The chart
Cove published a weekly Top 20 from 2002 to 2006. This is its successor: the twenty most-played songs in the United States this week, refreshed every day, with the singers who appear on the Cove 100 marked as they pass through.
The Cove editorial desk ยท Updated daily
The old Top 20 was compiled by hand from radio, sales and the editors' own arguments, and a copy of one week of it, from June 2006, is preserved and revisited twenty years on. The chart below is not an argument. It is a measurement, taken from what people are actually playing, and it is here for the same reason the old one was: a music publication should know what is number one this week, and its readers should be able to see it without leaving.
| # | Song | Artist |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | BbY WOW | KAROL G, rusowsky & Judeline |
| 2 | Choosin' Texas | Ella Langley |
| 3 | Janice STFU | Drake |
| 4 | Been By Now | Morgan Wallen |
| 5 | Dead Fresh | Lil Baby |
| 6 | Be Her | Ella Langley |
| 7 | stupid song | Olivia Rodrigo |
| 8 | In A Minute | Lil Baby |
| 9 | I Can't Love You Anymore | Ella Langley & Morgan Wallen |
| 10 | Freestyle | Lil Baby |
| 11 | the cure | Olivia Rodrigo |
| 12 | WAIT FOR U (feat. Drake & Tems) | Future |
| 13 | Dope Girl | Rod Wave |
| 14 | I'm The Problem | Morgan Wallen |
| 15 | LIKE ME (feat. 42 Dugg & Lil Baby) | Future |
| 16 | Don't We | Morgan Wallen |
| 17 | Boston | STELLA LEFTY |
| 18 | Best I Ever Had | Drake |
| 19 | Cinderella (feat. Ty Dolla $ign) | Mac Miller |
| 20 | March Madness | Future |
The twenty most-played songs on Apple Music in the United States, as published by Apple; refreshed daily, last Thu, 10 Sep 2026 14:02:17 UTC. 0 of the twenty are by singers on the Cove 100. For the same chart as Cove published it in June 2006, see the Top 20 revisited.
How to read it
The ranking is Apple's count of the most-played songs on its service in the United States, which is one measure of the American singles market among several and not the official chart. It moves faster than the sales charts of Cove's era and it leans towards streaming audiences, which are younger than radio's. It is useful for exactly what a weekly chart was always useful for: knowing what is everywhere right now, so that the arguments on the rest of this site are about the present as well as the past.
Where an artist on the chart is also on the vocalists list, the entry says so. That is the one piece of editorial judgement on the page, and it points at the pages where the judgement is argued.
Where the old charts are
The archived weekly Top 20 lives at /top20.html exactly as Cove left it in 2006, and the end-of-year lists are collected in the 2005 top ten revisited and the best debut albums of the 2000s.
Chart data is published by Apple and refreshed by this site once a day. Cove has no commercial relationship with Apple and the chart carries no purchase links.