The week of March 13, 2004, saw Usher atop the Billboard Hot 100 with ‘Yeah!,’ which occupied the #1 spot for 12 consecutive weeks that year.
At #2 is ‘One Call Away’ by Chingy, an artist I had never heard of until he showed up on Throwback Weekends in August (with ‘Right Thurr‘) and November (with ‘Holidae In‘). Those tracks peaked at #2 and #3, respectively.
Throwing back to the week of March 12, 1994, we find Swedish pop band Ace of Base atop the Billboard Hot 100 with ‘The Sign.’
Late last year, I featured the band’s previous hit, ‘All That She Wants,’ which peaked at #2. That song, plus today’s track and ‘Don’t Turn Around,’ which reached #4, all showed up on the band’s debut album, Happy Nation. To be more precise, they showed up on the U.S. version of that album, which had a different track order than the initial Denmark release and added three new songs (including ‘Don’t Turn Around’ and ‘The Sign’).
Dire Straits is one of those bands I rarely listen to despite loving everything I’ve heard. The group never found its way into my regular rotation, but that doesn’t stop me from considering Making Movies and Brothers in Arms perfect albums.
I’ve never given Mark Knopfler’s solo career much consideration, either, despite adoring 2000’s Sailing to Philadelphia. That album is an absolute banger, one I would stack up against pretty much anything from either decade it straddled.
In the mid-2010s I was briefly an Ariana Grande fan. I was particularly enamored of her 2014 album My Everything and its follow-up, 2016’s Dangerous Woman. Dangerous Woman, in particular, is a stellar pop collection.
Then, between 2018 and 2020, Grande put out three straight albums that left me cold. Sweetener was fine but unremarkable. Thank U, Next, despite its massive sales and trio of hit singles, went in a direction I just couldn’t follow. I barely listened to Positions. I pretty much wrote her off.
Kacey Musgraves won an Album of the Year Grammy for 2018’s Golden Hour, a wonderful blend of moody pop and her gentle country sound. It was her third strong release in six years (not including a Christmas album), and at the time it looked like she was on her way to superstardom.
Her 2017 marriage to singer Ruston Kelly ended in divorce in 2020, prompting a break-up album that promised to be a real beauty. Instead, 2021’s Star-Crossed was a muddled misfire, an artsy album that shared none of the DNA that made her earlier work so compelling.
Meet Me In Montauk 