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List of Billboard Hot 100 number ones of 1996

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 7, 2026
Entity authorityQ1303928 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Billboard Hot 100 is a chart that ranks the best-performing singles of the United States. Published by Billboard magazine, the data are compiled by Nielsen SoundScan based collectively on each single's weekly physical sales and airplays. The year started out with "One Sweet Day" by Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men and ended with "Un-Break My Heart" by Toni Braxton. There were nine singles that peaked atop the charts, but if "One Sweet Day" is excluded from the count (as the song had its peak in the previous year), the total would be eight, the second lowest for a single year, along with 2005 and 2015. The longest running number-one single of 1996 is "Macarena" (Bayside Boys Mix), which stayed at the top for 14 weeks.

That year, 8 acts earned their first number one song, such as Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, 2Pac, K-Ci & JoJo, Dr. Dre, Roger Troutman, Toni Braxton, Los del Río, and Blackstreet. Mariah Carey, Dr. Dre and Toni Braxton were the only acts to hit number one more than once, with each of them hitting number one twice.

Chart history

Number-one artists

See also

1996 in music

List of Billboard number-one singles

List of Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles of the 1990s

References

Additional sources

Fred Bronson's Billboard Book of Number 1 Hits, 5th Edition (ISBN 0-8230-7677-6)

Joel Whitburn's Top Pop Singles 1955-2008, 12 Edition (ISBN 0-89820-180-2)

Joel Whitburn Presents the Billboard Hot 100 Charts: The Nineties (ISBN 0-89820-137-3)

Additional information obtained can be verified within Billboard's online archive services and print editions of the magazine.

Editorial summary

“List of Billboard Hot 100 number ones of 1996” enters the record as wikimedia list article. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what List, Billboard and number can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2005, 2015, 1996, 1955—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around List, Billboard and number.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1303928. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2005, 2015, 1996 and 1955.

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This entry incorporates text from “List of Billboard Hot 100 number ones of 1996” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.