Throwback Thursday: 2013

Welcome to the new season (?) of Throwback Thursday! We're going to be looking back at all of the instrumental songs that have hit #1 on the charts! There are no instrumental songs from the 90's that hit #1, so it'll be refreshing to not do any 90's songs for a while.

And before anyone says anything, these are instrumental songs, but they might have some vocal parts in them. it's just that they're instrumental enough to be called instrumental by Billboard.

Here's the only instrumental song to hit #1 since I have been able to read! It jetted up to #1 after a meme started going around YouTube and Facebook. You can probably search YouTube for "Harlem Shake Videos" and see TONS. Billboard made changes to how they tallied the Hot 100 right around the time that the Harlem Shake meme was really hot. The change was that they would allow YouTube videos that featured songs to push those songs up the chart. So it was only natural that this one blasted up to the top and stayed there for 5 weeks!

Enjoy! And dance!

Baauer - Harlem Shake (2/2-2/23)

And here's a Top Ten Countdown of the Best Harlem Shake videos because apparently there was never an official music video for it

Top Ten Tuesday: Baauer "Harlem Shake"

Ok, so I felt like I had to do this one this week because there's no telling how long this song will be on the top 10. It might be gone next week! Though, I just realized that blog posts that have YouTube links will now be affecting the Hot 100. That's a cool side effect.

It's an Internet sensation in the vein of Gangnam Style, only ANYONE could do one of these videos. So, it might seem like I'm just jumping on a trend, but that's a little bit what this segment is going for, and the changes that this song debuting at #1 represents are HUGE.

So. What IS this Internet sensation? Well, first, read Sasha Frere-Jones's great article here, where he talks about what it is, what the deal with the Hot 100 is, and what some of the problems with the song are. Then, you can read the Billboard cover story about the man who made this song and sort of a history of the song. Very interesting stuff!

Then go here to see 10 fun examples of the meme.

Here's my favorite:

And here's the actual, full song itself: