“Obsessed”: TW #11; LW #8; WoC 11; P 7

Tell me about it. I no longer reflexively link to this piece, which I wrote more than a year ago during the Estelle/iTunes brouhaha, whenever I bring up the ’90s and withheld singles, but here it is again for whoever still hasn’t read it:

http://idolator.com/400826/once-more-with-loathing-are-labels-moving-to-kill-the-single-again

Also in that list of big country crossover hits, you’re missing “I Hope You Dance” by Leann Womack (a big pop radio hit despite managing only #14 on the Hot 100).

Thanks for the suggestion, but I was limiting the list above to Hot 100 Top Five hits. If I included songs like “…Dance” that reached, say, the Top 15 or Top 20, the list would’ve been much longer (and I’d still be sitting here writing it).

The only Top Five pop hit involving a country star that I didn’t include above was the Nelly/Tim McGraw duet “Over and Over” from 2004. I felt I could skip it because it didn’t even scratch the Country chart. With only one exception, all of the above songs — even the very poppy ones with minimal fiddle/steel — made the Country list. (And the one exception is Rimes’s “How Do I Live,” but that’s worth mentioning because of the Yearwood version and its all-around unusual story. Also, Billboard did chart Rimes’s huge-selling single on their now-defunct Hot Country Singles Sales list.)

That whole “let’s not release physical singles” thing from the 90’s really screwed a bunch of songs (like “Torn”, “Fly” and “Don’t Speak”) out of the #1 position. And it caused bands like Oasis to lose a second Top 40 hit, causing them to technically be a one-hit wonder in terms of the pop chart (now matter how popular “Don’t Go Away” or the radio edit of “Champagne Supernova” were on pop radio)

Also in that list of big country crossover hits, you’re missing “I Hope You Dance” by Leann Womack (a big pop radio hit despite managing only #14 on the Hot 100).