For music fans (and even non-music fans) it was pretty hard to miss the hype surrounding Britney Spears’ new single “Hold It Against Me”
from her currently untitled seventh studio album. In fact, the song created so much buzz and anticipation that it set the record for most radio spins in a day in the US and immediately became a massive (and that’s a conservative word) download hit. With the “perfect storm” in place (i.e. massive sales and massive airplay,) it really wasn’t any surprise that the song debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 this past week. While this may not seem like quite an exciting feat for someone as big as Britney, “Hold It Against Me” is only the 19th song in the Hot 100’s over-55 year history to debut at the top of the chart. Not only that, it is her second single to accomplish this (the first being “3” in 2009) making Brit the second artist in history to have 2 songs debut at number one (Mariah Carey beat her two it with “Fantasy” in ‘95 and “Honey” in ’97.)
Seeing as single sales have made a comeback in a huge way, thanks to digital downloads, it’s no surprise that the ability to debut at number one is possible. In fact, all of the songs to debut at the top between 1995 (with Michael Jackson’s “You Are Not Alone” being the first) and 1998 were due to the heavy sales of CD singles. Since October of 2009 there have been four songs to debut at the summit (outside of Brit’s two, Eminem’s “Not Afraid” and Ke$ha’s “We R Who We R” joined the elite list) due to the strong sales of digital downloads. In between the two surges (from 2003 to 2006,) it’s really not shocking that all of the songs to debut at #1 were American Idol songs, which were all released on CD singles. Since Idol’s decline, the digital revolution reached new heights, and while Idol winner/runner-up singles are now struggling to do much of anything at all, songs by popular artists are selling like crazy on iTunes, etc.
So while number one debuts are probably still going to be hard to come by, the opportunity has finally presented itself again for artists to make music history. So it looks like Britney has not only sealed the deal as being one of the biggest forces in pop music history (despite only having four #1s under her belt,) but has proven that the music world is a whole new ballgame! And no, we won’t hold it against you.
