Longest-Running Number-One Songs on the Billboard Hot 100

About This Dataset

This chart ranks the songs that spent the most weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100. Lil Nas X's 'Old Town Road' holds the all-time record with 19 weeks in 2019, ahead of three songs tied at 16 weeks including 'Despacito' and Morgan Wallen's 'Last Night'.

✨ AI Insight

'Old Town Road' rewrote the record book in 2019 with 19 weeks at number one - and it did so as a viral novelty that country radio initially rejected, proof that streaming had wrested control of the charts from radio programmers. The three songs tied at 16 weeks span three decades and three genres: Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men's 'One Sweet Day' (1995), the Spanish-language 'Despacito' (2017), and Morgan Wallen's country hit 'Last Night' (2023). Notably, five of the eight songs on this list reached their record runs after 2017, when streaming began counting heavily toward the chart - long reigns have become more common as passive listening keeps hits on top. Whitney Houston's 'I Will Always Love You' remains the longest-running number one of the pre-streaming era.

Source: Billboard

Key Findings

Auto-computed highlights from this dataset

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Old Town Road - Lil Nas X (2019) leads with 19 in All Time.

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Average value in All Time: 16 · median: 16.

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Gap in All Time: Old Town Road - Lil Nas X (2019) is 1.4× larger than Macarena - Los Del Rio (1996).