The Eagles - 1970s

(Credits: Alamy)

Sat 30 August 2025 21:30, UK

Eagles are just one of those bands who seem like they’ve been around forever and just won’t ever fade, like the comfy armchair of rock and roll, if you will, or everyone’s favourite drunk uncle. 

This is not to dispute the absolute cultural behemoth that the band racked up. In the space of just seven albums, a relatively short back catalogue for a group of sonic gods of their calibre, they made a permanent imprint on the landscape of rock and roll. God knows the legacy of ‘Hotel California’ will long outlive either you or me. 

But there’s often an odd phenomenon with artists like these, who are shrouded in an almost unearthly league of legend. What puts them in common with the likes of David Bowie and Bob Dylan? They barely had any number one singles between them, which is a surprising, if not pretty interesting feat to achieve, given the seismic icon status which surrounds each of them. It’s like they existed in minds and hearts, but never actually in the charts. 

For the part of the Eagles, this manifested in five number one singles in the US, which admittedly isn’t that much of a poor showing in and of itself. However, when you consider the fact that their debut album came out in 1972, and that their last was released in 2007, it does seem relatively few and far between over the course of a career lasting decades. Eagles may have soared high, but their chart successes were somewhat of an enigma.

What were the Eagles’ number one singles?

The band’s five stints atop the charts in the United States were gifted to them by the songs ‘Best of My Love’, ‘One of These Nights’, ‘New Kid in Town’, ‘Hotel California’, and ‘Heartache Tonight’. But within this, an even starker trend emerges: all of these songs only spanned the course of 1975 to 1979, meaning that despite a rock legacy still enduring through decade after decade, the peak of the Eagles’ success only lasted just shy of five years, half a century ago. 

Then you consider the fact that six out of the seven albums the band produced also went to the top spot, and things start to fall into place. In this sense, they’re exactly like Bowie and Dylan, artists whose iconic status is built on the temples of their collective works, rather than individual standout songs. Their key to success was cultivating a brand, as opposed to catching an earworm once in a while and reeling in the masses with that bait. 

So, even though Eagles could quite literally count their number one singles on one hand, their impact was never diminished. In a way, it’s quite fitting that a song like ‘Heartache Tonight’ would reap them some of their best moments, because it undeniably would have caused them heartache that the singles chart never seemed to swing in their favour. The music industry is possibly a metaphor for their very own ‘Hotel California’ in that sense, because you can never quite leave its allure behind.

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