longest continuous streak in top 40

[smack]

George Strait from One night at a time all the way til What do you say to that...he had one or more in the top 40 on billboard each and every week. 3/15/97-12-25-99. I can't think of anyone else from say 1990-current that can claim that! Keep in mind that songs really didn't start slowing down chart climbs/falls til about late 1997, and then got the extra 10 spots (30/20 recurrent rule in late 1998). He also had many runs of 5-7 songs dating all the way back to 1991, missing only a few weeks at most in between. His current song has been the longest gap between releases as far as I can remember with him by many many weeks counting only 1990-current. But he's back in a big way, as his song should debut inside the top 30 this week.

[Zazie]

Nice post. I don't have time to look it up, but I suspect Tim McGraw had an even longer streak of top 40 weeks in the 1998-2001 period. He benefited from having duets with Faith from her albums as well as his own big hits.

I don't know about top 40 streaks, but I can say that Toby Keith had a streak of almost 120 weeks in a row with 1 or more songs in the top 20, beginning with You Shouldn't Kiss Me Like This. And later, he had another 100+ week streak.

I'm using Billboard chart runs here, and since BB changed their recurrent rule, it's gotten a lot harder to have a long streak of weeks in the top 20. Top 40, though, is not nearly as hard. If I weren't too tired to do it, I'd check Chesney and Urban for top 40 runs. McGraw and Keith too. But I haven't got the drive to do it right now.