Frankie Moreno poses for a photo with his dog Stanzie at his home studio, Thursday, Oct. 7, 2021.
Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2021 | 2 a.m.
Once he got going, he couldn’t stop. And now he doesn’t want to.
On October 14, Frankie Moreno’s latest track “Can’t Go Back” hit the No. 1 spot in digital sales, giving the Las Vegas-based singer and songwriter an unbelievable 61 No. 1 hits over the last two years. It’s a new record for any artist; the legendary “King of Country” George Strait has tallied 60 No. 1 songs over his remarkable career.
This is not the Billboard Hot 100 chart, the music industry standard record chart for songs in the U.S., with rankings based on physical and digital sales, radio play and online streaming. That chart has been most recently ruled by mega-famous pop stars like Justin Bieber, Drake, Lil Nas X and Olivia Rodrigo. Strait’s record was a combination of Billboard hits and No. 1s on Mediabase charts.
Moreno’s record is on the iTunes U.S. Top 40 Charts, based only on digital sales. His songs have hit No. 1 nationally and internationally in various musical genres, from blues and country to pop and reggae. The record-breaking run started last year when the pandemic shuttered live concerts and Moreno retreated to his home studio to begin a creative marathon of writing and recording 67 singles, most of which went to No. 1.
“This was not the goal,” Moreno said the day after the accomplishment. “I was doing Facebook Live shows, playing a few [outdoor] concerts at Craig Ranch Park and doing a few other things, and we had no idea how long this [shutdown] would be.”
Moreno is certainly a well-known performer in Las Vegas and across the country, having sold out dozens of shows at the Smith Center in recent years and headlined at several casino showrooms. He had notched the first No. 1 in March before COVID changed all his plans and made up his mind to try to release a new single every week in order to stay busy and prolific without his normal hectic touring schedule. It was his large and loyal following of fans, known as the FM Army, that turned those weekly singles into chart-toppers.
“I’m still virtually an unknown artist,” Moreno says. “It takes hundreds of thousands of sales at a certain time to hit a No. 1 spot. You have to have that surge. You can have a million people buy your song over the course of six months, but when it enters the charts, it has to be all those people at once [buying] it.
“It’s purely driven by the fanbase. They’re unbelievably on it. They did this. I just make the song, I can’t make it hit No. 1. It’s a weird phenomenon to be able to do something of this magnitude … without being a household name.”
Frankie Moreno at Myron’s
Moreno — who last month became the first artist to perform at the reopened Smith Center and will be back at the downtown venue’s cabaret room, Myron’s, on Tuesday, October 19 — played almost all the instruments himself on all the singles and recorded them in his home studio before sending each track to Nashville-based engineer Christos Gatzimos to be mixed and mastered. (Gatzimos is the son of country legend Crystal Gayle.)
Most of the No. 1s were co-written by his writing partner Gianna Adams and others were co-written with his brother and bandmate Tony Moreno and his girlfriend Lacey Schwimmer, a dancer known for her turns as a finalist on “So You Think You Can Dance” and “Dancing With the Stars.”
It’s not the first time Moreno has found concentrated chart success. In 2019, he became the first artist to have six top-ten albums in the span of a year. But the relentless pace of producing new music that led to this new record was unlike any of his previous endeavors.
“People don’t release this many songs, that’s the thing,” he said. “Typically an artist might put out an album every two years, or if you’re crazy you might do one every year and try to climb the charts, do a tour, do some TV. We released almost 70 songs in a year.
“That being said, just because we release a song doesn’t mean it will chart at all, and I chalk a lot of it up to the pure loyalty of the FM Army. We were also in this scenario of COVID where this happened to a lot of people in the entertainment business and I didn’t want to sit and wait until I could start working again.”
Moreno said he’s always written as much as possible, even scratching out songs while on an airplane or in a hotel room during tours. Having all the time in the world made the difference, and the record-breaking experience has changed his creative process and his understanding of his own capabilities.
But now that he’s getting back to live performances, the breakneck pace can’t continue. He’ll still produce a lot of music and probably grab some more No. 1 hits, but there will be balance.
“I’m definitely a workaholic but here’s the thing: It’s music,” Moreno said. “I get up and have a cup of coffee with my English bulldog sitting on my lap and write music. It’s very hard to complain because I love it. It’s my job but also my total passion and hobby, and it’s still so exciting to get to make music.”
