On Saturday, I mentioned that only nine songs in languages other than English have topped Billboard’s Hot 100. This week I’ll reveal those titles in chronological order.

The first song to pull off the feat was 1958’s ‘Nel blu, dipinto di blu’ (popularly known as ‘Volare’), a ballad co-written and performed by Italian performer Domenico Modugno. Not only was this the first non-English #1 in Hot 100 history, it was just the second #1 on the Hot 100, period, as the chart had debuted just two weeks prior. So for a very brief time, 50% of all Hot 100 chart-toppers were in Italian.

‘Volare’ also made history at the first-ever Grammy awards in 1959, winning both Record and Song of the Year. Talk about a well-timed single.

The song was selected as the Italian entry for that year’s Eurovision contest, where it finished third behind two songs nobody has ever heard of. Almost fifty years later, it was voted the second-best loved Eurovision entry in the contest’s history, behind ABBA’s ‘Waterloo.’

Modugno wrote and released several other successful songs, though none with the international appeal of this one. He also appeared in more than 40 movies. He died in 1994, at just 66 years old, of a heart attack.