A Milestone: The One-Thousandth Number Ones Column

Photo illustration inset credit: Andrew Shurtleff Photography

On January 16, 2018, Stereogum senior editor Tom Breihan announced a new regular column:

He would review every Number One single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100. 

Tom added in his initial post: “Since there have been more than 1,000 #1 singles, I’ll do one of these every day, or as close to every day as I can manage.”

Ironically, the US Tom is now ahead in terms of years over the UK Tom, as the latter follows a leisurely pattern of posting when he wants. As of this writing, Ewing is up to the year 2004 while Breihan is at 2011.

He went from posting every workday except holidays to thrice weekly, effective September 23, 2019…

That schedule went down to weekly effective July 3, 2023, when he awarded a 10 for Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream.” Tom said he did it to keep the column run longer, since otherwise he could have finished up to the present day before the end of 2024.

But enough with this preamble. The reason for this post:

With his review of Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way,” Tom has now covered his 1,000th number one!

It’s a landmark achievement. To write 1000 separate essays about the great, the average, and sometimes – the truly awful records that reached the top of the charts – is an amazing feat.

(Click and hover…)

It’s a good reason to celebrate – so let’s do so!

– Fun Facts and Figures

Here are the first songs Tom graded at each position 1-10. 

• The First “10”: The Drifters – “Save the Last Dance for Me,” 1960
• The First “9”: Conway Twitty – “It’s Only Make Believe,” 1958
• The First “8”: The Teddy Bears – “To Know Him is to Love Him,” 1958
• The First “7”: Tommy Edwards – “It’s All in the Game,” 1958
• The First “6”: The Elegants – “Little Star,” 1958
• The First “5”: Domenico Modugno – “Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu (Volare)”, 1958
• The First “4”: Paul Anka – “Lonely Boy,” 1959
• The First “3”: Ricky Nelson – “Poor Little Fool,” 1958 (this was the first record Tom reviewed)
• The First “2”: The Kingston Trio – “Tom Dooley”, 1958
• The First “1”: Brian Hyland – “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini”, 1960

Here are the years where Tom gave gradings to songs at every number from 1-10 …

• 1974
• 1988
• 1989

The years with no grade from Tom below a 5 …

• 1983 
• 1984 
• 1996
• 1999
• 2004
• 2008

The honorable mentions for the latter category are the years which had only one 10 and no 9 ….

• 1963
• 1994 

And the years that had only one 9 and no 10:

• 1958
• 1993

Differing Opinions

Here are the top five Number Ones with the biggest negative variance between Tom’s grade and that of TNOCS voters, so far:

Tom is so enamored with “Crank That (Soulja Boy)” that he included it in his The Number Ones book. That, along with Laffy Taffy and Lollipop, suggests TNOCS voters aren’t into hip-hop as much as he is!

Given that most TNOCS voters are older than Tom, that isn’t surprising. 

The real eye opener is Tom’s fondness for “Teen Angel” and “Before the Next Teardrop Falls,” two ballads that left TNOCS voters indifferent at best. Usually it’s the other way around when it comes to this genre.

Now, here’s the top 5 number ones with the biggest positive variance between TNOCS voters’ grade and that of Tom’s:

• 5. Jim Croce – “Bad Bad Leroy Brown,” 1973 (Tom 3, TNOCS 7.2, 4.2)
• 4. The Beatles – “All You Need is Love,” 1967 (Tom 3, TNOCS 7.3, 4.3)
• 3. Rick Astley – “Never Gonna Give You Up,{” 1988 (Tom 2, TNOCS 6.5, 4.5)
• 2. The Carpenters – “Close to You,” 1970 (Tom 3, TNOCS 7.6, 4.6)
• 1. Barenaked Ladies – “One Week,” 1998 (Tom 1, TNOCS 6.2, difference of 5.2)

You may be shocked by the absence of “Magic” by Olivia Newton-John, given commenters’ passionate objection to Tom’s score for that entry.

“And then the other one that gets brought up a lot:

I gave “Penny Lane” a 6…”

Tom told Billboard in 2022:

“I just don’t like that song. Yeah, it’s important, but there’s certain Beatle eras that just don’t – they’re not my bag, necessarily.” 

TNOCS voters apparently have a 1960s bias, as they gave Penny Lane an 8.2 average for a difference of 2.2.

One is tempted to think that this boomer-millennial gap explains the top variances that were even bigger than “Magic” and “Penny Lane.” But what about “Never Gonna Give You Up” and “One Week,” both of which were well past the 1960s and were popular when Tom was growing up?

Well, read his columns for both.

He really hated both songs, while TNOCS voters can tolerate them better. Go figure.

The Big Picture

Overall, Tom’s grades for the first 1,000 number ones come out like this. Note that the results can make a very positively skewed pattern if charted statistically. 

(I might be off one or two scores, but I don’t know where, and it doesn’t really matter for this discussion overall.)

While I and others may think that Tom is too negative sometimes, this summary shows that if anything he’s generally favorable to what he’s reviewed so far, even if some give him considerable reservations in parts. That’s encouraging to know.

Finally, A Personal Note:

I learned about The Number Ones column on September 10, 2020, from another great blog, The Hits Just Keep On Comin’ by J.A. Bartlett.

So I took his advice and took a deep dive into reading all the entries to catch up. After months of stalking, I finally got up enough courage to become a TNOCS voter by, as best I can tell, the entry for Madonna’s “Like a Prayer.”

Whenever the difference is greater than 2 either way, that indicates to me a substantial variance of opinion and I note it as such in the now weekly’s comments when appropriate.

This brings me to my final questions:

When and why did you start reading The Number Ones column?

And what are your thoughts about it after 1,000 entries? 

Feel free to share your thoughts…

… in the very way that we all met:

In the comments below.

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