The popular music of the late 1950s was dominated by Italian singers from the urban northeast — though you might never guess it with a cursory glance at their names. Besides the uncontested star of ...

The Number Ones is a new column where I'll review every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart's beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present.

How does this kind of thing happen? 1958 was only two or three years after rock ‘n’ roll crossed over and changed the course of American culture. And yet the biggest song of 1958 was a grandly hammy ...