It probably defines how you describe 'hit'.
Garth Brooks topped the *US country* chart with the song in 1989 but Ronan Keating topped the *UK singles* chart with it in 2002.
So a country fan might say that GB had the first hit with it, whereas a pop fan in the UK might say that it was RK that had the first (and, to their mind, only) hit with it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_Tomorrow_Never_Comes