You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet - Market Performance

Market Performance

The first single from the Not Fragile album was "Roll On Down the Highway." It performed well, reaching #4 on the Canadian RPM charts, but eventually stalled at #14 on the U.S. charts. "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet," meanwhile, was becoming a hit as an album cut. Radio stations all over the USA were giving it a great deal of airplay, as Not Fragile was soaring up the album charts. So much so that Bachman was embarrassed because he thought it was a stupid song, just something that he wrote as a joke.

Fach would regularly call him with airplay reports, asking for permission to release "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" as a single. Bachman says, "And I refused for three weeks... I was producer, so I had final say on what went out. I woke up one day and asked myself, 'Why am I stopping this?' Some of my favorite records are really dumb things like 'Louie, Louie'... so I said to Charlie, 'O.K., release it. I bet it does nothing.'"

"You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" debuted at #65 on September 21, 1974 and shot to the top of the Hot 100 seven weeks later. It was the only US #1 single in BTO's history. (While in The Guess Who, Randy had penned only one other chart-topper, "American Woman," which hit #1 in 1970.)

"You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" also holds the record for falling farthest on the chart before returning to the Top 10. After falling to #34 two weeks after being in the #1 spot, it jumped back to #8 for two weeks, largely because of interest in the flip side, an instrumental called "Free Wheelin'".

On the UK version of the single, the label credits the band as "Bachmann–Turner Overdrive". It was kept off the top in the UK charts by "Lonely This Christmas" by Mud.