“Roar.” “Royals.” “Radioactive.” Notice a common thread among these recent hits? The number of charting songs with one-word titles continues to grow, with single-monikered tracks now making up nearly a third of the Billboard Hot 100 each week. To explore this trend, we’ve delved into the Hot 100 archives to formulate this chart of the top 50 biggest one-word hits.
Why Hit Songs Now Have One-Word Titles
The ranking is based on actual performance on the weekly Billboard Hot 100 chart. Songs are ranked based on an inverse point system, with weeks at No. 1 earning the greatest value and weeks at No. 100 earning the least. To ensure equitable representation of the biggest hits from each era, certain time frames were weighted to account for the difference between turnover rates from those years.