Welcome back to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart history from Slate magazine. About the hits from Coast to Coast. I'm Chris Melanthi, chart

analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slate's Why Is This Song Number One series. On our

last episode we walked through the history of cover songs on the charts

from their beginnings as Tin Pan Alley Commerce with multiple versions of the same song charting virtually simultaneously to the Beatles

and Dylan era of the singer-songwriter who spawned other folks covers to the rap era and the creation of the sample heavy song

interpolation often a cover in disguise. We are now going to walk through

the songs that scored a special chart distinction.

Thanks to their covers, they each top the Hot 100 twice.

To be clear, I'm about to present 18 number one songs, I'm about to present 18 number one songs,

nine pairs of originals and covers. To qualify for this list, both the

original song and the cover had to have reached number one on the Hot 100, not any other Billboard chart.

Also, the nine cover versions, in other words, the second hit in each pair are all traditional covers under the old-fashioned

definition, note-for-note and mostly word-for-word remakes of the original song. This is how Chart Historians track them. They don't count an interpolated

reboot with a different song title as a cover. So to cite one song I mentioned just

previously, even though Drake's 2021 hit Way Too Sexy reached number one.

To Stacy for this chain.

To safety for your gang.

And it heavily interpolated and even lyrically echoed another number one hit

Wright said Fred's 1992 chart topper I'm too sexy.

I'm too sexy for my shirt too sexy for my shirt so sexy it hurts

neither I'm too sexy nor way too sexy is on this list.

Jat said, you will hear a few covers that alter the instrumentation, the arrangement, and even

...