‘Blinding Lights’ is the first song to spend a full year in the Billboard top 10
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The Weeknd’s new wave-indebted monolith ‘Blinding Lights’ has been breaking records left, right and centre. It is now the first song ever to spend an entire year in the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100.
The track logged its 52nd week in the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100. Beating out the previous longest-running top-ten hit, Post Malone’s ‘Circles’ (which charted for 39 weeks), by a mile.
The success of ‘Blinding Lights’ was not immediate, the After Hours track first debuted on the charts at No. 11 in November 2019, it didn’t crack the top 10 until February 29th, 2020. It then climbed to No. 1 in April where it stayed for four weeks.
The track also holds the record for the longest a song has spent in the top 5, totalling 34 weeks. As it stands, the song has spent a full 65 weeks in the Hot 100, and looks poised to breaking the record of Imagine Dragons 87-week reign with ‘Radioactive.’
The track has seen a renewed interest in the past few weeks, following The Weeknd’s performance at the Super Bowl halftime show. It’s currently sitting at No. 3 on the charts, so we expect the total domination to continue for weeks, possibly months.
Despite the astronomical commercial success of ‘Blinding Lights’, the track was controversially snubbed by The 2021 Grammy Awards.
“The Grammys remain corrupt. You owe me, my fans and the industry transparency…,” The Weeknd wrote in a Tweet following the announcement of the 2020 nominees.
“We understand that The Weeknd is disappointed at not being nominated,” Grammy Chief Harvey Mason wrote in a response statement. “I was surprised and can empathize with what he’s feeling. His music this year was excellent, and his contributions to the music community and broader world are worthy of everyone’s admiration.
“Unfortunately, every year, there are fewer nominations than the number of deserving artists. But as the only peer-voted music award, we will continue to recognize and celebrate excellence in music while shining a light on the many amazing artists that make up our global community. “
This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.