67 Years of #1 Hits

Sound & Representation on the Billboard Hot 100

Edward Choi | Kevin Huang | Kaiwen Zhou

2026-03-05

The Data

1177 songs reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 between August 1958 and January 2025

Each song includes:

• Spotify audio features: energy, danceability, BPM, acousticness
• Hand-coded genre labels and instrumentation
• Gender composition of artists, songwriters, and producers

Two questions: How has the sound of #1 hits changed? And who has been making them?

Pop music has gotten louder, more danceable, and less acoustic

But different genres moved in different directions

Male artists have historically dominated #1 hits, but the share is shifting

Behind the scenes, the gap is even wider