Top 10's per album

This week Casey noted the then historic accomplishment of Fleetwood Mac having four hits that made the top 10, all originating from one album, Rumours.  He claimed it was the first album of the 70's to do such, implying an act like the Beatles might've had more.  The "originating" word would leave out compilation/Greatest Hits albums or live versions on a concert album.

Michael Jackson would be the first to match that accomplishment with four top 10 hits in 1979-80 with "Off the Wall," and he then crushed the record in 1982-1984 with 7 top 10 hits from "Thriller" which broke open the floodgates for hit albums suddenly having 5 or more singles released, with 4 top 10's being done by rather ordinary artists like Richard Marx or Expose....and the standard became 4 or 5 number one singles from an album (Michael Jackson again, George Michael, Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson, Paula Abdul).

The arrival of the "Soundscan" era of actually counting singles and sales in 1991 brought an end for awhile to such huge numbers of even top 10's, making even 2 #1's from an album a serious accomplishment and the top 10's per album were likewise limited as the charts slowed way down.

That all flipped around again when then whole idea of a single was challenged with streaming music and digital downloads of tracks from albums.  Now, for a big name artist like Drake (the master of this!) or Taylor Swift, or even SZA, your opening week for an album might carry many of the tracks into the Hot 100...with Taylor Swift in late 2022 pulling off the ultimate -- she claimed the entire top 10, with only one of those being a traditional radio-pushed single "Anti-Hero."

Ten does seem the natural limit -- to get to 11, you'd have to do the Taylor trick of covering the top 10 your first week then push one of the rest of the tracks later to radio eventually get to top 10 status, knowing that on initial release, it was not a fan favorite.

Given that Thriller only had 9 tracks to begin with, it demonstrates how fundamentally music purchasing and marketing has changed. 

Long Runs at #1

In two recent 70's countdowns, Casey's mentioned that Elvis was the first artist to have three #1's in a row on the charts...."Don't Be Cruel," "Hound Dog," and "Love Me Tender" were on top for 16 straight weeks.  At the time of the countdown, the number of back-to-back #1s had only been tied by the Beatles and the number of weeks in a row at the top had only been matched Les Brown and the Band of Renown.

In the decades to follow, having three #1's in a row by the same artist is still the record, but the weeks in a row at #1 had been smashed:

In 2009 the Black Eyed Peas hit #1 first with the 12-week champ "Boom Boom Pow" and then immediately another 14 with "I Gotta Feeling."

For three in a row, two artists got super close -- Usher replaced "Yeah!" at #1 with "Burn" which was interrupted at #1 by Fantasia (hot off an American Idol win) for 1 week, before "Burn" hit #1 again, to be replaced by his "Confessions (Part 2)" -- 22 out of 23 weeks.

Drake had a similar phenomenon in 2009 as "In My Feelings" replaced "Nice for What" which replaced "God's Plan" for a total of 29 weeks at #1... but "Nice for What" was interrupted a then-record three times by four different songs!

Next closest was Mariah Carey, who had 24 out of 25 weeks with "Fantasy" and "One Sweet Day", interrupted only by Whitney Houston's "Exhale" for a single week between the two.  Her partners on "One Sweet Day," Boyz II Men did earlier have back-to-back songs at #1 for 16 weeks, but the 2nd "On Bended Knee" was also interrupted, giving them 20 out of 22 weeks, starting with 14 weeks with "I'll Make Love to You."

But back to Elvis, he gets an * for three in a row anyway... the first two were flip sides of the same 45 rpm record, and it was before the Hot 100 began.  The Beatles three in a row were all independent records in the Hot 100 era of combining sales and airplay.