Last Hot 100 #1 On Vinyl Only?
Printed From: Top 40 Music on CD
Category: Top 40 Music On Compact Disc
Forum Name: Chat Board
Forum Description: Chat away but please observe the chat board rules
URL: https://top40musiconcd.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=9934
Printed Date: 09 May 2025 at 4:08pm
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.07 - https://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: Last Hot 100 #1 On Vinyl Only?
Posted By: Paul Haney
Subject: Last Hot 100 #1 On Vinyl Only?
Date Posted: 13 April 2023 at 12:04pm
|
The good folks in the chart department at Billboard have asked me what the last (most recent) #1
Hot 100 hit was that WAS ONLY COMMERCIALLY RELEASED ON A VINYL 7" SINGLE??? We all figure it had to be mid-to-late 1980s. I simply don't have the time to fully research this and I figured that if anyone would have the answer, it would be someone in this group. Any ideas??? Also, they were wondering about the last Hot 100 to be FULLY made up of vinyl 7" singles only. |
Replies:
Posted By: ChicagoBill
Date Posted: 13 April 2023 at 12:38pm
|
Paul, I think the 2nd part of your question could coincide with the debut of the cassette
singles, since they were around before CD singles. -Bill. |
Posted By: Paul C
Date Posted: 13 April 2023 at 12:43pm
|
When Bryan Adams “Heat Of The Night” was released, it was hailed as
the first cassette single. What I don’t know is whether labels subsequently released cassette singles of songs already available on 7-inch singles. |
Posted By: ChicagoBill
Date Posted: 13 April 2023 at 12:58pm
|
And then there is the case of some 12" singles that were released and yet no 7" singles were done. I
consider them mostly 'one-offs' and not a trend, if that's what they are looking for. -Bill. |
Posted By: Paul Haney
Date Posted: 13 April 2023 at 1:17pm
|
They are more interested in the first part of the question (the last #1 on vinyl only) than the second part.
Not sure if they are taking 12" vinyl into the equation (probably not). I'm guessing the #1 would be somewhere in 1987 or 1988??? |
Posted By: aaronk
Date Posted: 13 April 2023 at 1:31pm
|
There are a couple recent songs that had limited releases on both 7" and cassette single. For instance, "Watermelon Sugar" by Harry Styles and "Butter" by BTS. But if they mean songs pre-digital era, I think looking in '87 or '88 sounds about right. There might have also been some vinyl-only releases in 1989, but I don't know about #1 hits. ------------- Aaron Kannowski http://www.uptownsound.com" rel="nofollow - Uptown Sound http://www.919thepeak.com" rel="nofollow - 91.9 The Peak - Classic Hip Hop |
Posted By: ChicagoBill
Date Posted: 13 April 2023 at 3:09pm
|
O.K., after giving it a little more thought, I don't remember seeing a cassette single on Bob Seger's
"Shakedown". That hit #1 on August 1, 1987. See if anyone can come up with a later #1 that didn't issue a cassette single. I was not a fan of cassette singles, so there. -Bill. |
Posted By: thecdguy
Date Posted: 13 April 2023 at 5:29pm
There was a cassette single for "Shakedown", I have it myself. A few #1's down the line, "La Bamba" by Los Lobos I don't think had one. The one after that, MJ/Siedah Garrett's "I Just Can't Stop Loving You" didn't have one, either as I recall (although there was a 3 inch CD Single issued for it several months after it had already fallen off the chart. ------------- Dan In Philly |
ChicagoBill wrote:Posted By: eric_a
Date Posted: 13 April 2023 at 8:07pm
|
Billboard started marking the Hot 100 with (C) for
cassette singles in mid-1988, and scanning through the remainder of 1988 and 1989, it looks like everything had a cassette single available, so safe to say the last mass market vinyl-only #1 came out before then. And there's another technicality to add to Aaron's examples from the 2020s, I'd also consider 45s from the Hot 100's "post-single" era starting in 1998. Lots of hits weren't available commercially on CD/cassette but were available on vinyl. While these 45s were mainly for jukebox operators, I'd argue they were "commercial" -- e.g., UPCs, some retail availability, etc. Rob Thomas' "Lonely No More" might be the last example of a #1 before the majors stopped supplying jukeboxes. |
Posted By: aaronk
Date Posted: 13 April 2023 at 8:15pm
|
Good point, Eric. Regarding "Lonely No More," though, it only went to #1 on some of the sub-charts, like Hot AC. It peaked at #6 on the Hot 100. ------------- Aaron Kannowski http://www.uptownsound.com" rel="nofollow - Uptown Sound http://www.919thepeak.com" rel="nofollow - 91.9 The Peak - Classic Hip Hop |
Posted By: Glenpwood
Date Posted: 13 April 2023 at 10:59pm
|
Unless we count a video cd as a format, Cutting Crew’s I Just Died In Your
Arms is the last US 45 only number one. There are several chart toppers after that only made it to vinyl but also had commercial 12’ available. The last one I noticed to not have a cassette single but 7 & 12 inch releases is Tiffany’s I Think We’re Alone Now. The first chart topper that had a cassette single since the Go Go’s nor Bryan Adams made the top let alone the top 5 appears to be With Or Without You by U2 |
Posted By: eric_a
Date Posted: 13 April 2023 at 11:24pm
You're right - I was looking at the wrong list. Maybe the latest, then, is Usher's "Burn"? Or Jennifer Lopez "I'm Real"? |
Posted By: Paul Haney
Date Posted: 14 April 2023 at 3:59am
|
Thanks for all the input! I should've mentioned that they were mainly looking 1980s, or more precisely, before they
started listing configurations on the Hot 100. |
Posted By: Brian W.
Date Posted: 14 April 2023 at 4:00am
|
If what I'm seeing on Discogs is correct, the last US Hot 100 #1 that had no commercially available maxi-single or other commercially available format was MJ "I Just Can't Stop Loving You." (I don't count the commercial
CD3 because my recollection is that it didn't come out until around the time that "Dirty Diana" came out.) Unless... you count the Spanish version, "Todo Mi Amor Eres Tu," which was released in America on a cassingle backed with the English version. So I suppose a case could be made that the Spanish/English cassingle makes it ineligible. If that does make it ineligible, then it's "I Just Died in Your Arms Tonight." Great note about the video CD for that song, Glen, but it looks like that was only issued promotionally. |
Posted By: VWestlife
Date Posted: 14 April 2023 at 4:07pm
|
That would be CD Video, not Video CD.
CD Video was Philips' failed attempt to turn LaserDisc into a music video format in 1987. The discs were gold colored and featured an audio-only CD portion and an analog video portion playable on a LaserDisc player. Smaller CD Video discs could only fit a few minutes of video, just enough for a single music video, while larger ones could fit an entire movie. Video CD was introduced in 1993 and used MPEG compression to fit an hour of "VHS-quality" digital video on a disc that was physically identical to a CD, and could also contain CD-audio tracks. It was most popular in Asia and lasted as a video format there until the 2010s. |
Posted By: C J Brown
Date Posted: 14 April 2023 at 7:15pm
|
Hello VWestlife
Thanks for the format rundown on Phillips CD Video and the later Video CD. Any idea how Phillips CDI disc fit in the timeline. I am thinking I bought my Phillipa CDI player and software late 1988 or early 1989. |
Posted By: NightAire
Date Posted: 15 April 2023 at 1:09am
|
Discogs lists a cassette single of "(I Just) Died In Your Arms Tonight" in 1987 although they label it as a "reissue."
They also list a mini CD single in 1988. I'd offer Falco's "Rock Me Amadeus" as a possible contender, only having a cassette single listed in Discogs in New Zealand and Peru. Released in 1985, it hit #1 on March 29, 1986. Your thoughts? ------------- Gene Savage http://www.BlackLightRadio.com - http://www.BlackLightRadio.com http://www.facebook.com/TulsaSavage - http://www.facebook.com/TulsaSavage Tulsa, Oklahoma USA |
Posted By: Brian W.
Date Posted: 15 April 2023 at 3:06pm
The cassette is definitely a reissue as it says "BackTrax" on the cover. It's from the BackTrax reissue series. That 1988 mini CD single wasn't issued in America, and I think he's looking for American issues only, since he's referring to the Hot 100. |
Posted By: EdisonLite
Date Posted: 18 April 2023 at 1:41am
|
I remember buying ONE cassette single right when it came out - Whitney
Houston's "Didn't We Almost Have It All". It was one of the first (I think). So since that was '87, I'd say the answer definitely lies in a 1987 single. I had Whitney's CD, but I bought this anyway, not with the intention of ever playing it (though it was my #1 song of 1987), but because I thought it would be a quickly fading fad. I was obviously wrong about that :) |
Posted By: Brian W.
Date Posted: 18 April 2023 at 2:12am
LOL. Yeah... I thought that about this thing a coworker told me about in 1998 or so where you could buy books on the Internet and have them delivered to your house. I thought it was a dumb idea that would never catch on. I believe the name of the company was Amazon or something like that. (I also remember a friend telling me DVDs would never catch on.) |
Posted By: EdisonLite
Date Posted: 18 April 2023 at 2:12am
|
As far as the original question that someone asked Paul:
what the last (most recent) #1 Hot 100 hit was that WAS ONLY COMMERCIALLY RELEASED ON A VINYL 7" SINGLE?? I'd say that if a song in the 2000s was commercially released as a 7" and digitally, then by definition, it wasn't only commercially released on 7". So this would eliminate any songs of the last several years. So is the current theory "I Just Died In Your Arms"? Gene brings up a good point about Falco - are we talking worldwide or US? |
Posted By: EdisonLite
Date Posted: 18 April 2023 at 2:19am
OK. I just re-read this. A later (not concurrent) release on CD single shouldn't exclude a 45. Nor if the song was released in some video format, like a CD-video or VHS. But I guess it's not Cutting Crew if there was a cassingle released at the same time as the vinyl. And Brian, LOL, that's funny about Amazon! Some people didn't think the CD format would become anything. And the same thing when cassettes of albums were released. As for Amazon, going even bigger, there were probably people early on that didn't think this "internet thing" would catch on. :) |
Posted By: TomDiehl1
Date Posted: 18 April 2023 at 3:43am
But that cassette came later, as a reissue... as far as I can tell, not issued concurrently with the 45... ------------- Live in stereo. |
Posted By: thecdguy
Date Posted: 20 April 2023 at 7:26am
I bought that Cassingle, too. Her previous #1 from a few months earlier, "I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)", had both a Cassette Single and Cassette Maxi-Single. As I recall, both "I Wanna Dance" and "Didn't We" both had non-LP B-Sides, which is another reason I bought them. I'm going to have to dig out my cassingle of "Didn't We" to see if it has that distortion issue that's been discussed on another thread. I'm sure it does, but I have to say I never noticed it until I read about here on this forum. Now that I know it exists, I can't not hear it anytime I listen to the song. As far as #1's go, I'd also like to mention that Club Nouveau's "Lean On Me" (#1 a few months before the Cutting Crew song) also had a cassingle issued for it (though technically it was probably more like a Cassette Maxi-Single). I have it in my collection as well. As far as I know, that's the earliest #1 I know of to be available in the format. ------------- Dan In Philly |
Posted By: aaronk
Date Posted: 20 April 2023 at 8:31am
Sorry about that. I think I was the one who pointed it out. ------------- Aaron Kannowski http://www.uptownsound.com" rel="nofollow - Uptown Sound http://www.919thepeak.com" rel="nofollow - 91.9 The Peak - Classic Hip Hop |
Posted By: EdisonLite
Date Posted: 14 May 2023 at 12:19am
|
Yeah, I don't think I ever noticed that in "Didn't We Almost Have It All" until
Aaron pointed it out. And I'd heard the song maybe 1000 times. I love it only slightly less than "All At Once", and both are in my top 10 of all time, if I had to guess. Oh and I don't recall "Didn't We Almost Have it All" cassette having a non-LP B-side - because that would have been a great reason to buy it - and I know I bought it because I thought the format wouldn't last and having this cassette would be a novelty thing. :) |
Posted By: hellogator
Date Posted: 17 May 2023 at 4:16pm
I "invented" Netflix/video streaming for a public speaking course I took in college in 1992. My teacher asked me how it would work and I explained that a robotic jukebox would automatically select the Laserdisc of your choice and play it for you over the internet. The entire class looked at me like I was stupid or crazy (or both). |
Posted By: thecdguy
Date Posted: 18 May 2023 at 8:23pm
The B-Side of "Didn't We...." was "Shock Me", her duet with Jermaine Jackson. It was from the movie "Perfect" with John Travolta and Jamie Lee Curtis and it was on the film's soundtrack, but it hadn't been on either of Whitney's albums at that point. That makes at least 4 duets she recorded with Jermaine, the others being "Nobody Loves Me Like You Do" and "Take Good Care Of My Heart" from her first album and "If You Say My Eyes Are Beautiful" from his "Precious Moments" Album. I just remembered that I saw this listing on Discogs awhile ago and just remembered it now in relation to this thread. Apparently, there was a limited-edition Cassette Single issued in the US for Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" in 1986, (although it only contains remixes and not the LP or Single Version). Never saw it in stores, but it has a barcode, so I guess it was available commercially. https://www.discogs.com/release/12398065-Peter-Gabriel-Sledgehammer-Limited-Edition-Dance-Mix - Sledgehammer Cassette Single ------------- Dan In Philly |