Alex Warren’s (left) “Strange” continues to climb up the Billboard Scorching 100 chart. In the meantime Jack Black (proper) scores a shocking document with a really brief track from A Minecraft Film.
Picture by Frazer Harrison/Getty Photographs for Stagecoach; Picture by Jerod Harris/Getty Photographs for Warner Bros. Discovery
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Picture by Frazer Harrison/Getty Photographs for Stagecoach; Picture by Jerod Harris/Getty Photographs for Warner Bros. Discovery
It is a gradual week on the Billboard charts, nevertheless it’s nonetheless a giant week for Kendrick Lamar and SZA. Their collaboration “Luther” holds at No. 1 for a tenth consecutive week — considered one of solely 46 songs to take action in chart historical past — whereas SZA’s SOS and Lamar’s GNX sit at Nos. 1 and a pair of on the albums chart, respectively. However this week’s charts do characteristic an all-time document value noting, as a 34-second track cracks the Scorching 100.
TOP ALBUMS
Final week, the rapper Ken Carson debuted atop the Billboard 200 albums chart with Extra Chaos, his first-ever chart-topper. And, although it was a gradual week on the charts — Extra Chaos had the smallest accumulation of gross sales and streaming for any chart-topping album in three years — a No. 1 album is a No. 1 album.
Carson’s trip on the high was short-lived, nonetheless. This week, Extra Chaos plunges from No. 1 to No. 38, and with no main debuts to crash the occasion — the very best debut of any album this week belongs to Wiz Khalifa, whose Kush + Orange Juice 2 bows at No. 62 — we’re left within the firm of the standard suspects.
Tourmates SZA and Kendrick Lamar have been sticking across the Billboard 200’s uppermost reaches all 12 months, and now SZA’s SOS and Kendrick Lamar’s GNX sit at Nos. 1 and a pair of, respectively — albeit with numbers even decrease than what Extra Chaos posted final week. Morgan Wallen is surging a bit (One Factor at a Time from No. 6 to No. 3 and Harmful: The Double Album from No. 14 to No. 9), which isn’t surprising given the pending arrival of his new album. However in any other case, there is not a lot motion to talk of, till you get to…
…No. 10, the place Grammy-winning rapper Doechii vaults into the High 10 for the primary time in her profession. Alligator Bites By no means Heal leaps from No. 24 to No. 10 because of a mix of things: The viral “Anxiousness” continues to be booming on the Scorching 100 — it rises from No. 14 to No. 12 this week — whereas “Denial Is a River” continues to be floating round within the high 50 after peaking at No. 21 earlier this 12 months. The larger issue, although, is that the album acquired two new vinyl editions (obtainable completely at Goal and City Outfitters), in addition to its first-ever CD.
TOP SONGS
One byproduct of the streaming period is that blockbuster songs are posting ever-longer streaks at No. 1. Simply final 12 months, Shaboozey‘s “A Bar Music (Tipsy)” tied an all-time document with 19 weeks atop the Scorching 100 — and that track, many months later, nonetheless sits at No. 5. So it should not come as an enormous shock that Kendrick Lamar’s “Luther (feat. SZA)” is at No. 1 for a tenth consecutive week. Nevertheless it faces looming competitors from two completely different instructions.
The best menace to the reign of “Luther” is almost certainly Alex Warren‘s “Strange,” which appears arrange for long-term (maybe even Shaboozey-level long-term) chart success. The track rises from No. 5 to No. 3 this week, because of a surge in each airplay and streaming; it is now No. 1 on Billboard‘s streaming chart and nonetheless has tons of room to maneuver as extra radio stations’ program administrators — who typically observe the lead of streaming as of late — add it to their rotations.
At this level, it does not require an incredible present of prognostication to recommend that you’ll hear this track all over the place this summer season: at weddings, on the radio, on TikTok, through your streaming algorithms and so forth. You want heart-on-their-sleeve singer-songwriters like Lewis Capaldi? Choir-addicted uplift retailers like Coldplay? Rock-adjacent earworm farmers like Think about Dragons? You are gonna love this track. You in all probability already do. You may be listening to it this very instantaneous, as you learn this.
The opposite main looming menace to “Luther” comes from nation sensation Morgan Wallen, who’s no stranger to the “track of the summer season” dialog, given the dominance of “Final Evening” and “I Had Some Assist” lately. Wallen will launch I am the Downside on Might 16, however this week he extends a outstanding document: With the discharge of his Publish Malone collaboration “I Ain’t Coming Again” — the 2 collaborated on “I Had Some Assist” simply final 12 months — he is now landed six pre-release singles from I am the Downside within the high 10 within the run-up to the discharge. The earlier document, held by Publish Malone and Taylor Swift, was 4.
At this level, there’s not a scintilla of doubt that the 37-song I am the Downside can be a blockbuster. Nevertheless it stays unclear whether or not anyone new Wallen observe will take off as dramatically as “Final Evening” or “I Had Some Assist” did, given how a lot his new songs are competing with each other.
Wallen presently has 5 songs within the Scorching 100’s high 20: “I am the Downside,” which jumps from No. 10 to No. 7; “I Ain’t Coming Again,” which debuts at No. 8; “Simply in Case,” which slides from No. 11 to No. 14; “I Had Some Assist,” which climbs from No. 17 to No. 15 after almost a 12 months on the chart; and “Love Any individual,” which ticks up from No. 20 to No. 17. That is a formidable pile-up of hits, however followers can solely stream one factor at a time.
WORTH NOTING
The rise of TikTok has difficult life for many who compile Billboard‘s chart rankings. In any case, TikTok recognition typically leads and contributes to success on the pop charts. Nevertheless it’s tough to match streams of track fragments to streams of full songs.
After all, TikTok has modified the music trade in different methods, to the purpose the place some analysts have gone as far as to (very prematurely) predict that the app’s rise would result in unusually brief songs — not mere excerpts, however songs themselves — changing the three- and four-minute bangers that routinely spherical out the Scorching 100.
Setting apart the occasional blockbuster that clocks in at lower than two minutes — lookin’ at you, pre-Billy Ray Cyrus model of “Outdated City Street” — that prediction hasn’t come to move. However there is a brand-new all-time document, set throughout this exceptionally gradual week on the Billboard charts, for the shortest-ever track to hit the Billboard Scorching 100. (The Scorching 100 dates again to August 1958.)
The track? “Steve’s Lava Rooster” by Jack Black, from A Minecraft Film. (Black, who stars within the movie as Steve, co-wrote the track with director Jared Hess.) Its size? Extremely, solely 34 seconds, although there’s a remix that drags it out to 1:22, which is actually a rock opera by comparability. The track’s debut chart place this week? No. 78.
“Steve’s Lava Rooster” is not Black’s first track to crack the Scorching 100; that will be “The Choose of Future,” by his band Tenacious D, which additionally hit No. 78 again in 2006. And it is not the highest-charting hit of Black’s profession; the truth is, “Steve’s Lava Rooster” is not even the highest-charting track Black has sung in a kid-friendly film franchise. That might be “Peaches,” which hit No. 56 on the energy of Black’s flip as Bowser in 2023’s The Tremendous Mario Bros. Film. (That track’s runtime was a relatively exhausting 1:35.)
It seems that, whereas a 34-second runtime constitutes an all-time document — at the very least till Taylor Swift begins dabbling in skits — it is really the third sub-1:00 track to crack the Scorching 100. With a nod of appreciation to Gary Belief at Billboard and Paul Haney of Joel Whitburn’s Document Analysis, listed here are the 5 shortest songs ever to hit Billboard‘s major singles chart:
- Jack Black, “Steve’s Lava Rooster,” 0:34, No. 78 (2025)
- Child Cudi, “Lovely Journey,” 0:37, No. 100 (2020)
- Pikotaro, “PPAP (Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen),” 0:45, No. 77 (2016)
- The Womenfolk, “Little Packing containers,” 1:02, No. 83 (1964)
- Nat King Cole, “Deck the Halls,” 1:06, No. 16 (launched in 1960, peaked in 2022)
For these trying to recreation out the chart way forward for “Steve’s Lava Rooster,” “Peaches” spent a complete of 5 weeks on the Scorching 100 and even accrued a little bit of Oscar buzz. And, although “Peaches” didn’t make the minimize for the Academy’s 15-track finest unique track shortlist that 12 months, Black should not lose all hope for the awards way forward for “Steve’s Lava Rooster.” In any case, there is no rule that claims a 34-second track cannot win an Oscar.
