Timeline of Billboard number-one country songs

Common card · No. 286772

Billboard magazine has published charts ranking the top-performing country music songs in the United States since 1944. The first country chart was published under the title Most Played Juke Box Folk Records in the issue of the magazine dated January 8, 1944, and tracked the songs most played in the nation's jukeboxes. The first number one was the song "Pistol Packin' Mama", different recordings of which were bracketed together and treated as one entry. Billboard added a second chart in 1947 based on retail sales, and a third in 1949 based on radio airplay. The jukebox chart was discontinued in 1957, and the following year, the remaining two charts were dropped and replaced with a chart, initially entitled Hot C&W Sides, which combined sales and airplay data into one overall ranking. The chart was renamed Hot Country Singles in 1962, Hot Country Singles and Tracks in 1990, and Hot Country Songs in 2005. In 1990, its methodology changed to use only airplay data from country music radio...

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