The year is now 2005. This year marks another big change in the way the Hot 100 works - for the first time, digital sales are incorporated into the formula for calculating the charts. As a result, sales become a significant part of the formula again after dwindling in relevance due to the death of the physical singles market, and though we don’t notice it quite so much this year, it contributes to the #1s becoming more diverse in the years to come and putting an end to the Age of Crunk.
There’s no carryover this year, and this is in fact the slowest year for #1s - a mere eight songs made it to the top spot this year. What’s your favorite?
Gwen Stefani, easily and to honor No Doubt who never had a #1 single. Mariah Carey made a good comeback and she still had a tenacity for #1 singles, but never captured her 1990s heyday. Gwen deserves my vote. Liked “Gold Digger” in 2005 but now it has aged badly barely ten years on and I have grown to dislike Kanye West.
My high school graduation year.
As I could’ve gone with “Hollaback Girl”, “We Belong Together”, or “Gold Digger”; and as I figured (correctly) that Kanye and Gwen, respectively, would be getting the most votes, I decided to go with Mariah Carey for this year (which, surprisingly, is not as purulently shitty as the previous several years have been).
I daresay they are - we’re past the peak of the dance/crunk boom at this point, and while that genre still hasn’t disappeared from the pop charts entirely today, we will be seeing more “fun” pop music in the remaining years we have to look at.
I cast my vote for Hollaback Girl, for what it’s worth - it’s one of the songs I hated when it was new, especially compared to some of the alternative music on the radio at the time (White Stripes/Franz Ferdinand/the Killers etc.), but I have to admit it’s a catchy song, and it holds up better than the rest of this list.
For the third consecutive year, there is a very tight two-song contest for superiority in the world-famous Ponch8 Music Rating System. “Gold Digger” beats “Hollaback Girl” just by a skosh.
Carrie Underwood’s “Inside Your Heaven” easily finishes dead-ass last, even though most of these other songs aren’t that great either. Are we nearing the end of Mariah Carey’s reign of terror yet?
She has one more #1 coming up in 2008 - which, at 18, makes her the solo artist with the most #1s in history, and second only to the Beatles (at 20) with the most #1s overall.
I liked all but 2 songs on this list, so it was relatively tough (not really). Went with Mario’s best song as an artist. Still such a smooth song.
We Belong Together is a very good Mariah song, and it’s attached to fond memories of a summer camp I went to that year. It was also that same summer Fall Out Boy got really big. It was an interesting camp.
I’ve never heard the Carrie Underwood song. I don’t even want to know what it’s about.
Yeah…This is the year I stopped listening to conventional radio stations in exclusive favor of online ones that are genre specific. Reading this list, well, no regrets.
I have never said this before and I will never say it again: This list is so bad there is nothing on it I can vote for. Usually I can find at least one piece of pyrite in the dungheap but there isn’t any here.
Now I feel less bad about not being able to remember 2005.