild Honey Pie" in the top 40?

 

Two completely different eras. A great achievement by Ariana but it should be compared to her contemporaries in the streaming era.

Btw around the same time they had the US top 5 the Beatles had the top 6 in Australia

 

And let me tell you something- the two best songs on the album, "Needy" and "NASA" would be #4 and #5 on the list if they were promoted with a video, they're that good.

"Hey Siri, play the new album from Ariana Grande."
"Okay, here's Thank You, Next."
"Thought I'd end up with Sean, but he wasn't a match..."

 

Fun for sure and get used to seeing this thread at the top of the forum for a while ,we gonna settle it.

 

Good for her. I appreciate you celebrating her achievements with this non-provocative thread.

 

Good for her. She's on top of the world right now and her album is a big success. Everything else about comparing her to the Beatles is dumb and the only people that care about this stuff are here on these forums since no one under the age of 30 knows what a chart is anymore and could care less. She shouldn't be disapraged cause we don't measure singles sales like they used to. It's a different world and this is how it's done now. Is it the same? No. Is she still the biggest act in the world? Yes. Did she compare herself to the Beatles? No. Let's cut the girl some slack save 50 pages of insults and give cheers to her success. I still have all my Beatles albums and they still all sound the same.

 

Let's not sell AG short, shall we? It's okay to say that "Needy" is a better song than "Yesterday", "NASA" is to hip-hop and pop what "I Am The Walrus" was to rock. There's no need to beat around the bush here.

 

Who's Arianda Grande?

Honestly never heard of her and wouldn't know one of her songs if it jumped up and bit me on the pecker.

 

Don't worry- I'd never heard of Leonard Cohen until it came up in a thread about the death of the album last week. You'll figure it out. Search YouTube, you'll see.

 

Maybe she is the Beatles.

 

Can't wait to see this forum go after one of the most successful and acclaimed female artists of this half of the decade.

 

Actually, that's why I posted this here... as a younger person, there aren't a lot of online communities where I can talk to anyone about charts.

I tried to keep this (perhaps more provocative) part out of my main post as not to alienate too many folks, but... I think she really is that good. As far as the quality of her output, her positive public image, and her fairly universal appeal, I think she's so far hit and kept a degree of dynamic, quality, and relevance that not a lot of pop musicians ever do. I don't think just any artist could pull off what she did in terms of a whole album of songs taking off like that. Perhaps I will be proved wrong shortly though.

Or at least three Canadians.

 

She's basically the new Beatles. She's certainly well on her way to smashing every record and achievement that those old, washed up mop tops ever first made newsworthy.

 

Artist?

"Performer" is more like it...

 

Like Elvis.

And Sinatra.

 

As for the actual music:

“7 rings” isn’t a very good song IMO - she rips off Soulja Boy! “break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored” is worse, but I enjoy “thank u, next.”

 

What's with the lowercase song titles?

 

That's "art".

The album is dead and so too is the album cover, so the way today's artists express themselves to position a song or song collection is through the song titles including the case and font.

 

It's an incredible achievement for Grande. Not sure it compares to the Beatles feat, but that's sort of the wrong way to look at it. Ariana is competing on an even playing field with her contemporaries who all have the same advantage in terms of lower numbers of digital downloads equating to a number 1 these days. So while she doesn't have to sell as much as the Beatles did back then, neither do her current competitors, so its basically just as impressive of an accomplishment, even though it's a different ballgame all together. Having the top 3 singles, no matter how they are tabulated, will never not be impressive.

And she IS an artist. Singing is an art form. Come on, guys.

Aretha wasn't an artist? Sinatra?

The voice is an instrument. A talented singer is an artist.

She's only 25 and is 5 albums in. She's got lots of time to mature and create more types of music.