Beatles’ charts onslaught ‘a unique moment in time’
Fab Four had top five songs on 1964 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 colossus. How big?
Friday marks the 50th anniversary of The Beatles grand slam on the Billboard charts. The Fab Four achieved the impossible and captured 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 mil- lions 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, adding that a bizarre record release system also helped.
“Capitol Records had rejected The Beatles (repeatedly) during 1963 while they conquered Europe,” Lewis said.
“Those rejections meant that three other U.S. labels — Vee-Jay, Tollie and Swan — also had Beatles discs available to release. Only two of those top five Beatles singles were on Capitol, which paid the price for its earlier myopia.”
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.”
Only 50 Cent — who had three titles in the top five in March 2005 — has come close to matching The Beatles.
But their chart triumph is unlikely to ever be duplicated.
“For years, the Hot 100 was based on sales of singles available to purchase in record stores and limited by what was actually released by labels,” Caulfield said.
“Now, in the era of the Internet and YouTube, when a digital-oriented artist like Taylor Swift or Mumford & Sons has a big surge, all those tracks show up on the Hot 100. But their chances of filling the top five? Pretty slim.”