Lists of the past
In the second week of June 2006 Cove published its weekly Top 20, with a Fort Minor single at number one after a jump from eighteenth and a Disney soundtrack song debuting at two. The chart itself survives in the archive. This is what became of the twenty records on it.
The Cove editorial desk · Published 9 September 2026
A weekly chart is a photograph of a moment, and a twenty-year-old photograph is more interesting than a new one. The June 2006 Cove Top 20 caught pop at the exact point where the mid-decade sound, big choruses, emo guitars and crunk drums in the same countdown, was about to be replaced by something else. Some of these records became standards. Some vanished so completely that reading the chart is the first time anyone has thought about them since. The order below is the chart's own; the verdicts are ours, twenty years later.
Fort Minor — "Where'd You Go"
The side project of a Linkin Park member, at number one on the strength of a ballad built on a piano loop and a guest hook. It was the group's only big single and the project did not continue, which makes it the purest example on this chart of a song outliving its act. It still turns up on radio; the name on the sleeve mostly does not.
Rascal Flatts — "Life Is a Highway"
A cover of a 1991 Tom Cochrane song, recorded for the Cars soundtrack and debuting here in its first week. Of everything on the chart it is the record most heard today, because a children's film is a permanent broadcast: a new audience of five-year-olds arrives every year, and the song is the first thing they hear in the movie.
Shakira — "Hips Don't Lie"
Falling from two, and the one record here that became a global standard rather than an American one. The trumpet figure is recognised on every continent, the song is the best-selling single of its year in several countries, and it is the reason its singer's later stadium career was possible. The chart had it right and its direction wrong.
Gnarls Barkley — "Crazy"
The only song on the chart that the critics of the day and the public agreed about, and the agreement has held. A soul vocal over a spaghetti-western sample, produced by the man who would make records for half the artists on later versions of this list. It was also, in Britain, the first single to reach number one on downloads alone, which is a footnote about the industry that matters more than most of the chart.
The Pussycat Dolls — "Buttons"
The group's third big single, and the one that showed the formula had a ceiling. It is competently made and its hook is a single word. The group's solo career story is more remembered than the record, and that is the record's verdict.
Christina Aguilera — "Ain't No Other Man"
A brass-driven retro-soul single from a singer who is fourteenth on the vocalists list, and one of the best pure vocal performances on the chart. The album it introduced was a deliberate period piece and it sold accordingly, but the single stands on its own and is sung as well as anything she recorded.
Lil Jon — "Snap Yo Fingers"
The crunk era at its commercial peak and, in retrospect, its last big chart moment. The production is a shout and a snap and almost nothing else, which was the point. The style it represents was gone from the top of the charts within two years, replaced by the sound at number fifteen.
Rihanna — "S.O.S"
The first number-one single of a career that would produce more of them than almost anyone alive, built on a sample of a 1981 synth-pop hit. Twenty years later it is a minor entry in its singer's catalogue and an unmistakable one: the record where the voice on the radio became the voice the decade would be defined by.
Panic! at the Disco — "I Write Sins Not Tragedies"
Emo pop with a string section and a title that is a whole sentence, from a band that had been signed on the strength of an internet demo. It has become a karaoke standard, which is the highest form of longevity a song like this can achieve, and the band's name is still on tour.
Rihanna — "Unfaithful"
The same singer twice in the top ten in one week, which is a fact about 2006 rather than about the song. A piano ballad, sung carefully and a little stiffly, that pointed at a range the earlier records had not used. Less played now than the record two places above it.
Nick Lachey — "What's Left of Me"
A boy-band graduate's solo ballad about a very public divorce, and a hit for exactly as long as the divorce was news. It is the chart's clearest example of a record whose success was its context. The song is fine. Nobody has needed it since.
AFI — "Miss Murder"
A hardcore band's arena-rock moment, with a chorus built to be shouted back. It was the band's biggest single and it still is, and the record sits in the catalogue as the point where the group was briefly on pop radio and then chose not to stay.
The All-American Rejects — "Move Along"
The kind of pop-punk single that was everywhere in 2006 and that most people now remember as a different band's song. It has aged into a sports-broadcast staple, which is a respectable retirement for a chorus.
Red Hot Chili Peppers — "Dani California"
The veteran act on the chart, twenty-three years into a career at that point, with a single whose verse melody prompted a plagiarism argument at the time that nobody has thought about since. It remains a set-list fixture and one of the band's most played songs, which is a better outcome than most of the chart managed.
Chamillionaire — "Ridin'"
The record that won the year's rap Grammy and was covered by a comedian, in that order. Its subject, being profiled by police while driving, has aged into the most durable thing on the chart. The chopped-and-screwed Houston sound it carried was the one that replaced crunk at the top.
Cherish — "Do It to It"
A four-sister R&B group's one hit, snap music with a hook made for a dance. The group had one more single and then stopped, and the record survives on the nostalgia playlists that are now the main afterlife for mid-2000s R&B.
Nickelback — "Savin' Me"
The fourth single from the biggest-selling rock album of its era, and the ballad on it. Its chart presence in June 2006 is a measure of how long that album stayed on the radio. The band's reputation went one way and its sales went the other, and this record was part of both.
The Fray — "Over My Head (Cable Car)"
Piano-rock from a Denver band whose next single would be far larger. This was the first, and it is the better song: a chorus that moves in a way the follow-up's does not. It is still played and it is still confused with the follow-up, which is the price of having one.
Daniel Powter — "Bad Day"
The song that a television talent show used to send contestants home, which made it the best-selling single of 2006 in the United States and then made it impossible to hear without thinking of the show. Its singer never had another hit of any size. It is, twenty years on, the definition of the one-hit wonder, and a pleasant one.
Nelly Furtado — "Promiscuous"
At twenty on this chart and on its way to number one nationally within weeks, which makes it the chart's biggest miss. The producer was Timbaland, the sound was the one the next two years would be built on, and the record is the clearest signal on the list of where pop was going. Cove had it at the bottom. In our defence, so did everyone else that week.
For what is number one this week, twenty years on, see the Top 20 this week, refreshed daily.
What the chart got right and wrong
Right: the top four. Fort Minor aside, the three records under it became standards, and even Fort Minor's song outlived its act. Wrong, in the sense of direction: the sound that would run the next two years was at fifteen and twenty, and the sound that had run the previous two was at five, seven and sixteen. A weekly chart measures what people are playing, not what they will be, and this one did that honestly. The retrospective verdict is that eleven of the twenty are still in some kind of circulation, which is a high number, and that the record most heard today was the one from the cartoon about cars.
Chart positions are those published by Cove in June 2006, preserved at /top20.html. The commentary is editorial opinion about the records; sales and chart facts are as widely reported at the time.