Jack Black’s ‘A Minecraft Movie’ song breaks chart record : NPR

It’s a slow week on the Billboard charts, but it’s still a big week for Kendrick Lamar and SZA. Their collaboration “Luther” holds at No. 1 for a 10th consecutive week — one of only 46 songs to do so in chart history — while SZA’s SOS and Lamar’s GNX sit at Nos. 1 and 2 on the albums chart, respectively. But this week’s charts do feature an all-time record worth noting, as a 34-second song cracks the Hot 100.

TOP ALBUMS

Last week, the rapper Ken Carson debuted atop the Billboard 200 albums chart with More Chaos, his first-ever chart-topper. And, though it was a slow week on the charts — More Chaos had the smallest accumulation of sales and streaming for any chart-topping album in three years — a No. 1 album is a No. 1 album.

Carson’s ride at the top was short-lived, however. This week, More Chaos plunges from No. 1 to No. 38, and with no major debuts to crash the party — the highest debut of any album this week belongs to Wiz Khalifa, whose Kush + Orange Juice 2 bows at No. 62 — we’re left in the company of the usual suspects.

Tourmates SZA and Kendrick Lamar have been sticking around the Billboard 200’s uppermost reaches all year, and now SZA’s SOS and Kendrick Lamar’s GNX sit at Nos. 1 and 2, respectively — albeit with numbers even lower than what More Chaos posted last week. Morgan Wallen is surging a bit (One Thing at a Time from No. 6 to No. 3 and Dangerous: The Double Album from No. 14 to No. 9), which isn’t a surprise given the pending arrival of his new album. But otherwise, there isn’t much movement to speak of, until you get to…

…No. 10, where Grammy-winning rapper Doechii vaults into the Top 10 for the first time in her career. Alligator Bites Never Heal leaps from No. 24 to No. 10 thanks to a combination of factors: The viral “Anxiety” is still booming on the Hot 100 — it rises from No. 14 to No. 12 this week — while “Denial Is a River” is still floating around in the top 50 after peaking at No. 21 earlier this year. The bigger factor, though, is that the album received two new vinyl editions (available exclusively at Target and Urban Outfitters), as well as its first-ever CD.

TOP SONGS

One byproduct of the streaming era is that blockbuster songs are posting ever-longer streaks at No. 1. Just last year, Shaboozey‘s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” tied an all-time record with 19 weeks atop the Hot 100 — and that song, many months later, still sits at No. 5. So it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that Kendrick Lamar’s “Luther (feat. SZA)” is at No. 1 for a 10th consecutive week. But it faces looming competition from two different directions.

The greatest threat to the reign of “Luther” is most likely Alex Warren‘s “Ordinary,” which seems set up for long-term (perhaps even Shaboozey-level long-term) chart success. The song rises from No. 5 to No. 3 this week, thanks to a surge in both airplay and streaming; it’s now No. 1 on Billboard‘s streaming chart and still has tons of room to move as more radio stations’ program directors — who often follow the lead of streaming these days — add it to their rotations.

At this point, it doesn’t require a great gift of prognostication to suggest that you’re going to hear this song everywhere this summer: at weddings, on the radio, on TikTok, via your streaming algorithms and so on. You like heart-on-their-sleeve singer-songwriters like Lewis Capaldi? Choir-addicted uplift merchants like Coldplay? Rock-adjacent earworm farmers like Imagine Dragons? You’re gonna love this song. You probably already do. You might be listening to it this very instant, as you read this.

The other major looming threat to “Luther” comes from country sensation Morgan Wallen, who’s no stranger to the “song of the summer” conversation, given the dominance of “Last Night” and “I Had Some Help” in recent years. Wallen will release I’m the Problem on May 16, but this week he extends a remarkable record: With the release of his Post Malone collaboration “I Ain’t Coming Back” — the two collaborated on “I Had Some Help” just last year — he’s now landed six pre-release singles from I’m the Problem in the top 10 in the run-up to the release. The previous record, held by Post Malone and Taylor Swift, was four.

At this point, there’s not a scintilla of doubt that the 37-song I’m the Problem will be a blockbuster. But it remains unclear whether any one new Wallen track will take off as dramatically as “Last Night” or “I Had Some Help” did, given how much his new songs are competing with one another.

Wallen currently has five songs in the Hot 100’s top 20: “I’m the Problem,” which jumps from No. 10 to No. 7; “I Ain’t Coming Back,” which debuts at No. 8; “Just in Case,” which slides from No. 11 to No. 14; “I Had Some Help,” which climbs from No. 17 to No. 15 after nearly a year on the chart; and “Love Somebody,” which ticks up from No. 20 to No. 17. That’s an impressive pile-up of hits, but fans can only stream one thing at a time.

WORTH NOTING

The rise of TikTok has complicated life for those who compile Billboard‘s chart rankings. After all, TikTok popularity often leads and contributes to success on the pop charts. But it’s tricky to compare streams of song fragments to streams of full songs.

Of course, TikTok has changed the music industry in other ways, to the point where some analysts have gone so far as to (very prematurely) predict that the app’s rise would lead to unusually short songs — not mere excerpts, but songs themselves — replacing the three- and four-minute bangers that routinely round out the Hot 100.

Setting aside the occasional blockbuster that clocks in at less than two minutes — lookin’ at you, pre-Billy Ray Cyrus version of “Old Town Road” — that prediction hasn’t come to pass. But there is a brand-new all-time record, set during this exceptionally slow week on the Billboard charts, for the shortest-ever song to hit the Billboard Hot 100. (The Hot 100 dates back to August 1958.)

The song? “Steve’s Lava Chicken” by Jack Black, from A Minecraft Movie. (Black, who stars in the film as Steve, co-wrote the song with director Jared Hess.) Its length? Incredibly, only 34 seconds, though there’s a remix that drags it out to 1:22, which is essentially a rock opera by comparison. The song’s debut chart position this week? No. 78.

“Steve’s Lava Chicken” isn’t Black’s first song to crack the Hot 100; that would be “The Pick of Destiny,” by his band Tenacious D, which also hit No. 78 back in 2006. And it’s not the highest-charting hit of Black’s career; in fact, “Steve’s Lava Chicken” isn’t even the highest-charting song Black has sung in a kid-friendly movie franchise. That would be “Peaches,” which hit No. 56 on the strength of Black’s turn as Bowser in 2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie. (That song’s runtime was a comparatively exhausting 1:35.)

It turns out that, while a 34-second runtime constitutes an all-time record — at least until Taylor Swift starts dabbling in skits — it’s actually the third sub-1:00 song to crack the Hot 100. With a nod of appreciation to Gary Trust at Billboard and Paul Haney of Joel Whitburn’s Record Research, here are the five shortest songs ever to hit Billboard‘s primary singles chart:

1. Jack Black, “Steve’s Lava Chicken,” 0:34, No. 78 (2025)
2. Kid Cudi, “Beautiful Trip,” 0:37, No. 100 (2020)
3. Pikotaro, “PPAP (Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen),” 0:45, No. 77 (2016)
4. The Womenfolk, “Little Boxes,” 1:02, No. 83 (1964)
5. Nat King Cole, “Deck the Halls,” 1:06, No. 16 (released in 1960, peaked in 2022)

For those looking to game out the chart future of “Steve’s Lava Chicken,” “Peaches” spent a total of five weeks on the Hot 100 and even accrued a bit of Oscar buzz. And, though “Peaches” failed to make the cut for the Academy’s 15-track best original song shortlist that year, Black shouldn’t lose all hope for the awards future of “Steve’s Lava Chicken.” After all, there’s no rule that says a 34-second song can’t win an Oscar.