It's only happened once in chart history – Love The Way You Lie in 2010. But in the streaming era, where songs are staying around longer and longer, is it possible for a song to, one year, have sales so consistently stable and strong that it eventually outdoes songs that blocked it?

If anything it's probably more likely to happen again now. At the moment 'Man I Need' is still the year to date #1 (not sure if it's still looking to hold onto that or if 'Rein Me In' will eventually overtake) and that hasn't reached #1 this year, albeit only because of ACR.

Unless it has a random collapse i can see Man i need actually doing it , rein me in is literally only chipping away at the lead of a few thousand a week at present

39 minutes ago, Bror said:

If anything it's probably more likely to happen again now. At the moment 'Man I Need' is still the year to date #1 (not sure if it's still looking to hold onto that or if 'Rein Me In' will eventually overtake) and that hasn't reached #1 this year, albeit only because of ACR.

Calculations show that MIN will still be #1 at the end of the year, but the gap between it and RMI will be smaller.

More likely with every year that passes!

Funnily enough Moves Like Jagger would've been year-end #1 in 2011 too had it not been for Adele performing at the BRITS!

Bad Habits got year-end #2 a few years back without being #1 that year. So it's definitely possible.

I'm not sure how the decade-end charts are looking so far, but I think Mr. Brightside is a contender, and that's far more extreme!

Edited Tuesday at 13:441 day by Eric_Blob