Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia - Toppermost of the Poppermost Edition Part 1
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4.2 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 13 September 2025
⏱️ 56 minutes
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Summary
In the rarefied world of smash pop singles, there are No. 1s—and there are No. 1 debuts. Entering Billboard’s Hot 100 at the top is one of the hardest tricks in music. In fact, it wasn’t possible in the U.S. until 1995. That’s when the record labels hacked the Hot 100 and figured out how to send new singles straight into the chart penthouse.
But scoring a No. 1 in Week One doesn’t mean it’s built to last. For every enduring hit like “Fantasy,” “Shake It Off” or “Hello,” there are plenty of one-off oddities, coronation pabulum from American Idol finalists, and even a few missteps from chart luminaries. Within a couple of years these fast-breaking hits may be forgotten—never to be spun on the radio or streamed on Spotify.
Join Chris Molanphy as he explores the chart calculus, superfan interventions, and fluky conditions that create a perfect storm of pop-chart insta-success. It’s a parade of pop bangers that scored a fast pass to the front of the line.
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Podcast production by Kevin Bendis and Olivia Briley.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey there, hit parade listeners. What you're about to hear is part one of this episode. |
| 0:06.6 | Part two will arrive in your podcast feed at the end of the month. Would you like to hear this |
| 0:11.7 | episode all at once the day it drops? Sign up for Slate Plus. It supports not only this show, |
| 0:18.5 | but all of Slate's acclaimed journalism and podcasts, just go to |
| 0:23.4 | Slate.com slash hit parade plus. You'll get to hear every hit parade episode in full the day it |
| 0:31.2 | arrives. Plus, hit parade The Bridge, our bonus episodes, with guest interviews, deeper dives on our episode topics, |
| 0:40.3 | and pop chart trivia. Once again, to join that's slate.com slash hitparade plus. Thanks, |
| 0:48.1 | and now please enjoy part one of this Hit Parade episode. |
| 1:13.8 | Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart History from Slate magazine about the hits from coast to coast. |
| 1:19.5 | I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slate's Why Is This Song Number One series on today's show. 30 years ago, this month, in September 1995, pop queen Mariah Carey blew up on Billboard's Hot 100 with |
| 1:32.6 | Fantasy, one of the biggest hits in her dominant 90s streak. |
| 1:38.5 | Carrie was, to say the least, not new to topping the chart. |
| 1:43.4 | This was her ninth number one hit, out of her career total |
| 1:47.7 | of 19. But fantasy was historic for several reasons. It was one of the first sample-based pop |
| 1:56.6 | songs to top the Hot 100. In its remix, featuring rapper Old Dirty Bastard, Fantasy |
| 2:04.0 | also helped establish the Rap and B duet. |
| 2:07.8 | Me and Mariah, go back like babies with pass the fires. |
| 2:12.6 | Old Dirt Dog, no liar, keep the fantasy hot like fire. But what was most historic about fantasy, the hot one hundred, straight in at the top. |
| 2:27.0 | Not only had no prior Mariah Carey song debuted at number one before, it was one of the first songs, period, to debut at |
| 2:37.9 | number one in America, and the first ever by a female artist. This had never happened on the charts before |
| 2:57.2 | 1995. |
| 2:59.3 | Debuting at number one |
... |
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