The first song in hashtag history to reach the Billboard charts was keytar-wielding dance-pop act Cobra Starship’s single “#1Nite,” which hit No. 23 on Bubbling Under in August 2011. The third single from the band’s fourth (and most recent) album, “Night Shades,” has sold 91,000 copies to date, according to Nielsen Soundscan.
According to Cobra Starship frontman Gabe Saporta, the idea to add a hashtag came at the last minute.
“The song was originally just ‘One Night,’” Saporta tells Billboard. “But as we were writing down a track listing to be sent out to the press, our manager Alex Sarti [of Crush Management] suggested we should add a hashtag so that we could be an automatic trending topic, and [the band] thought it was such a good idea we just jumped on it without really thinking twice.”
Saporta says that, to promote the song, the band engaged fans on Twitter by asking them to talk about “that one night you can’t forget,” thereby tying a song to a particular topic or movement. The effort was a success among fans (#1Nite did become a trending topic for a brief period), but it left some confused radio DJs declaring, “Coming up next, it’s ‘Number One Night!’”
With a Top 10 single, “Good Girls Go Bad,” recently under its belt, Cobra Starship was actually a fairly high-profile act to adopt the hashtag single at the turn of the decade.
Source: Billboard