What Are the Differences Between Songs That Have Short and Long Stays in the Hot 100’s Top 10?

Hit Songs Deconstructed has released its 2024 Staying Power report.

Mar 27, 2025 - 15:51

What Are the Differences Between Songs That Have Short and Long Stays in the Hot 100’s Top 10?

Over the Billboard Hot 100’s 66-year history, hits have spent between one and 57 weeks in the top 10. Of the more than 5,200 top 10s to date, nearly 600 have logged a single frame in the tier. Conversely, The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” boasts the most top 10 weeks (57), followed by two other ubiquitous songs that hit first the top 10 in 2024: Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control” (54) and Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” (45).

(The average for a title over the Hot 100’s archives is 6.5 weeks in the top 10. Since 2000, it’s 5.6 weeks; among songs that peaked in 2024, it was 7.2%.)

What are key differences between songs that have short and long stays in the Hot 100’s top 10? Hit Songs Deconstructed, which provides compositional analytics for top 10 Hot 100 hits, has released its 2024 Staying Power report.

Here are three takeaways from Hit Songs Deconstructed’s in-depth research about Hot 100 top 10s during 2024.

Everlasting Love

A hefty 82% of songs that spent 10 or more weeks in the Hot 100’s top in 2024 featured a love/relationship lyrical theme. Encompassing all top 10s, the share was 52%. Among No. 1s, it was 44%.

As noted above, “Lose Control” fits that theme, as do songs with lengthy top 10 runs in 2024 including Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso,” Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things” and Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather,” each of which spent more than 20 weeks in the top 10.

Pop Harder to Stop

“Pop songs had the greatest staying power in 2024, with 36% remaining in the Hot 100’s top 10 for 10 weeks or more,” Hit Songs Deconstructed notes. “Country songs followed at 23% and R&B/soul rounded out the top three at 18%. Hip-hop/rap — while it was the most popular primary genre in the overall top 10 — came in fourth in terms of staying power, accounting for 14% of songs.”

Along those lines, “pop was the most common influence across-the-board, being featured in 95% of songs” with 10 or more weeks in the top 10 in 2024, according to the report. Plus, pop was an influence in two-thirds of songs that charted for nine weeks or fewer.

Leaving? Not So Fast

Simply put (hopefully), faster songs were slower to leave the Hot 100’s top 10 in 2024 and slower songs were faster to leave the top 10.

A 65% majority of songs that charted in the 10 for at least 10 weeks last year had tempos of over 100 BPM, with the most common range being 100-119 BPM. Of songs that spent between one and nine weeks in the top 10, however, 62% had tempos under 100 BPM, with most in the 80-99 BPM range.