The Billboard Hot 100 is widely considered the place to be for an artist looking to make hit songs. If you want to have a hit, find a way to get it on the Hot 100. As a result, hits are usually short and punchy attention grabbers and don’t tend to stray far from about 3 minutes and some change. That has all changed, as André 3000‘s similarly long-titled 12-minute hit has broken a Billboard record.
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Clocking in at 12 minutes and 20 seconds, the song “I Swear, I Really Wanted to Make a ‘Rap’ Album But This Is Literally the Way the Wind Blew Me This Time” from André 3000’s recent album New Blue Sun recently broke the record for the longest song on the Billboard Hot 100. It hit the chart at No. 90, surpassing Tool’s 2019 hit “Fear Inoculum” which ran 10 minutes 21 seconds and debuted at No. 93.
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The top three longest songs in Hot 100 history are now, in order, André 3000’s “I Swear, I Really Wanted to Make a ‘Rap’ Album But This Is Literally the Way the Wind Blew Me This Time,” Tool’s “Fear Inoculum,” and Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version),” which clocked in at 10 minutes 13 seconds.
André 3000 recently spoke to NPR about his experimental album and reiterated the opening track’s title when he said, “In my mind, I really would like to make a rap album. So, maybe that happens one day, but I got to find a way to say what I want to say in an interesting way that’s appealing to me at this age.”
New Blue Sun is André 3000’s all-instrumental solo debut, charting at No. 1 on the New Age Albums chart. The opening track, “I Swear, I Really Wanted to Make a ‘Rap’ Album…” has garnered 5.8 million official streams since its arrival, with an additional 22,000-strong radio audience. According to a report from Billboard, alternative radio stations in Seattle and Philadelphia have been introducing their listeners to the record-breaking song.
(Featured Image by Andrew Toth/Getty Images)
