Is Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” the Biggest Hit of All Time in the US?
Credits: Todd Owyoung/NBC
Shaboozey's A Bar Song (Tipsy), a country single released on April 12, 2024, could be the biggest hit of all time in the US in terms of chart performance on the Billboard Hot 100 as of next week, the chart dated September 20, 2025.
The current biggest hit of all time in the US is The Weeknd's Blinding Lights, which was announced officially in November 2021 after being predicted to top the list by us months prior in April 2021.
This time around, we think it's a bit dicier as to whether Billboard will award A Bar Song (Tipsy) the title of the chart's biggest hit.
Let's dive into why.
Note: This article represents independent analysis by the Talk of the Charts team, and is unaffiliated with Billboard and its chart rankings.
The Raw Stats
Without looking into the details of Billboard's all-time methodology yet, one can see that A Bar Song (Tipsy) has more impressive raw stats than Blinding Lights on the Billboard Hot 100 in the upper regions of the chart:
| Rank | Blinding Lights (weeks) | A Bar Song (Tipsy) (weeks) |
|---|---|---|
| #1 | 4 | 19 |
| Top 2 | 8 | 24 |
| Top 3 | 21 | 27 |
| Top 5 | 43 | 47 |
| Top 10 | 57 | 66 |
| On chart | 90 | 73 |
A Bar Song (Tipsy) spent a record-tying 19 weeks at #1 (while Blinding Lights spent just 4), and it bests Blinding Lights in weeks in the top 5 and top 10, which are the most important for the all-time methodology used by Billboard.
The area where Tipsy lags is weeks on the chart overall, which for the all-time ranking, is not as important as weeks spent in the top 10 or at #1.
But here's why it might not be crowned the Hot 100's biggest hit of all time despite the impressive raw stats.
Longevity Records Keep Getting Broken
In the 2020s, there's been a tendency for songs to break longevity records frequently.
In 2020, Post Malone's Circles became the longest-running top 10 hit of all time on the Hot 100 with 39 weeks, only to be surpassed by The Weeknd's Blinding Lights in 2021 with 57 weeks in the top 10. In 2022, Glass Animals' Heat Waves broke Blinding Lights' record for most weeks on the Hot 100 with 91 weeks, only to be surpassed by Teddy Swims' Lose Control in 2025 at an incredible 107 weeks and counting.
It's not necessarily likely that more songs of this current era are bigger than songs of previous eras. Rather, the broad belief is that the streaming era has resulted in songs lingering around on the chart for longer as a natural consequence of the way music is now consumed.
The Effect of Streaming
In the digital sales era, an individual's consumption largely ended after a single week in terms of chart points once they downloaded a track. While a person could purchase a song again later on, the vast majority of people only downloaded a song once and then listened to it offline in their iTunes library. As a result, their activity was only measured for a single week — playing a track offline in 2011 from an iTunes download months after the original purchase wasn't measurable for the Billboard Hot 100.
In the streaming era, consumption is always online and is measured effectively indefinitely. Week after week, each stream counts towards chart points, even if the song is months or years old.
This change in how consumption is measured is likely to be the biggest cause of songs lingering on the chart for longer periods of time.
Stagnant Radio Playlists
Streaming isn't the only culprit, though: radio has also changed how it plays songs. While radio impressions counted indefinitely like streaming in the sales era too, many radio stations now play songs for much longer periods of time before rotating them out. This means they continue to earn points for audience impressions even long after their peak.
A Bar Song (Tipsy) also broke the record for most weeks at #1 on Billboard's Radio Songs chart at 27 weeks, beating, fittingly, Blinding Lights by The Weeknd.
You could argue radio is following streaming trends, so streaming could still be a root cause.
Tipsy Faces an Uphill Battle
This change in music consumption means A Bar Song (Tipsy) has an uphill battle to prove itself as the biggest hit of all time in the US. Charting for well over a year in the top 10 is no longer enough to win the title as in previous decades.
It's difficult to tell whether a song is truly massive based on chart longevity alone, or if it's merely a product of a changing consumption landscape. Billboard's all-time methodology must account for these changes to avoid heavily favoring songs from the 2020s, and accurately compare songs of different eras.
Plus, it's been just four years since Blinding Lights was crowned the biggest hit of all time in the US. It's not out of the question that Billboard might want to wait a bit longer to assess how the landscape looks in more detail before awarding another song the title, given the chart dates all the way back to August 1958.
So how does Billboard calculate the all-time rankings?
The All-Time Methodology
Although the methodology behind the all-time chart is not publicly available, it is believed that the system was accurately modeled due to its ability to predict Billboard's rankings.
Articles listing a given artist's biggest hits, and the recently-revealed 21st century list, line up with the rankings calculated by the unofficial system known to our staff.
The system is not based on the raw chart points used in the weekly and year-end charts. Instead, it's based on a system that assigns points to songs based on their rank on the chart each week.
The system used by Billboard has two unique parts:
- The inverse point system
- The era multiplier system
1. Inverse Point System
Billboard's all-time and decade-end rankings award points on an inverse basis, where weeks at #1 receive the most points and those at #100 receive the least. Unlike raw chart points, where a song can be very strong at #1 or very weak at #1, each position is worth the same number of points from one week to the next in a given era.
2. Era Multiplier System
The second part of the system ensures fairer comparisons across different eras, which is done by weighing eras based on chart turnover: eras with fast-moving charts are weighed higher than eras with slow-moving charts.
The specific technique Billboard uses to fairly weigh different eras is multipliers. The points assigned to songs each week are multiplied by a value (such as x0.75) according to the era a chart week occurred.
Charting for twenty weeks in the top 10 in 2010 was much more rare than it is now, and so Billboard penalizes modern songs that find themselves spending more time charting.
2025's Weight
Here's where it gets dicey. According to the unofficial system model, A Bar Song (Tipsy) is the biggest hit of all time in the US as of the upcoming chart — but only when using the same multiplier values Billboard gave to 2022-2024.
2025's true weight is unknown. The multiplier values are constantly in flux as Billboard adjusts them to reflect the current state of the charts. Billboard has consistently changed the multiplier this decade, and so one cannot assume that 2025 will be weighed the same as 2022-2024.
Given how slow 2025 has been in terms of chart turnover, it's possible, or even likely, that Billboard will assign a lower multiplier to weeks in 2025 than 2022-2024. This would mean that Tipsy would need to chart for many more weeks to actually be crowned #1 of all time.
And an upcoming release threatens it.
Risks in the Future
The biggest risk to Tipsy's future is Taylor Swift's 12th studio album The Life of a Showgirl, which is set to be released on October 3, 2025.
The last two studio album releases by Taylor Swift were Midnights (2022) and THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT (2024). Each album was so massive that both had their tracks occupy the entire top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100, which pushed out every other song from the top 10.
This is where the risk lies for Tipsy if 2025's weight is lower than 2022-2024 — due to the recurrency system on the Billboard Hot 100, where songs that are descending are removed from the chart if they fall below the top 25 and have charted for more than 52 weeks, it could be pushed out of the top 25 the week of The Life of a Showgirl's release. That would permanently remove it from the chart, where it will only be allowed back if it re-enters the top 25 after receiving a notable boost due to a major event. Such re-entries are very rare.
The Verdict
What we can say is that Tipsy is probably at least top 3 of all time, assuming the overall methodology of the chart remains unchanged.
On the official November 2021 list, the gap between #1 and #2 is tiny, while the gap between #2 and #3 is massive. The gap is so large that any multiplier change would have to be unrealistically drastic to push A Bar Song (Tipsy) out of the top 3.
That is assuming Teddy Swims' Lose Control doesn't overtake it, in which case it will get pushed to #4.
If Billboard does not weigh 2025 lower than 2022-2024, A Bar Song (Tipsy) is indeed the biggest hit of all time in the US, under the current methodology. If 2025 is weighed lower than 2022-2024, then it's not—at least yet.
