Katy Perry Sets Singles Record With 'Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)'
It took her a bit longer than expected, but [artist id="3274550"]Katy Perry's[/artist] persistence and the inescapable, saxophone-bleating 1980s vibe of "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)" were just too much for music fans to resist.
Perry, who is nominated for a leading nine Moonmen at the upcoming MTV Video Music Awards, finally snagged the record as the first album from the Billboard Mainstream Top 40 chart to have five #1 singles. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Perry's Teenage Dream album is the first in the nearly 19-year history of the chart to achieve the feat, thanks to "Friday Night" bumping up one spot to #1 this week.
"Friday Night" joins the other chart-toppers from Perry's Dream album, which include the title track, "California Gurls," "Firework" and "E.T." The record puts her in pretty impressive company, landing Perry just ahead of Lady Gaga (The Fame) and Justin Timberlake (FutureSex/LoveSounds), whose albums yielded four #1s apiece.
"Friday Night" also broke some other new ground, setting the high watermark for most weekly plays in the chart's history (12,468), blowing past the old record, which she also held with "E.T." (12,361). Even more impressive, the five singles from Dream account for five of the six songs with the chart's highest-ever weekly spin totals, with Pitbull's "Give Me Everything" acting as the spoiler at #4 with 12,107.
When we sat down with Perry before the premiere of her "E.T." video with Kanye West, she talked us through how her songwriting process has evolved on Teenage Dream. "I always want to be completely honest and, for this record in particular, I knew from the outside world, a lot had changed. [But] I was hoping that I was still the same me, [the] kind of quirky, weird-perspective girl that I've always been," she said during "MTV First: Katy Perry." "But you know, there was a lot of distraction and glitz and glam. When you get to a certain point, you have to push it all away and remember what your core is, and that's what I did for this record."
The next potential record to fall could be the biggie Perry's been waiting for. She's still looking to become just the second artist ever to mark five #1 singles from the same album on the Billboard Hot 100, a mark held by [article id="1666386"]Michael Jackson's Bad[/article]. She's got four #1s already and "Friday" moved up from 3 to 2 on last week's chart, so it could happen.
