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\n\tIt all comes back to pop music. Pop is the backbone not only of the music industry, but of culture in general: Nothing else connects people, defines moments and lives and passes down history from generation to generation the way pop does. It\u2019s our shared language, our communal experience. It\u2019s why wedding receptions are usually joyous and celebratory occasions even if the DJ doesn\u2019t know a thing about the people they\u2019re playing to, why karaoke can feel like a spiritual awakening in the right circumstances, why top 40 and oldies radio remain cultural staples a decade into the streaming era. There is no safer bet, no easier sell than pop music. <\/p>\n
\n\tAnd yet, there\u2019s been relatively little attempt to properly canonize modern pop\u2019s greatest works and practitioners. While rock as a genre has been listed and anthologized to death over the past 50 years, and hip-hop and country are finally starting to catch up, such pop histories are relatively few and far between. There\u2019s no official pop hall of fame, like there is for those other genres. It shouldn\u2019t be possible for the biggest music on the planet to be overlooked, but it does feel that way sometimes. <\/p>\n
\n\tSo we here at Billboard<\/em> have decided to take the occasion of the 65th anniversary of the Billboard Hot 100<\/a> \u2014 with the chart finally having lived a full-enough life to be at retirement age, though it\u2019s still as vital as ever and certainly nowhere near hanging it up \u2014 to take our shot at listing the 500 best pop songs since the chart\u2019s debut. Though songs had to hail from the Hot 100 era to qualify for our list, this isn\u2019t a charts-determined ranking: Rather, these are the songs our staff felt were simply the greatest, most enduring pop songs of that 65-year period, the songs that we most think of when we think of what pop music could and should be. (Because 500 is a much smaller number than you think when talking about 65 years of pop music, and because we wanted to be able to include as many different artists as possible, we capped the number of pop songs per lead artist at three.)<\/p>\n \n\tHow are we defining \u201cpop songs,\u201d you might ask? Well, that\u2019s a little tough: One of the reasons pop can be hard to summarize is because there\u2019s no real sonic or musical definition to it. There are common elements to a lot of the biggest pop songs, but at the end of the day, \u201cpop\u201d means \u201cpopular\u201d first and foremost, and just about any song that becomes popular enough \u2014 whether it be rock, dance, rap, R&B, country, reggaet\u00f3n or some combination \u2014 can be considered a pop song. So the only hard-and-fast qualification we laid down for songs to be eligible for our list was that they had to have hit the Hot 100 at some point, in some version. (The only exception we made was for songs that came during the \u201990s period where many huge airplay hits were ineligible for the Hot 100; read here<\/a> for more details on that.)<\/p>\n \n\tAll that said, the \u201cpop\u201d part of this project was still essential when determining our ranking. We were looking for the songs that most fit our idea of pop music \u2014 catchy, tight, rousing, emotional, immaculately crafted, instantly memorable. If a song didn\u2019t strike us as an obvious pop song, we might have ranked it lower on our list than most other all-time songs lists have in the past, or left it off altogether. Conversely, if a song makes us go \u201cnow that\u2019s<\/em> a pop song!\u201d every time we hear it, even if it\u2019s not the kind of critically revered song that often ends up on all-time lists, we made sure to give it a little extra love here. Our definition of pop might differ from yours \u2014 we couldn\u2019t even all agree on every song ourselves \u2014 but even if we can\u2019t do much better than \u201cwe know it when we hear it,\u201d we\u2019re confident you\u2019ll hear it plenty yourself while reading through the songs on our list. <\/p>\n \n\tHere are our staff\u2019s 500 favorite pop songs since the introduction of the Billboard Hot 100 on Aug. 4th, 1958 \u2014 from Lesley Gore to Carly Rae Jepsen, from Sam Cooke to SZA, from The Kinks to The Chainsmokers, from Chubby Checker to Rae Sremmurd. We counted down from 500 to 301 yesterday (Oct. 17), and now we present to you 300 to 101<\/a> \u2014 with the final 100 being unveiled on Thursday (Oct. 19), along with more related articles you can read all about here<\/a>. <\/p>\n \n\tJoin us below all week, and feel free to sing along; we know you know the words. <\/p>\n \n\tSkip to:
<\/em>Nos. 400-301<\/a>
Nos. 300-201<\/a>
Nos. 200-101
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