(February 11, 2024). Sports fans know that no NFL franchise has earned seven championship rings, although two — the New England Patriots and my beloved Pittsburgh Steelers — have come close with six apiece.
But do they know that there are not one but two entities that are tied to seven rings when it comes to the big game?
Of course, there’s future Hall of Fame QB Tom Brady, who earned seven Super Bowl rings – six with the Patriots and one with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers — and then there’s, wait for it, Ariana Grande, whose song “7 Rings” was the No. 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 during Super Bowl LIII in 2019.
That’s just one of the many factoids you’ll learn about the juxtaposition between the NFL’s biggest night and Billboard’s premier singles chart as you read on.
And while everyone knows that there’s no real connection between having a No. 1 song on Super Bowl Sunday and the big game itself — other than a quirk of the calendar — it’s fun to make the association, especially for chart and sports geeks like yours truly with a penchant for delivering useless facts and figures.
For instance, did you know that the No. 1 song during each of the first 58 Super Bowls were by a combined 70 recording acts (including features)?
Or that Beyoncé, who’s famously never won a Best Album Grammy, is the only artist to have the No. 1 single during two consecutive Super Bowls (XL and XLI)?
Meanwhile, of the two highest profile musicians who’ll be at this year’s big game (that we know of) — Usher and Taylor Swift — only Usher has achieved a Super Bowl No. 1 (in 2002 when “U Got It Bad” topped the chart while the New England Patriots won their first championship after the controversial “Tuck Rule” catapulted them into that year’s AFC Championship Game and launched their historic dynasty).
It’s worth noting that Taylor Swift has had ten Hot 100 No. 1 hits but none of them have been No. 1 during a Super Bowl Week.
Meanwhile, Usher joins Beyoncé, Bruno Mars, and Katy Perry as the only halftime performers who’ve also had a No. 1 song during the week of a big game, although none of them have been the performer during the weeks that their songs ranked at No. 1.
Beyoncé, Bruno Mars and Elton John are the only recording acts to have scored two No. 1 songs on Super Sunday, with Mars almost doing it three times (his “Locked Out of Heaven” was knocked out of chart heaven just a day before Super Bowl XLVII (47) in 2013).
And for those wondering, Janet Jackson is on this list as well, with the song that happens to be the namesake for her current world tour, “Together Again,” which topped the Hot 100 during Super Bowl XXXII, six years before the infamous halftime performance that practically guaranteed she wouldn’t be adding another song to the list.
Billboard’s charts are dated on Saturdays and cover the week leading up to and including that day. And while they won’t announce this week’s chart until Monday, the day after Super Bowl 58 is played, my very reliable sources tell me that the No. 1 song will be Jack Harlow’s “Lovin’ On Me,” which will be returning for its fourth engagement (and knocking out Megan Thee Stallion’s “Hiss” in the process).
That makes Harlow’s song one of seven rap tunes to top the chart during Super Bowl Sunday, following hits by B2K feat. P. Diddy, Flo Rida feat. T-Pain, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Migos feat Lil Uzi Vert, Drake, and Roddy Ricch.
Excluded from that rap count are songs by OutKast (“Hey Ya” reigned during Super Bowl XXXVIII but is hardly rap) and Shaggy feat. RikRok Ducent (“It Wasn’t Me” is similarly not rap).
Sadly, this list also doesn’t include “Black and Yellow,” Wiz Khalifa’s 2011 ode to the city of Pittsburgh and the Steelers who lost that year’s Super Bowl to the Green Bay Packers. “Black and Yellow,” which partially owed its popularity to the Steelers’ pursuit of a historic seventh ring that year, moved to No. 1 the week after that game was played, narrowly missing this exclusive recap.
And for the old heads reading this who love living creatures with misspelled names, there are no Beatles on the list, but there are some Monkees.
The recap of all the No. 1 songs during Super Bowl Sunday begins below. Take a scroll down memory lane and this marriage of music and football — from the very first Super Bowl in 1967 all the way through this week’s game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers, the latter of which has a chance to join the Patriots and Steelers as the lone teams with six rings.
DJ Rob
Owner
Make sure you keep scrolling until you get through all 58! And come back next year when we update the list for Super Bowl LIX!
DJRob
DJRob (he/him) is a freelance music blogger from the East Coast who covers R&B, hip-hop, disco, pop, rock and (sometimes) country genres – plus lots of music news and current stuff! You can follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @djrobblog and on Meta’s Threads.
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