Honor Roll: Highlights & Records Achieved by the ‘Glee’ Cast on Hot 100, Billboard 200 & Other Charts

Glee’s voices are set to soar again, Disney+ and Hulu announced on Wednesday (Oct. 21), after the streaming services gave co-creator Ryan Murphy a series order. The original Glee aired for six seasons, from 2009 to 2015, on Fox.

In addition to its TV run, the series achieved notable highlights — and set records — on Billboard’s charts.

The cast, largely at Glee’s start focusing on the high school-set show’s core show choir, New Directions, followed a unique strategy to achieve 207 entries on the Billboard Hot 100 — still the most among non-soloists. Multiple songs billed to the Glee cast were released, on 20th Century Fox/Columbia Records, to accompany each new episode. Parlaying that onscreen reach, between May 2010 and March 2012, the act logged 15 weeks each with five debuts; four weeks each with six; and two weeks each with seven.

Even with 173 of the Glee cast’s 207 Hot 100 hits having spent one week each on the chart, its songs have sold 48.4 million downloads in the United States, according to Luminate — and drawn 4.5 billion official U.S. streams.

Reflecting on the origin of Glee, Geoff Bywater, then head of 20th Century Fox Television’s music department, recalled projecting the series’ success to its respective executive producer and co-creator in a 2010 Billboard cover story: “I remember I talked to Dante Di Loreto and Ryan Murphy and said, ‘If all works well, we should see records in the top 10 and we should sell albums.’ ”

With those aspirations achieved and more, here’s a look at 10 of Glee’s top feats on multiple Billboard rankings.

• Most Hits Among Non-Soloists

  On the Hot 100 dated June 6, 2009, the Glee cast debuted with its cover of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” at No. 4 (along with its remake of Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab” at No. 98). It would go on to stockpile 207 entries, still the most among non-solo acts in the chart’s 68-year history. Through the chart dated Oct. 24, 2026, only Drake (407), Taylor Swift (281) and Future (246) have made more appearances.

• Most Hits in a Single Year

  

  The Glee cast charted 80 songs on the Hot 100 in 2010 — the most by any artist in a single year. The collective nearly matched its mark in 2011 with 77 entries. (Plus, its 27 entries in 2012 led all artists that year.)

  Swift has the next highest single-year total: 54 Hot 100 hits in 2023. Prior to Glee, The Beatles held the record with 31 charted titles in 1964.

• Glee Dethroned The King

  On the Feb. 26, 2011-dated Hot 100, the Glee cast pushed its sum from 107 to 113 entries — passing Elvis Presley for the most in the chart’s history to that point. At the time, they were the only acts with triple-digit totals (before streaming would spark an explosion of entries for big-name artists, led by weeks in which albums debuted; to date, 25 acts now have 100 or more Hot 100 hits.)

• 58 Charted Covers of No. 1s on the Hot 100

  The Glee cast charted on the Hot 100 with versions of 58 former No. 1s by other acts, from its update of Rihanna’s “Take a Bow” in September 2009 through Whitney Houston’s “How Will I Know” in May 2012. Also among leaders that the troupe returned to the chart were songs by Adele, The Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, Michael Jackson, Lady Gaga, Madonna, Prince, Queen, Britney Spears and Usher.

• Back to School

  As Glee gained in popularity, the show welcomed high-profile guests and the cast notched Hot 100 hits with Kristin Chenoweth, Neil Patrick Harris, Ricky Martin, Idina Menzel, Olivia Newton-John and Gwyneth Paltrow.

  Chenoweth (six entries) and Harris (one) have hit the Hot 100 solely with the Glee cast, while five of Paltrow’s six visits were with the act.

  Newton-John, notably, returned to the Hot 100 in 2010 for the first time since 1998 via a remake of “Physical,” which she originally took to No. 1 for 10 weeks in 1981-82 (marking the longest reign of the ‘80s).

• Most Digital Song Sales Hits

  

  The Glee cast continues to boast the most entries among all acts on the Digital Song Sales chart: 235. Swift ranks second with 195.

  Eighteen Glee songs hit the chart’s top 10, with two reaching No. 1, in back-to-back weeks in 2010: “Teenage Dream” and its Paltrow-featuring “Forget You.”

• 3 No. 1s, 14 Top 10 Albums

  Likewise realizing Bywater’s ambitions about selling albums, the Glee cast claimed three No. 1s, among 14 top 10s, on the Billboard 200. Its leaders, all earned in 2010: Glee: The Music, The Power of Madonna; Glee: The Music, Volume 3: Showstoppers; and Glee: The Music, Journey to Regionals.

  The ensemble’s U.S. album sales to date total 8.2 million.

• Winter Wins

  Glee translated its trademark cheer to three top 10s on the Top Holiday Albums chart. Glee: The Music, The Christmas Album hit No. 2 in 2010, while its second and third volumes reached Nos. 3 and 6 in 2011 and 2012, respectively.

• Field Trips

  

  “We did a Hot Topic tour right after the pilot and there were 3-, 4-, 500 people,” Bywater told Billboard in 2010. Along with its songs and albums chart honors, the cast grossed $45.9 million and sold 558,000 tickets over 53 reported shows in 2010-11, according to Billboard Boxscore.

  “Within the passing of just a couple of months,” he noted, “we were talking 1,500 people outside the Borders in New York. It happened really, really fast.”

• After Graduation

  The Glee cast last reached the Hot 100 in October 2013, with the Lea Michele-sung version of the Bob Dylan-penned “To Make You Feel My Love,” a tribute to costar Cory Monteith, who died that July.

  Still, Michele, who portrayed star diva Rachel Berry on the show, hit No. 4 on the Billboard 200 in March 2014 with her LP Louder, a high among cast members on their own. Previously, Matthew Morrison, aka New Directions choir director-mentor Will Schuester, reached No. 24 in May 2011 with his self-titled album.