The Chainsmokers Receive Warm Congrats From LeAnn Rimes For Tying Her Record

LeAnn Rimes has no issues sharing records. On March 20th, LeAnn Rimes congratulated The Chainsmokers for tying her record of 32 weeks in the Billboard Hot 100 chart’s top 10 for The Chainsmokers’ single “Closer.”

For a little context, “Closer” featuring Halsey spent an absurd amount of time camped out in the upper half of the Hot 100, becoming one of the defining pop-dance crossover hits of 2016 and 2017. Tying a record that had stood since the late ’90s is no small feat, especially in an era where streaming numbers and playlist placements can make or break a song’s chart run in a matter of weeks rather than months.

LeeAnn Rimes’ “How Do I Live” peaked at the number 2 spot on December 13, 1997. The record will however stay intact since The Chainsmokers‘ “Closer” fell out of the top 10 to number 13 this week.

What makes this moment even better is how genuinely supportive Rimes was about the whole thing. Instead of being precious about a record she’d held onto for two decades, she went out of her way to record a video shouting out the duo directly, which says a lot about how far Alex Pall and Drew Taggart’s success had traveled outside of the dance music bubble and into mainstream pop culture at large.

To congratulate the guys for their accomplishments, LeAnn tweeted “Hey guys, congratulations,” she said in the video. “I’ve held this [record] for 20 years and I’m really proud of you guys and happy for you, so enjoy.”

Watch the video here:

So happy for @TheChainsmokers tying my @billboard record with #Closer. I've held the title for 20 years, now we can share! Congrats guys

— LeAnn Rimes (@leannrimes) March 20, 2017

https://twitter.com/leannrimes/status/843917019053481985

It’s a nice reminder that even in an industry built on charts, streaming numbers, and constant comparisons between artists, there’s still room for a moment like this. Rimes could have easily stayed quiet and let the record stand without comment, but instead she chose to publicly celebrate two guys from a completely different corner of the music world catching up to something she accomplished two decades earlier. That kind of graciousness doesn’t happen nearly often enough, and it says just as much about her as it does about how far The Chainsmokers had come by that point in their career.