Longest-held vocal note in a US hit single (female artist)

The longest same-pitch vocal note in a song that made the US Billboard Hot 100 chart was “Dim All the Lights”, from Donna Summer’s (US) seventh studio album Bad Girls, which contains a note lasting 16 seconds. The disco track peaked at No.2 on 10-17 November 1979.

Summer’s enduring note begins 46 seconds into the track, on the word “up”. It beats a note in another Summer classic, which, remarkably, hovered just below “Dim All the Lights” in the Hot 100 Top 10 on 10-17 November 1979: “No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)”, featuring the queen of long-held vocal notes, Barbra Streisand, contains a 14-second lung-buster on the word “tear”, from 1 minute 43 seconds. By 24 November 1979, “No More Tears” had risen to the top of the chart – the longest-held vocal note in a US No.1 single (female artist), beating Streisand’s “Woman in Love” (11 seconds) in 1980.

Melba Moore’s 36-second note at the end of “The Other Side of the Rainbow”, the title track of her 1982 studio album, is the longest studio-recorded note by a female singer and the longest-held single note on an album track, but it was never a Hot 100 hit in the US.

“Dim All the Lights” stalled at No.2 behind the Eagles’ “Heartache Tonight” on 10 November 1979 and “Still” by the Commodores on 17 November.