By the time AT40 started in July 1970, Elvis' biggest charting days were behind him, but he'd already wracked up over 100 Hot 100 hits, clearly leading the pack of all artists. Casey acknowledged this in his intro for "The Wonder of You" this week in 1970 (the 3rd episode of AT40), and as Elvis kept charting through the 70's, Casey normally acknowledged how Elvis kept breaking his own record, up to this week in 1977 when Elvis had his "134th chart record."
What Casey said less often, but did this week in 1970, was guessing no one would _ever_ break the record. At the time, Ray Charles and James Brown were his nearest competition, and they were also past their peak.
As late as 2010 (the year of my latest Top Pop Singles book), Madonna, Mariah Carey, and Jay-Z had the most of active artists, each with about 50 hits. Joel Whitburn, the author of Top Pop Singles, did not count any song an artist was "featured" on (which in the industry is a step below being the lead, or "with" or "&" another artists, but became commonplace in the 2000s.) Even including the "featuring"s, would've only taken Jay-Z to 76. In all cases, double-sided hits count as two.
But then around 2010, with the breakout of digital releases, the chart records were all re-written. The Glee Cast alone charted over 200 songs, as an entire episode's worth of songs would all drop on one day. The next week another batch would drop, driving the previous ones off the chart. None hit #1, and none charted more than a few weeks, but each was legitimately among the top 100 in sales/airplay for that week....without the trouble of having to actually physically make, ship, and market a 45-rpm record around the country.
Another repercussion with the digital revolution was that artists could drop an album's worth of material with no designation of which were "singles"...then the buying public could download (and later stream) the songs they liked the best, and for the biggest artists, 10 or more songs on an album might make enough of an impact to be on the top 100 for a week or two during the initial surge. The top performers would give record executives great data about what songs to release to radio. Taylor Swift, Adele, and Mumford and Sons have all charted dozens of songs this way.
But the King of these developments is clearly Drake. From his own albums as lead artist, he's beaten Elvis with 195 songs, but I feel safe characterizing over 100 of them as fundamentally album tracks, not singles. But, throw in the "featurings" (of which Elvis had none, nor even a duet!), he picks up another 86 songs, which are indeed overwhelmingly actual singles.
My bottom line -- Casey was obviously wrong in his predictions in the strict sense of counting Hot 100 entries, but even counting songs intended as singles, Drake's got Elvis beat. Casey himself, I expect, would've counted all duets and "featuring"s.
Someday, I'll do the analysis to include group participation to see where Paul McCartney falls.
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