64. Hollaback Girl - Gwen Stefani
Stats:
- #1 for 4 Weeks in 2005 (May - June)
- Replaced: Candy Shop - 50 Cent featuring Olivia
- Replaced by: We Belong Together - Mariah Carey
- Sample Headline from its Reign: Kuwait grants women the right to vote.
- #2 Hits It Prevented from Reaching #1: Hate It Or Love It - The Game featuring 50 Cent, Oh - Ciara featuring Ludacris
- Top 200 #1 Hits 1955-2000 Rank: New Song
In the JM history of pop, Hollaback Girl does a lot of lifting. From the decline of the boy bands (let's say early 2001) up until this song, pop was in a tough spot. The #1 spot was littered with some good rap and R&B songs and some truly terrible ones, but nothing that you would really call straight up pop. Indeed the songs that could qualify from that time frame consisted of: Butterfly - Crazy Town, How You Remind Me - Nickelback, A Moment Like This - Kelly Clarkson, This is The Night - Clay Aiken. Two idols and two early 00s Numetal light groups. In an entire high school students career that was all the #1s that weren't rap or R&B. So Hollaback Girl was when that all started to change. It was the 2nd new #1 hit after Billboard started to count iTunes downloads and it was the first number one hit to sound truly like a mash-up. In other words, the culture of pop was beginning to retake the charts from the ground up. Gwen presaged Gaga, Katy Perry, Ke$ha and all of the other pop ladies that 10 years ago would have been swept away by another 50 Cent song or some such. And that, more than anything else, is bananas.
Coming up: #63 - "Tonight the light of love is in your eyes"
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