It may be due to a technicality, but Taylor Swift has broken a record that has stood for 48 years on the Country Singles chart.
Swift's We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together is spending its ninth week in the number 1 spot, something that was totally unheard of in the past couple of decades until Billboard made a major change to the way they tabulate the chart. Two months ago, the magazine changed their methodology from strictly a tally of country radio airplay and single sales to "a digital, streaming and expanded radio hybrid." That meant that songs and artists that didn't traditionally get country radio airplay or whose song's longevity were limited by a constantly churning radio playlist are seeing their songs getting much more exposure on the charts.
To put this in perspective, no song had spent longer than two weeks at number 1 this year until the ascension of Swift's track and you would have to go back to 2006 to find any track that spent longer than five weeks at number one (Carrie Underwood's Jesus Take the Wheel was number 1 for six weeks).
To find the song that last spent nine weeks at the top of the Country Singles, you have to go back 46 years to August of 1966 with David Houston's Almost Persuaded.
Her big record, though, is the longest running number one by a solo female artist in the 68 year history of the Billboard Country Singles chart. That record was previously held by Connie Smith's Once a Day which spent eight weeks at number 1 in 1964. The only female to spend longer at number one was Slipping Around, a 1949 duet between Margaret Whiting and Jimmy Wakely, which spent 17 weeks at the top.
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