This Week in Billboard Chart History: In 1963, Stevie Wonder Made History on the Hot 100 With ‘Fingertips – Pt 2’
Plus, remembering feats by Lisa Loeb, Ashlee Simpson & Madonna.
Your weekly recap celebrating significant milestones from more than seven decades of Billboard chart history.
Aug. 5, 2000
Following four career-opening top 10s (billed as by matchbox 20), matchbox twenty topped the Pop Songs airplay chart with “Bent.” The group has earned seven top 10s on the tally, while frontman Rob Thomas has added two as a soloist.
Aug. 6, 1994
25 years ago: Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories began a three week-run atop the Billboard Hot 100 with “Stay (I Missed You).” Loeb’s friend Ethan Hawke famously gave a tape of the song to director Ben Stiller, who subsequently featured it in his classic ’90s film Reality Bites, starring Hawke, Stiller and Winona Ryder.
Aug. 7, 2004
15 years ago: Ashlee Simpson‘s Autobiography bowed atop the Billboard 200. Simpson sibling rivalry: Jessica Simpson has peaked at a No. 2 high on the chart, with In This Skin, also in 2004. Ashlee returned to the top with I Am Me in 2005.
Aug. 8, 1992
Madonna‘s “This Used to Be My Playground,” from the Olympics-themed 1992 album Barcelona Gold, finished first on the Billboard Hot 100. The song was initially released as a stand-alone single from the soundtrack to the film A League of Their Own, starring, among others, Madonna, Tom Hanks and Rosie O’Donnell.
Aug. 9, 2003
Alan Jackson’s “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere” began an eight-week reign on Hot Country Songs, the longest of his 26 career No. 1s. His singing and drinking buddy on the track? Jimmy Buffett. (And, a special toast to Buffett, who worked as Billboard‘s Nashville correspondent in the early ’70s.)
Aug. 10, 1963
Stevie Wonder‘s iconic debut single, “Fingertips – Pt 2,” topped the Billboard Hot 100 for the first of three weeks. The song made the then-13-year-old the youngest soloist ever to lead the Hot 100 and became his first of 10 No. 1s, the second-most among solo males (after Michael Jackson’s 13).
Aug. 11, 1984
35 years ago: Ray Parker, Jr.‘s “Ghostbusters” made No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 its haunt for the first of three weeks.
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