(Credits: Far Out)
Wed 13 August 2025 19:30, UK
1964 may well have been the year when Beatlemania really began to take a hold of the world of music, and of pop culture in general, but if anyone was wondering whether anything else of note happened in music that year, fear not – there were plenty of other things you could have turned your attention to if The Beatles weren’t quite cutting it for you.
This year saw the release of hits such as The Kinks’ proto-garage classic, ‘You Really Got Me’, The Animals’ interpretation of ‘The House of the Rising Sun’, and The Supremes’ ‘Baby Love’, all of which got to number one in the UK and US.
Want more? The Beach Boys’ ‘I Get Around’, Roy Orbison’s ‘Oh, Pretty Woman’ and The Shangri-Las’ ‘Leader of the Pack’ were, for better or worse, major hits from ‘64 that garnered plenty of attention. If my point wasn’t already clear enough, The Beatles had stiff competition in the charts throughout the year, but still, they seemed almost immovable when it came to keeping them off the top of the charts.
You have to bear in mind that this was a time when physical record sales meant considerably more, and that the amount of units shifted would ultimately be the deciding factor of what made it to the top spot in any given country. Given that every single record-buying individual had different tastes, there was far more room for a variety of acts to reach number one, whereas the new rules regarding streaming mean that certain artists can, if their album is popular enough, occupy several spots in the chart at any one time, almost making the point of single releases obsolete.
However, as mentioned, this group from Liverpool had taken the world by storm, and that’s immediately noticeable when you take a look at how the year-end statistics pan out for 1964. That being said, were they enough of a force on both sides of the Atlantic that they occupied the top spot in the charts for the longest time with one single in that year?
Who held number one for the longest in 1964?
In the UK, The Beatles managed to make it to number one on four separate occasions throughout 1964, and incidentally, two of these songs bookended the year, with ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ being number one at the crossover from December 1963, and ‘I Feel Fine’ carrying over into January 1965. Alongside these two hits, they also managed to make it to number one on home soil with ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ and ‘A Hard Day’s Night’. Not bad for a year’s work, right?
That being said, those two songs that bookended the year didn’t have all of their five weeks apiece at the top in 1964, and if we take a closer look, ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ was only number one for 16 days in 1964, and ‘I Feel Fine’ only managed to top the charts for 21 days – the same amount of time as ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ and ‘A Hard Day’s Night’.
There’s one track, therefore, that supercedes all of the Beatles’ hits from this year in terms of the amount of time it spent at number one, and it was a fellow Liverpudlian who kept them from taking home this accolade. Cilla Black, who had multiple number ones in the UK that year, remained at the peak with ‘You’re My World’ for four weeks, while ‘Anyone Who Had a Heart’ tied with the three Beatles songs that spent three weeks at the top.
However, the US did seem to take this British export more seriously, and coming out on top for the most amount of time spent at number one in 1964 was ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’, staying in pole position for a total of seven weeks through February and March.
Not only did this single dominate the US charts, but it was one of six number ones the band had in the US that year, with the same four singles from the UK making it to number one along with reissues of their 1963 singles, ‘She Loves You’ and ‘Love Me Do’, adding to the total. ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ was also the start of a 14-week run at the top of the charts for The Beatles, and in total, they’d spend 18 weeks at number one that year, making up over a third of the year.
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