Musical Acts with the Most Hits since 1962

Paul McCartney is on here three times.

exactly why queen's music is still in rotation nowadays and chicago's isnt.

I'm wondering that too. I'm guessing it's a combination of modern artists releasing a lot more singles than artists did in previous eras, and the fact that many hits will by someone featuring someone so both artists will probably get the points for the one song.

Yep, the internet. Every stream on a platform such as Spotify counts towards a song's chart performance. If someone listens to a whole album, every song is counted. Billie Eilish's last album saw 12 of its 14 songs in the Top 100 at the same time, along with 2 of her other songs. 6 of them weren't even singles.

When I was young - in the '60s - the only way we could buy music was to go to the record store and get either a 45 or LP album. Most of us didn't have that much money and had to be selective on what we purchased. It was also very difficult for an artist to get signed to a record label. I'm surprised to see so many artists from the earlier decades, and I'm really surprised to see Rod Stewart so high on the list. I like his music, but I didn't realize he was so popular. I'm surprised that Simon and Garfunkel didn't make the list.

Besides the internet, in the 60s, 70s, and 80s the music was being churned out by many, many different groups. There was more competition. The market has had less competition in recent years. Some will argue that there is more competition because there is more access, but as for as original music being produced, you can't beat the 60s, 70s, and 80s. A lot of diversity there.

I don’t think these explanations are the primary reasons modern artists are over-represented. It’s the methodology of this quiz and to some degree Billboard’s changing methodology. Primarily, the death of physical singles caused this. There used to be over a thousand songs entering the top 100 Billboard charts every year in the 60s and 70s, with some years hitting (if I remember correctly) over 1800 unique songs. There simply was never a 20 week period where a song was #1. Singles could sell tens of millions of physical copies pretty easily, but the industry was very competitive and radio DJs often determined what songs would be the massive hits. This made the turnover of songs on the chart higher, since radio stations needed to keep up with trends, and then listeners would go out and buy their favourite singles, often spending around double what we pay today for music.

This being said, there are far more artists and songs today than there ever have been before—due to streaming. Billboard values streaming to some degree, but it’s still impacted by outdated media like physical sales and radio. Regardless, music is FAR more diverse today, which generally means that a #1 hit of the year today is worth less than one from the 90s or earlier. The best selling physical single ever is from 1942, for instance. It probably made much more money than Blinding Lights (inflation adjusted, of course). A moderate hit by Nirvana probably brought in more money than a #1 Maroon 5 song. Heck, Un-Break My Heart was only #81 on the year end chart but sold 11 million physical copies. I guarantee that’s way more significant than Maroon 5’s #5 position on the year end chart with Sugar. This is to say that billboard year end charts aren’t really equal, and a true measure of popularity would be via total revenue. How else can you compare streams with physical sales fairly?

I’ll end my rant by just pointing out that the music industry still makes less money than it did before the internet age, and the money is spread way thinner than ever before, with Spotify taking a massive cut of the money. There are artists with well over a billion streams that most people have never even heard of and never even had a hit on the Billboard hot 100 (TV Girl, for instance, has a song with over a billion streams but never even appeared on the Hot 100). And since this quiz is just 101 minus the year end chart position, we can safely assume that intuition would be correct and acts like the Beatles drew more money and were far more significant than acts like Maroon 5 or Post Malone.

Yeah, this list is wack. No Genesis or the Eagles.

They didn't take the world by storm like the Freddie Mercury cash cow hype machine likes to tell it.

It's only singles not albums, I think. And it's the best-selling singles of the year. You could have 20 hits in one year, but if none of them were in the top 100 best-selling hits of the year, you're not going to get any points for the list. I agree, it's strange criteria. It's an interesting concept for a quiz but the title is very misleading.

The Billboard Hot 100 is a list of songs, not albums. Making it on the list you need to sell copies of that song, so, I assume selling an album counts as selling one copy of each song on the album, but some artists sell many more singles either on records or through digital downloads now. It also factors in radio play and online streaming, and country just doesn't play on the radio that much in many markets and certainly doesn't get watched as much online. Mostly what you hear on the radio is "pop," which is why they call it popular music. The above is certain. Now, to speculate a bit on why some contemporary artists appear so high while not having had as many years to chart, I think it might be because modern pop music is dominated by just a small handful of artists who put out large numbers of singles and in effect monopolize the airwaves and online downloads. In the past you had a lot more "one-hit wonders" and there was a greater variety of acts being played on the radio. I think.

Perhaps the fact that Garth rarely gets played on the radio most places contributes to him selling more physical albums (less exposure, but at the same time if his fans want to hear his music they need to buy it). I also assume that during the decades when he was blowing up his fanbase were less Internet savvy than most and probably didn't download as much from Napster or iTunes or spend as much time on YouTube.

That's what happens when you're popular, I guess.

I was expecting a lot worse. There are a lot of really good acts on this list. Beatles, Elvis, Elton John, Billy Joel, Marvin Gaye, Temptations, Eminem, Stevie Wonder, Alicia Keys, Supremes, Bruno Mars, Boyz II Men, Adele, the Stones, Prince, MJ. I get that some people think only classic rock warrants appreciation, but a lot of these acts represent the best of their style of music.

Well, at least one answer is! ;)

Okay

...but they're not trying to convince you that? This isn't a list of the best music, it's a list of the biggest music.

It's not even terrible taste. The reason McDonald's sells more and the reason that these musicians sell more is that they are acceptable/"okay" to a huge majority of people. In general these are artists who make some catchy songs you wouldn't mind listening to and some people are going to really like them. That will always sell better than songs where the people really into that sort of thing will love it as one of the greatest examples of that genre/style/whatever, but the people who don't really care for it will actively dislike it.

About the only exception is rap, which there is still a portion of people who hate, but that portion gets smaller every year, so you see the more recent rap artists come through (you'll note no Tupac or Biggie).

CCR missing was also a surprise. They were only around for a little while, but they had hit after hit.

The one that surprised me the most was the Eagles. Then again Billboard's criteria for radio play in the 70s were off kilter. They were very slow to add FM stations to their numbers so rock music was severely under counted and popular music was over counted based off actual airplay and number of listeners. Additionally they segmented the markets so bands that would get airplay on multiple station formats would not get counted into one pool. Lastly they were an album band and as expensive as singles were in comparison to the album (about a third of the price of the album) a good chunk of buyers would opt to buy the album instead.

Despite his popularity, he's had less than ten songs make billboard's year end lists. He's a lot more of an albums artist than a singles artist.