Aptly given its title, Sia’s “Unstoppable” becomes the first song in nearly a quarter-century to spend 100 weeks on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart.
The track hits triple-digits on the list dated May 11, where it holds at No. 4. It notched 12 weeks at No. 1, nonconsecutively, between charts dated Nov. 12, 2022, and March 18, 2023.
Below is a look at the select four songs to have logged at least 100 weeks on Adult Contemporary over the chart’s history, which dates to July 1961.
Notably, three are by Australian acts: Above Sia’s song, the top two are by pop duo Savage Garden. (LeAnn Rimes, also on the list below, is from Jackson, Miss.)
Most Weeks on Adult Contemporary Chart:
- 124, “I Knew I Loved You,” Savage Garden (No. 1 for 17 weeks, beginning Dec. 25, 1999)
- 123, “Truly Madly Deeply,” Savage Garden (No. 1, 11 weeks, beginning April 11, 1998)
- 104, “I Need You,” LeAnn Rimes (No. 2 peak, Oct. 7, 2000)
- 100, “Unstoppable,” Sia (No. 1, 12 weeks, beginning Nov. 12, 2022)
through the chart dated May 4, 2024
Rules regarding the removal of songs from Adult Contemporary due to their age have varied over the years. On average, titles began having longer stays once the survey adopted electronically monitored Luminate data in July 1993. Check out Billboard’s charts legend for more details.
Meanwhile, the longevity of “Truly Madly Deeply” helped spark its No. 1 status on Billboard’s Greatest of All Time Adult Contemporary Songs chart.
“Unstoppable” has charted in the top five of Adult Contemporary for a record 84 weeks, all consecutively since the ranking dated Oct. 8, 2022. Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero” follows with a likewise active run of 66 weeks in the top five, placing at No. 5 on the latest list. (The latter hadn’t yet been released when “Unstoppable” started its top five stay; it arrived on Swift’s album Midnights that Oct. 21.)
Mirroring its lengthy chart run, “Unstoppable” has a winding history, as it was originally released on Sia’s 2016 LP This Is Acting. It was used promos for Major League Baseball’s 2016 postseason and in a Lancôme Idôle commercial, starring Zendaya, in 2019. It subsequently became prominent on TikTok and soundtracked a Samsung Galaxy ad.
Radio promotion followed, at last, in 2022, and the song entered the Adult Contemporary chart dated that June 18. “We started talking about it [that] January. The question was, ‘How are we going to do this?’ ” Erik Olesen of Crush Music told Billboard of the airplay campaign. Complicating the push, Sia’s most recent material has been released on Atlantic Records and “Unstoppable” was originally on RCA Records, and later moved to Sony Music’s catalog division under the Legacy label. However, “both RCA and Legacy were very supportive and were all about us going for this,” Olesen said.
In its favor, “Unstoppable” was among other older songs cutting through in 2022. As it built at radio, Kate Bush took off with her 1985 classic “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God),” spurred by its synch in Netflix’s Stranger Things. Noted Olesen, “At least ‘Unstoppable’ was 30 years younger!”
As momentum continued to build for the song, Olesen “asked several format captains at different radio chains both domestically and internationally to put it into their callout research. After a couple of weeks, it started to raise its hand and had huge familiarity. One of the most important ingredients for radio is familiarity.”
Since its release, “Unstoppable” has drawn 2.8 billion in airplay audience among reporters to Billboard‘s all-format Radio Songs chart. It has also run up totals of 438.1 million official streams and 494,000 sold in the U.S.
All Billboard charts dated May 11 will update on Billboard.com Tuesday, May 7.
