If it feels like you”re been hearing Imagine Dragons” “Radioactive” forever, that”s because you have.
Today, the song broke the record for the most weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, as it stakes out its 77th week on the chart, according to Billboard. The rock band”s tune , which debuted in August 2012, surpasses Jason Mraz”s “I”m Yours,” which spent 76 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2008 and 2009. And just to add insult to Mraz”s losing the title, this week AWOLNATION”s “Sail” logs its 76th week on the Hot 100, meaning Mraz will probably get pushed down to third place next week.
So how did “Radioactive” achieve this feat? The three factors that go into determining position on the Hot 100 are streaming, digital sales and airplay, but Billboard doesn”t only tally Top 40 stations, it includes rock, country, pop, and alternative stations. Therefore, a song can be getting airplay only on rock stations and still land on the Hot 100, which is how “Radioactive” first came onto the Hot 100. Then it crossed over to rock, then to Adult Top 40 and then to Mainstream Top 40, according to Billboard. Therefore, it stayed on the Billboard Hot 100 the whole time it crossed from one genre to the next.
The song, which peaked at No. 3 last August, recently gained traction following the band”s performance of the song with Kendrick Lamar on the Jan. 26 Grammy Awards. That version has sold 228,000 copies, while the band-only version has sold 6.6 million downloads.