Eight Days A Gleek: Glee Cast Now Bigger Than The Beatles

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NEW YORK - MAY 28: Lea Michele and Cory Monteith (center) from the cast of Glee perform at Radio City Music Hall on May 28, 2010 in New York City.

We can’t wait to share this knowledge with our BFF Lea Michele!

What’s that you say about the hit television show Glee? That is has abandoned all pretense of character development and narrative consistency in pursuit of empty spectacle and iTunes downloads? Well guess what, spoilsport? The plan has paid off: The Glee cast now has more hits than the Beatles.

With six (!) songs debuting on next week’s Billboard Hot 100 charts, the Glee cast has surpassed the Beatles to become the non-solo performers with the most Hot 100 hits since the chart’s inception in 1952. The young songbirds have amassed an astonishing 75 entries — more than the Fab Four (71), Ray Charles (74) and Aretha Franklin (73) — in little more than a year. The cast still lags behind all-time leader Elvis Prestley (108), but at this rate they should overtake him by the end of Glee season 3.

Defenders of the lads from Liverpool can point to extenuating circumstances, though. First, the Glee cast only performs covers of well-known songs, never originals. Second, each Glee song on the charts has a short shelf life; with new singles appearing after every episode, songs rarely stay on the charts for more than one week. (Billboard reports that only 14 Glee songs have charted for multiple weeks.) And, third, if readers feel like being curmudgeonly, they can note that the vast majority of Glee‘s sales come from digital downloads, which hardly require the kind of effort and investment to purchase that a Beatles 45 once did.

Such sniffling will likely go unheard under the noise of thousands of shrieking Glee fans. Still, there could be one positive: Could this make Kevin McHale go full-George on us, picking up a sitar and singing about inner truth and mysticism?

(From Billboard via Vulture, which notes that according to the transitive property, this makes the Glee cast bigger than Jesus.)