Lady Gaga's "Applause" Headed High

Through one complete day of airplay (Monday), Lady Gaga's new single "Applause" from forthcoming album ARTPOP, has registered 43 plays. That registers to a #18 rank so far, with three more days of airplay to count. If the song runs at the same pace, by tomorrow it would have about 80-85 plays in this airplay week. That would register a #6 or #7 position. Although possible, that seems a little farfetched. Still a good guess is it would register about 20-25 plays on Tuesday (instead of about 40). That would line up with a 2 day total of about 65-70 plays which would be a #9 or #10 rank on the Chart Builder Airplay chart. Following this more reasonable estimate through the rest of the week (Wednesday, Thursday and Friday), Gaga's "Applause" could end the week with a total upwards of 120-130 which would narrowly be the best airplay week of all time. Only a handful of songs have passed 100 plays in a single week. The songs that have done this are listed below in order of most plays:

Plays	Song	Artist	Date	Rank
116	Payphone (feat. Wiz Khalifa)	Maroon 5	April 19th, 2012	#1 (Debut)
111	Don’t You Worry Child (feat. John Martin)	Swedish House Mafia	December 6th, 2012	#1 (+1)
104	Where Have You Been	Rihanna	June 21st, 2012	#1 (+2)
102	Euphoria*	Loreen	June 21st, 2012	#2 (-1)
101	We Run the Night (feat. Pitbull)	Havana Brown	June 21st, 2012	#3 (+18)

*Please note that is only a table featuring songs that have reached OVER 100 plays. "Euphoria" opened to an even 100 in it's opening week on May 31st, 2012. The following week June 7th, 2012 it dipped to 99. On June 14th, 2012 it again hit 100 but it wasn't until June 21st, 2012 that it peaked with 102 plays to finally qualify.

According to this table, the week of June 21st, 2012 was the biggest airplay week of all time. That week the top 3 brought in a hefty 307 plays total (about 102 plays each on average). This was also an extremely competitive week, as 1 or two plays separated each song. Additionally this became the only week to have all songs in the top 10 reach 90+ plays with "LaserLight (feat. David Guetta)" rounding it out with exactly 90.

This table also shows that the weeks with songs that earned above 100 plays have all been in 2012. Major debuts in 2013 including Avril Lavigne's "Here's to Never Growing Up" have done well in terms of positioning (Lavigne's song debuted at #1 and peaked at the summit for 4 consecutive weeks) but have failed in airplay compared to last year's hits. Most top 5 debuts of 2013 (that has been a small amount) have actually been lucky to bank over 60 first week plays, and overall, 2013 #1's are usually crowned for having about 70 plays each week.

Anyway even if Lady Gaga's "Applause" doesn't quite manage to keep up on this predicted pace, it should wind up with a top 3 debut. Also, things could get more competitive as Ayah Marar's "Thinking About You" and Macklemore's "Same Love (feat. Mary Lambert)" could fight back to recreate a June 21st, 2012 week.

Come back for "The LOOK Vol. 3" tomorrow (a report on the August 23rd's chart happenings with more "APPLAUSE" info),  later today for the (late) yet full chart for the date August 15th, 2013, and Friday for the August 23rd, 2013 highlights! Thanks!