50 years ago, Beatles swept top of Hot 100
We loved them, yeah, yeah, yeah.
In the age of Ke$ha, Katy and Bieber, The Beatles still stride across the universe like a timeless musical collossus. How big?
Friday marks the 50th anniversary of The Beatles grand slam on the Billboard charts. The Fab Four achieved the impossible and captured five of the top five slots on the Hot 100.
“It was the first and only time anyone ever monopolized the entire top five,” Billboard magazine’s Keith Caulfield told USA Today. “It was a unique moment in time, something that likely will never happen again. We were at the height of the Beatles invasion, and millions of fans were discovering them and their work.”
On April 4, 1964, these Beatles songs were the top five: 1. Can’t Buy Me Love; 2. Twist and Shout; 3. She Loves You; 4. I Want to Hold Your Hand, and 5. Please Please Me.
Fab Four scholar Martin Lewis said there were a number of factors contributing to the lads from Liverpool’s chart onslaught. The group was fresh and their popularity was buoyed by three consecutive appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show.
And their appearance came hot on the heels of the November assassination of beloved U.S. President John F. Kennedy.
“Those performances were an aural balm to America’s soul,” Lewis said.
And the hits kept coming as the band released some of their imported singles, keeping them on top of the charts for the rest of 1964.
“Their songs were competing against each other in the marketplace,” Caulfield said. “You don’t have that now. You have one or two songs as the focus.”