Given its sound, the top 10 of the latest Billboard Hot 100, dated May 2, is one of the most notable going back more than a decade.
The latest chart marks the first time since at least 2013, when Hit Songs Deconstructed started tracking the weekly Hot 100’s top 10, that every song in the region has been in a major key, excluding weeks in which it was dominated by a single lead artist.
The only other all-major key top 10 during that span? Two years ago this week (May 4, 2024), Taylor Swift held the entire region with songs from her album The Tortured Poets Department.
(Note that this data excludes weeks with holiday songs in the chart’s top 10.)
The popularity of major keys on the newest Hot 100 is due, in part, to the top 10’s genre makeup: pop (60%), country (20%) and R&B/soul (20%).
To put each genre’s tonality into perspective, here are major/minor key breakdowns for Hot 100 top 10s from the start of this decade through this week:
Pop: 67% major / 33% minor
Country: 65% major / 33% minor
R&B/soul: 59% major / 41% minor
In other words, pop, country and R&B/soul top 10s on the Hot 100 this decade have largely leaned major key, and the latest top 10 is fully made up of those three primary genres.
Hits by Olivia Rodrigo — new at No. 1 on the Hot 100 with “Drop Dead” — Bruno Mars, Olivia Dean (“So Easy [To Fall in Love]”), Alex Warren, Justin Bieber and HUNTR/X account for pop’s dominance in the May 2 top 10. Ella Langley has the two country titles and Dean (“Man I Need”) and Kehlani represent R&B/soul.
The recession of hip-hop/rap hits also contributed to the rise of major keys. Over the same 2020-26 period, 84% of hip-hop/rap top 10s on the Hot 100 have been in a minor key (with the rest major or encompassing both).
Alongside major keys taking center stage in the Hot 100’s top 10 this week, romantic songs and faster tempos claim runaway wins:
70% have a romantic/being-in-love/seeking-love lyrical theme
70% likewise feature a tempo of more than 100 BPM (beats per minute)
“Drop Dead” helps drive both of those marks, from its “kiss me and I might drop dead”-punctuated chorus to its 130-BPM tempo. Similarly, “Daisies,” back in the Hot 100’s top 10, finds Bieber daydreaming, “I’m countin’ the days, how many days ‘til I can see you again?,” set to a 110-BPM backdrop.
Meanwhile, women continue their dominance in the Hot 100’s top 10, claiming seven spots for a sixth consecutive week. As previously reported, the streak is the longest since an eight-week run in 2014.
Notably, exclusively female-led Hot 100 top 10s have been on the rise since 2018, vaulting from a 15% share that year to 42% in 2025, while holding relatively steady at 40% year to date.
David and Yael Penn cofounded Hit Songs Deconstructed, which provides compositional analytics for top 10 Hot 100 hits. In 2023, Hit Songs Deconstructed and fellow song analysis platform MyPart publicly launched ChartCipher, an AI-powered platform analyzing a deeper scope of hit songs, as defined by Billboard’s charts.
