Throwing back to the week of May 19, 1984, we find Lionel Richie’s cheesy ballad ‘Hello,’ which topped the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks.
This was the second song from the hit album Can’t Slow Down to reach the top spot, following ‘All Night Long (All Night).’ The album’s three other singles all reached the top ten, on the way to making this one of the top-selling albums of the 80s.
After a Taylor Swift detour we’re back to Throwback Weekends, and this is a fun one. The week of May 18, 1974, saw country/pop artist Ray Stevens atop the Billboard Hot 100 with his novelty song ‘The Streak.’
Written in response to the rise in streaking at public events, the song finds Stevens portraying both a TV reporter and the main witness to streakers at a supermarket, a gas station, and a basketball game.
For almost the entirety of 1964 so far, in these Throwback Weekends, The Beatles have dominated the Hot 100. The band owned the top of the chart for 14 consecutive weeks with three different songs reaching #1.
So who finally dethroned the Fab Four? Would you believe it was 62-year-old jazz legend Louis Armstrong with a demo of the title track from the Broadway musical Hello, Dolly!?
Throwing back to the week of May 1, 1954, we find two repeats topping Billboard’s singles chart: Perry Como’s ‘Wanted’ and Jo Stafford’s ‘Make Love to Me.’ This was the fifth straight week that those songs occupied the top two spots, with Como in #1 for four of them.
At #3 is ‘Cross Over the Bridge,’ a song originally written in 1945 by Bennie Benjamin and George David Weiss. The recording that received the most success was this one, by singer Patti Page. Page was the top-selling female performer of the 50s, having already scored four #1 hits before this one made it to #2.
The week of April 24, 2004, saw Usher atop the Billboard Hot 100 with ‘Yeah!,’ in the middle of a 12-week run at the top spot.
At #2 was R&B artist Mario Winans with ‘I Don’t Wanna Know,’ a song that spent eight weeks in the second spot, never able to overtake Usher. Even when ‘Yeah!’ fell out of #1, it was replaced by another Usher track, ‘Burn,’ while Winans remained at #2. This guy must hate Usher.
Meet Me In Montauk 