The week of August 1, 1964, found The Beatles atop the Billboard Hot 100 with ‘A Hard Day’s Night.’ This was the fifth of seven #1s the Fab Four would have in a one-year period.
The runner-up that week was a song that was in the top spot the previous week, looking down at The Beatles at #2. The Four Seasons’ ‘Rag Doll,’ a pop/doo-wop classic, gave the band their fourth chart-topper.
Throwing back to the week of July 31, 1954, we find a classic doo-wop song topping Billboard’s singles chart. ‘Sh-Boom,’ or ‘Life Could Be a Dream’ as it is sometimes titled, is so good it showed up twice in the top ten simultaneously by two different artists.
The track was first recorded by New York R&B group The Chords. That version eventually made it to #2 on the R&B charts and #9 on the pop chart. It was also recorded by Canadian doo-wop group The Crew Cuts, and their version made it to #1, where it stayed for seven straight weeks. No surprise that the white guys had the bigger hit with the Black guys’ song.
The fifth and sixth slots on the current Billboard Hot 100 belong to the same artist: Sabrina Carpenter.
My pick for Song of the Summer, ‘Espresso‘ currently sits at #5 after peaking at #3. It still boggles my mind that this song never reached #1. Maybe it still will.
Just below it is ‘Please Please Please,’ the second single from Carpenter’s upcoming album Short n’ Sweet.
Billboard’s #4 song of the week is a genre mashup by a little-known artist named Tommy Richman. Like so many hits these days, it got its start on TikTok.
A snippet of ‘Million Dollar Baby’ was uploaded to the social platform in a lo-fi clip shot in the recording studio and promptly racked up millions of views. When the record dropped later that week, it was already a hit.
This week’s #3 song is Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Not Like Us,’ the fifth diss track the rapper released during his recent feud with Drake.
I had managed to not hear any of the dueling songs released by either artist until now, so I’m certainly not qualified to say who came out on top. That said, only one of the rappers scored a #1 hit with a song accusing his rival of pedophilia, so I’d say that makes Kendrick the winner.
Meet Me In Montauk 