Aren’t You Sick of That Song?

Several big hits from 2024 are still Top 10 hits today in 2025. Do people simply not get tired of songs anymore?

You’ve heard that song one too many times.

Perhaps it was a craze that seemingly wouldn’t die…

Maybe it’s a rightfully iconic classic that’s overdone…

Sometimes, it’s the song that just always seems to be playing in the deodorant aisle at CVS and you can’t find the unscented Dove fast enough…

(There’s an entire Spotify Playlist on that topic.)

The industry professionals charged with extracting money from your wallet and time from your ears are keenly aware that every hit song has a shelf life.

Record labels funnel their promotional muscle behind a recording as long as it’s hot. Once they determined everyone who wanted to own it had bought it, they moved on to the next big thing.

Radio programmers will play a song week after week, month after month, as long as their audience still loves it. However, they don’t want to alienate listeners who have grown tired of a song. Their jargon for it is “burn” and while there’s fervent debate about the details, radio stations have typically moved on from a current hit once 30% of listeners say they’re tired of hearing it.

This summer, the Top 10 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 have brought this entire concept into question.

2025: The Year When Last Year Never Ended

There has never been a time in chart history when songs have stayed on the chart longer than right now.

1. Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control” first entered the top 10 in January 2024. According to Billboard, “Lose Control” was the #1 song of 2024. It has stayed in the Top 10 for 72 weeks and counting, more than any other song in Hot 100 history.

2. "A Bar Song (Tipsy)" from Shaboozey first entered the Top 10 in May of last year. It’s now the second place champ, with 64 weeks and counting in the Top 10.

3. Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ "Die with a Smile" has now spent 49 weeks and counting among the Hot 100’s 10 biggest hits since reaching the Top 10 last August. It’s the 4^th longest run in the Top 10 of any song in chart history.

Last year (2024) generated nine different songs that stayed in the Top 10 for longer than half a year, far more than any other year in chart history.

• Are this year’s songs so bad folks would rather keep listening to last year’s hits?

• Was the idea that songs have limited lifespans overblown in the past?

• Or, has the way we consume music and assess which songs are most popular changed so dramatically that comparisons are simply invalid?

Yes—and then some.

How long can a hit stay a hit?

The graph below shows how many weeks the longest-running song spent in the Top 10 each year. You’ll notice four distinct eras:

1. For over three decades, songs typically spent no more than 12 weeks in the Top 10.

2. In the early 1990s, Top 10 residencies quickly rose to over 20 weeks.

3. After declining slightly in the latter half of the 2000s, the maximum number of weeks began rising again in the first half of the 2010s.

4. Maximum Top 10 runs rose dramatically in the 2020s.

Let’s take a journey though the Billboard Hot 100 from the chart’s inception in 1958 through today, examining successively each of eight songs that broke the record for the most weeks in the Top 10.

The Eight Songs that Broke the Record

Billboard’s goal with the Hot 100 is to provide the music business with a comprehensive ranking of the most consumed songs in the U.S.A. While the mission hasn’t changed, the way Billboard compiles the Hot 100 has changed dramatically as technology has changed. Until streaming became the dominant way people consume music, the Hot 100 combined how many people bought a song single and how often radio stations played a song to determine its rank. We’ll discuss those changes as we review each record-breaking Top 10.

1959: "Mack the Knife" by Bobby Darin - 16 Weeks

For the first ten years of the Hot 100, only one song spent more than 12 weeks in the Top 10. In 1959, an artist who began his career singing superficial Rock ‘n’ Roll pivoted to the jazz-based standards adults still preferred. He did it with “Die Moritat von Mackie Messer,” a 1928 ditty originally crafted by Kurt Weill for German playwright Bertolt Brecht’s Three Penny Opera.

The song’s upbeat melody belies its story line of a criminal with a horrifyingly successful streak of mortally stabbing his enemies without getting caught. After Louis Armstrong became the first performer chart with an English language vocal performance in 1955. Bobby Darin added it to his live shows. Dick Clark, American Bandstand host, warned Darin not to release it, believing his Rock ‘n’ Roll fans wouldn’t embrace it. Boy was he wrong. Yes, “Mack the Knife” was massively popular with grown ups who would never buy Darin’s teenybopper tunes—but his core teen audience loved it, too. That alliance of younger and older fans kept “Mack The Knife” in the Top 10 for 16 weeks---a record Darin would hold until the Disco era.

That young and old coalition will be a common theme here.

1977: "How Deep Is Your Love" by The Bee Gees – 17 Weeks

What happens when the hottest dance-based music craze in recorded music history finally creates a love ballad? You get the song that finally tops Bobby Darin’s 19-year record for the most weeks in the Top 10. Originally intended for a Bee Gees album, “How Deep Is Your Love” ultimately became part of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. Unlike the soundtrack’s dance tracks, “How Deep Is Your Love” also received tons of airplay on Adult Contemporary radio stations alongside Barry Manilow and Barbara Streisand.

1992: "End of the Road" by Boyz II Men – 19 Weeks

Since forever, Billboard had asked record shops to give them a ranked list of the top-selling singles. Likewise, they asked radio stations for a ranked list of the songs they played most often.

Then, Billboard made a change so massive to how they measured music consumption, it literally killed careers.

In ’91, they began using Nielsen’s SoundScan. It tapped into the store’s UPC bar code scanner at the cash register to record which records people actually bought. At the same time, they implemented Broadcast Data Systems (BDS), which monitored and electronically recorded which songs radio stations actually played. The goal of tracking song sales and radio exposure remained unchanged. The change in how they tracked those metrics, however, had massive implications.

1. Most famously, SoundScan revealed that Hip Hop, Metal, and Country were much more popular than previously believed, while mainstream Pop wasn’t as strong as assumed.

2. SoundScan also revealed that album sales for big artists typically peaked in the first week of release—instead of growing over time as previously believed. At the same time, SoundScan revealed that people were still buying legendary albums years after they debuted. (Put a pin in that finding for later.)

What impacts our story most, however, is the implementation of BDS Radio’s data on exactly how often stations played each song.

Thanks to callout research, where radio stations used telephone surveys to find out which songs listeners know and love, they discovered that people still wanted to hear songs long after folks stopped buying them. As callout replaced record sales as radio’s primary metric for gauging song popularity in the 1980s, stations kept big hits in rotation longer—even as labels pressured them to move on to the latest record they wanted to sell.

However, those self-reported rank lists Billboard got from radio stations masked that songs were hanging around longer. Once Billboard had precise spin counts, the truth was revealed: Radio was keeping the biggest Top 10 hits in heavy rotation for a lot longer than the 12 weeks the charts reported.

The first song to demonstrate this change was Boys II Men’s breakup ballad "End of the Road". With 19 weeks in the Top 10, it displaced the Bee Gee’s 17-week record from 15 years ago. Like our previous two Top 10 record-setters, “End Of The Road” was a song that became popular because teens liked it but was the kind of song mom and dad liked, too.

Unlike previous Top 10 record-setters, “End of the Road” was an R&B song, not a Pop song, reflecting SoundScan’s discovery that Black music was more popular than the previous measurement systems had portrayed.

1993: "Whoomp! (There It Is)" by Tag Team – 24 Weeks

Just a year after Boyz II Men broke the Bee Gees record for most weeks in the Top 10 by two weeks. Tag Team broke it by five weeks. It’s the first song to spend more than 20 weeks in the Hot 100’s Top 10. It’s the first Hip Hop song to hold that record. And unlike every other song among our eight record-setters, it’s the only one that—at the time--older adults didn’t like.

1997: "How Do I Live" by LeAnn Rimes – 32 Weeks

Just four years after Tag Team’s record, a crossover hit from another genre that benefited from SoundScan’s implementation bettered that record by eight weeks: Country singer LeAnn Rimes “How Do I Live“ competed with Trisha Yearwood’s version, which was on the soundtrack for the film Con Air. Ultimately, Rimes prevailed. Her version spent 32 weeks in the Hot 100’s Top 10 and, despite ultimately being the biggest song of the 90s, it never reached #1.

Like most songs that set Top 10 residency records, “How Do I Live” appealed to adults more than most hits. It also appealed to both Country and Pop partisans.

Finally, of all the songs on this list, “How Do I Live’s” chart performance was based more on radio airplay. In 1997, single sales were for—reasons—were at their lowest. That left radio airplay data making up the bulk of a song’s Hot 100 performance. And anyone alive in ’97 can attest that radio played “How Do I Live” for months. LeAnn Rimes would hold this record for 20 years.

2017 "Shape of You" by Ed Sheeran (2017) – 33 Weeks

When Bill Gates negotiated with labels to sell digital singles for 99-cents in 2003, he instantly gave back to music fans what the labels had spent the entire 1990s trying to take away; the ability to buy a single song. In 2005, the Hot 100 incorporated paid digital downloads into the Hot 100’s formula.

The effect of people once again buying individual songs was to boost the role of song sales in calculating a song’s Hot 100 ranking. Correspondingly, more iTunes sales downgraded the role of radio airplay.

Since the time frame for fans buying a song is shorter than the time fans still want to hear a song on the radio, the 2000s saw songs staying in the Top 10 for shorter periods than they did in the late 1990s. 2007’s "Apologize" by Timbaland featuring OneRepublic spent more weeks in the Top 10 than any other song of the decade—but it was only 25 Weeks.

That trend reversed in the 2010s as streaming began.

In 2014, "Uptown Funk", thanks to strong and sustained streaming, almost beat “How Do I Live” with 31 weeks in the Top 10. In 2016, “Closer” from The Chainsmokers featuring Halsey tied it.

Then, in 2017, in what would be the last year before streaming surpassed paid digital downloads as the primary way fans listen to the music they choose, Ed Sheeran’s “Shape Of You” finally topped LeAnn Rimes 20 year old record by one week more in the Top 10. Globally, it was the first song to top 2 billion streams on Spotify.

In a year that gave us innovative hits from Kendrick Lamar, Migos, and Lil Uzi Vert, once again, it’s “the song the whole office can agree on” that ultimately sets a record for weeks in the Top 10.

I’m pretty sure that every single time I got my hair cut at SuperCuts in 2017, they were playing “Shape Of You.”

2020: "Blinding Lights" by The Weeknd – 57 Weeks

Of any song that has the COVID-19 pandemic to thank for its success, it’s “Blinding Lights.”

Released in December 2019, The Weeknd’s ode to improperly aimed aftermarket LED headlights saw its streams slowly grow in January thanks to a TikTok dance meme. The Weeknd was the last performer on Saturday Night Live before U.S. lock downs sidelined the show’s live episodes.

By March—when the entire globe was inside—it became the #1 song on Spotify in the U.S.

With the exception of Christmas seasons, “Blinding Lights” stayed in the Spotify 200 every week until June 2023.

There’s a reason I’m citing streaming performance.

When you bought a song on iTunes, your fandom only counted at the moment you purchased that song. With streaming data, however, Billboard is tracking every single time you play a song. For the first time, chart data tells us how long people keep playing a song when they’re in control of the music.

The events of 2020 resulted in an influx of new subscribers for Spotify and its competitors. “Blinding Lights” was perfectly timed to showcase just how long some folks keep playing their favorite songs on Spotify.

2024: "Lose Control" by Teddy Swims – 72 Weeks (and Counting)

My wife is—let’s just say she recently joined AARP—and she loves Teddy Swims. Just this week, she was commenting on his soulful, heartfelt rendering of “Lose Control.” What might surprise you as a fellow music geek is that she first discovered “Lose Control” late in the Spring of 2025.

The song came out in 2023.

As late as 2019, streaming music consumers were overwhelmingly in their teens and 20s. by 2024, the majority of Americans under age 45 subscribed to a music streaming service. Even among 45- to 54-year olds, 40% subscribe.

As I’ll explain below, older adults take a lot longer to discover new songs—and take a lot longer to eventually get tired of them—than do younger music fans.

Perhaps more than any song on this list. Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control” highlights three reasons songs stay in the Top 10 forever.

What can we learn from these 8 record-setters?

There are three major conclusions.

#1: The more accurate our data becomes, the longer we realize people like their favorite songs

Every innovation in music consumption measurement has revealed that fans like songs longer than we previously thought.

First, radio stations stopped relying solely on which 45’s people were buying and began asking listeners directly which songs they knew and loved. They quickly learned that people still love songs long after people stopped buying them. That discovery should have been obvious: People kept playing their favorite records long after they bought them.

(I detailed how today’s callout research may inadvertently be over-focusing on the most passive music consumers in this article.)

Next, switching from self-reported rank lists to electronically measured sales and airplay revealed that certain recordings remained strong sellers longer than rudimentary rank lists suggested, and also changed reported radio airplay data to accurately reflect the impact of callout research.

Finally, streaming fundamentally changed how we measure music consumption by measuring every single time someone plays a song. With song sales, you only buy a song once. Your music consumption only counted when you first bought it. With streaming—for the first time in history—we can measure what songs people keep playing when they’re in control of the music.

(I further examined how streaming keeps songs on the chart forever in this article, as well as in this article.)

#2: Songs that stay in the Top 10 the longest garner strong appeal from adults.

With the exception of erstwhile stadium jam "Whoomp! (There It Is),” every song that reset the record for the most weeks in the Top 10 was popular with both younger and older listeners.

The fact is, once you have a mortgage and a preschool bill, you tend to devote less time and energy with current music. You inevitably get to know fewer new songs, take longer to become familiar with those songs, and get sick of them more slowly than did your younger self.

Consider the weekly Spotify streams for Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control” against another massive hit from last year, Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us.” Based on the age of people griping about Lamar’s halftime performance on Facebook, it’s safe to assume “Not Like Us” appealed primarily to a fan base under age 30. “Not Like Us” rapidly peaked with over 38 million plays on Spotify in the U.S. in its second week.

In contrast, “Lose Control” took a glacial 17 weeks to reach it’s peak week on Spotify. With 7 million plays, its peak was only one-fifth “Not Like Us’” peak. After 20 weeks, “Not Like Us’” weekly streams fell below those for “Lose Control.”

Even with Lamar’s unprecedented Superbowl bump, Teddy Swims quickly overtook Kendrick Lamar in weekly Spotify plays.

Or consider the Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights,” against another 2020 hit that you’re definitely not hearing at CVS; “WAP” from Cardi B featuring Megan Thee Stallion.

The fact is, younger music fans are very fast to embrace new songs, play the crap out of them, and then move on quickly to the next thing. In contrast, adult music fans take forever to embrace a new song, they play it less often, but keep playing it a lot longer than do their kids.

And as I detailed in this article, we are in one of most egregiously adult-driven periods in the history of the Hot 100.

#3: The songs that stick around forever are kind of boring

Anyone alive in 1996 can tell you unfathomable tales of torture: They called it “The Macarena,” Like most musical mega-fads, It came in with a an explosion and went out as a punchline.

The thing is, as unrelenting as it seemed, "Macarena” (specifically the Bayside Boys Remix) was in the Top 10 for 23 weeks. Sure, that a great chart run—but Toni Braxton’s contemporaneous “Un-Break My Heart” spent 25 weeks in the Top 10—and no one complained about it.

Folks who remember the late 1970s clearly (a dubious claim) will recall a song so annoying, it became the trope for the cheesy cocktail lounge singer of the era:

it may have spent the rest of the decade as a punchline, but Morris Albert’s “Feelings” only spent 6 weeks in the Top 10.

Plenty of early Disco hits stayed in the Top 10 longer without earning such scorn for an individual song.

Then were was Silentó. His 2015 invocation to watch him 1) whip, and 2) nee nee may have delighted elementary school assemblies, but it annoyed the snot out of anyone past puberty. “Watch Me” was only in the Top 10 for 3 weeks. In contrast, Fetty Wap’s far more innovative "Trap Queen" was Top 10 for 25 weeks.

(Sadly, Silentó’s life hasn’t turned out well, unsurprising to my friends who attended his alma matter Redan High School.)

The kind of songs that folks famously get sick of are songs that illicit strong passion—both positive and negative. Some love them. Many hate them.

In contrast, you won’t find “End Of The Road,” “How Deep Is Your Love,” “How Do I Live,” or “Blinding Lights” in a Google search of most annoying songs of all time.

Obviously, these songs developed a mass audience of fans who enjoyed them. Most folks simply don’t care about these songs passionately enough to ever hate them.

They’re great songs—they’re simply not interesting enough to hate.

So are people really not sick of songs anymore?

You know from your own personal experience that people get annoyed by certain overplayed songs.

Since the Hot 100 is now largely driven by the songs we play most on streaming services, its harder—but not impossible—to spot when songs have overstayed their welcome. When you’re in control of your music, you eventually stop playing a song as often as you used to. You remove it from a playlist once you’ve heard it too often. You solve the problem before it’s a problem.

When someone else if picking the tunes, burn is still very real.

It’s why there are people analyzing the “CVS Core” music style.

It’s why radio stations that become too reliant on last year’s hits eventually see their ratings erode. (I showcased that problem in this article.)

Beyond the fundamental changes of measuring streams instead of sales, the record-setting longevity of songs like “Lose Control” and “Beautiful Things,” and the rise of Alex Warren’s “Ordinary,” proves that today’s charts are filled with perfectly pleasant songs that aren’t offensive—but also aren’t innovative.

Let’s hope we soon have some new songs that are important enough to hate.

If you program a CHR or Hot AC station…

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Data sources for this post:

• The Billboard Hot 100: https://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100

• Wikipedia’s Billboard Hot 100 Top 10 singles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Billboard_Hot_100_top-ten_singles

• Spotify Top 200 chart (weekly for the USA): https://charts.spotify.com/charts/overview/us