The Changing Sound of Chart-Topping Music

How Musical Characteristics and Artist Factors Shape Chart Success (1958–2025)

Proud Bunny
Jennifer Ai, Abigail Park, Sam Friedman

2026-03-05

Introduction

  • Dataset: TidyTuesday Billboard Hot 100 #1 songs (Aug 4, 1958 → Jan 11, 2025)

  • 1,177 #1 song instances, 105 variables

  • Audio features from Spotify analysis (0–100): energy, danceability, acousticness, etc.

  • Q1: How have energy, danceability, and acousticness changed over time across genres?

  • Q2: How do artist gender and collaboration status associate with chart longevity (weeks at #1)?

Question 1: How have musical characteristics of #1 hits changed over time across genres?

  • Plot 1: Line chart — mean feature score per decade, colored by genre
  • Plot 2: Ridge density plot — full score distribution across three broad eras

Question 1: Line Chart

Multi-series line chart showing mean energy, danceability, and acousticness per decade for the five most common Billboard #1 genres.

Question 1: Ridge Density Plot

Ridge density plots showing overall distributions of energy, danceability, and acousticness across three broad eras.

Question 2: How is chart longevity (weeks at #1) associated with artist characteristics and critical reception?

  • Plot 1: Chart barcode timeline — every #1 song as a vertical bar, colored by artist gender
  • Plot 2: Faceted scatterplot — critic rating vs. weeks at #1, by artist structure and collaboration status

Question 2: Chart Barcode — Longevity Over Time

Timeline segment chart showing every Billboard #1 song from 1958 to 2025 as a vertical bar whose height equals its weeks at #1 and whose color encodes artist gender. The streaming era (2010+) is shaded and shows a clear skyline shift toward longer runs. Thirteen songs with 14+ week runs are labeled.

Question 2: Collaboration and Critical Reception

Faceted scatterplot with regression lines showing overall critic rating vs. weeks at #1 for solo acts, duos, and groups, colored by whether the release includes a featured artist. Featured releases show a steeper positive slope.

Key Takeaways

Q1: Acousticness collapsed; energy and danceability rose across all genres

Q2: Streaming era extended chart runs; featured artists amplify the effect of high critic ratings

Data: Billboard Hot 100 · TidyTuesday 2025 (Chris Dalla Riva)