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Welcome to the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show, I’m your host, Christopher Verdesi. Every week we do a deep dive into a year in Pop music and culture and count down the top ten hits according to our exclusive recap of the weekly charts published at the time in Billboard magazine, the music industry’s go-to chart authority. This week on Chartcrush, we’re counting down 2006, the year the last remnants of Pop’s Album Era born in the late ’60s withered away.

Yeah, you could still buy a CD, but CD sales were in freefall, down nearly 40% since 1999 as the illegal filesharing apocalypse continued to gut the music biz. Stores? Vanishing too. FYE, the last mall chain standing, snapping up the corpses of Wherehouse, Sam Goody, Strawberries, Coconuts and others. For music discovery, radio and cable TV still ruled—for the moment—but YouTube and MySpace were coming on strong.

And when you did hear something you liked, odds are you weren’t buying the album; you were downloading just that track, and probably for free on a legally dubious peer-to-peer network like LimeWire or BearShare—although you could spare yourself that hassle and pay 99 cents for a legal, guaranteed glitchless mp3 of your new jam on iTunes. But still, just that à la carte track. Either way, the Album Era was toast.

Artists, though? They weathered it just fine. With CDs collapsing, ticket prices soared, and surprise! So did attendance—up 14%. And grosses? Up a whopping 35%. No wonder Billboard‘s Year in Music issue for ’06 led with tours, not songs or albums. And the biggest winners: Legacy Acts like Madonna, Rolling Stones, Barbra Streisand, U2: Acts with mile-long catalogs and legions of fans to pack stadiums. Concerts weren’t promoting the product anymore; they were the product.

Which was no help to labels, of course, but Ringtones were! In ’06, labels raked in $1.2 billion from Americans downloading 15- to 30-second clips to their Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, or LG flip phones. When the phone rang, you knew who it was from the Ringtone. They’d been around for a few years, and polyphonic MIDI tones even got their own Billboard chart in ’04, but ’06 was the year of the “MasterTone:” actual song clips, finally possible thanks to better phone memory and networks. And fans were happy to shell out up to five times more than iTunes was charging for the full song.

Labels had competition, though. In ’04, startup Jamster unleashed its animated Crazy Frog to sell a ringtone of a guy imitating a motorcycle, and within a year Crazy Frog’s cover of the Beverly Hills Cop theme “Axel F” was #1 for four weeks in the U.K. In the States it only hit #50, but by ’06 you couldn’t turn on a TV without being assaulted by ads with cartoon critters hawking ringtones—Sweetie the Chick, Crazy Cow, Mad Moley the Gopher.

Ringtone companies preferred their own clips, of course—no pesky royalties—but once the latest chart hits were available, cartoon mascots faded fast. And once Artists and Producers started crafting hits for the Ringtone market, the Pop formula shifted: bumper-sticker slogans, and hooks and choruses EQ’d to make tinny Motorola Razr speakers crackle.

Pop learned to write little catchy jingles—for itself! And the obsession with brevity, impact and immediacy didn’t stop with ringtones. It’s the same DNA that would soon drive the EDM-Pop explosion in the early ’10s.

#10 Justin Timberlake featuring T.I. – My Love

Which you can already hear the first rumblings of in our #10 song, by the only Artist that had not one but two songs among Neilsen RingScan’s top ten MasterTones of ’06, and both are in our countdown. The minute people heard Producer Timbaland’s futuristic sounding beat with its trancey strobing synth, they knew: club culture was about to conquer the mainstream—again!

The track first leaked as a lo-fi unmastered mp3 on LimeWire, with a robotic watermark interrupting: “Atlantic Records for T.I. clearance.” Well DJs spun it anyway, the tag became a meme, and someone even made a t-shirt of it! T.I., the Featured Rapper on the song. #10 as we kick off our Chartcrush Countdown of 2006’s top ten hits, Justin Timberlake’s “My Love.”

“My Love,” the second hit off Justin Timberlake’s second solo album FutureSex/LoveSounds. The first and biggest, still to come on our 2006 edition of the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show. T.I. with the Rap verse—his first #1 as well, after two top tens under his own name since debuting in ’04 with his verse on Destiny’s Child’s “Soldier.”

Now don’t look for “My Love” anywhere near the top ten in Billboard‘s year-end Hot100 ranking. It’s third week at #1 was the chart year cutoff, November 25 so most of its run landed in Billboard‘s 2007 chart year and they’ve got it at #61 for 2006 and #26 for ’07. But counting the song’s full chart run as we do for every song in our Chartcrush ranking, it’s the #10 song of 2006.

Hipster music site Pitchfork gave it even more love—#1 on their staff-compiled top 100 songs ranking for ’06, and they declared JT “the new King of Pop,” which raised some eyebrows!

#9 Natasha Bedingfield – Unwritten

So, fun fact: between the Spice Girls and Elton John’s Princess Di tribute in 1997 and early 2006, British Acts went nearly a decade without a U.S. #1, and only a few cracked the top ten—notably Dido with “Thankyou” and Coldplay with “Speed of Sound.” But in February ’06 there were two songs by British Acts in the top ten simultaneously for the first time in nearly five years. Both stayed in the top ten for 11 weeks, and both are in our countdown.

At #9, the one that didn’t get to #1—it peaked at #5—by a Singer whose older brother Daniel had joined that exclusive British early ’00s top tens club in ’02 with his bedroom-produced U.K. Garage hit “Gotta Get Thru This,” and whose younger brother Josh had just turned 14, so the song was his birthday present. At #9 it’s Natasha Bedingfield’s “Unwritten.”

After ’06, Brits made a comeback on the U.S. charts—Snow Patrol, Amy Winehouse, Leona Lewis, Coldplay, and another top ten by Natasha Bedingfield, “Pocketful of Sunshine.” “Unwritten” we just heard at #9—one of the first cracks in the dam, along with the song that was the first #1 by a Brit since ’97, still to come on this week’s edition of the Chartcrush Countdown Show.

Again, “Unwritten” only peaked at #5 on the Hot100, but it got to #1 on the club charts thanks to remixes and was the #2 Airplay hit and the #5 Adult Contemporary hit of the year, also boosted by being the theme song of MTV’s wildly popular The Hills—the docu-soap about 20-something gals figuring out the whole adulting thing in L.A.

#8 Beyoncé featuring Slim Thug – Check on It

At #8, the Female Singer, who, like Justin Timberlake, had been in a massively successful Group at the turn of the millennium, went solo and scored hits—bigger hits than Justin in ’02 and ’03, in fact. But a top-heavy and self-important pop culture establishment that couldn’t agree on much of anything wasn’t quite ready to crown either of them era-defining Superstars—until 2006.

Both their sophomore albums dropped that Fall, but while Justin’s advance singles lit up the charts, this Singer’s first two off her B’Day album stalled, so the coronation had to wait until “Irreplaceable,” ten weeks at #1 into ’07. Her biggest hit of 2006? Not from B’Day at all, but from the end credits of Steve Martin’s Pink Panther reboot, where she co-starred as Pop Diva murder suspect Xania. Left off the soundtrack CD for some reason, it landed on Destiny’s Child’s #1’s compilation. Still a solo track though, featuring Houston Rapper Slim Thug. At #8, Beyoncé’s “Check on It.”

“Check on It,” Beyoncé with Slim Thug, #8 on our 2006 Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown. Bey’s first collab with Producer Swizz Beatz—Ruff Ryders Beatmaker, Label Boss, future Alicia Keys husband. He’d go on to helm three tracks on her B’Day album, including “Ring the Alarm,” which hit #11. But “Irreplaceable” was waiting in the wings—the single that, as one Hip-Hop editor put it, elevated Beyoncé “from princess-in-waiting to a full-fledged queen.”

#7 Sean Paul – Temperature

At #7, the second solo #1 after guesting on Beyoncé’s “Baby Boy” in ’03 by the Kingston DJ who brought Jamaican Dancehall into the American mainstream in ’03 with his breakout hit “Get Busy.” Since then, Daddy Yankee’s “Gasolina” and Shakira’s “La Tortura” had launched Reggaeton into the top 40, so Caribbean club sounds were everywhere in the mid-’00s.

But no one rode the wave higher than our Jamaican Dancehall star, back on top in ’06 laying his rapid-fire patois over Rohan “Snowcone” Fuller’s sleek electronic riddim. A riddim in Dancehall? It’s kind of a public domain backing track or beat for DJs to toast—or rap—over. At #7 it’s Sean Paul’s “Temperature.”

Sean Paul, “Temperature,” the #7 song of 2006. Like “Get Busy” on Lenky’s “Diwali” riddim, Paul turned a hot Jamaican street track into a global smash—his star power translating the culture to U.S. Pop radio. And he wasn’t done: three more top tens in the year after “Temperature”—his own “Give It Up to Me,” plus features with Lil Jon and a young Rihanna in early ’07, just before “Umbrella” made her a superstar.

Then, just when EDM-Pop seemed to have left him behind, he was back with the Tropical House wave in 2016: a U.K. top ten with an up-and-coming Dua Lipa, #1 worldwide with Sia’s “Cheap Thrills,” and another top ten in 2017 on Clean Bandit’s “Rockabye.”

#6 James Blunt – You’re Beautiful

Now earlier I mentioned the ten-year drought of British Acts at #1 on the Hot100. Natasha Bedingfield’s “Unwritten” stalled at #5 but this next song which in the top ten at the same time, climbed slowly for four months until it hit #1 in March—the first U.S. chart-topper by a Brit since Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind 1997.”

And even if you’re of the mind—as we are at Chartcrush—that the Airplay chart better reflects songs’ true popularity in the late ’90s because the Hot100 was excluding songs not out as physical singles in those years, you still have to go back to late ’97—to Chumbawamba’s “Tubthumping“—to find the last U.S. #1 by a Brit.

It was the lead U.S. single from the Singer’s debut album—#1 in the U.K. in the summer of ’05—and Adult Contemporary radio got it scaling up the charts in the U.S. At #6, James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful.”

“It’s always been portrayed as romantic, but it’s actually a bit creepy,” James Blunt told the U.K. Guardian in 2020 about his biggest hit. He continued to chart in the U.K. ’til 2019 and his next two albums did alright, but after “You’re Beautiful” he never cracked the top 10 again on any Billboard songs chart.

Fun fact, though: before music, Blunt was a Captain in the British Army leading a peacekeeping platoon in Kosovo. When NATO commander Wesley Clark ordered his unit to block Russian forces at the airport serving Kosovo’s capital, Pristina, Britain’s General Mike Jackson famously refused: “I’m not going to start World War Three for you.” So the standoff ended without a shot, and Blunt went on to a very different kind of battlefield: the Pop charts.

#5 The Fray – How to Save a Life

At #5, 2006’s biggest Rock Band on the Hot100, formed at a Christian school in Colorado and boosted early on by Denver’s alternative free weekly Westworld. Local free weeklies, a crucial but often overlooked music-discovery pipeline of the ’80s to ’00s. Their debut single “Over My Head (Cable Car)” broke at Alternative radio in the Fall of ’05 and crossed over to the Hot100, dipping in and out of the top ten through the Spring and Summer.

But then, ABC featured their follow-up on Grey’s Anatomy and used the song for its Season 3 promos in late Summer for the show, and that sync propelled it to #3. Like most Rock crossovers in the ’00s, it makes the top ten on the year on staying power, racking up those ranking points week after week for 58 weeks—19 in the top ten. At #5 it’s The Fray with “How to Save a Life.”

“How to Save a Life,” The Fray at #5 on our Chartcrush Countdown of 2006’s top ten hits. Like Justin Timberlake’s “My Love” we heard at #10, its long chart run split between adjacent Billboard chart years, so they only factored its 31-week ascent up the Hot100, but not the 27 weeks it remained on the chart into their ’07 chart year. Again, at Chartcrush, we factor every song’s full chart run so it’s #5 on our Chartcrush ’06 Countdown instead of a middling #27 where Billboard has it.

“You Found Me,” the lead single off their next album in ’09 spent 39 weeks on the chart and peaked at #7, but the Hot100 was not kind to Rock Bands in the ’10s, and TV syncs, top ten albums and even collabs with Timbaland and Ryan Tedder couldn’t get The Fray back into the top 40. In 2019 they announced a hiatus and Frontman Isaac Slade opened a record shop on an island in Puget Sound.

#4 Daniel Powter – Bad Day

Well, we’ve made it all the way to #4 without mentioning American Idol even once! Hard to believe, because Season Five in 2006 was peak Idol—biggest ratings yet after Season One winner Kelly Clarkson scored three of 2005’s biggest hits off her album Breakaway and proved that the show could mint actual Pop stars. And Season Four winner Carrie Underwood about to be crowned Billboard‘s Top Country Artist of ’06 with the year’s #1 album, Some Hearts.

Season Five’s finalists Chris Daughtry, Taylor Hicks, Katharine McPhee and Kellie Pickler all went on to successful careers, but the only Idol-related single to crack our top ten for ’06 wasn’t sung on the show. It was the song that soundtracked the goodbye montage for every episode’s eliminated contestant. At #4 it’s Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day.”

Now, Billboard has “Bad Day” as 2006’s #1 song, but only because the chart runs of our top two were split across years. Counting them in full—and our #3 hit edging it out in points—Daniel Powter’s opus lands at #4 in our Chartcrush ranking for ’06 we’re counting down this hour.

He recorded it all the way back in 2002, and it hit in the U.K. and Europe in ’05 after it was in a Coke ad, but once contestants started getting voted off American Idol Season Five, it rocketed to #1 in just seven weeks.

Ironically, as a 35-year-old Canadian, Powter wasn’t eligible to compete on Idol and told VH1 that he couldn’t even watch the show: “too sensitive; it’d break my heart,” he said.

Two follow-up singles barely scraped the Adult Pop and AC charts later in ’06, and that was it. Billboard later crowned “Bad Day” the decade’s top one-hit-wonder.

#3 Nelly Furtado featuring Timbaland – Promiscuous

Well we’re down to the top three here on our 2006 Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown, leading off with a pair of hits at numbers 3 and 2 from the year’s MVP Producer, Timbaland, who we already heard one from back at #10, Justin Timberlake’s “My Love.” On these two, though, he’s not just behind the glass; he’s on the mic. Pop Matters‘ Quentin B. Huff dubbed these two songs “fraternal twins.”

Prince and Janet Jackson’s “Nasty” loom large as influences on the one at #3, but the real surprise was the Artist: a Canadian Singer-Songwriter who’d first broken through in the waning days of the Lilith Fair boom in the ’90s with airy, coffeehouse confessionals. Her sultry-but-sweet “I’m like a Bird” was her first hit in 2001, and also her last, until this, which is a hard pivot to slinky, clubby call-and-response. At #3, the lead single off Nelly Furtado’s third album Loose: “Promiscuous.”

The working title for “Promiscuous” was “The BlackBerry Song,” like back-and-forth flirty texts. How 2006 is that? Gwen Stefani had shown in ’05 how an Alt-Girl could crash the Pop mainstream with “Hollaback Girl,” and Nelly Furtado followed suit on Loose, but with Timbaland’s techno sheen and sly chemistry, she carved out her own lane. And then Britney Spears amped up the formula in ’07 on Blackout, the album that foreshadowed Gaga and the EDM-Pop wave.

Loose yielded two more big hits in ’06—”Maneater” and “Say It Right“—and then along with Justin Timberlake she added a verse to Timbaland’s three-way diss track “Give It to Me,” #1 in the Spring of ’07. But after that? Just guest spots, a Spanish-language detour in ’09, and eventually in 2013, a Pop comeback that really didn’t have much of a chance in a landscape crowded with newly minted Female Superstars like Katy Perry, Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus.

#2 Justin Timberlake – SexyBack

But speaking of Justin Timberlake—by the mid-2000s he was everywhere. Embracing R&B on his solo debut Justified… envelope-pushing comedy sketches on SNL—a certain very un-family-friendly holiday gift sketch which was the most-viewed clip in YouTube’s short life up to that point… Guest spots with Hip-Hop heavyweights… cameos on MTV’s hidden-camera practical joke show Punk’d… the ubiquitous McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ It” jingle; and of course, he was the guy onstage with Janet Jackson during the infamous Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction in ’04. All of which helped him shed his squeaky-clean *NSYNC image and become Pop culture’s “it” guy.

But the clincher was his ’06 Timbaland-produced album FutureSex/LoveSounds. Its lead single, his biggest hit of 2006, #1 for seven weeks in September and October, a must-have ringtone, and the second half of our Timbaland twofer at numbers 2 and 3 here on the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show. At #2: “SexyBack.”

Well after three and a half years of Hip-Hop and R&B dominance, April 22, 2006 marked the first week since the Fall of ’02 that a majority of the songs in the top ten were by White Artists—the norm for decades until 1991 when Billboard started ranking songs on real sales and airplay data, but a rarity post-SoundScan.

Justin Timberlake found a lane, though—embracing Black music like few Artists since the ’60s—then in ’06 and ’07 as Hip-Hop transitioned between its Bling and Blog Eras, a big factor in that sudden comeback of White Acts in the top ten with his FutureSex/LoveSounds album and its Timbaland-produced top tens “SexyBack” and “My Love”—plus “What Goes Around…Comes Around” and “Summer Love” in ’07.

Rihanna, Kanye West, T-Pain. Flo Rida—and the Teen Singer/Dancer R&B Hearthrob at #1 in our ’06 Chartcrush Countdown—restored that lopsided post-SoundScan racial status quo after mid-’07. But for about a year, JT—along with Nelly Furtado, the Fray, Fergie, and Idol breakouts Carrie Underwood and Daughtry— led a rare pause in an era when Black Artists all but owned the top ten.

#1 Chris Brown – Run It!

And speaking of that Teen Singer/Dancer R&B Hearthrob, our #1 song was the debut single off his debut album. And with four top tens, he was Billboard‘s Top Artist of ’06. Well, duh! But here’s a twist: none of those hits are in their year-end top ten, let alone #1. Explanation for that straight ahead, but first, the song: Producer Scott Storch’s de facto update of Usher’s club anthem “Yeah!,” our #1 song of ’04. And like, “Yeah!,” there’s even an exclamation point in the title! It’s the 17-year-old Michael Jackson heir apparent from Tappahannock, Virginia, Chris Brown: “Run It!”

“Run It!,” #1 on our Chartcrush Countdown of the biggest hits of 2006—Chris Brown. 38 weeks on the Hot100, late August ’05 to mid-May ’06, with 17 in the top ten and five at #1. But that run? Split between Billboard chart years like Justin Timberlake’s “My Love” and The Fray’s “How to Save a Life,” the other two songs we heard this hour that didn’t make Billboard‘s top ten. They’ve got “Run It!” at #16 for ’06 and #42 for ’05. But again, factoring songs’ full chart runs puts Billboard‘s Top Artist of ’06 also at the top of the yearly Hot100 ranking. That’s right where he belongs.

In 2008 it was the opposite. Brown had two songs in Billboard‘s year-end top ten—”With You” and his Wrigley’s Doublemint Gum jingle “Forever,” plus his duet with Jordin Sparks “No Air,” speaking of American Idol breakouts—Sparks was the winner of Idol Season Six in ’07. But all three of those hits, nudged out of our Chartcrush Top Ten for ’08 by that year’s year-straddlers, one of which was our #7 song of ’08, Rihanna’s “Disturbia,” which Chris Brown wrote!

A year after that, of course, Brown brutally assaulted then-girlfriend Rihanna and was sentenced to five years’ probation in the era’s top domestic violence case. But he still managed to chart 36 hits in the 2010’s, 78 if you count his features—including six top tens. No other Male Solo Act who debuted before 2006 had more chart mojo in the ’10s than Chris Brown.

Bonus

Allright, so there ya have ’em: our Chartcrush Top Ten songs of 2006, but we’re not quite done yet because the three year-straddling hits coming in to our top ten (including “Run It!” at #1), displaces three from the top ten on Billboard‘s year-end Hot100 ranking, so in deference to Billboard‘s enormous reach as America’s go-to source for charts, let’s have a look at those.

#16 Chamillionaire featuring Krayzie Bone – Ridin’

At #8, Billboard had the year’s top ringtone hit according to not only that Neilsen Ringscan ranking I mentioned at the top of the show, but the Rapper also got a gold cell phone trophy when the RIAA made it its first-ever multi-plantinum certified Mastertone for its sales of 3.2 million ringtones, and folks started talking about “blingtones.”

Houston, Texas, looming large on Hip-Hop’s heat map in ’06. Slim Thug we heard back at #8 featured on Beyonce’s “Check on It” was from Houston. So was Chamillionaire, and here he is featuring Bone Thugs-n-Harmony’s Krayzie Bone on “Ridin'”

Chamillionaire’s “Ridin’ Dirty” is #16 on our Chartcrush ranking for 2006 but Billboard had it at #8 on the year. But either way, the biggest Rap song of ’06 on the Pop charts, and Weird Al Yankovic’s send-up even cracked the top ten—”White & Nerdy.”

Billboard‘s year-end Hot Rap Songs chart went a different way: Yung Joc’s “It’s Goin’ Down” was #1 on that chart for the year.

#18 Gnarls Barkley – Crazy

Next in our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show bonus segment of songs from Billboard‘s year-end top ten nudged out of ours, it’s Billboard‘s #7 song of ’06, but in ’09, Rolling Stone named it the #1 song of the decade. That’s a subjective ranking, but the song spanned radio formats at a time when Pop had fragmented into dozens of “squabbling niches” and “the idea of a universal pop hit…seemed like a sweet old-fashioned notion,” as Rolling Stone‘s Writer put it. Beloved by everyone “from your mom to your ex-girlfriend’s art professor,” it’s Danger Mouse and CeeLo Green as the short-lived Duo Gnarls Barkley, “Crazy.”

Gnarls Barkley, Producer Danger Mouse who helmed Cartoon Act The Gorillaz’s second album in ’05 and the top 20 hit “Feel Good, Inc.” and Singer CeeLo Green of Atlanta’s Goodie Mob with “Crazy.” #7 on Billboard‘s year-end chart, it notches in at #18 on our Chartcrush ranking we counted down the top ten from earlier in the show—stuck at #2 for seven weeks in late Summer behind Nelly Furtado’s “Promiscuous” and Black Eyed Pea Fergie’s first solo hit “London Bridge.”

#19 Shakira featuring Wyclef Jean – Hips Don’t Lie

And finally, we’ve got another real strong contender for Song of Summer: a Colombian Singer teaming up with a 37-year-old Haitian Rapper and scoring what Neilsen Broadcast Data Systems called the most-played hit in a single week in the history of American radio. It also had the year’s biggest opening-week digital sales, and since those two metrics—airplay and paid downloads—basically defined the Hot100 in 2006, it was Billboard‘s #5 song of the year. Shakira featuring Fugees alum Wyclef Jean, “Hips Don’t Lie.”

Original title, “Dance like This,” written by Wyclef Jean as a Fugees song, but Lauryn Hill didn’t like it, so after Shakira’s people approached him about a collab, it evolved into “Hips Don’t Lie.” At Chartcrush we’ve got it at #19 for 2006 but Billboard‘s got it at #5, probably because of those outsized airplay and download stats I mentioned.

Instead of recapping the weekly charts, in ’92, Billboard started going back to its underlying Nielsen-reported—and highly confidential—sales and airplay data to recap the year, which usually doesn’t create huge discrepancies like that, but looks like it did for Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie.”

And with that, we’re gonna have to wrap up our 2006 edition of the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show, but if you like what you heard and want more, head on over to our website, chartcrush.com for a written transcript of the show and link to stream the expanded podcast edition, plus crunk extras like our full top 100 chart and interactive line graph of the actual chart runs of the top ten songs.

’06 not your thing? No problem!—we do all that for every year we count down, from the ’40s to now, all on that website, again, chartcrush.com. I’ve been your host, Christopher Verdesi. Thanks for listening, and tune in again next week for another year, and another edition of Chartcrush.

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