Adult Contemporary
Adult contemporary music (AC) is a form of radio-played popular music, ranging from 1960s vocal and 1970s soft rock music to predominantly ballad-heavy music of the present day, with varying degrees of easy listening, pop, soul, R&B, quie ...
is a
chart
A chart (sometimes known as a graph) is a graphical representation for data visualization, in which "the data is represented by symbols, such as bars in a bar chart, lines in a line chart, or slices in a pie chart". A chart can represent tabu ...
published by ''
Billboard
A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...
'' ranking the top-performing songs in the United States in the
adult contemporary music
Adult contemporary music (AC) is a form of radio-played popular music, ranging from 1960s vocal and 1970s soft rock music to predominantly ballad-heavy music of the present day, with varying degrees of easy listening, pop, soul, R&B, quiet ...
(AC) market. In 2016, nine different songs topped the chart in 53 issues of the magazine, based on weekly
airplay
Airplay is how frequently a song is being played through broadcasting on radio stations. A song which is being played several times every day (spins) would have a significant amount of airplay. Music which became very popular on jukeboxes, in n ...
data from radio stations compiled by
Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems
Broadcast Data Systems (also known as BDS or Luminate BDS), is a service that tracks radio, television and internet airplay of songs. The service, which is a unit of MRC Data, is a contributing factor to North American charts published by co-owned ...
.
On the first chart of the year, British musician
Seal
Seal may refer to any of the following:
Common uses
* Pinniped, a diverse group of semi-aquatic marine mammals, many of which are commonly called seals, particularly:
** Earless seal, or "true seal"
** Fur seal
* Seal (emblem), a device to impr ...
moved into the number one position with his version of the 1970 song "
This Christmas", displacing "
Hello
''Hello'' is a salutation or greeting in the English language. It is first attested in writing from 1826. Early uses
''Hello'', with that spelling, was used in publications in the U.S. as early as the 18 October 1826 edition of the ''Norwich C ...
" by
Adele
Adele Laurie Blue Adkins (, ; born 5 May 1988), professionally known by the mononym Adele, is an English singer and songwriter. After graduating in arts from the BRIT School in 2006, Adele signed a reco ...
.
The following week, "Hello" regained the top spot and held it for 16 consecutive weeks, the year's longest unbroken run atop the chart. Adele would return to number one for two weeks later in the year with "
Send My Love (To Your New Lover)
"Send My Love (To Your New Lover)" is a song recorded by English singer-songwriter Adele for her third studio album, ''25''. It was written by Adele, Max Martin and Shellback, with the latter two also handling its production. The song was fir ...
", and her total of 18 weeks in the top spot during 2016 was the most for any artist. She was the only act to take more than one song to the top of the AC listing during the year. In March, the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
described Adele as the biggest star in pop music at the time.
From the issues of ''Billboard'' dated July 9 through November 26, the top spot was occupied by two songs from film soundtracks.
''. Timberlake's song returned to the top of the chart in November for two further weeks. It was the singer's first AC number one as a solo artist, although he had topped the listing 16 years earlier as a member of the group
". Having begun with one version of "This Christmas" atop the chart, 2016 ended with a different version of the song in the top position. The band
took its version of the song to number one in the issue of ''Billboard'' dated December 17, yielded the top spot the following week to
", but returned to number one in the final issue of the year. The two songs continued a trend of Christmas-themed songs topping the AC chart at the end of the year, reflecting the fact that adult contemporary radio stations usually switch to playing exclusively festive songs in December.