Frank Sinatra Makes History With First No. 1 on a Billboard Songs Chart Since 1967

Pentatonix and Frank Sinatra’s “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm” cozies up to the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart (dated Dec. 20). The song leaps four spots, surging 56% to 2.2 million in audience Dec. 5-11, according to Luminate.

The carol is from Pentatonix’s new album, Christmas in the City, which in November debuted as the vocal group’s 11th top 10 on the Top Holiday Albums chart.

Pentatonix earns its first Adult Contemporary No. 1, among eight top 10s — all holiday songs. The quintet previously reached a No. 3 high on the chart with “That’s Christmas to Me” over the 2014 holidays.

Sinatra, who died in 1998, adds his seventh Adult Contemporary No. 1 — and first since the chart dated Sept. 30, 1967, when “The World We Knew (Over and Over)” wrapped a five-week reign. He linked five No. 1s in a row, with that single following “Somethin’ Stupid,” with daughter Nancy, “That’s Life,” “Summer Wind” and “Strangers in the Night.” He first led with “It Was a Very Good Year” in February 1966.

The Chairman of the Board ends the longest break between Adult Contemporary No. 1s: 58 years, two months and three weeks. He surpasses Elton John, who went 23 years, 11 months and one week between leading with “Something About the Way You Look Tonight” in 1998 and “Merry Christmas,” with Ed Sheeran, in 2022.

Sinatra (the first artist to top Adult Contemporary posthumously since Roy Orbison with “You Got It” in 1989, following his passing in 1988) also claims the longest span of ruling the chart: 59 years, 10 months and two weeks, dating to the first week at No. 1 for “It Was a Very Good Year.” Plus, he boasts the longest span of appearing on the tally overall: 64 years and five months, as he placed on the inaugural edition dated July 17, 1961.

Meanwhile, “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm” marks Sinatra’s first No. 1 on any Billboard songs chart since “The World We Knew (Over and Over)” last led Adult Contemporary. He commanded an album tally as recently as May 2023, when Nothing but the Best was No. 1 on Jazz Albums.

Sinatra bookends Billboard chart archives, as he sang on the No. 1 song — “I’ll Never Smile Again,” billed as by Tommy Dorsey — on the first nationwide sales chart, the National List of Best Selling Retail Records, published in the July 27, 1940, issue.

“They blessed us with his voice,” Pentatonix’s Kirstin Maldonado recently told Billboard’s Pop Shop Podcast of the Frank Sinatra Estate, which allowed the group to use a previously unreleased vocal take of Sinatra singing the Irving Berlin-penned “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm.” “This arrangement is perfectly what we wanted to achieve within this album. I feel so proud of it. I love it so much.”