feature image photo by Photo by Boston Globe / Contributor via Getty Images
The Billboard Hot 100 is looking very HOT TO GO. Chappell Roan has a whopping six songs simultaneously on the Hot 100 this week, a huge feat for the lesbian pop star that further signals her accelerating prominence in mainstream pop despite a distinctly outside-of-the-mainstream path to get here.
Her six placements on the Hot 100 this week are as follows:
#10 – “Good Luck, Babe!”
#26 – “Hot To Go!”
#47 – “Red Wine Supernova”
#50 – “Pink Pony Club”
#79 – “Casual”
#96 – “Femininomenon”
While data on Hot 100 simultaneous one-week song totals is a little difficult to track past the very top record holders, based on my research, this does seem to be the first time a lesbian-identified artist has had this many singles in the top 100. Other queer artists have hit significant concurrent Hot 100 milestones, like Cardi B charting 13 songs in one week in 2018 and Billie Eilish charting 14 the following year. Megan thee Stallion and Lady Gaga have both also had several entries on the Hot 100 concurrently.
Roan’s Hot 100 presence and growth has been significant ever since she first broke through to the list with “Good Luck, Babe!”, which debuted at 77 in April. Now with six singles on the Hot 100 concurrently, she’s dominating in a way few other queer women outside of the top mainstream stars have. While sometimes achieving success on some of the other genre-specific and focused Billboard charts, similar artists have struggled to break into the Hot 100.
Despite their growing popularity, artists like Rina Sawayama, girl in red, and MUNA haven’t broken through. Reneé Rapp and Hayley Kiyoko haven’t either. Fletcher has had just one Hot 100 placement — “Undrunk,” which charted for six weeks. Even St. Vincent has only charted on the separate Hot 200 (though she co-wrote Taylor Swift’s Hot 100 chart-topping single “Cruel Summer”), and Janelle Monáe’s only songs to break into the Hot 100 are “Yoga” and “Make Me Feel” (though “We Are Young” which Monáe is featured on, dominated the chart for 42 weeks, with six weeks at number one). Kehlani has only ever had one solo song in the Hot 100 at a time, though two songs she is featured on (Cardi’s “Ring” and Charlie Puth’s “Done For Me”) charted simultaneously. Victoria Monét’s “On My Mama” is her only solo single to chart, though her collab with Ariana Grande, “Monopoly” also hit the Hot 100.
As Hannah Jocelyn writes for Billboard, the Hot 100 debut and streak for “Good Luck, Babe!” is in many ways groundbreaking — it’s a musically and lyrically complex song about compulsory heterosexuality…not exactly mainstream pop fodder! Indeed, it’s not just the fact that Chappell has six songs on the Hot 100 right now that stands out; it’s the actual content of those songs that does. All six are queer as fuck, covering a wide range of queer experience and delivering sexy, gay fun. Songs featuring lyrics that are explicitly about queer sex — “Knee deep in the passenger seat and you’re eating me out” from “Casual” and “I heard you like magic / I’ve got a wand and a rabbit / So baby, let’s get freaky, get kinky / Let’s make this bed get squeaky” from “Red Wine Supernova” — are taking up much deserved sapphic space on the Hot 100.
The Roanaissance is continuing apace.
I had no idea so many of the artists mentioned had never, or rarely, broken into the Hot 100. I was definitely under the misapprehension that they were more mainstream than they are. Happy to see Chappell doing so well!
i had no idea either!