Tones and I reaches new high of No 5 on US Billboard chart

Australian singer-songwriter Toni Watson has reached No 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 with Dance Monkey.

Tones and I in Adelaide this month Picture: Naomi Jellicoe

After spending the latter half of last year watching her breakthrough song smash just about every record in the domestic pop history books, Australian singer-songwriter Toni Watson continues a slow ascent up the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the US.

Watson — who performs as Tones and I — and her song Dance Monkey rose two places this week to achieve a new high of No 5 on the US chart, where it has spent 18 weeks overall.

Since its release in May last year, Dance Monkey has triumphed in dozens of countries, including 11 weeks at No 1 in Britain, making it the longest running chart-topper by a female artist in that country.

In Australia, the song has spent 24 non-consecutive weeks atop the ARIA singles chart and 35 weeks in the top 50. It currently sits at No 3, behind tracks by The Weeknd and Dua Lipa.

According to Billboard, Watson’s newest US ranking means that it is the first top five Hot 100 hit written solely by a woman in almost eight years: in March 2012, Whitney Houston posthumously reached No 3 with her cover of Dolly Parton’s I Will Always Love You.

Regardless of gender, though, it is exceedingly rare for solo songwriters to reach No 1: of the 247 songs to hit the top spot in the US since 2000, only 11 songs — or 4 per cent — were penned by a single writer.

Dance Monkey recently surpassed one billion plays on streaming service Spotify, where it continues to receive more than six million plays daily.

The song also has spent 113 days at No 1 on Spotify’s global top 50 chart, tying a record set by US rapper Post Malone with his 2017 song Rockstar, according to chartdata.org.

Watson is touring a run of sold-out shows in the US, which is likely to help her chances at making it a long way to the top of one of the world’s biggest pop music markets.

On Thursday, the Australian singer-songwriter also announced five Australian theatre shows, beginning on May 8 in Melbourne and ending on May 29 in Fremantle.