Elvis Lives on the Singles Chart

Elvis Presley returned the top of the Billboard singles chart with "Heartbreak Hotel" today, fifty years after its debut in 1956. The King recorded the tune — his first-ever Number One — two days after his twenty-first birthday during the now infamous first RCA Studios session. The genre-crossing "Heartbreak Hotel" originally spent eight weeks at Number One on the pop chart, topped the country charts for seventeen weeks and reached Number Three on the R&B charts.

The single is included in the deluxe box set Elvis #1 Singles, due January 24th. The collection features all of Presley's twenty-one Number One hits packaged together on individual discs, including a double A side containing "Hound Dog" and "Don't Be Cruel."

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Song Stories

“Helen Wheels”

Paul McCartney | 1973

A rollicking good-time hard rocker, "Helen Wheels" was not about a woman but about Paul McCartney's Land Rover, the anthemic chorus voicing the vehicle's reckless joy as "she" took to the road. The song was added to the U.S. version of Band on the Run but was issued only as a single in McCartney's native U.K. "I like that because it's a British road song and there's not many of those around," said McCartney. "It's always Route 66. But Carlisle? How many songs have got Carlisle in them?"

More Song Stories entries »

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