"That's the Way Love Goes" entered the US "Billboard" Hot 100 at number 14. Two weeks later, it became Jackson's sixth number-one single on the Hot 100, eleventh number-one single on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, and ninth number-one single on the Dance Club Songs charts. At the time of its release, the song's three week trek to the top made it the second-fastest rising single in Hot 100 history, only behind The Beatles' single, "Can't Buy Me Love". The single is Jackson's biggest Hot 100 Airplay hit, spending ten weeks at number one; achieving four weeks atop the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart and Dance Music Maxi-Singles Sales. It also peaked atop the Hot R&B Airplay and Hot R&B Single Sales charts. To date, the song is Jackson's longest hit in the United States, and was also the eighteenth biggest hit of the 1990s. Six years after its release, "Billboard" ranked the song as the thirtieth biggest pop hit of the past forty-five years, and in 2007, ranked it as the nineteenth biggest hit ever by a female solo artist.