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Welcome to the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show, I’m your host, Christopher Verdesi. And every week on Chartcrush, we do a deep dive into a year in Pop music and culture and count down the top ten hits according to our exclusive recap of the weekly charts published at the time in Billboard, the music industry’s top trade mag.

This week on Chartcrush, we’re counting down 1985, the year the Pop revolution wrought by MTV, video and New Wave had unquestionably triumphed, and in so doing, crystalized into a slick, glossed-up “new normal” of precise beats, thunderous gated drums, processed guitars and atmospheric, cinematic soundscapes thanks to all the new synthesizers and sequencing and sampling tech that was coming online in the ’80s.

And it all sounded fresh and exciting on radio, records and of course on CDs with zero clicks, pops or static. CDs, still just 9% of music biz revenue in ’85, but that was three times what it was in ’84, and by ’86 it had more than doubled again. Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms: the first album recorded digitally and the first to sell a million on CD.

But the singular purpose to which all this new sonic wizardry was being marshalled in ’85? Well, it was right there every time you turned on your radio. Melodrama! Close your eyes (or for that matter open them if you’re watching MTV), and you’re climbing a mountain, soaring like a bird, walking through fire. All three if the song was John Parr’s theme from St. Elmo’s Fire, the brat-pack flick. And all as Bono wailed on U2’s Martin Luther King, Jr. homage “Pride,” in the name of love.

But why? How’d we go from vegemite sandwiches, getting physical and Tastee Freez chili dogs to all this over-the-top melodrama? Was it all the New Coke people were drinking (or, as it turned out, not drinking!)? Well, seeing it through a political lens (as critics are known to do sometimes), maybe it was a way to compensate for the shallow, materialistic values and ostentatious displays of wealth that got so much media attention as President Reagan sought to transition the country from government dependency programs to economic opportunity.

Reagan, of course, sworn in for his second term in ’85 as President after the biggest election landslide since 1972.

Or maybe emotionally-intense songs were resonating because people were inspired by Reagan and the new sense of pride and purpose he embodied.

Well, both those takes hold water, but a much simpler reason? Video! For decades, Hollywood had been using music to enhance the emotional impact of movies and sell tickets. Now, for the first time though, the music biz had all those tools of cinema to hit people right in the feels and sell records not just musically, but also visually.

MTV’s first Video Music Awards were at the end of ’84, and by ’85 it wasn’t just that a song had to have a video to be a hit; it had to be a great video. And even for a run-of-the-mill song, a great video could propel it into the top ten. Just ask Norwegian one-hit wonders a-ha, whose song “Take On Me” was released three times, but went nowhere until its famous pencil-sketch animation video hit MTV in ’85.

#10 Tears for Fears – Everybody Wants to Rule the World

That was Billboard‘s #10 year-end Hot100 hit of 1985, which shakes out at #18 on our Chartcrush ranking, so we’ll be kicking off our countdown with a different #10 that was Billboard‘s #7 song of the year: the U.S. chart breakthrough by a Duo that, unlike a-ha, had three more top10s later in the ’80s and even topped Billboard‘s Modern Rock chart launched in ’88—in 1993. Which put them on a pretty short list of successful ’80s New Wave acts that stayed relevant into the ’90s. At #10 it’s Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.”

Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith (a.k.a. Tears for Fears) scored big in their native U.K. with their first album and its three top five singles in ’83, but it was “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” off their second set, #10 on our Chartcrush Countdown of 1985’s top ten hits, that cracked the code in the U.S.: #1 for two weeks in June.

Their anthem “Shout” was next: #1 for three weeks in August, but not on the chart as long, so it comes out #12 on the year.

“Everybody Wants to Rule” showed up later in ’85 in the closing scene of the movie Real Genius, then stayed on the radar through the ’90s as the theme song of HBO’s Dennis Miller Live, the precursor to Real Time with Bill Maher.

#9 Madonna – Crazy for You

Now after ’84 when five of the top ten songs of the year were from movies, ’85 was another a big year for theme songs: the aforementioned theme from St. Elmo’s Fire “Man in Motion,” Huey Lewis & The News’ “Power of Love” from the year’s top box office hit Back to the Future, Duran Duran’s Bond theme, “View to a Kill” and from John Hughes’ era-defining film The Breakfast Club, Simple Minds’ “(Don’t You) Forget About Me.” All those hit #1, plus one from TV, Jan Hammer’s “Miami Vice Theme.”

But only two soundtrack hits are in the top ten on the year and up next at #9, one by the Singer who, it turned out, was Billboard‘s Top Artist of ’85, but back in ’83 when the filmmakers tapped her to sing it, that wasn’t at all clear. And the movie Vision Quest came out February ’85, just after the song that made her an icon had completed its six weeks at #1. At #9, Madonna’s first of many hit Ballads “Crazy for You.”

Madonna also appears in Vision Quest singing “Crazy for You” fronting a live band in a dive bar while the stars Matthew Modine and Lisa Fiorentino share a slow dance. No dialog, but a month later, her supporting role as the title character in Desperately Seeking Susan hit theaters, and suddenly she was a movie star as well as the year’s top Pop phenom.

#8 Dire Straits – Money for Nothing

So like radio in the ’50s and ’60s, cable TV in the ’80s wasn’t controlled by a handful of big corporations. A patchwork of small, local operators decided what to carry, and subscriber demand, obviously, an important consideration. Enter veteran Ad Man George Lois, who repurposed a slogan used to sell Maypo syrup-flavored baby oatmeal in the ’50s, and turned it into one of the most iconic and effective pull campaigns of all time, “I Want My MTV.”

Print, radio, cable, broadcast, buses, subways, billboards and of course, on MTV itself; the ads were everywhere: Pop stars telling folks to pester their local cable providers to add MTV. And in 1985, the Band Dire Straits borrowed the slogan again, and made it their first and only #1. At #8, “Money for Nothing.”

Dire Straits at #8, with an assist from Police frontman Sting, who also happened to be on the Caribbean island of Monserrat windsurfing. So he dropped by the studio for dinner, sang “I Want My MTV” to the tune of the Police’s “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” and got a co-songwriting credit for a #1 hit.

Ditto Dire Straits Songwriter Mark Knopfler, who’d been a news reporter in a past life, so when an appliance installer on break at a New York electronics store he was in started talking smack about Pop stars in front of a wall of TVs all tuned to MTV, out came the trusty pen and pad, and that’s the rest of the lyrics, transcribed verbatim.

“Money for Nothing,” indeed!

#7 Mr. Mister – Broken Wings

Well, we’re counting down the top ten hits of 1985 here on this week’s edition of Chartcrush, and at #7, a sterling example of the sonic and lyrical melodrama I was alluding to at the top of the show. It hit #1 for two weeks in December and all but the last eight of its 22 weeks on the chart were in calendar 1985, but you won’t find it anywhere on Billboard‘s year-end Hot100 because they unveiled a new policy in ’85: songs moving up the charts the last week of their chart year get their full runs counted the following year. So they have it as the #5 song of 1986.

Now at Chartcrush, we always count full chart runs, and we go by calendar years, not “chart years,” so we have it at #7 for 1985.

The black and white video of front man Tim Page cruising around the desert in a ’59 T-Bird convertible packs the same visual melodrama and smoldering suspense as does the song. At #7, it’s Mr. Mister, “Broken Wings.”

“Broken Wings,” Mr. Mister at #7 as we count down the top hits of 1985 here on this week’s edition of the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show.

So Billboard‘s new policy I mentioned of counting songs’ full chart runs for its year-end rankings? That was a long time coming! Up to ’85, they only factored weeks in the “chart year,” and the year-end charts came with a disclaimer, something like “these rankings don’t reflect the total popularity of records that peaked late last year or haven’t yet reached their peak.”

Well, no more! Now year-straddlers got the same shot at ranking high as hits with their whole chart runs within the chart year. Which worked out great—until 1989 when Chicago’s “Look Away,” a song that’d peaked in 1988 and already seemed dated, was, as renowned chart geek Chris Molanphy put it, the “what-the-fuckest of all of Billboard #1 end-of-year songs.”

So in 1990 Billboard reverted back to the old policy of counting just weeks in the chart year. But don’t worry, we’ve got you covered at Chartcrush: counting full chart runs and using the exact same rules and point system to rank every year, ’40s to the present.

Mr. Mister was back in the top ten on the year in ’86 with their follow up, “Kyrie,” which also got two weeks at #1.

#6 REO Speedwagon – Can’t Fight This Feeling

At #6, more mid-’80s Rock Power Ballad melodrama, this time from the act who practically invented it, or at least re-invented it for the ’80s, with their lighters-up, eve of MTV chart-topper “Keep On Loving You,” Billboard‘s #10 song of 1981 that just misses our Chartcrush ’81 ranking at #12.

Flip that though for this one in ’85 though: #6 on our ranking and Billboard has it at #13 despite its three weeks at #1 in March. The Band had been at it since 1971 and this was the second single off their 11th studio album. It’s REO Speedwagon’s “Can’t Fight This Feeling.”

Well, add crawling on floors, crashing through doors, and throwing away oars to the list of dramatic gestures that ’80s Power Balladeers will do for love. REO Speedwagon’s “Can’t Fight This Feeling,” #6 on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown for 1985: the song that kept “Material Girl” from becoming Madonna’s second #1, and instead it was the Ballad “Crazy for You” we heard at #9.

#5 Phil Collins and Marilyn Martin – Separate Lives

Which was the first of the two soundtrack hits in our countdown. At #5, the second from the musical drama White Nights starring Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines about Dancers with shifting allegiances during the Cold War, notable for its scenes shot in the Soviet Union’s second largest city, Leningrad.

It was Director Taylor Hackford’s follow-up to his 1984 Noir remake Against All Odds, for which our Artist at #5 had written and recorded the title song, and it became his first #1 and got him an Oscar nomination.

So they tried it again, this time a Duet, and a song written by Soft Rocker Stephen Bishop, whose own chart fortunes had waned since 1983. But not so our act at #5. “Against All Odds” was barely off the charts when his third album No Jacket Required dropped, and in early ’85 its first two singles “Sussudio” and “One More Night” had become his second and third #1s, respectively. So he was red hot. At #5, it’s Phil Collins teamed with Singer Marilyn Martin, “Separate Lives.”

Phil Collins, “Separate Lives” at #5, duetting there with Marilyn Martin. Never heard of her? Well, you’re not alone. She was a backup and session Singer that Atlantic Records’ chief Doug Morris tried to break, unsuccessfully, it turned out. Her album, which dropped while “Separate Lives” was still in the top ten yielded only one minor hit.

As for Collins, it was on to the next project by his group Genesis, their 13th studio album Invisible Touch and its string of five top10s in ’86 and ’87.

#4 U.S.A. for Africa – We Are the World

So Billboard‘s year-in-review article for ’85 leads off with the observation that Rock turned 30 in ’85. Bummer. But “maturity has its positive side, like awareness of the world community and willingness to do something for it.” The big “something” in ’85 was U.S.A. for Africa, which staged the Live Aid benefit in July.

By the way, Phil Collins, the only act that played both Live Aid stages, London and Philadelphia, thanks to the supersonic Concorde jet and its three-and-a-half hour trans-Atlantic flight time.

But months before Live Aid, Thriller Producer Quincy Jones got a who’s who of Pop talent already in L.A. for the American Music Awards in January to come to a studio afterward for an all-night session to record what became the bestselling single of all-time ’til then, co-written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, with all proceeds going to poverty relief in Africa.

It got four weeks at #1 but only shook out at #20 on Billboard‘s year-end Hot100. On our Chartcrush ranking for 1985 we’re counting down the top ten from this hour, it’s #4: U.S.A. for Africa’s “We Are the World.”

Prince, the big no-show at the “We Are the World” sessions. He wanted to contribute a guitar solo and Quincy Jones said “no thanks,” so he partied at a nightclub a few blocks away instead, and caught a ton of flak for that, including, some say, Purple Rain losing Best Album at the Grammys a month later to Lionel Richie’s Can’t Slow Down. He didn’t play Live Aid in July either, but he did contribute a song for the We Are the World album.

#3 Foreigner – I Want to Know What Love Is

Well we’re down to #3 in our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown for 1985, and if you thought we were done with melodrama, hold on—this one’s got a full Gospel choir and lyrics about climbing a mountain!

It was the group’s second trip to the Power Ballad well; their first in ’81, “Waiting for a Girl like You,” spent nine weeks at #2 behind Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical,” and then Hall & Oates’ “I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do)” moved up and made it ten weeks, shattering the record for weeks at #2 without ever getting to #1.

Four years later in ’85, though, they got their first chart topper, two weeks in February. At #3, the lead single from Foreigner’s fifth studio album Agent Provocateur, “I Want to Know What Love Is.”

Foreigner, with “I Want to Know What Love Is.” #3 on our ranking of 1985’s hits we’re counting down the top ten from here on this week’s edition of Chartcrush. Billboard had it #4 on the year.

Lou Gramm with that melodramatic vocal, but Songwriter Mick Jones roughed out the song in the middle of the night and woke up his soon-to-be second wife, British-born New York Socialite and Jewelry Designer Anne Dexter to hear it. “What do you mean?” she asked with a fixed stare. “Don’t you already know what love is?”

Whoops! But despite that, they stayed married 25 years, then divorced in 2007 and remarried ten years later.

Hey, it’s a process, learning what love is!

By the way, Dexter is DJ/Producer Mark Ronson’s mom from her first marriage. Ronson scored 2015’s top hit, “Uptown Funk!” featuring Bruno Mars.

#2 Wham! featuring George Michael – Careless Whisper

Next up, the Duo that had two hits in the top ten on Billboard‘s year-end Hot100 for ’85: their U.S. breakthrough from late ’84 and its even bigger follow-up which they named the #1 hit of the year.

Now by our reckoning, that first hit, “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” is a 1984 song, so we have just the follow-up: the one Billboard named #1. But it comes out #2 on our ranking. Billboard‘s point system for ’85, much more generous for weeks in the top ten than ours, so that’s the difference.

At #2 it’s Wham! featuring George Michael (credited as a George Michael solo record everywhere but the U.S.), “Careless Whisper.”

In Wham’s first big U.S. hit, “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” George Michael sings “I’m not planning on going solo.” But with “Careless Whisper” we just heard at #2, he did just that! The idea was to broaden his appeal beyond Wham!’s Teen audience, and it worked! “Careless Whisper” was #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart two weeks longer than the Hot100, and Billboard described it as “a ballad adored by 12-year-old girls and their grandmothers alike.”

Michael and partner Andrew Ridgeley, as Wham!, became the first Western Pop act to tour communist China in ’85, but in ’86 the split became official.

#1 Madonna – Like a Virgin

So if not “Careless Whisper,” what is the #1 song here on our 1985 Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown? Well we’re about to find out! Billboard had it at #2 on the year despite its six weeks at #1 to “Careless Whisper’s” three.

The Singer’s 1983 debut album yielded a pair of top10s and put her on the map as an up-and-coming Dance Pop Act, but she still didn’t rate an invite from Quincy Jones to sing on “We Are the World.” And then, in September ’84 at the first MTV Video Music Awards, she debuted the title song from her upcoming second album wearing a white-lace bustier, fingerless gloves and “Boy Toy” belt, and the next day it was all anyone was talking about.

Who else but Madonna? We heard her first hit Ballad from later in ’85 back at #9, “Crazy for You,” but at #1, the hit that made her an overnight icon, “Like a Virgin.”

Now given Madonna’s penchant for courting controversy with her own carefully crafted material going forward, you’d think “Like a Virgin” was her song. But nope; it was handed to her by her label A&R guy, written by pro Songwriters Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly—two dudes!

But Madonna loved it from the jump, and with Nile Rodgers in the control room and his band Chic backing her, she made it her first of seven #1s in the ’80s and her signature song, prompting Parents Music Resource Center co-founder Susan Baker to accuse her of teaching little girls to act like “a porn queen in heat.” The PMRC’s high-profile Senate hearings in September led to Parental Advisory stickers on offensive records and CDs.

And that’s the top ten here on our 1985 edition of Chartcrush, but with all the differences in ranking methodology, four songs from the top ten on Billboard‘s year-end Hot100 for ’85 are absent from ours; three because they shake out as 1984 hits when you do things by calendar years instead of Billboard‘s chart years. I mentioned Wham!’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.” They had that at #3 for ’85; we have it at #12 for ’84. Chaka Khan’s “I Feel for You,” #5 Billboard; our #17 song, again, of ’84, not ’85. And Hall & Oates’ “Out of Touch,” #6 for ’85 in Billboard; #11 in our ’84 Chartcrush ranking.

Which leaves one legit 1985 hit.

#18 a-ha – Take On Me

Which was #10 song on Billboard‘s ’85 ranking. I mentioned it in the intro as an example of a song that was lifted on the charts by its innovative, must-see storytelling video that mixed live action with pencil-sketch animation: a-ha’s “Take On Me.”

Turn on MTV for an hour in the Fall of ’85 and you were bound to see Steve Barron’s riveting video of a-ha members jumping back and forth between live-action and pencil-sketch animation universes that won six moon-man trophies at MTV’s third Video Music Awards in ’86.

And speaking of 1986, three songs from Billboard‘s ’86 top ten were really 1985 hits doing things by calendar years. Mr. Mister’s “Broken Wings” was Billboard‘s #5 song of ’86; that was in our ’85 countdown at #7. The other two didn’t fare as well though.

#19 Eddie Murphy – Party All the Time

Billboard‘s #7 song of ’86: #19 on our ’85 ranking. SNL and Beverly Hills Cop star Eddie Murphy cut it, he said, to settle a bet with Richard Pryor over whether he could sing: “Party All the Time.”

#2 for three weeks December ’85 into January ’86 behind Lionel Richie’s “Say You, Say Me,” Eddie Murphy’s wager song to prove he could sing, “Party All the Time.” I wonder if Richard Pryor paid up?

#17 Klymaxx – I Miss You

And finally, the third song from Billboard‘s year-end top ten for 1986 that shakes out as a 1985 hit in our Chartcrush rankings. It was on the chart 29 weeks, longer than any other song in either year, and peaked at #5 for four, also while “Say You, Say Me” was #1 December into January. Again, Billboard was being very generous to weeks in the top ten in those years, so they ranked it #3 for ’86. It’s the breakthrough hit by L.A. Girl Group Klymaxx, “I Miss You.”

Klymaxx’s “I Miss You,” Billboard‘s #3 song of 1986 but it peaked the last week of 1985 and racked up more ranking points scaling up the chart than the tail end of its run in early ’86 so we have it at #17 for 1985.

And that’s gonna be a wrap for our 1985 edition of the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show. I’ve been your host, Christopher Verdesi. Hey, if you have a minute and you like what you heard this hour, why not head over to our website, chartcrush.com for a transcript of the show and a link to stream the podcast version, plus rad extras like our full top100 chart and interactive line graph of the Billboard chart runs for the top10 hits. Which we do for every year, 1940s to now, and it’s all on that website, again, chartcrush.com. Thanks for listening and tune in again next week, same station, same time, for another year and another edition of Chartcrush.

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Happy New Year and welcome to a special edition of the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show. I’m your host Christopher Verdesi. Now usually on this show, we set our sights on a year in Pop history and culture and count down the top10 hits of the year based on the weekly charts published in Billboard, the music industry’s top trade mag. And as you might’ve guessed, this hour as we get set to ring in 2025, we’re gonna be counting down the top10 from the year just passed, 2024.

Okay, so why call it a “special edition?” Why isn’t it just the 2024 edition of Chartcrush? Well that’s because the way we do our Chartcrush rankings, 2024 won’t really be over until all the songs that were on the chart during the year have completed their chart runs.

Billboard doesn’t do it that way. Every year, they have a cut-off week for their eligibility period or “chart year” for the year-end rankings that’s several weeks before the end of the year on the calendar, and the chart year begins several weeks before the start of the calendar year. And they only count weeks within that time frame. So for 2024, the chart year goes from the week after the end of their 2023 chart year, October 28, 2023, to their cut-off week for the 2024 chart year, October 19, 2024. Again, only chart activity within that period counts toward their year-end rankings.

Now do you see the problem with this? It’s a biggie! Of the top10 hits in Billboard‘s year-end Hot100, only one had its chart run entirely within the chart year. The rest—nine out of the top10—had weeks that weren’t counted toward the year-end rankings. Two were already on the chart when the chart year began, and eight, still on it when it ended. One song with an exceptionally long run had weeks both before and after the chart year!

So what happens with those weeks vis a vis Billboard‘s year-end charts? Right! Not counted, at least for 2024. The ones before the chart year were already factored into their 2023 rankings and the ones after will be factored into 2025’s.

And this is nothing new. Throughout Billboard‘s year-end chart history, especially in the streaming era since 2016 as chart runs have gotten much, much longer, dozens of major hits have had their runs split between chart years, so their year-end rankings totally obscure how massive they were.

And the opposite is true too: songs whose full chart runs fall within a chart year rank higher than they would if every song’s full run was counted.

So why do they do it like that? Well it’s obvious! If they didn’t get their ranking out before New Years, they’d totally miss all the New Years hype and retrospective year-end recaps and reviews in the media. And since 2023 they’ve been timing the release of their year-end charts around their annual awards gala in late Fall, the Billboard Music Awards, generating their own hype.

But that’s where we come in. For our Chartcrush recaps of past years, we get to count songs’ full chart runs and present corrected top10s. Songs never fall through the cracks no matter when they came out during the year; we rank them in whichever year they saw most of their chart action and earned the majority of their ranking points.

Of course, we can’t do that yet for 2024 because, again, eight of the top10 songs in Billboard‘s just-announced year-end Hot100 are still on the charts. The rankings are bound to change, perhaps dramatically, before all is said and done. So that’s why this is a New Year’s Special: a countdown of Billboard‘s year-end top10 for 2024. Think of it as a rough draft for our 2024 edition of Chartcrush.

Honorable Mention: Taylor Swift – Cruel Summer

Which we’re gonna kick off with a bonus cut: an honorable mention from the Artist who just won a record 10 Billboard Music Awards including Artist of the Year and Hot100 Artist of the Year at the big gala December 12 at the MGM Grand in Vegas. Astonishingly though, although she placed five songs in Billboard‘s year-end Hot100, none of them made the top10 on the year, so we’re gonna spin her top-ranking song for ’24.

And speaking of year-straddling hits, it also ranked pretty high on Billboard‘s 2023 year-end recap, #18, having begun its chart run in June of ’23, and it stayed on the chart all the way to the end of May of 2024. But (now get this!) it’s from her 2019 album Lover. Critically praised and a fan fave, but not promoted as a single—until she included it on the setlist of her 2023 Eras Tour and it commenced a 22-week climb to #1.

Billboard‘s #12 year-end Hot100 hit of 2024 based only on its weeks in their 2024 chart year, it’s Taylor Swift’s “Cruel Summer.”

Now since all of “Cruel Summer’s” four weeks at #1 were in calendar 2023, we predict that once we crunch all the data and compile our 2023 and 2024 Chartcrush rankings, Taylor Swift’s sleeper hit from her 2019 album Lover will land very near the top of our 2023 ranking, not 2024. But we singled it out as an honorable mention here on our 2024 Chartcrush New Years Special because it’s the top-ranked song on Billboard‘s 2024 year-end Hot100 by their just-crowned Artist of the year.

Three cuts from her newest album The Tortured Poets Department also made the 2024 year-end Hot100: “Fortnight” featuring Post Malone at #22, “I Can Do It with a Broken Heart” at #35 and all the way down at #98, an album cut not officially promoted as a single, “Down Bad.” She also re-did a 2014 outtake, “Is It Over Now?,” for her 2023 “Taylor’s Version” of her breakthrough Pop album 1989. That was Billboard‘s #33 song of 2024.

Incidentally, Taylor Swift also won Billboard Artist of the Year and Top Hot100 Artist in 2023 on the strength of “Cruel Summer” plus three songs from her 2022 album Midnights, “Anti-Hero,” “Lavender Haze” and “Karma” featuring Rapper Ice Spice.

Artist of the Year two years in a row, Taylor Swift: first time since Destiny’s Child in 2000 and 2001. And since she also won in 2013 and 2015, her 2024 win also makes her the first to collect four Top Artist trophies since Billboard started awarding them in 1993. Up to 2024 she was tied with Drake at three.

Honorable Mention: Chappell Roan – Good Luck, Babe!

Now before we dive into the countdown we’ve got another honorable mention we’ve gotta put out there because not only is Billboard‘s Top Artist for 2024, Taylor Swift, absent from the top10 songs of the year, so is their Top New Artist of the year!

Actually, that’s happened more often than you’d think in the history of the Billboard Music Awards, since both awards factor other things besides the Hot100 like albums and tours. But we’d be remiss to not recognize the chart newcomer from Springfield, Missouri whose breakthrough took 24 weeks to peak #4 in late-September. But as of mid-December, it’s still on the chart as her fame continues to soar beyond her “fierce, tightknit, largely queer fanbase” as Rolling Stone put it back in March when she was just getting started. Billboard has it at #18 for 2024, it’s Chappell Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe!”

“Good Luck, Babe!,” Billboard‘s Top New Artist of 2024 Chappell Roan: her ’80s Synthpop-influenced breakout hit, boosted on streaming platforms and the charts by her gig opening for Olivia Rodrigo on her first North American arena tour, February to April.

#10 Hozier – Too Sweet

OK, with those well-deserved honorable mentions out of the way, time to count down the top10 hits of 2024 according to Billboard‘s just-released year-end Hot100 here on our special New Years Edition of Chartcrush.

At #10, an Irish Singer-Songwriter who first got on the radar ten years ago in 2014 and ’15 when his hit “Take Me to Church” racked up 20 weeks in the top10. But just as his momentum was peaking, he took a year off, and although his albums did well, he was a one-hit wonder in the U.S., until this infectious bassline hit the streaming platforms and Pop radio and his teaser clip featuring a coffee-drinking, chain-smoking skeleton went viral on TikTok.

“Take Me to Church” topped out at #2 in ’14 and ’15, but this was his first #1, for a week in April. At #10, Hozier’s “Too Sweet.”

Hozier, “Too Sweet,” #10 here on our Chartcrush New Years Special counting down the top10 from Billboard‘s just-released year-end Hot100 for 2024.

#9 Zach Bryan featuring Kacey Musgraves – I Remember Everything

Country, a big story in Pop in 2023 with Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night” and Luke Combs’ remake of Tracy Chapman’s 1988 hit “Fast Car” both among Billboard‘s year-end top10. And in 2024 even the Wall Street Journal noticed. Kinda hard to miss when Beyonce is donning red, white and blue buttless chaps and a ten-gallon hat, and climbing on a horse for the cover of her 2024 album, Country Carter. “Texas Hold ‘Em,” #1 for two weeks in March, the biggest hit from that to date.

At #9, a Country Duet, the lead single from the fourth album by Billboard‘s Top New Artist of 2023, the first Country act ever to win that, since the category debuted in 1977. And featured, one of Country’s biggest Female crossover Acts since 2012.

It debuted at #1 on the Hot100 in September of 2023 and just its seven weeks before Billboard‘s October 21 chart year cut-off were enough to make it their #74 song of 2023. But in the 2024 chart year it racked up 17 more weeks in the top10 and stayed on the charts all the way to August, and that makes it Billboard‘s #9 song of 2024. It’s Zach Bryan featuring Kacey Musgraves’ “I Remember Everything.”

Zach Bryan, a proud Navy vet from Oklahoma with a Guild acoustic, a raspy voice and an earnest Folkie style who first made the Hot100 in 2022 with “Something in the Orange,” paired with Kacey Musgraves on Billboard‘s #9 song of 2024, “I Remember Everything.”

Country radio was slow to embrace Bryan, who didn’t come up through traditional Nashville channels; and it’s never really embraced outspoken Progressive Kacey Musgraves, who hadn’t cracked the top10 on the Country chart since 2014. But “I Remember Everything” was the first #1 for both of them, not just Country, but on the Hot100 and Hot Rock and Alternative charts too. Simultaneously! A Billboard first. Yes, outsiderdom sometimes has its perks!

#8 Tommy Richman – Million Dollar Baby

Next on our special Chartcrush New Year’s countdown of Billboard‘s top10 for 2024, a fluke of a hit, if there even is such a thing since MySpace, then YouTube, then Vine, then Instagram, then TikTok became so key to chart success. There’s been at least one of those every year since “Crank That (Soulja Boy)” in 2007, and at #8, 2024’s biggest, teased in a short TikTok vid April 13 and released two weeks and over 10 million views later, whereupon it debuted at #2 on the Hot100 May 1: the highest debut by a chart newcomer since Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond” in 2023.

And it didn’t leave the top10 ’til September, 17 weeks and over 200 million Spotify streams later. It’s previously unknown Virginian Tommy Richman, strong contender for Song of the Summer, “Million Dollar Baby.”

Just to make sure he wasn’t jinxing himself or overthinking things, Tommy Richman also released what he called the “VHS version” of “Million Dollar Baby” that has the distorted blown-out bass sound in the amateurish teaser vid that earned him nine-and-a-half million views on TikTok before he dropped the “official version” we just heard at #8 here on our Chartcrush New Years Special: Billboard‘s top10 songs of 2024.

#7 Sabrina Carpenter – Espresso

Now Taylor Swift may not have a hit in the top10, but over the years she’s demonstrated a definite knack for launching her opening acts onto the charts—or picking winners, depending on how you look at it.

Ed Sheeran on her Red Tour in 2013; Shawn Mendes on her 1989 Tour in 2015. “Havana” by Camila Cabello hit #1 in January 2018 before she opened for Taylor on her Reputation Tour, but the follow-up, “Never Be the Same,” made the top10 in May just as the tour was kicking off. And most recently, Gracie Abrams on the final leg of Swift’s Eras Tour in 2024: her “That’s So True” just became her first charting hit as a Lead Artist and her first top10 in November.

Well our act at #7 also opened 25 shows on the Eras tour in 2023 and ’24, but not in North America; in Latin America, plus Australia and Singapore. Right after that, the advance lead single from her new album debuted at #7, was her first top10 in April, and stayed in the top10 for basically the rest of the year, 31 weeks, peaking at #3. And her next single “Please Please Please” debuted at #2 in June and became her first #1 a week later. At #7, that first top10, which was still in the top5 at the end of Billboard‘s 2024 chart year, October 19, it’s Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso.”

The “Espresso” Sabrina Carpenter’s talking about? Herself! That’s that me espresso, keeping the boy up nights obsessing. And if that doesn’t do the trick, she’ll Mountain Dew it for you cuz it’s all about the caffeine, get it?

“Espresso,” Billboard‘s #7 song of 2024 and Best Song at the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards in September that had to be pushed back a day because of the Donald Trump/Kamala Harris Presidential Debate. When Carpenter’s album Short ‘n Sweet dropped in late August, all 12 of its songs made the Hot100, but it was her sixth album since her days as a Disney kid in the ’10s starring in Girl Meets World, and only her first to sell a million. She was definitely due!

#6 Kendrick Lamar – Not like Us

Now I mentioned the election talking about how the MTV VMA’s had to be rescheduled because of the Trump/Harris debate in September. The back-and-forth got pretty harsh in politics in ’24, but if you thought that was bad, Hip-Hop saw maybe its most acrimonious year since Kanye vs. 50 Cent in the mid ’00s; maybe since East Coast-West Coast/Biggie-Tupac in the ’90s, as the long-simmering beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar boiled over.

Things happened fast. Drake upped the ante first on May 3 with his 1,700-word seven-and-a-half minute diss track “Family Matters,” and within an hour, Kendrick’s 1,300-word six-and-a-half minute “Meet the Grahams” was on YouTube. But the last word dropped the next day, May 4, what Vibe‘s Marc Griffin called the “knockout punch” in the feud. It debuted at #1 on the Hot100 (Lamar’s fourth career chart topper), broke the record for most weeks atop Billboard‘s Rap chart with 25, and Drake’s only response to date? Take it to court. At #6, Kendrick Lamar’s “Not like Us.”

Kendrick Lamar’s “Not like Us” at #6 on our Chartcrush New Years Special counting down the top10 from Billboard‘s just-announced 2024 year-end Hot100 recap chart. Produced by Mustard, formerly DJ Mustard, who in the early ’10s pioneered “Ratchet Music” out of L.A., one of the few new street Hip-Hop styles to get chart traction during the EDM-Pop-Rap wave of the early ’10s. “Rack City,” a #7 hit for Rapper Tyga produced by Mustard in 2011. Which had critic Katherine St. Asaph calling “Not like Us” Mustard’s biggest hit since the Obama administration in the internet magazine Stereogum.

#5 Jack Harlow – Lovin on Me

Sticking with Hip-Hop for Billboard‘s #5 hit of 2024, the only song in the countdown whose chart run fell completely within Billboard‘s 2024 chart year. As I talked about in the intro, every other song had weeks of chart activity before and/or after Billboard‘s 2024 eligibility period that, when all the data is in and we compile our Chartcrush rankings based on songs’ full runs, will alter the rankings, perhaps dramatically.

It debuted at #2 in late November of ’23, like “Million Dollar Baby” we heard at #8, just weeks after a teaser vid for the song went viral on TikTok. A week later it was #1, then surged back to #1 in early ’24 for another five non-consecutive weeks. At #5, it’s newly mulleted White Kentucky Rapper and 2021 Billboard Top New Artist Nominee Jack Harlow, his third #1 and fifth top10 and since his pandemic breakthrough “What’s Poppin’” in 2020, “Lovin on Me.”

Jack Harlow’s biggest hit to date, “Lovin on Me,” six weeks at #1, passing his 2022 hit “First Class,” which had three, the #5 hit on Billboard‘s 2024 year-end Hot100 we’re counting down the top10 from here on our 2024 Chartcrush New Years Special.

#4 Post Malone featuring Morgan Wallen – I Had Some Help

Now just scanning the artist names in the year-end top10 for 2024, you might think the song at #4 is yet another Hip-Hop hit. Nope. It’s another Country hit, but by an Act who made his name in the late ’10s mostly as a Rapper. And as late ’10s names go, four years running, 2017 to 2020, his was in the top10 on Billboard‘s year-end Hot100; twice in ’18 and ’19.

And here he is again in 2024 repping a completely different genre, Country, with an assist from Morgan Wallen, the Singer who just scored the biggest Country crossover hit of all time, “Last Night,” Billboard‘s #1 song of 2023. The song at #4 debuted at #1 on both the Hot100 and Country charts and stayed on top on both for five weeks, a first. It’s the lead single from Post Malone’s 2024 album F-1 Trillion, “I Had Some Help.”

“I Had Some Help,” Post Malone featuring newly-minted Country Superstar Morgan Wallen at #4. It wasn’t just a one-off Country detour for Posty. As the Pink Floyd-worthy album cover of a pickup truck over a serene lake, impossibly balanced front-first on the water’s surface (or about to plunge in) proclaims, his 2024 F-1 Trillion album is a headfirst dive into Country.

After his 2023 album with no collaborators, F-1 Trillion‘s track list reads like a Nashville Hall of Fame: Blake Shelton, Tim McGraw, Brad Paisley, Luke Combs, Chris Stapleton, Hank Williams Jr. Even Dolly Parton! Clash critic Robin Murray called the album “a love letter” to Country.

All 18 tracks charted when the album dropped in late August, including the three advance singles already in the top40 with “I Had Some Help” in its 14th week in the top3.

#3 Benson Boone – Beautiful Things

Well we’re counting down the top10 hits from Billboard‘s just announced year-end Hot100 for 2024 here on our special New Years edition of the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show and we’re down to #3, a Singer whose impressive following on TikTok got him recruited to audition for Season 19 of American Idol in 2021. But after wowing all three judges and adding hundreds of thousands more followers, he was MIA at Hollywood Week, poached by Imagine Dragons front man Dan Reynolds for his Warner-affiliated label.

His first single “Ghost Town” only grazed the Hot100, but his second did a little better and at the end of 2023, sporting longer hair and a new ‘stache (those were back big in ’24) he teased snippets of his upcoming debut album’s lead single on TikTok and Instagram and racked up 130 million views.

It starts out slow, but wait! It’s a “sledgehammer ballad” according to Variety Senior Music Writer Stephen J. Horowitz. At #3, Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things.”

Originally two different songs, combined at the urging of a collaborator into that dynamic two-part emotional wallop, “Beautiful Things.” Benson Boone at #3 as we count down Billboard‘s top10 songs of 2024 on a special New Years Chartcrush.

In late June, Boone opened for Taylor Swift at Wembley Stadium in London, but “Beautiful Things” had already been in the top10 for 14 weeks by then so we can’t add Benson to the list of “Taylor made” stars that I recapped earlier. It sure didn’t hurt though!

It topped out at #2 on the Hot100 but was #1 on Billboard‘s Global 200 for seven weeks. That’s the power of a strong social media following!

#2 Shaboozey – A Bar Song (Tipsy)

Hey, have you ever heard of Woodbridge, Virginia? Population 45,000 20 miles south of DC? Well in a strange twist, two of Billboard‘s top10 hits of 2024 are by chart newcomers who are from there, and they debuted on the Hot100 within two weeks of each other: Tommy Richman with our #8 song “Million Dollar Baby” on May 11, and our act at #2 two weeks earlier on April 27.

Coincidence? Well it seems so. No one including the local papers were wise to any magic fairy mist wafting in off the Potomac in the Spring, or any connection between the two Artists whatsoever prior to making the charts.

Both had Rap aspirations coming up but Richman, a White dude with formal Opera training into Punk, and our #2 act, a Black Nigerian immigrant, five years older, channeling his dad’s love of Country.

Now Pop fans will recall that the last time a Black aspiring Rapper crossed over to the Country charts it broke the Hot100 record for weeks at #1, 19, Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” in 2019. Well this past year, our Nigerian immigrant tied that record with his Country-Rap hybrid. At #2 it’s Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy).”

Shaboozey, “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” at #2 on our Chartcrush New Years Special counting down the top10 from Billboard‘s hot-off-the-press year-end Hot100 for 2024. 19 weeks at #1, tying Lil Nas X’s record from 2019 with “Old Town Road.”

But it was still #1 at the cutoff for Billboard‘s 2024 chart year eligibility period, as it turns out, with five more weeks at #1 still to go before the songs from Kendrick Lamar’s new album GNX knocked it off its perch to #6 on December 7. Then Holiday songs hit the top5 the next week and nudged it down even further, to #8.

Will it rebound back to #1 in January? Well we’ll see, but either way, when all 2024 songs have run their course and we compile our 2024 Chartcrush rankings, with a total of 19 weeks at #1, it’s hard to see how “A Bar Song” won’t come out on top.

#1 Teddy Swims – Lose Control

But as of that cutoff date, October 19, a different song was coming up tops on points for Billboard‘s year-end 2024 ranking, and of course, that’s #1 on our countdown. It only had one week at #1, but was in the top10 basically all year, from January 20 to November 30, except for the week Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poets Department album dropped in May and all its songs charted.

It debuted at #99 at the end of August 2023 and didn’t even crack the top40 until Thanksgiving. After the holidays, though, it shot into the top10 and just stayed there. At #1 it’s yet another chart newcomer, Teddy Swims, “Lose Control.”

Billboard‘s Katie Atkinson said Teddy Swims benefitted “from an overall mainstreaming of growly Country voices” in 2024 including Zach Bryan, whose duet with Kacey Musgraves “I Remember Everything” we heard back at #9.

And if there’s a top headline for American Pop music in 2024, maybe that’s it. More broadly, the raw authenticity of the year’s top hits also comes across, not just voices but actual played instruments. If that remains a Pop priority going forward, 2024 will go down as a definite pivot point. Time as always will tell.

And as the clock ticks us into 2025 here in a few days, hours, minutes or seconds (depending on when, exactly, you’re listening to our special Chartcrush New Year’s countdown of Billboard‘s top10 for 2024), I hope you’ve enjoyed our first draft hot take on the year just passed.

I’m Christopher Verdesi, Creator and Host of the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show and as always I want to thank you for listening. On our website at chartcrush.com you’ll find a written transcript and a link to stream the podcast version of the show you just heard, plus all our regular episodes, each counting down the top10 hits of a different year. And you’ll also find plenty of other fun and informative goodies. Again, that website: chartcrush.com. Check in and leave a comment if you like, and be sure and tune in again next week for another edition of Chartcrush.

Happy New Year, folks!

::end transcript::

::start transcript::

Well, Merry Christmas folks and welcome to a special edition of the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show! Normally on this show, we set our sights on a year in Pop history and culture and count down the top ten hits according to our exclusive rankings based on the weekly charts published in Billboard, the music industry’s top trade mag. Well this week, it’s still a top 10 countdown, and it’s still based on the Billboard charts, but instead of a year, we’re gonna home in on… Christmas music, which has never been bigger on the charts, with at least one Christmas song making the top 10 on the weekly Hot100 every Holiday season since 2017, and, every year since 2019, actually topping the chart!

Now it’d be totally wrong to conclude from that that Americans are listening to more Christmas music than in days gone by, but since on-demand streams on platforms like Spotify and Apple Music became the biggest factor in Billboard‘s weekly song rankings in the late ’10s, listening has been tracked and measured like never before, so it is safe to say that the charts are doing a better job of reflecting what people are listening to between Thanksgiving and New Years, and for that matter, all year. And yeah, people are listening to a lot of Christmas music!

So we’ve crunched the data, same as we do when we rank the songs for our year-focused episodes, and this hour, we’re gonna count ’em down: the top-charting Christmas songs so far in the streaming era, 2016 to 2023.

Now Christmas records have been making the charts since the first year there were charts, 1940, when the Glenn Miller Band’s jazzed-up “Jingle Bells” made Billboard‘s Best Sellers in Stores top 10 two weeks at Christmas.

In the War years it was Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” starting in 1942 when it first came out, and it charted 18 of the next 20 Christmas seasons.

The late ’40s and early ’50s were sentimental, nostalgic times in America, and a golden age of Christmas music that produced many of the classic songs and performances still played at Holiday time by Singers like Nat King Cole, Gene Autry and Perry Como. Then Rock ‘n Roll changed everything on the charts, but not at Christmas! Like “White Christmas,” many pre-Rock era discs continued to chart year-after-year as Rockers and a new generation of Pop Singers added to the evolving canon.

The sole #1 Christmas hit of the ’50s decade, though, hasn’t aged very well. Sped-up vocals might’ve seemed like a marvel of modern studio-craft when The Chipmunks’ “Christmas Don’t Be Late” topped the chart in 1958, but it’s the highest-charting Christmas hit we won’t be hearing in our countdown—and that despite a new version charting over the holidays in 2007 after the Alvin & The Chipmunks movie hit theaters.

In the 1960s, Christmas music surged to new heights as Americans geared up at hi-fi shops, and in ’63, Billboard launched separate charts for it and removed holiday music from the Hot100 and the album charts. Those special holiday charts dwindled away to nothing, though, amid the revolutionary turmoil of the late ’60s, and Billboard discontinued them in 1973.

The first Christmas songs to chart on the Hot100 in ’73? John Denver’s “Please, Daddy (Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas)” and Merle Haggard’s equally desperate “If We Make It Through December.” Boy how times had changed! And Christmas music on the charts continued to be kind of a bummer straight through “Do They Know It’s Christmas?,” the 1984 New Wave charity guilt trip, ’til 1992, when David Letterman’s “Christmas Queen,” early ’60s Girl Group Singer Darlene Love, charted the first upbeat, positive holiday hit in 30 years, “All Alone on Christmas” from Home Alone 2. Lonely title; happy song, and backed by Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band.

But despite that, and “Macarena Christmas” for ’96, it was gonna take generational change to finally dispense with Jonesers’ and X-ers’ cynicism about Christmas and Christmas music, and that came when Millennial Christina Aguilera scored the biggest Christmas hit on the Hot100 since “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” with her sincere remake of “The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire).” That got to #18, followed by Shedaisy’s “Deck the Halls” and the first chart appearance for Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” in 1999.

In the ’00s, Christmas music mostly lived on Adult Contemporary radio, but besides News and Talk, that was the top-rated format on radio, and once downloads and on-demand streams took over the Hot100’s ranking calculus, Millennials and Gen-Z had a clear shot at remaking Christmas in their own image. So what did they do? Well that’s what we’re gonna find out this hour here on our Chartcrush Christmas countdown of the top ten Christmas hits (so far) in the streaming era!

#10 Dean Martin – Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

And #10 as we kick things off is a big hint. The song had been a #1 hit, not just before the streaming era, but before vinyl! Yeah, there was an era before vinyl, pre-1949 when brittle, delicate 78s were the only format for music, and the first Christmas after the Allied victory in World War 2, 1945, this song by Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn was #1 for five weeks for Boston area Bandleader/Singer Vaughn Monroe.

Monroe’s deep Baritone voice, though? Quite dated, and a hard sell even for sentimental Millennials and Gen-Zers, who preferred this version of the song in stereo, recorded for Dean Martin’s 1966 Christmas album (between drinks perhaps!). The #10 Christmas hit of the streaming era? Dean Martin’s version of “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!”

Dean Martin, “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” #10 on our Chartcrush Christmas Special counting down the top ten Christmas hits so far in the streaming era, 2016 to 2023. Deano’s version never made the Hot100 when it first came out because, again, Billboard wasn’t charting holiday songs on the Hot100 in the ’60s, but also, it wasn’t released as a single. His version of “White Christmas” was the single from his 1966 Christmas album “Let It Snow” was on, and it didn’t chart.

But of all the versions of “Let It Snow” over the years—Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Rod Stewart, Jessica Simpson, Michael Buble and many others, including Vaughn Monroe, that original one—year-after-year since 2018, Deano’s version is the only one that’s made the charts.

Martin also charted over the 2019 holidays with his 1959 duet with Marilyn Maxwell on “Baby It’s Cold Outside“.

#9 José Feliciano – Feliz Navidad

At #9, a song written and recorded in 1970, which you’ll recall from the intro was a time when Christmas music was in a downward spiral. And the Singer/Songwriter never expected it to do anything at all; he just dashed it off in minutes one day, far from home in a studio in L.A., feeling homesick and nostalgic for his family Christmas in Puerto Rico. But over the years it gradually picked up steam and first charted Christmas 2016: the traditional Spanish Christmas and New Year greeting that translates to English “Merry Christmas, a prosperous year and happiness.” At #9, the first bilingual Christmas song, José Feliciano’s “Feliz Navidad.”

“Feliz Navidad, próspero año y felicidad.” That’s Spanish for “Merry Christmas, a prosperous year and happiness.” José Feliciano with the #9 Christmas song here on our special edition of Chartcrush counting down the top 10 Christmas hits of the streaming era based on Billboard‘s Hot100 rankings since 2016.

After charting at Christmas in 2016, it went missing from the charts at Christmas 2017, which is really ironic because 2017 was the year Luis Fonzi’s “Despacito” was #1 for 16 weeks: a watershed for Latin Pop. But “Feliz Navidad” was back in ’18, and every year since, first making the top 10 in 2020 and returning in ’21, ’22 and ’23.

#8 Wham! – Last Christmas

Next up at #8, something from the ’80s, when Christmas music still wasn’t very cool, but anything by this Act was gonna get attention. Besides, the song is less about Christmas than the heartbreak that inevitably results from misplaced emotions. Christmas is the backdrop, but also a motivator to do better. The cast of the TV show Glee first charted a version of the song in the U.S. off their 2009 Christmas album, and then up-and-coming Pop star Ariana Grande made the charts with her version at Christmas the year she debuted on the Hot100, 2013.

But the original had never charted in the U.S. It wasn’t released as a single despite getting to #2 on the U.K. chart upon its initial release in 1984 and several more years after. That changed, though, in 2016 when the Writer and original Singer unexpectedly died, at just 53, on Christmas Day. So in tribute, the original made the U.S. chart, peaking at #41. And it’s come back at Christmas every year since, in the top 10 every year since 2020. At #8 it’s the late George Michael’s Duo Wham! with “Last Christmas.”

“Last Christmas,” Wham! at #8 on our special Chartcrush countdown of the top ten Christmas hits of the streaming era.

#7 Bing Crosby – White Christmas

At #7, the record I mentioned in the intro that first charted all the way back in 1942. Together with the Singer’s nearly identical 1947 re-recording of it for the same label, Decca (because the original master was worn out from all the re-pressings), it has charted 24 Christmases and counting, by far the most of any record in our countdown. And it would be more if Billboard hadn’t stopped charting holiday hits on the Hot100 in the ’60s and early ’70s.

The original version recorded in 18 minutes in 1942 is out there if you look for it, but it’s the 1947 one that re-entered the Hot100 in 2018 for the first time since 1962, and has charted every Christmas since. 1947: that’s the oldest recording in our Christmas countdown, and not only that, it’s the oldest recording ever to chart on the Hot100 period! At #7, Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas.”

Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” at #7 here on our special edition of the Chartcrush Countdown Show: the top 10 Christmas hits of the streaming era. Like many of the ’40s top tunes, from a movie musical: Holiday Inn, in which Bing co-starred with Fred Astaire. And it won legendary Songwriter Irving Berlin his only Best Song Oscar, which he presented at the Oscar ceremony… to himself, the only time that’s ever happened. “And the Oscar goes to… me!” He humbly accepted. Berlin, a Russian-Jewish immigrant writing the biggest Christmas hit of all time. Only in America, folks.

#6 Andy Williams – It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Fast forwarding now for our #6 hit to 1963, when Billboard‘s first annual Holiday music charts were all about this Singer. And in the 10-year history of those charts, ’63 to ’73, no album racked up more weeks at #1: nine all told. Our #6 song was on that album, but the label, Columbia, didn’t see fit to promote it, at least at first. Instead they went with his version of “White Christmas,” and that actually beat Bing Crosby’s in ’63.

When the album returned to #1 on the Holiday chart in ’64 and Columbia did issue the song as a promo 45, it failed to make the singles chart. But after decades of holiday department store commercials using it and the Singer’s Christmas specials on TV, by 2001 it was big enough to make ASCAP’s first annual ranking of the top 25 holiday songs most played on radio, and by 2010 was #4 on that list. It made its streaming era Hot100 debut Christmas 2015, and has cracked the top 10 every year since 2018. At #6, Andy Williams’ “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.”

In a 2023 round-up of the 100 best Christmas songs of all time, Billboard‘s Staff was tempted to assign Andy Williams’ “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” a “schmaltz factor” of 11 on a scale of one to 10. “The most schmaltziest schmaltz of them all…like Santa flew in on his sleigh from the North Pole and wrote the song himself,” unquote. But if the key feature of holiday music in the 21st century is Millennials and Zoomers embracing the sentimentality of the season instead of laughing at it like their parents did, then schmaltz sells!

That subjective Billboard staff ranking put it at #14; we have it at #6 on our Chartcrush ranking of the top 10 charting Christmas hits of the streaming era based solely on chart placements. Williams’ “Happy Holiday/The Holiday Season” has also made the Hot100 every Christmas since 2019.

#5 Nat King Cole – The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas to You)

Now I mentioned that Bing Crosby’s 1947 re-do of “White Christmas” is the oldest recording in our countdown. Well if the Singer’s original version of our #5 Christmas hit was the one making the Hot100 every holiday season since 2015, he’d have ‘ol Bing beat by a year.

1946, the year he first waxed it, and that was a year after Mel Tormé saw lyricist Robert Wells’ jotted-down lyrics on an oppressively hot Summer day, pre-air conditioning, and the two of them went to work, trying to “stay cool by thinking cool,” and they finished the song in less than an hour.

Tormé eventually recorded it himself, but he gave it to his friend to cut the first version with his Jazz Trio and a small string section, and that made the top 10 on both Billboard‘s DJ and Best-Sellers charts in ’46: his biggest hit up ’til then.

In 1953 after he’d become a superstar Pop Crooner with his #1’s “Mona Lisa” and “Too Young,” he re-did it with Nelson Riddle conducting a full orchestra, and then again in 1961 in stereo (and with a little extra gravel in his voice) with a different Conductor (Ralph Carmichael), but sticking with Riddle’s arrangement. That version charted in ’62 and is the one that’s been re-entering the Hot100 every Christmas since 2015. At #5 it’s Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song.”

“The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire),” #5 on our Chartcrush Countdown of the top charting Christmas hits of the streaming era. As I mentioned earlier, it was Christina Aguilera’s warm, sincere version of that song in 1999 peaking at #18 that turned the tide on over 30 years of “too cool for school” cynicism and mockery of traditional Christmas music, the top charting holiday hit since “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” in 1984. But Nat King Cole’s 1961 version is tops in the streaming era. His version of “Deck the Halls” has also charted four years running since 2020.

#4 Burl Ives – A Holly Jolly Christmas

And it’s back to the mid ’60s for #4, to the 1964 Rankin-Bass stop-motion Christmas special, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer that’s been a must-watch on TV every Christmas since. The Singer is the voice of the Narrator, Sam the Snowman, and the song is in the special, but it’s a slightly different version recorded separately by the Singer in ’64 that’s become the Christmas standard on radio, and since the 2016 holiday season, on the Billboard Hot100. It’s been in the top 10 every year since ’18. At #4, Burl Ives’ “Holly Jolly Christmas.”

Burl Ives made his name as a Folk Singer, went to Juilliard, got parts in Broadway shows in the ’30s and started charting hits in 1949. In 1950 he cooperated with the House Un-American Activities Committee and avoided the blacklist, but at the expense of his relationship with other Folkies like Pete Seeger, whose group The Weavers went from #1 on the charts to not even being able to play clubs almost overnight in the early ’50s (they eventually reconciled).

Ives won an Oscar in 1959 for his Supporting role in the epic Western Big Country, so at 55 when he did “Holly Jolly Christmas” and voiced Sam the Snowman in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, he was entertainment royalty.

#3 Bobby Helms – Jingle Bell Rock

At #3, a song that the Singer recorded at least seven versions of between 1957 and 1983, all quite different, but unlike Nat King Cole with “The Christmas Song,” none of them besides the 1957 original on Decca with Nashville Guitarist Hank Garland connected. And that original was a hit as soon as it came out just months after he’d scored his first top 10, “My Special Angel” in November of ’57.

He was the latest in a succession of young Nashville Rockabilly sensations, so when he dropped his Christmas single, Dick Clark’s Teen Dance show American Bandstand had him on to do it and the record shot to #7 on Billboard‘s Best Sellers chart. Unfortunately though, after that his singles barely dented the charts, and if not for his Christmas song charting again in ’58, ’60, ’61 and ’62, and then after that on that segregated Holiday chart into the ’60s, he’d be just one of many Rockabilly one-hit wonders.

In 2015 the song re-entered the Hot100, and it’s made the top 10 every year since 2018. At #3, Bobby Helms, “Jingle Bell Rock.”

Bobby Helms’ “Jingle Bell Rock” at #3 on our special Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown of the biggest Christmas hits of the streaming era. The first glimmer of its enduring success into the new century? It’s reappearance in the Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sinbad comedy Jingle All the Way, which got it back on the Country chart for two weeks during the 1996 Christmas season.

#2 Brenda Lee – Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree

Well we’re down to #2, a record whose chart success in the digital era goes back to 2013 when downloads were still the Hot100’s top component as well as radio airplay and YouTube views. It skipped 2014, but it’s charted every Christmas since, peaking at #2 four years straight, 2019 to ’22. And in 2023, it became the only other Christmas song besides our song up next at #1 to top the Hot100 in the streaming era. At #3 it’s Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.”

Brenda Lee was just 13 when she recorded and first released “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” in 1958. She did it at the insistence of veteran Songwriter Johnny Marks, who’d also written “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” first a hit by Gene Autry in 1949, and who later also wrote “A Holly Jolly Christmas” in 1962, Burl Ives’ hit we heard at #4.

1960 was Brenda Lee’s breakthrough year on the charts, with four top 10s including the #1’s “I’m Sorry” and “I Want to Be Wanted,” so “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” first charted at Christmas 1960, peaking at #14, then re-entered again in ’61 and ’62 and on that Christmas singles chart thereafter.

#1 Mariah Carey – All I Want for Christmas Is You

So what’s the #1 song on our special Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown of the biggest Christmas hits of the streaming era? Well if you’re a chart watcher, you probably know already just based on all the hype that’s accompanied its re-appearance on the Hot100 year-after-year, but for the rest of you out there, I already mentioned it in my brief thumbnail history of Christmas songs on the Billboard charts at the top of the show: a song written and recorded in 1994 and issued as the lead single from the Singer’s first Christmas album at the height of her fame.

But still, it didn’t chart until 1999, the year Millennials imprinted themselves on pop culture with MTV’s Total Request Live, Britney vs. Christina and the Boy Bands, ‘NSYNC and Backstreet Boys. Christina (as in Aguilera’s) unironic, sentimental reboot of “The Christmas Song” cracking the top 20 after her explosive debut earlier in the year began a cascade of similarly sincere, good-timey neo-Christmas anthems that included our #1 song’s first chart appearance.

It only got to #83 while her song “Thank God I Found You” was starting its run to #1, but it’s still noteworthy in that it hadn’t charted when first released, and Airplay and CD sales were the only way to make the charts in ’99. And again, Darlene Love notwithstanding, Christmas songs like this just didn’t become hits. It’d been that way for 30 years. The fact that the Singer was Gen-X’s top charting Pop star made it even more poignant, like a long-overdue generational surrender to the simple joys of Christmas, with prodding from the younger generation.

Here it is: the #1 Christmas song of the streaming era, Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”

It has a definite ’60s groove, but it’s Mariah Carey and it’s a song written and recorded in the ’90s, not the ’60s, ’50s or ’40s. “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” the #1 Christmas song, not just on our Chartcrush ranking of the top holiday hits of the streaming era, but any such ranking you’re likely to find.

It’s hit #1 on the Hot100 every Christmas since 2019, which breaks all kinds of chart records, too many to even get into. Maybe Billboard was right in 1963 when they gave Christmas music its own chart and took it out of the Hot100. Songs like the ones we’ve heard this hour are in a separate class: precious, timeless, artifacts of Christmases past, still cherished in the present, if only for a few weeks every year, but their enduring magic continues to bedazzle new generations of fans, and dare we say, perhaps even help shape musical tastes the other 47 weeks of the year in the future.

You’ve been listening to a special edition of the Chartcrush Countdown Show: the top 10 biggest Christmas hits of the streaming era. Thank you for listening. I’ve been your host, the creator of Chartcrush, Christopher Verdesi, and I also want to wish you the merriest of Christmases and a happy, fulfilling New Year.

On our website at chartcrush.com you’ll find a written transcript of the show you just heard, plus all our other episodes, each counting down the top 10 hits of a different year with commentary. And you’ll also find links to stream our Chartcrush episodes online, and other fun and informative goodies. Again, the website: chartcrush.com, I hope you’ll visit. And I hope you’ll tune in again next week, same station and time, for another edition of Chartcrush. Merry Christmas, folks!

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Welcome! This is The Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show and I’m your host, Christopher Verdesi. Every week on Chartcrush, we dive deep into a year in Pop music and culture and count down the top 10 songs according to our exclusive recap of the weekly Pop charts published at the time in Billboard, the music industry’s top trade mag. This week we’re turning the clock back to 1974, the year “Rock attained perfection” according to Homer Simpson. But also, quote, “the worst year, bar none, in the history of popular music” in Pulitzer-winning critic Tim Page’s widely-quoted opinion.

Confused? Well, by ’74, Rock had migrated to albums, and since most people don’t buy singles of songs they have on albums, the vacuum on the Hot100, a singles chart, was filled by, well, everything else, and whether or not you agree with him, it’s the “everything else” that Tim Page is talking about.

Rock even had its own radio band in the ’70s, FM, and a front page piece in Billboard in ’74 quoted experts predicting (accurately) that FM would overtake AM by 1981, which, not coincidentally, was when Billboard first recognized Rock as its own genre and launched a new chart tracking airplay on FM Rock stations. Until then, though, for a Rock Act to make any of Billboard‘s songs charts including the Hot100, it had to find an audience in the singles market beyond its fan base willing to shell out for the album.

A handful did achieve that, including all four former Beatles in ’73 and ’74, but because of that album factor, a lesser-known Rock Act without an existing fan base buying its album actually stood a better chance of making the top10 if AM radio played their song. That’s why, say, Blue Swede’s “Hooked on a Feeling” was #1 in ’74, but nothing on The Rolling Stones It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll album cracked the top 10.

Now, Soul and R&B acts like Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Temptations and others, also airing it out on albums, of course, but unlike Rock before ’81, Soul/R&B did have its own songs chart, along with Country and Easy Listening, so a lot more crossover between those genres and the Hot100.

But the larger point here: with the oldest Baby Boomers hitting their late 20s and albums overtaking singles not just in revenue but units, the Hot100 itself had become a genre chart, not based on a style, but on a format, the single, that had always been the default for Pop, but no longer. And in 1970 the genre got a name, borrowed from radio jargon, when Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 launched and people first started obsessing over charts.

And let’s face it: in the mid ’70s, people really needed things like that just to stay sane! Vietnam, not looking good after the U.S. combat role ended. Gas prices, up over 20% since ’73 and still rising even after OPEC ended its embargo. Bombings, hijackings and other mayhem by fringe activist groups peaking. Something called the Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapped heiress Patricia Hearst in March, and then she shows up just weeks later robbing a bank with them!

Serial killers, on people’s minds as Ted Bundy and Dennis Rader started their killing sprees. In Florida, a newswoman, Christine Chubbuck, killed herself on live TV! And, of course, Watergate: President Nixon turning over his Oval Office tapes to Congress in July, and then resigning two weeks later.

With all that and a recession, entertainment boomed. All sectors—film, TV, sports and music: normal in tough times, but in the early ’70s, Hollywood was making bank stoking anxiety and paranoia, not soothing it. Exorcist, Deliverance, Death Wish and the peaking disaster movie genre supplying three of ’74’s top 10 films: The Towering Inferno, Earthquake and Airport 75. And on the tube Norman Lear’s All in the Family and its spinoffs The Jeffersons, Maude and Good Times magnified the day’s headlines.

So for an escape valve, that left Sports and Music, and Sports sure delivered! More on that later. But in Music, a record 36 #1 hits provided a diverse (and pretty escapist) soundtrack on still-dominant AM radio.

#10 Dionne Warwicke and The Spinners – Then Came You

And nine of those 36 #1 are in our top10 countdown for ’74, including our song at #10, which was #1 the on the Hot100 the week Billboard published its first Dance Club Songs charts, October 26, tracking sales at two New York Record stores, and a third compiled by Disco DJ Tom Moulton based on what he was hearing in clubs.

It wasn’t on any of those Dance charts, but it’s a prime slice of the Philly Soul style that led directly to Disco, by two acts who’d been making the charts since the early ’60s but had only recently landed at Atlantic Records. And Producer Thom Bell gave them both their first career #1. At #10 as we kick things off, it’s Dionne Warwicke and The Spinners’ “Then Came You.”

“Then Came You” at #10 on our Chartcrush Countdown of 1974’s top 10 hits, later included on both Dionne Warwicke’s and The Spinners’ next albums, but only on a single when it came out: always a plus for ranking on the Hot100. The Spinners, already one of Atlantic’s top Groups since their breakthrough in ’72 but for Dionne, it was a comeback: her first top 10 in five years since before the Songwriter-Producers behind most of her ’60s hits split, Burt Bacharach and Hal David.

After signing with Warner Brothers (Atlantic’s parent company) in ’71 she tacked on an “e” to the end of “Warwick” for good luck. No kidding: she got the idea from an Astrologer friend, which won’t surprise anyone who saw Dionne’s ubiquitous Psychic Friends Network commercials in the ’90s! None of Dionne’s follow-ups to “Then Came You” charted, so in ’75 she went back to the original spelling without the “e.”

#9 MFSB featuring The Three Degrees – TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)

But that Philly Soul sound stayed hot! In ’75, Europeans Giorgio Moroder and Michael Kunze and Sylvester Levay scored big hits for Donna Summer and The Silver Convention respectively with their minimalist, synthy take. Viola! Disco! But in ’74 it was all Thom Bell and the Producers of our #9 hit, Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff.

Bell’s signature style, melodicism and psychedelic flourishes like the flanged wah-wah guitar on “Then Came You” while Gamble/Huff’s sound was punchier and funkier. But the common denominator: strings. Lots of strings. And what better to highlight those than an instrumental! At #9, the first and only #1 hit in history with an abbreviated artist and title. MFSB, the artist, short for “Mother, Father, Sister, Brother” (or “Mother F-ing Son of a B’s” depending on who you ask). And the title, “TSOP:” “The Sound of Philadelphia.”

Soul Train launched on TV in Chicago in 1970: DJ-entrepreneur Don Cornelius’ American Bandstand-inspired showcase for Black music and youth, and in ’73 Cornelius turned to Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff for a new theme. “TSOP” by their Philadelphia International label’s house band MFSB featuring vocals by Girl Group The Three Degrees opened the show from ’73 to ’75 as it ramped up into a full-blown cultural phenomenon: #9 as we count down the top 10 hits of 1974 here on this week’s edition of Chartcrush.

Cornelius later regretted his decision to not have the name of the show in the words or title. Unclear what his thinking was exactly, but he corrected the mistake with every subsequent Soul Train theme. Unfortunately, none of those were hits, but plenty of other TV themes were: Rhythm Heritage’s “Theme from S.W.A.T.,” Mike Post’s “Rockford Files Theme,” John Sebastian’s “Welcome Back” from Welcome Back Kotter, Pratt & McLain’s “Happy Days:” all top 10s later in the ’70s.

#8 Al Wilson – Show and Tell

And speaking of Soul Train, at #8, a song and Singer featured on the show in ’74. The song, previously issued by Crooner Johnny Mathis in ’73, but his went nowhere so the Songwriter, Jerry Fuller, also a veteran Producer and label owner, paired it with the Singer, in his mid-30s and hitless since his minor splash in ’68 with his version of Civil Rights Activist Oscar Brown’s cautionary story song “The Snake,” whose lyrics candidate Donald Trump later revived in spoken form at campaign rallies.

It came out on Fuller’s indie Rocky Road label and checked enough Philly Soul boxes to make the cut on AM radio, and after climbing the chart all Fall through the Holidays it got its week at #1 in January ’74. At #8 it’s Al Wilson’s “Show and Tell.”

Al Wilson at #8 on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown for 1974. He made the Hot100 twice more in ’74 after “Show and Tell,” again in ’75, and even cracked the top 30 in ’76 with his debut release on Hugh Hefner’s short-lived Playboy label, but that was the end of the road for him on the charts, and he spent the next 20 years touring clubs and lounges.

#7 Love Unlimited Orchestra – Love’s Theme

So Sports! Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s career home run record in 1974, and in October, Charley O. Finley’s colorful, mustachio’d Oakland A’s won their third straight World Series. In basketball all eyes were on Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Julius Erving. In football it was Bob Greise, Larry Csonka and the Miami Dolphins repeating as Superbowl champs. And hockey’s Philadelphia Flyers earned the nickname “Broad Street Bullies” with their aggressive playing personified by Center and Team Captain Bobby Clarke and his two missing front teeth. And of course, “The Rumble in the Jungle,” Muhammad Ali reclaiming his heavyweight title from George Forman in Zaire in October. “Black Superman,” a Top40 hit in early ’75 inspired by Ali.

In August, French Acrobat Philippe Petit walked a tightrope between New York’s Twin Towers and a month later, Evel Knievel attempted to jump the Snake River Canyon in Idaho on a rocket bike. No, Hollywood wasn’t offering much in the way of escapism in the early ’70s, but Sports sure was. And all those names I mentioned and others were cultural icons in a way that only a handful of athletes had ever been before.

At #7, another Philly Soul instrumental. ’74, the first year since 1961 with more than one instrumental in the top 10 on the year by our Chartcrush rankings. And while “TSOP” we heard at #9 was the theme of Soul Train, this was the de facto theme for practically every Sports event on TV in ’74, and officially the TV theme of the aforementioned Philadelphia Flyers. Philly, looming large as the bicentennial approached! At #7, the biggest of ’74’s instrumental smashes: Barry White’s Love Unlimited Orchestra with “Love’s Theme.”

Barry White had already scored his first hits in front of the mic with his sexy, deep Baritone when “Love’s Theme” hit #1 in February ’74. But he was also a successful Producer, and the 40-piece Orchestra he’d assembled to back the Girl Group he’d discovered, Love Unlimited, proved chart-worthy in its own right, as we just heard at #7 on our Chartcrush 1974 Top Ten Countdown.

Barry’s biggest hits as a Singer were right around the corner: “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe” hit #1 in September and “You’re the First, the Last, My Everything” was in the top 10 by year’s end. And in the early ’90s when Jodeci, Silk and R. Kelly were turning up the steam factor on the charts, he was back with “Practice What You Preach” and a recurring role as himself on The Simpsons, which cemented his legacy as R&B’s original Sultan of Smooth.

#6 Steve Miller Band – The Joker

But he wasn’t the Gangster of Love or Space Cowboy. No, those honorifics, already claimed by our act at #6, callbacks to two of his late ’60s songs. And other lyrics in the song, from obscure ’50s R&B records. Not “midnight toker,” though. That was a new one. And somehow it got past AM radio censors still cracking the whip about drug references despite letting the word “damn” slide on Isaac Hayes’ “Theme From Shaft” and Jim Croce’s “Bad Bad Leroy Brown” in ’71 and ’73, respectively, both #1 hits.

And speaking of steam, greenlighting Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On,” also in ’73 and also a #1 hit. They didn’t flag it on Brewer & Shipley’s “One Toke Over the Line” either in ’71. But the single edit of our #6 song still had “midnight toker,” and it seemed only Hippies were any the wiser.

The song a complete overhaul of his sound for the ’70s and it connected, just like when he updated again for the ’80s with “Abracadabra.” At #6 it’s the title song from The Steve Miller Band’s 1973 album, “The Joker.”

Now you weren’t likely to hear much Who or Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd or Yes on the AM airwaves, but Steve Miller, one of a handful of Rockers in the ’70s who managed to tear it up on both the Album chart and the Hot100 singles chart. “The Joker,” his first big hit single, topping the chart for a single week in January. And he made the top 10 three more times in ’76 and ’77, including another #1, “Rock’n Me.”

Another lyric in “The Joker” that had folks in ’74 scratching their heads: who or what is this “pompatus of love” Miller speaks of? Believe it or not there’s a whole movie dedicated to sleuthing that out, titled, you guessed it, The Pompatus of Love. Actor John Cryer spilled the beans to Straightdope’s Cecil Adams when the film was in theaters in 1996. The actual word is “puppetutes” and it’s from a 1954 record by an obscure L.A. Doo Wop Group: Singer Vernon Green’s word for the paper dolls that inspired his Teen fantasies.

#5 Jackson 5 – Dancing Machine

At #5, the only song in our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown for 1974 that never got to #1. Which was quite a feat in a year with 36 chart toppers, but it had a good long chart run (for ’74) of 22 weeks, with nine in the top 10, as many as any record in ’74. And two at #2.

It’s a comeback to the top 10 by five Brothers whose first four singles all went to #1 in 1970, and whose next two in ’71 peaked at #2. But then, at the height of their fame as a Group, their label, Motown, started putting out solo records by two of the Brothers, which worked out great for the youngest, Michael, but not so much for his older Brother Jermaine, and not for the Group, who suddenly couldn’t even crack the top 10.

Until ’74, when this not only got to #2, but positioned them as a cutting-edge Funk-based Dance Act at the exact moment when that was a very smart thing to be. At #5 it’s The Jackson 5’s mid-’70s comeback, “Dancing Machine.”

“Dancing Machine,” The Jackson 5 at #5. Doing it on Soul Train, 15-year-old Michael famously busted out the first of his “wait, what did I just see?” signature dance moves. The moon walk? Well that would have to wait ’til “Billie Jean” in ’83, but in ’73 and ’74 it was the robot dance!

#4 Ray Stevens – The Streak

And at #4 we have the record that blocked “Dancing Machine” from getting to #1 the two weeks in May it was #2, considered a travesty by most critics, but rarely in pop culture do we find such a clear reflection of a defining fad getting all the way to #1. For all the hype about Muhammad Ali and the Rumble in the Jungle, Johnny Wakelin’s “Black Superman” only got as high as #21.

The Sexual Revolution, of course, fanned out from the counterculture in the ’70s, but before it found its main thoroughfare into the mainstream via Disco, one of the better-lit detours earlier in the decade? Streaking. It started in upstate New York: college students, exclusively male at first, stripping down to just sneakers and socks and running across campus.

News coverage and late-night-TV amplified the fad and at the Academy Awards in April, mustachio’d LGBT Editor/Photographer Robert Opel streaked across the stage on live TV as Actor David Niven introduced Elizabeth Taylor to present the Best Picture Oscar.

Only a few days before that, Pop’s longtime Prankster/Comedian had rushed out his unique take on the phenomenon, and as Opel enjoyed his 15 minutes of fame, it zoomed up the charts, #1 its sixth week, where it stayed three weeks in May. At #4 on our Chartcrush Countdown of 1974’s top 10 hits, Ray Stevens’ “The Streak.”

With his early ’60s hits like “Ahab the Arab,” “Harry the Hairy Ape” and “Jeremiah Peabody’s Poly Unsaturated Quick Dissolving Fast Acting Pleasant Tasting Green and Purple Pills,” Ray Stevens pioneered a slapstick Country-Folk style that AM Pop DJs just couldn’t resist, that was imitated by Hippie acts like Arlo Guthrie in “Alice’s Restaurant” and Country Joe & The Fish’s anti-Vietnam “Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag,” otherwise known as 1-2-3 What Are We Fighting For?”

In 1970 he played it straight and scored his first #1 with “Everything Is Beautiful,” but after that he couldn’t crack the top 40 with anything, Novelty or straight, until 1974 and “The Streak,” #4 on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown for 1974. The biggest Novelty hit since David Seville’s “Witch Doctor” in 1958, and until Rick Dees’ “Disco Duck” in ’76, and yes, that includes “Alley Oop,” “The Monster Mash” and “The Purple People Eater.”

Surprisingly, he followed up “The Streak” with an album of Pop standards, which, even more surprisingly, did well! His banjo take on “Misty” got all the way to #14 in ’75. And the phrase “boogity boogity?” Nearly as ubiquitous as “dy-no-MITE!” in the ’70s, and color commentator Daryl Waltrip resurrected it as his catchphrase for the green flag starting off NASCAR races on FOX TV throughout the 2000’s and ’10s. Yes, “The Streak” had cultural legs!

#3 Elton John – Bennie and the Jets

At #3, we have the second of two back-to-back songs with canned laughter sounds, how about that? In “The Streak” it was laughs fighting with the cartoonish instrumental backing; on this, it’s concert applause for the Glam Rock robot Group from the future that the song’s about.

Never conceived as a single, it even seemed out of place on the sprawling 1973 double concept album it was on, but after it started getting airplay on the biggest R&B station in America’s R&B capital, Detroit, the Artist was so delighted that he scuttled “Candle in the Wind” as his next single and went with this instead, and it became his second #1. At #3 it’s Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets.”

The second of Elton John’s four consecutive appearances in our Chartcrush top 10’s from 1973 to ’76, “Bennie and the Jets” at #3 for ’74. “Crocodile Rock” was #7 for ’73; “Philadelphia Freedom” and “Island Girl,” numbers 3 and 8, respectively, for ’75, and his duet with Kiki Dee, “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart,” #10 for 1976. No other artist matched that until Mariah Carey in the ’90s.

Besides the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road double LP, “Bennie and the Jets” was also on Elton’s Greatest Hits album released in late ’74, one of the five Greatest Hits packages to top the album chart in ’74, along with Carpenters, John Denver, Beach Boys and Crosby Still Nash & Young. Up to ’74 all the way back to 1958, only four Greatest Hits LPs had topped the chart, but they continued to be among the top sellers for decades.

#2 Terry Jacks – Seasons in the Sun

OK, we’re down to #2: a favorite target of 1974 naysayers and Worst Song Ever list compilers down through the decades. You know who you are. But it’s fascinating how those lists always skew so heavily toward earnest soul-searching tear-jerkers. Mark Dinning’s “Teen Angel” from 1960, Bobby Goldsboro’s “Honey” from ’68, and then this. Maybe there are subjects that shouldn’t be addressed in two- or three-minute Pop songs, but the folks who made them massive hits would clearly disagree.

Our #2 song is a cover of a 1961 song originally in French by Belgian Jacques Brel, translated to English by American Poet Rod McKuen and recorded by The Kingston Trio in ’64, then stripped of all its cheating-wife sarcasm in the original, and loaded up with simple love declarations for the hit. At #2 it’s Terry Jacks’ “Seasons in the Sun.”

Terry Jacks had been on the charts before: #2 in 1970 with his wife Susan as The Poppy Family on “Which Way You Goin’ Billy?” They split when the marriage ended in ’73 and Terry went to work with The Beach Boys on “Seasons in the Sun,” but Brian Wilson tinkered with it too long, as he was known to do. Jacks got frustrated and did his own, and it was one of the biggest hits of 1974.

He disappeared from the charts after two follow-ups in ’74 failed to connect, then retreated behind the glass as a Producer for a few years and re-emerged as an environmental activist in the ’80s. A common kids’ variation on the lyrics to “Seasons in the Sun” in the ’70s: “We had joy, we had fun, we had weiners in a bun.”

#1 Barbra Streisand – The Way We Were

And that gets us down to #1 here on our Chartcrush Countdown of the top 10 songs of 1974, by a Brooklyn girl whose singular focus coming up was Broadway, and her meteoric rise in the early ’60s is a great rags-to-riches show-biz story. Along the way, her singles and albums of mostly medleys and show-tunes did well on the charts, but it wasn’t ’til 1969 that she made her first Pop album, Stoney End, the title track of which became her first top 10 since her chart debut “People” from Funny Face in ’64.

In ’73 she passed on recording the Pop version of “Delta Dawn,” which Helen Reddy got instead and took to #1. And she also refused the song from The Poseidon Adventure, “The Morning After,” so Producers tapped unknown Singer Maureen McGovern and that also got to #1. Fortunately, though, she did sing the title song for the 1973 movie she starred in opposite Robert Redford, and it didn’t just get to #1, it was #1 on the year. 1974, that is, after debuting in late ’73 when the film hit theaters. At #1, it’s Barbra Streisand’s “The Way We Were.”

“The Way We Were,” Barbra Streisand’s first #1 and the #1 song here on our 1974 edition of the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show. Melody by Marvin Hamlisch, who scored a #3 hit himself a few months later with his arrangement of Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer” from The Sting, which won the Best Picture Oscar Elizabeth Taylor presented after Streaker Robert Opel cleared the stage.

Streisand had seven more top 10s on the Hot100 through 1981 including three #1s, and 21 top 10s including six #1s over on the Adult Contemporary chart through 1997.

Bonus

Well that’s our top 10 here on our 1974 edition of Chartcrush but we’re not quite done yet. Three songs that made the top 10 in our Chartcrush ranking were not among the top 10 on Billboard‘s year-end Hot100 published at the end of 1974.

Our #10 song, Dionne Warwicke & The Spinners “Then Came You” was too late in the year for all its weeks to be counted in Billboard‘s 1974 chart year. They have it at #46, but counting its full chart run as we do for every song at Chartcrush, it does much better.

Al Wilson’s “Show and Tell” on the other hand was too early, with its first weeks in Billboard‘s 1973 chart year. Our #8 song; they have that at #15.

And finally, “The Joker.” Steve Miller Band. Same deal: too early. Billboard has it at #40; it’s our #6 song of the year counting its full run. But three songs coming in to our top 10 displaces three from Billboard‘s, so to be thorough we’re gonna take a look at those.

#65 Mac Davis – One Hell of a Woman

Billboard‘s #10 song of ’74 had the longest chart run of any single in ’74, 28 weeks, but never made the top 10 and was only in the top 20 for six weeks. Our Chartcrush ranking method is less generous to songs with runs like that so we have it at #65. It’s Mac Davis’ “One Hell of a Woman.”

Mac Davis wrote several of Elvis Presley’s late ’60s comeback hits including “In the Ghetto,” then got to #1 on his own on both the Pop and Country charts in ’72 with “Baby Don’t Get Hooked on Me.” “One Hell of a Woman” was his second million-seller.

#15 Grand Funk – The Loco-Motion

Next as we look at the three songs that made Billboard‘s year-end top 10 for 1974 but not our Chartcrush Top Ten on the year we counted down earlier, their #6 song that notches in at #15 on our ranking: an unlikely cover of an early ’60s Girl Group classic by one of the early ’70s biggest Hard Rock groups: Grand Funk’s “The Loco-Motion.”

Produced by Todd Rundgren, Michigan’s Grand Funk, coming off their first #1 in ’73, “We’re an American Band,” also produced by Rundgren. Critics mostly hated them but Youngsters bought lots of their 45s so they were one of the few Rock Bands that did well both on the album and singles charts.

#14 Redbone – Come and Get Your Love

And finally in our Chartcrush bonus segment look at the songs in Billboard‘s year-end top ten nudged out of our 1974 countdown due to differences in ranking methods, the song Billboard had at #4 on the year despite it only peaking at #5 on the weekly chart; like Mac Davis, one of the longer chart runs in the year, 23 weeks, but songs with more weeks in the top 10 push it down to #14 in our Chartcrush ranking. It’s Redbone’s “Come and Get Your Love.”

Native American brothers Pat and Lolly Vegas, fixtures on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip music scene since the mid-60s, who in ’69 started Redbone, their name borrowed from a Cajun word for mixed-race person. Four albums later in ’74 they had a hit, “Come and Get Your Love.”

Well that’s a wrap for our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show for 1974. I’ve been your host, Christopher Verdesi. Hey, if you like what you heard, head over to our website, chartcrush.com for a full transcript of today’s show and a link to stream the podcast version, plus boffo extras like our full top 100 chart and interactive line graph of the Billboard chart runs for the top 10 hits. We do that for every year, 1940s to now, and it’s all on the website. Again, that’s chartcrush.com. Thanks for listening and be sure and tune in again next week, same station, same time, for another year and another edition of Chartcrush.

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Welcome to the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show, I’m your host, Christopher Verdesi. Every week, we do a deep dive into a year in Pop music and culture and count down the top 10 hits according to our exclusive recap of the weekly charts published at the time in Billboard, the music industry’s top trade mag. This week on Chartcrush, we’re counting down 2015, the year the music biz got out in front of the organic, viral social media chaos that’d been wreaking havoc with their release and promotion schedules for years.

“There are few real surprises in music anymore,” said Billboard‘s Editor-in-Chief Tony Gervino introducing the 2015 Year in Music issue. Which had fans who were used to a steady stream of leftfield hits making the top 10 purely from clicks, views and shares scratching their collective heads.

But Billboard‘s readers, industry insiders, knew what he meant. The odds of another Macklemore or Lorde or “Harlem Shake” topping the charts without passing through their gates or at least being on their radar? Remote at best.

Of course, there were viral hits after 2015, lots of ’em, but nearly all orchestrated and/or magnified by net-savvy labels now with state-of-the-art monitoring and analytics tools, strategic influencer marketing programs and partnerships with streaming platforms: a far cry from 2007, when Universal Music CEO Doug Morris compared the music biz trying to solve online piracy to a dog owner trying to do surgery on his pup.

At the center of everything in 2015: the playlist. “In the brave new world of streaming, finding music to listen to is rarely a problem,” wrote Billboard‘s Robert Levine, “but sifting through it certainly is.” So the streaming playlist revolutionized music discovery for really the first time since Top40 radio.

Celebrity you admire? Magazine or blog you read? Dad who’s into music? President Obama? They all got playlists. None of the above? Well, try one made by an algorithm on Spotify, Pandora, Amazon and 2015 newcomers Apple Music and Jay-Z’s Tidal. All the streaming platforms scrambling to strike the right balance between humans and tech for on-point playlists.

And let’s not forget YouTube, with more video plays than any streaming platform had listens. Parent company Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt, a big advocate for those purely algorithm-created playlists. More democratic and empowering for fans than the teams of tastemakers and genre experts in charge on all the audio platforms, he argued. Which was probably easier to believe before middle schoolers started turning in science projects proving the bias in Google’s search results.

But whatever, besides generating buzz on social media, labels in 2015: throwing big money at playlists in hopes of putting the internet genie back in the bottle and stopping all the fan-driven mayhem on the charts. In August, a piece on the blog site Medium wondered “Are There Any Rules When It Comes to Playlists?” and Billboard was even more blunt, calling out playlist curators and streaming platforms for “playola,” a riff on “payola,” labels and promoters paying DJs for airplay. Congress had to step in in the early ’60s to stop that, but the feds’ jurisdiction over FCC-licensed terrestrial radio didn’t apply on the internet, so nothing Uncle Sam could do.

Billboard actually was okay with that: “Playlists shaped by data, influenced by promoters and ultimately determined by tastemakers,” Billboard opined, “sounds a lot like good old radio.” But looking back in hindsight, the brief window in the early ’10s when fans’ clicks, taps, listens and shares alone were picking the hits: that was closing. With streaming about to eclipse ownable media and reverse the industry’s 16-year revenue nosedive from music piracy though, no one seemed to notice, or care!

#10 Shawn Mendes – Stitches

At #10 as we kick things off here on our 2015 edition of the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show, a great example of a label, in this case Island Records, leveraging an act’s traction on a social platform, in this case the pre-TikTok user-generated video app Vine, to get him positioned on curated playlists and catapult him from #24 (his first hit, “Life of the Party” in 2014) to #4 with this, his breakthrough in 2015. It’s Shawn Mendes’ “Stitches.”

Shawn Mendes taught himself guitar at 13 watching YouTube tutorials at home in his Toronto suburb and within a year had millions of followers on Vine for his six-second video clips singing current Pop hits.

His first single and EP on Island Records charted, and in the Spring of ’15 he had enough built-up buzz for his first full-length album Handwritten to debut at #1. “Stitches” was a limited time “pre-order exclusive” on iTunes. Pre-order the album; download the single early! And in the Summer in the middle of its long 29-week climb to #4, he was on tour opening for Taylor Swift!

“Stitches” stayed on the chart 52 weeks, all the way to June of ’16. Longer chart runs, a feature of the emergent streaming era where songs get chart juice every time they’re played, not just at purchase. But because its run was split between chart years, it’s not in the top 10 on any Billboard year-end Hot100. They’ve got it at #36 for 2015 and #23 for 2016. But at Chartcrush we count every song’s full chart run, and then we rank it in whichever calendar year it earned the most ranking points, which makes it our #10 song of 2015.

#9 Silentó – Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)

Next up, another Teen whose long chart run (51 weeks) was split between ’15 and ’16, but here, enough of it was before Billboard‘s November 28 cut-off for the chart year to make it their #8 song of 2015. We’ve got it at #9.

But unlike Shawn Mendes, he made the charts before getting signed purely from posting the song on SoundCloud and Instagram, signing up on the web with the DIY distribution network TuneCore, who tapped a dance-oriented YouTube channel that made the song available for user vids, many of which broke the million view mark, and that alone put him on the charts.

But once Capitol Records snapped him up in March, the song was unstoppable, cracking the top 10 in July and staying 18 weeks. By the end of the year, the official video Capitol paid for had nearly a half a billion views and he was on New Year’s Rockin’ Eve in Times Square. At #9, some say it was the biggest dance craze since “The Macarena,” it’s Silentó’s “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae).”

Silentó, “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae),” #9 on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown for 2015, with 18 weeks in the top 10 peaking at #3 in July, the biggest in a wave of hits by unknown Indie Rappers who started viral dance trends in ’15: T. Wayne’s “Nasty Freestyle,” first to crack the top 10, #9 in May; then Silentó; then iLoveMemphis’s “Hit the Quan,” #15 in October.

Other unknown Rappers went viral too in ’14 and ’15 and got Trap on the charts, the sound that dominated Hip-Hop for the rest of the ’10s. We’ll be hearing the biggest of those a little later. Silentó was a true one-hit wonder. “Watch Me,” his only hit, and in 2021 he was arrested and jailed in Georgia for shooting and killing his cousin.

#8 Weeknd – Can’t Feel My Face

So the death of Michael Jackson in 2009 finally reverberated in a big way on the charts in 2015. Justin Timberlake and Bruno Mars, of course, influenced by the late King of Pop, but our song at #8: a deliberate nod to Jackson’s sound, by an act shrouded in mystery whose stuff up ’til then had been a compellingly dark and hazy but so far uncommercial patchwork of styles that critics dubbed “PBR&B:” moody R&B for Pabst Blue Ribbon drinking Hipsters.

His debut single “Wicked Games” had only gotten to #53 in 2012, and neither of his next two charting singles had done any better. But in 2014 he teamed up with Swedish Producer Max Martin and made his move. Martin, 17 #1’s on his resume and fresh from co-producing and co-writing most of Taylor Swift’s album, 1989, which added three more before all was said and done.

A duet with Ariana Grande was first, “Love Me Harder” in November of ’14, both acts’ first top 10. Then his song “Earned It” from the film Fifty Shades of Grey (not produced by Martin) got to #3: his first top 10 as lead artist. And then this was #6 its third week on its way to #1, totally different from anything he’d ever done before. At #8, the big breakthrough that transformed The Weeknd from online cult figure to a bona fide Pop star, “Can’t Feel My Face.”

“Can’t Feel My Face” at #8 here on our Chartcrush Countdown of 2015’s top 10 hits, The Weeknd, spelled W-E-E-K-N-D, missing that third “E” because there was already an act called The Weekend, but folks first seeing it in print didn’t know if it was “Weekend” or “Weakend.”

Abel Tesfaye first used the name for his short-lived Duo with Toronto Producer Jeremy Rose in 2010 and kept using it after they parted ways. After he got traction with his first mixtape House of Balloons in 2011, the Rapper Drake, also from Toronto, championed The Weeknd on his socials and tried to sign him to his OVO Sound label, but Tesfaye held out. Instead he released all three of his highly acclaimed mixtapes on his own indie label, XO, and in 2012 signed a distribution and repackaging deal with Universal Music Group’s Republic Records, keeping total creative control over his output.

Those first three albums, House of Balloons, Thursday, and Echoes of Silence: free downloads off The Weeknd’s website when they were independently released in 2011. No sample clearance or other hassles since no money was changing hands, hence “mixtapes,” not proper albums. But different story when Republic released its remixed remastered version as Trilogy in 2012.

#7 Taylor Swift – Blank Space

So The Weeknd, Ariana Grande and Shawn Mendes, three acts whose big chart breakthroughs and enduring success going forward made 2015 a pivot year for Pop. Post Malone, another, whose first #1 was still a ways off, but his Hot100 debut “White Iverson” was in ’15. Halsey and Alessia Cara, two others who first appeared on the radar in 2015. And of course, Trap. More on that coming up.

But at #7, a breakthrough that’s right up there with The Weeknd’s, even bigger if you’re just looking at units and dollars. And both have two songs in our countdown. Kinda hard to call 2015 her breakthrough year since she’d already notched a head-turning 69 chart hits going all the way back to 2006, including 14 top 10s.

But her roots in Country music had taken her as far as they were going to, so in ’14 and ’15, she moved from Nashville to New York and rebooted her career, planting both feet in Pop with her 2014 album I mentioned earlier, mostly co-written and co-produced with Max Martin. The second of the three #1’s from the album titled after the year she was born, 1989, #1 for seven weeks ’14 into ’15, it’s Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space.”

Taylor Swift’s first pure Pop album 1989, #1 on the album chart for 11 weeks, one more than her 2008 Country-Pop set Fearless that first put her on the map, and Billboard‘s #1 album of 2015.

Taylor was also Billboard‘s Artist of the Year for singles and albums combined despite losing Hot100 Singles Artist to The Weeknd. And she had 2015’s top grossing tour: 71 dates, $217 million, notable for a current chart act in an era when Boomer legends were still the kings of the road. U2, The Stones, Fleetwood Mac and Billy Joel, also among 2015’s top ten tours.

And incredibly, Swift accomplished all those things without the biggest streaming platform. In late ’14, she yanked her entire catalog from Spotify for three years over low royalty rates. “Blank Space,” on top seven weeks, November ’14 to January ’15 and the second of the three #1’s from her album 1989. “Bad Blood,” the third in June and July, notches in at #25 on our ranking and the first, still to come here on our 2015 edition of The Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show.

#6 Ed Sheeran – Thinking Out Loud

So I mentioned earlier that Shawn Mendes was Taylor Swift’s opening act on her 1989 tour. Well, our act at #6 was the opener her previous tour for her album Red in 2013 and even co-wrote and sang on one of the hits from the album, “Everything Has Changed.”

He’d already conquered the charts in his native U.K. when his first of several albums titled with just a mathematical symbol, + debuted at #1 and produced four U.K. top 10s, only one of which, “The A Team,” had cracked the top 20 in the U.S. But a month after the tour with Taylor, he sold out New York’s Madison Square Garden for three nights as the headliner, and six months later in the Summer of ’14 when his second album × dropped, he was as big in the U.S. as back home.

At #6, its third single, #2 for eight straight weeks, January to March, and the longest chart run of any 2015 song, with 58 weeks. It’s Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud.”

So why, you ask, was “Thinking Out Loud” #2 for eight straight weeks? Did you catch that right before the song? Well, because our #1 song of 2015, coming up here in a bit, locked down the top spot for 14 straight weeks, so Sheeran had to wait another two years for his first American #1, “Shape of You” in 2017, off his next mathematically-titled album, ÷. But by the end of 2015, × was certified Double Platinum and had produced three top 10s. Not bad.

#5 Taylor Swift – Shake It Off

And speaking of songs that were #2 for eight weeks, we’ve got another one at #5 on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown for 2015. It debuted at #1, stayed on top another week, but then got nudged to #2 by Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass,” only to reclaim the #1 spot for another two weeks in November, after eight weeks. By the way, the longest gap like that in chart history, nine weeks in 2013 when Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball” got nudged to #2 by Lorde’s “Royals,” then got back to #1 for a week. Poor Ed Sheeran had eight weeks at #2 and never got to #1.

We heard the second of the three #1’s from her album 1989 at #7, “Blank Space.” At #5, the first and biggest hit off the album. Again, Taylor Swift, with “Shake It Off.”

In 2014, the “Year of the Booty,” the video for “Shake It Off” had Taylor crawling bemusedly through a tunnel of other girls’ twerking butts, which Stereogum’s Tom Breihan said “led to plenty of hand-wringing thinkpieces about Whiteness and appropriation.” Taylor, though, untouched by all that somehow, unlike other 2014 stars (Iggy Azalea, ahem).

“Shake it Off” was immediately followed at #1 by “Blank Space,” the first time an act replaced itself at #1 since The Black Eyed Peas’ in 2009.

Like Shawn Mendes’ “Stitches” we heard back at #10, “Shake It Off’s” chart run began in 2014 and ended deep into ’15, so Billboard has it at #13 for 2014 and #18 for 2015; not in the top 10 either year. But when you add up its full run, as we do for every song in our Chartcrush rankings, it’s #5. And since it earned more of its ranking points for its 32 weeks slowly descending the chart in calendar 2015, it’s a 2015 song, even though all its ten weeks at numbers 1 or 2 were in the Fall of 2014.

#4 Fetty Wap – Trap Queen

So that’s ironic. Wanna hear something else that’s ironic? Despite all the aforementioned critical handwringing about cultural appropriation in 2014, the “Year of the Booty,” early 2015, President Obama’s seventh year as President, was the Whitest ten weeks in the top ten since 1982 right before Michael Jackson’s Thriller came out.

December 6, 2014 to February 14, 2015, not one Black artist in the top 10. Rihanna’s “FourFiveSeconds” broke that streak at the end of February, then The Weeknd’s “Earned It,” but at the end of March, an unknown Black New Jersey Rapper’s viral year-old Soundcloud track made the top 10, with some help from the Atlantic Records imprint that signed him in November of ’14, and led an epic comeback for straight-up Hip-Hop on the charts.

Once it made the top ten, it stayed ’til September, 25 weeks, and on the chart ’til January of 2016 as his next five singles came and went along with a whole bunch of other viral Rap hits. At #4, Fetty Wap’s “Trap Queen.”

Fetty Wap’s girl cooks and deals drugs out of their trap house. She’s his “Trap Queen,” #4 on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown for 2015. It doesn’t check all the boxes of the dark, ominous, moody Trap sound that dominated Hip-Hop in the late ’10s. Closer to the mark in 2015 would be things like: O.T. Genasis’ “Coco,” Future’s “Commas” and Travis Scott’s “Antidote.” But it has the word in the title, which counts for a lot when we’re talking about mainstream pop culture trends.

The wave of viral Hip-Hop Dance vids led by Silentó and other Trap or Trap-adjacent hits in the Spring and Summer culminated with the release of the blockbuster N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton in August. Hip-Hop was back, yo. And bigger than ever!

#3 Weeknd – The Hills

So recall that Taylor Swift replaced herself at #1 in late 2014? First act since The Black Eyed Peas? Well it didn’t last long. Less than a year later in October of ’15, another act did it. And the week before, he equaled another Black Eyed Peas feat from ’09 by locking down the #1 and 2 spots the same week. Taylor didn’t manage that!

At #3, the second of the two #1s, and it’s hard to imagine two songs from the same artist in the same year sounding more different. “Can’t Feel My Face” we heard at #8, a Max Martin-juiced homage to Michael Jackson; this, a return to the woozy sound from his mixtapes that made him an internet cult sensation.

Given that and the song’s abundant profanity, it’s the unlikeliest of smash Pop hits, but it was #1 for six weeks, even bigger than the song it replaced, “Can’t Feel My Face,” and that changed Pop for the rest of the decade and beyond. At #3, again The Weeknd: the heavily censored Radio Edit of “The Hills.”

The hit that heralded a darker, more ominous vibe in Pop in the late ’10s: The Weeknd’s “The Hills” at #3 on our Chartcrush Countdown of 2015’s top 10 hits. It was #1 twice as long as “Can’t Feel My Face” at the same time Abel Tesfaye, a.k.a. The Weeknd’s fellow Torontan and mentor-collaborator Aubrey Graham, a.k.a. Drake, was eagerly anticipating his song “Hotline Bling,” becoming his first #1 as a lead artist with its meme-bait video and dance. But “The Hills” kept it at #2 its last three weeks at #1.

By the way, fun fact: fans have sleuthed out that the scream right before the bass drop in “The Hills” is Laura Palmer from the series finale of Director David Lynch’s surreal early ’90s TV phenomenon Twin Peaks. Tesfaye, a big Lynch fan, so he added it after a leaked phone recording of a work-in-progress version of “The Hills” he played at a party went viral on Soundcloud. A partygoer screamed at just the right moment, and he wanted that on the record!

#2 Wiz Khalifa featuring Charlie Puth – See You Again

So I’ve mentioned a few 2015 movies in the show so far. Straight Outta Compton was boxofficemojo’s 19th top grossing film of the year in the U.S. Fifty Shades of Grey, #17. But #5 was the seventh film in the Fast & Furious franchise, Furious 7. The sudden death of the lead actor, Paul Walker, had sent shock waves through the pop culture, and since his untimely demise, in a car crash of all things, came the middle of filming, the movie had to be completely revamped around the existing footage.

But revamped it was, with an emotional send-off for Walker and his character at the end. Our #2 song soundtracked that scene, but 12 weeks at #1 made it a new all-purpose grieving anthem. It’s Rapper Wiz Khalifa featuring chart newcomer Charlie Puth on the chorus, which he also wrote: “See You Again.”

Wiz Khalifa had scored an out-of-the-blue #1 in 2010 with his first charting single, the Pittsburgh anthem “Black and Yellow,” and a #6 in 2011 with his ode to all-night partying, “No Sleep,” but all his top 10’s since had been features on other acts’ records.

Still, his name ID far surpassed just-signed American Singer-Songwriter Charlie Puth, so he was lead artist even though Puth’s chorus had been the song’s genesis, submitted in answer to Universal’s call for a Ballad to soundtrack that final Furious 7 scene.

Chris Brown, Sam Smith and Jason Derulo all recorded versions, and reportedly Adele was even interested, but Puth’s original vocal stayed.

After Furious 7 hit theaters April 3, downloads and streams launched the song from #84 to #10 in a single week and radio took it from there, including a Charlie Puth-only version on Rap-averse Adult Contemporary stations. In all, enough to bump the #1 song in our 2015 Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown to #2 for three weeks after its 14-week run on top.

#1 Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars – Uptown Funk!

That one, also Billboard‘s #1 for the year. In fact, Billboard named it the biggest hit of the ’10s decade at the end of 2019: the first-ever year-end #1 that’s not sung by its lead artist. The Singer is the featured artist, and also co-wrote, co-produced and played the drums.

Unlike Charlie Puth, though, he was already huge, with five #1s back to 2010 under his belt and headlining the 2014 Super Bowl halftime show. And the lead artist was a 39-year-old British DJ/Producer virtually unknown in the U.S. outside the music biz. But he was the visionary and driving force behind the track, and it was on his album, so there ya go!

Slate‘s resident Chart Geek Chris Molanphy devoted a whole column to Billboard‘s July 25, 2015 chart, on which 29 of the 100 songs had featured artists. At #1, Mark Ronson featuring Superstar Bruno Mars: “Uptown Funk!”

“Uptown Funk!” #1 on our 2015 edition of the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show. Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars: a song pop culture site Vulture called “so scientifically joy-inducing” that not enjoying it should be considered a symptom of depression.

Ronson’s next chart entry wasn’t ’til 2019 and got to #2 in the U.K. but only #43 in the U.S., “Nothing Breaks like a Heart” featuring Miley Cyrus. But Bruno Mars, of course, continued to score big hits, and Ronson and “Uptown Funk” altered his trajectory. One reviewer called his 2016 studio album 24K Magic “a full-length sequel.” And then his next project in 2021, Silk Sonic with Rapper Anderson .Paak was a full-blown vintage Funk/Soul Nostalgia trip.

Bonus

OK, so that’s our top 10, but as I pointed out when we heard them earlier, three of our top 10 songs were not in the top 10 on Billboard‘s year-end Hot100 because of how they split songs’ chart runs that go from one year into the next.

Shawn Mendes’ “Stitches,” The Weeknd’s “Can’t Feel My Face” and Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off,” all songs whose chart runs were split between different years in Billboard. Again, at Chartcrush with the benefit of hindsight, we factor every song’s full run, which means that three hits that were in Billboard‘s top 10 got bumped out of ours. So to be thorough, let’s take a look at those.

#19 Weeknd – Earned It (Fifty Shades of Grey)

At #9, Billboard had the Weeknd’s soundtrack cut from Fifty Shades of Grey that spent 18 weeks bouncing around the top 10 from March to July priming music fans for the one-two punch of “Can’t Feel My Face” and “The Hills” in the second half of the year, “Earned It.”

“Earned It,” Billboard‘s #9 song of 2015; #19 on our Chartcrush ranking; The Weeknd’s first top 10 as a lead artist. There was a second top 10 from Fifty Shades: Ellie Goulding’s “Love Me like You Do.” Both songs peaked at #3 just two weeks apart in the Spring.

#13 WALK THE MOON – Shut Up + Dance

Billboard‘s #6 song as we look at the songs from their 2015 year-end top 10 not in our Chartcrush Top Ten we counted down this hour: the year’s top Rock song: #1 for a whopping 27 weeks on the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart, and peaking at #4 for five weeks on the Hot100.

Recall that Shawn Mendes’ “Stitches” and Silentó’s “Watch Me” took 21 and 18 weeks, respectively, to reach their chart peaks. This took 27! Cincinnati, Ohio’s WALK THE MOON, with “Shut Up + Dance.”

With its 53 weeks on the Hot100 and 18 in the top 10, one-hit wonder WALK THE MOON’s “Shut Up + Dance” notches in at #13 on our Chartcrush 2015 ranking.

#12 Maroon 5 – Sugar

And finally, Billboard‘s #5 song of 2015 was the eleventh top ten hit for veterans Maroon 5, which succeeded Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud” at #2 the last four weeks “Uptown Funk” was #1, “Sugar.”

Maroon 5 Front Man Adam Levine, in his eighth season as a Coach on NBC’s singing competition show The Voice while “Sugar” was on the charts: Billboard‘s #5 song of 2015; #12 on our Chartcrush ranking we counted down the top 10 from earlier.

And that’s a wrap for our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show for 2015. I’ve been your host, Christopher Verdesi. Hey, if you like what you heard, head over to our website, chartcrush.com for a full transcript of today’s show and a link to stream the podcast version, plus on fleek extras like our full top 100 chart and interactive line graph of the Billboard chart runs for the top ten hits. We do that for every year, 1940s to now, and it’s all on the website. Again, that’s chartcrush.com. Thanks for listening and tune in again next week, same station, same time, for another year and another edition of Chartcrush.

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Welcome! This is the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show, I’m your host, Christopher Verdesi. Every week on Chartcrush, we do a deep dive into a year in Pop music and culture, and count down the top 10 songs according to our exclusive recap of the weekly charts published at the time in Billboard, the music industry’s top trade mag. This week on Chartcrush, we’re counting down 1953, the year TV passed half of U.S. households and annual sales hit seven million sets.

And with networks in ’53 cranking out sitcoms like I Love Lucy, Ozzie and Harriet, Abbott and Costello and variety shows like Milton Berle and Jackie Gleason (where The Honeymooners started out as a sketch), TV wasn’t just nice to have; it was must have for just basic walking around cultural literacy.

Dragnet was such a phenomenon that Stan Freberg’s “St. George and the Dragonet” became the first spoken word Comedy record to top the charts: Sgt. Friday investigating dragon sightings. Bandleader Ray Anthony’s version of the Dragnet theme, also in the top 10 for nine weeks, and Billboard in a front-page piece credited those records for lifting the show from fifth to first in the ratings.

Swanson launched the frozen TV Dinner in ’53. Cook ’em and eat ’em in the same foil package you bought ’em in: the branding because TV was a “magic” status symbol, the inventor later said. And motels: after ’53, no guest room was complete without a TV in it. “TV,” usually above “vacancy” on the sign outside.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, the first President whose inauguration was on TV, that was in ’53. Ike as he was called, the former Supreme Allied Commander in World War 2, beat Democrat Adlai Stevenson in a landslide, and ending the Korean War was job one, a stalemate since ’51 after China sent a half million troops across the Yalu River to save North Korea.

Instead of bombing China itself or God forbid, responding with nukes, President Truman backed off and even fired the top General Douglas MacArthur for criticizing that policy in public. The Soviets, of course, who’d been pulling the strings the whole time, also had nukes, so behind the scenes, America with its new defense/intelligence apparatus had decided to fight communism with spies and propaganda, not bombs and soldiers, and except for Vietnam, that’s how the Cold War played out for the next 45 years.

Eisenhower got a break when Soviet Dictator Josef Stalin died in March of ’53 and in July he got his armistice. So instead of fighting World War III in the ’50s America got to get on with the business of rooting out communists and spies in the U.S. (’53 was peak McCarthyism), plus building highways and houses in the ‘burbs, filling them with appliances and having, on average, 3.5 Baby Boom toddlers per nuclear family.

Finally getting serious about ending racial segregation, also high on the agenda since it was the top criticism heard by American diplomats and travelers abroad as the Cold War ramped up. Right after Ike appointed Earl Warren Chief Justice in ’53, The Supreme Court heard Brown vs. Board of Education, the landmark case that in ’54 declared discrimination in public schools unconstitutional.

Marilyn Monroe became America’s new bombshell Pinup in ’53 after Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire in theaters. And then in December there really was a pinup, and topless no less, in the first issue of Playboy. That hit newsstands just weeks after Alfred Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Female hit book stores, and as Variety reported, all the daily papers maxed out the 5,000-word limit on excerpts! Kinsey and Playboy‘s Hugh Hefner, fathers of the sexual revolution.

So there was a lot of aggressive envelope pushing in ’53. Not on the Pop charts though! As in movies, the name of the game in music was polishing and perfecting existing paradigms, not breaking down barriers. And that meant records with bigger studio orchestras, more intricate arrangements and improved sound four years after vinyl LPs and 45s replaced noisy shellac 78s and rich folks were starting to catch the hi-fi bug.

#10 Pee Wee Hunt and His Orchestra – Oh!

OK, we’re gonna kick off our Chartcrush Top Ten for 1953 with an instrumental by the Trombonist who co-founded the very first big name Swing Band in the late ’20s, The Casa Loma Orchestra, and because of that some say it was the last #1 Swing record. Is it Swing? Well, you be the judge. At #10, Pee Wee Hunt and Orchestra, “Oh!”

Pee Wee Hunt left the Casa Loma Orchestra after 14 years in 1943 to be a radio DJ in Hollywood, then he did a stint in the Merchant Marine during the War. But in ’46 he was back in L.A. leading his own Band. In ’47 they dashed off “Twelfth Street Rag” in the studio as a parody of an amateur Dixieland Band circa 1921, not intended for release.

But the suits at Capitol Records thought it could ride the Nostalgia wave that’d just catapulted a reissue of a record from 1933 to #1, Ted Weems’ “Heartaches,” and they were right: “Twelfth Street” was the #3 song of 1948. And then Hunt struck again with another one written in the early ’20s, “Oh!,” which we just heard at #10 here on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown for 1953.

#9 Perry Como with The Ramblers – Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes

Next up, one of the first Pop stars on TV since ’48 when NBC wheeled cameras into the studio where he’d been doing the Chesterfield Supper Club on network radio since ’44. Then ’49 was his biggest year ever with 15 charting hits including six top10s and he became a TV institution.

But his time slot, weekday evenings after the news? Well, the only way younger folks were seeing him was if Mom and Dad were watching, so in ’53 at age 42, he picked up the pace: his fastest hit tempo-wise: a Pop rendition of a Western Swing song that’d charted five different versions on the Country chart in ’52. At #9 it’s Perry Como’s “Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes.”

Perry Como, “Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes” at #9 on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown for 1953. Since it was a Pop version of a recent Country hit, RCA rechristened the backing Vocal Group “The Ramblers” for the record. Actually though, it was the same Group that backed him on records and on TV for 35 years, The Ray Charles Singers; Ray Charles, the Arranger/Conductor, not the iconic Black Soul Pioneer, who, by the way, had just scored his first R&B hits in ’51 and ’52.

And cutting a fast Western Swing song wasn’t the only way Mr. C was wooing the soda fountain set. His previous top 10 was his first-ever Duet with a fellow Crooner, Teen Heartthrob and RCA label-mate Eddie Fisher: a cover of The Ink Spots’ hit “Maybe” from 1940. And launching off from there, RCA’s Publicity Department pushed a Buddy-Mentor narrative to fan mags and gossip columns, which was a total fabrication, but it got Como the fresh look he needed. With LPs the top earner at retail for the first time in ’53 thanks to Grownups, and jukebox use skewing ever younger, singles had to appeal to the kiddos.

#8 Eddie Fisher featuring Sally Sweetland – I’m Walking Behind You

And as for Fisher, it got him some extra gravitas with adults. He’d become a superstar while serving in the Army: nine top10s ’51 and ’52 as “PFC Eddie Fisher,” the vocal soloist for The U.S. Army Band entertaining troops, cutting records and appearing in uniform on TV: a promotional tool for the Army and the war effort in Korea, not a combat asset. Still President Truman’s “Favorite PFC,” though.

In April ’53 his two year stint was up and the night of his discharge his first gig in civilian clothes at New York’s Paramount Theater, just like Sinatra and Como in the ’40s, mobbed by Bobbysoxers. That was the media’s term for Teenaged Female Superfans. At #8, one of the songs he unveiled there, Billboard‘s #1 song of the year if you’re looking only at their year-end Jukebox chart, but it was in the top ten Sales and Airplay as well. It’s Eddie Fisher’s “I’m Walking Behind You.”

Coke Time with Eddie Fisher debuted on TV just nine days after Fisher’s discharge-night gig at the Paramount. Just 15 minutes twice a week, but an instant ratings bonanza for NBC, and Fisher’s name became synonymous with Coca-Cola. If you were a fan at the local soda fountain, you didn’t ask for a Coke, you asked for an “Eddie Fisher.” Not sure Coke saw that coming!

Anyway, “I’m Walking Behind You” we just heard Fisher’s version of at #8 here on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown for 1953, also notable for being Frank Sinatra’s first record on Capitol after his contract with Columbia ran out in ’52 and wasn’t renewed by A&R honcho Mitch Miller. Of Billboard‘s three separate Pop charts before the Hot100 in ’58, Sinatra’s version only appeared on the DJ chart. Not a blip on Best-Sellers or Jukeboxes.

All that changed, though, starting in August when the Pearl Harbor War Drama From Here to Eternity hit theaters. A down-on-his luck Sinatra had lobbied hard to get his role in that and it paid off when he won Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars. Right after that, his next hit in ’54, “Young at Heart,” shot into the top 10 on all three charts and Sinatra had a singing career again: one of the most spectacular comebacks in Pop history.

#7 Joni James – Why Don’t You Believe Me?

So while Teen Girls swooned over Eddie Fisher, what were the Boys doing? Well a lot of them were discovering Black R&B music. Dolphin’s of Hollywood was a 24-hour record store, not in Hollywood, but in South Central L.A. that specialized in Jazz and R&B, and in ’52, the owner told Billboard that 40% of his customers were White: Teens from throughout the L.A. region drawn by DJs like Hunter Hancock beaming out Black R&B records citywide on the radio from a booth in the store’s window.

Those included a version of “Crying in the Chapel” by a previously-unknown Baltimore Doo-Wop group, The Orioles, that made the national top 20, setting the table for The Crows’ “Gee” and The Chords “Sh-Boom” in ’54.

Another harbinger of things to come in ’53: Bill Haley & The Comets’ “Crazy Man, Crazy,” the first Rock ‘n Roll record to crack the top 20. Haley & Comets were White, of course, with roots in Pop’s other musical ghetto, Country/Western. But their beat was all R&B, and in ’54 they scored Rock’s first top 10 Pop hit too: their cover of Big Joe Turner’s “Shake, Rattle and Roll.” Then, of course, “Rock Around the Clock,” the first Rock ‘n Roll #1 in ’55.

But the Rock Era was about more than just the merger of R&B and Country. Teens in the early ’50s were seeking out other oddities. “Oh, Happy Day” was a crude Doo Woppy recording of an original by a White High School Junior in Cleveland, Don Howard, who must’ve been one of Alan Freed‘s late night “Moondog Rock ‘n Roll Party” listeners on WJW.

After it sold 21,000 locally and got picked by Essex Records, the same label as “Crazy Man, Crazy,” it made the top 10 nationally for 11 weeks, despite slicked-up versions of the song by The Four Knights and The Lawrence Welk Orchestra out within a month. One DJ in New York promised listeners he’d eat the record if it was a hit, and the cover of the February 14 issue of Billboard competitor Cashbox magazine is him doing just that, with a smiling Don Howard standing by with salt and pepper!

Oddities aside, though, as John Gilliland said in the early ’70s on his show Pop Chronicles, mainstream Pop in ’53 “still had stars in its eyes and moon June and spoon in its heart.” And even inside that box the Silent Generation was imprinting itself on the pop culture. Male Teen Idols, of course, but that wasn’t new. Eddie Fisher, just the latest in a string going all the way back to Rudy Vallée in the ’20s.

What was new in ’53: a Female Singer with songs and a style that appealed directly to Teens. Connie Francis’ breakthrough, the Revenge Ballad “Who’s Sorry Now” in ’58, considered the first hit in that mold, and Francis leaned in. But our 21 year-old petite, raven-haired Beauty at #7, not so much. “Sing for the 20-year-olds, the 30-year-olds and the 50-year-olds,” she told an Interviewer, “and forget the 12-year-olds because they’ll soon forget you.”

So after her romantic, expressive style cut straight through to Teenagers on her first three hits in early ’53, it got buried under layers of lush orchestration on subsequent releases, and her last top10 was in ’55, just before “Rock Around the Clock.” It’s on full display here though, the biggest of those three top10s in early ’53. At #7 it’s Joni James, “Why Don’t You Believe Me?”

Joni James’ “Why Don’t You Believe Me?,” the first of three Females in a row here on our 1953 edition of Chartcrush. Numbers 7, 6 and 5: all ladies! James’ big break came when she was tapped as a last-minute substitute on Male Teen Idol Johnnie Ray’s TV show, and her appearance generated a flood of fan mail that got her a deal with MGM Records, the same label that signed Connie Francis a few years later. Her first record was a dud, but “Why Don’t You Believe Me?” shot into the top 10 in only its third week and was #1 for five weeks right as Teens were also flexing their purchasing muscles on “Oh Happy Day.”

Then as now, Billboard‘s year-end recaps only count weeks within their “chart year,” and “Why Don’t You Believe Me’s” chart run went from ’52 into ’53 so of Billboard‘s three 1953 chart recaps, it was only in the top ten on Jukeboxes. Now at Chartcrush we count every song’s full chart run: no year-splitting, so we have it at #7 on our ranking that sums all three Billboard pre-Hot100 charts into a combined weekly chart, and then based on that we rank the songs same as Hot100 years.

Another of Joni James’ trio of smashes in early ’53 was a Pop cover of “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” Hank Williams’ song he recorded in his final session before his sudden death on New Years Day 1953 in a car en route to a gig. The original topped the Country chart and James’ got to #2 on the Pop Jukebox chart, both in the Spring of ’53, and interestingly, both records were on the same label, MGM. With almost no crossover between the genre and Pop charts, no reason for a label not to target different versions of the same song to each.

#6 Patti Page – The Doggie in the Window

Now with “Why Don’t You Believe Me?,” there was a competing Pop version from a different label by a Singer who was much more famous than Joni James, but it didn’t do nearly as well because her mellow, sentimental style wasn’t really a fit for the song, and with Joni’s version out there, that was painfully apparent.

But it was perfectly suited for our #6 song: the second of our trio of back-to-back-to-back Ladies in the countdown, a light-hearted Novelty that’s often cited as “exhibit A” of everything that was wrong with Pop in the years before Rock ‘n Roll. Yet it’s one of the Singer’s best-remembered hits. #1 in the Spring for five weeks on all three Billboard Pop charts, and one of the 16 top10s that made her the ’50’s top-charting Female, it’s Patti Page with “Doggie in the Window.”

“Doggie in the Window” hit right in the middle of Norman Vincent Peale’s 48-week run atop The New York Times’ Nonfiction Bestseller list with The Power of Positive Thinking. Just those two data points say an awful lot about the mid-’50s! Peale, the Pastor at the church in Manhattan that Donald Trump attended with his family. There’s another data point!

The barking dogs, credited as Joe and Mac, but in fact they were Patti Page’s longtime Arranger/Conductor Joe Reisman and his Violin player Mac Ceppos. And the record also features Page’s signature overdubbed tight-harmonies.

Hillbilly satirists Homer & Jethro’s sendup, “How Much ls That Hound Dog in the Window,” was their biggest hit, #2 on the Country chart.

#5 Teresa Brewer – Till I Waltz Again with You

At #5, the third of our three Female Singers in a row in our 1953 Chartcrush Top Ten countdown, and the youngest, beating Joni James by about a year. And she was three years younger than James when she scored her first #1 “Music! Music! Music!” in 1950 at just 18. It was a fluke of a hit first issued as a B-side of an unremarkable Dixieland cover, but morning New York DJ and future Match Game Host Gene Rayburn and his buddy, fellow DJ Dee Finch, plugged it hard so off it went.

Subsequent Novelty records and a Duet with Crooner Don Cornell only dented the charts, but in late ’52, this one caught on, reportedly handed to her in the lobby of New York’s Brill Building by the Songwriter Sidney Prosen, who later started an indie label and was first to sign Simon & Garfunkel. At #5 it’s Teresa Brewer, “Till I Waltz Again with You.”

A song in 4/4 shuffle time with Waltz in the title. Hmmph. I guess no rule that a song about waltzing has to be a waltz. Teresa Brewer’s “Till I Waltz Again with You,” #5 on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown for 1953. The best selling single of her career, and before the year was out, Brewer was back in the top 5 with “Ricochet,” then two more top10s before Rock ‘n Roll squeezed her and most other Traditional Pop Acts out of the top 10 for good.

#4 Tony Bennett – Rags to Riches

OK, back to the Guys for our #4 song: one of the Crooners the aforementioned Mitch Miller cultivated at Columbia as his relationship with Sinatra deteriorated, who made bank right off the bat with two hits that swapped the #1 and #2 spots on the charts back and forth for eight weeks in ’51: “Because of You,” and what seemed to everyone at the time like Mitch Miller throwing a Hail Mary: a cover of Hank Williams’ “Cold, Cold Heart.” No one had ever repurposed a Country hit like that before: Crooner backed by a full Orchestra.

But by ’53 every Pop A&R man was plundering the Country charts for material, even Hank’s own label, MGM, giving “Your Cheatin’ Heart” to Joni James as I mentioned earlier. And with White Teens digging Black music, by ’54 labels were turning to the R&B charts and plundering those.

Anyway, back to our Crooner. After that spectacular start in ’51 he cooled off a little, but roared back in late ’53 with another pair of simultaneous top10s, “Stranger in Paradise” and this one, which Martin Scorsese later used for the opening sequence of his 1990 Mob epic Goodfellas. At #4 it’s Tony Bennett, “Rags to Riches.”

“Rags to Riches,” Tony Bennett, #4 on our Chartcrush countdown of 1953’s top ten hits, but like Joni James’ “Why Don’t You Believe Me?,” its chart run was over the holidays into the next year, in this case ’53 into ’54, so Billboard didn’t factor its full chart run and it’s not in the top 10 on any of their year-end recaps. But counting songs’ full chart runs as we do at Chartcrush, year-straddling hits never fall through the cracks like that. All Tony Bennett’s hits up to 1956, backed by Percy Faith, Columbia Records house Bandleader/Conductor recruited by Mitch Miller when he came on board there in 1950.

#3 Percy Faith and His Orchestra featuring Felicia Sanders – The Song from Moulin Rouge (Where Is Your Heart)

And Faith got to cut and release his own records too. In ’52, his instrumental “Delicado” was a top 10 Best-Seller for 16 weeks, but in ’53, his hit up next at #3 was Billboard‘s #1 Best-Selling single of the year. Only reason it’s not #1 on our Chartcrush ranking? Well, again, we factor the DJ and Jukebox charts as well as Sales. Plus, our #1 and 2 hits we’ll be hearing here shortly were still on the charts at the end of Billboard‘s 1953 chart year, so they outrank it when you count their full runs. Still a massive hit at #3 though.

It’s Faith’s version of the theme from John Huston’s 1952 movie about Paris’ Bohemian subculture in the 1890s, centered around Painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and the burlesque cabaret that’s the film’s title. The same front-page article in Billboard that credits the “Dragnet” records for the TV show’s soaring ratings also singles this out for boosting the movie’s box office receipts. At #3, Percy Faith’s “Song from Moulin Rouge.”

Percy Faith’s “Song from Moulin Rouge” at #3 on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown of 1953’s biggest hits. Felicia Sanders on the vocal, for which she received only a one-time payment at union scale: for a #1 hit! No royalties. Mitch Miller and Percy Faith both did their best to get her a hit under her own name over the next couple years though: 11 singles on Columbia from ’52 to ’56, six backed by Percy Faith. But the closest any of them got was #30 for a single week.

As for Percy Faith, he kept his streak going as Americans bought stacks of Easy Listening records to soundtrack their happy hours, and in 1960 as the fallout from the Payola scandal suffocated Top40 radio, his “Theme from ‘A Summer Place’,” also known as the “Technical Difficulties Song” on TV from the ’60s to ’80s, made him the only recording artist to score #1 hits both before and during the Rock Era.

#2 The Ames Brothers – You, You, You

Well we’re down to the top two, both of which as I said were still on the charts at the end of Billboard‘s 1953 chart year, so counting full runs gets them more ranking points than Billboard‘s recaps.

Now clean-cut White Male Vocal Groups inundated the Pop charts in the ’50s: Four Aces, Four Freshmen, Four Coins, Four Lads, Four Preps, Crew Cuts. But these four siblings from Malden, Massachusetts were the O.G. ’50s clean-cut White Male Vocal Group, having scored their first hits in 1950: the one-two punch of “Rag Mop” and “Sentimental Me” on Decca’s Coral subsidiary.

RCA wooed them with better royalties in ’53, and their first release with them was their biggest hit since 1950, backed by Percy Faith’s counterpart at RCA, house Arranger/Conductor Hugo Winterhalter. At #2, The Ames Brothers’ “You, You, You.”

Ames Brothers with “You, You, You” at #2 on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown for 1953. All the Vocal Group competition after 1953 didn’t slow them down much and neither did the initial burst of Rock ‘n Roll in ’56. They captured the changing Zeitgeist better than most and continued charting hits all the way ’til 1960. Then in the ’60s deep-voiced Lead Singer Ed Ames went solo and found a lane, both on the charts and as an Actor. From ’64 to ’70 he played Daniel Boone’s sidekick Mingo on the Daniel Boone TV series.

#1 Les Paul and Mary Ford – Vaya Con Dios

At #1, another hit that spilled over into ’54. The last six of its 32 weeks were after the December 12 cutoff for Billboard‘s 1953 year-end charts. So on their year-end Sales recap it’s #2 behind “Moulin Rouge;” Airplay, #3 behind “Moulin Rouge” and The Ames Brothers’ “You, You, You;” and Jukebox Plays, #2 behind Eddie Fisher’s “I’m Walking Beside You.” But adding those six weeks back in and counting its full chart run, it’s our #1 hit of the year.

The song, first cut for Mercury Records in late ’52 by veteran Jazz Singer Anita O’Day, who’d sung on Big Band hits by Gene Krupa and Stan Kenton in the ’40s, but right before her scheduled appearance to unveil it on CBS’s celebrity rate-a-record show Juke Box Jury, she got busted for heroin possession.

Meanwhile, our husband and wife act at #1 had heard O’Day’s version on the radio, liked it, and recorded it, and their version was the #1 record of 1953. They were the #3 chart act of the first half of the ’50s overall, behind only Patti Page and Eddie Fisher, which makes them the top Duo or Group. At #1, Les Paul and Mary Ford with “Vaya con Dios.”

Les Paul and Mary Ford, “Vaya con Dios,” #1 here on our 1953 edition of The Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show. They got a TV show on NBC and scored two more top10s in ’54 and ’55, but after that their chart action fell off a cliff. Rock ‘n Roll and more guitars on the radio had a lot to do with that, sure. Les was a Jazz and Pop guy, not a Rocker. But the “New Sound” he’d pioneered with custom gear in his garage on hits like “How High the Moon” in ’51 wasn’t so new anymore with labels upgrading their studios with his innovations, often with his consulting help.

Also, the marriage was on the rocks: his workaholism, her possibly related alcoholism, a separation in ’56 and a nasty divorce in ’64 after years of escalating tensions: an unseemly end to a spectacular partnership. But Ford remarried, and Les Paul kept working, inventing, prospering and adding to his legend ’til his death in 2009, aged 94.

Bonus

So that’s our top ten, but we’re not quite done yet because we still have three records that made the top ten on two of Billboard‘s published year-end charts for 1953 (Sales, Airplay and Jukebox Plays), yet missed our Chartcrush Top Ten. Not by much, mind you, but thanks to those placements on Billboard‘s charts, we think they rate a spin and a shout-out.

#13 Les Baxter and His Orchestra – April in Portugal

First up, an Easy Listening instrumental that Billboard has as 1953’s #7 Best-Seller and #8 Jukebox hit (and #12 Airplay). “The lush sound of violins came into real vogue,” they noted in ’53. Here’s yet another example: Les Baxter’s “April in Portugal.”

Les Baxter, Capitol Records’ top Arranger/Conductor for a while in ’50 and ’51 after Paul Weston jumped ship to Columbia, but before he was eclipsed by his protégé Nelson Riddle, who went on to back Frank Sinatra and many others. Still, Baxter continued charting instrumentals on Capitol under his own name for years. “April in Portugal,” one of the biggest.

#12 Frankie Laine – I Believe

Up next a Crooner who charted higher in ’53 than he had since his breakthrough in 1949, when he scored his back-to-back #1s “That Lucky Old Sun” and “Mule Train.” This one got to #2 in the middle of an 18-week run in the top 10, making it #10 on both Billboard‘s year-end Sales and Airplay charts, and #14 Jukeboxes. It notches in at #12 on our Chartcrush ranking we counted down the top ten from earlier. It’s Frankie Laine, “I Believe.”

As big as Frankie Laine’s “I Believe” was Stateside, in the U.K. it was the #1 song of the year with 18 weeks at #1 on the U.K. chart.

#11 Perry Como – No Other Love

And finally on our bonus segment of records that made the top ten on Billboard‘s 1953 year-end charts but not our Chartcrush Top Ten we counted down earlier, Billboard‘s #8 Best-Seller of the year and #6 with DJs, but just #17 on Jukeboxes; hence just missing the top ten on our Chartcrush ranking that factors all three of those. We have it at #11. After “Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes” which we heard at #9, it’s Perry Como’s second biggest hit of 1953, “No Other Love.”

“No Other Love,” Richard Rodgers’ melody from the score of NBC TV’s Victory at Sea, later given lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II for their Broadway musical Me and Juliet, and ‘ol Perry Como notched the chart hit.

Well that’s gonna have to be a wrap for our 1953 edition of the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show. Thanks for listening, I’ve been your host, Christopher Verdesi. Hey, if you like what you heard, there’s much more on our website, chartcrush.com: written transcripts, links to podcast versions and peachy extras like our full top 100 charts and interactive chart run line graphs, which we do for every year, ’40s to the present. And it’s all on the website, again, chartcrush.com. So check it out, and be sure and tune in again next week, same station and time, for another year, and another edition of Chartcrush.

::end transcript::

::start transcript::

Welcome to the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show. I’m your host, Christopher Verdesi. Every week on Chartcrush, we do a dive deep into a year in Pop music and culture and count down the top 10 songs of the year according to our exclusive recap of the weekly Pop charts that were published at the time in the music industry’s leading trade publication and chart authority, Billboard magazine. This week on Chartcrush we’ll be counting down 2009, the year the rest of the American economy caught up with the music biz, and not in a good way.

Music, still reeling from going-on ten years of revenue free-fall from online filesharing due to the failure of the industry in its lucrative CD bubble in the ’90s to grasp the inevitability of online distribution and figure out with a way to monetize it.

And for the rest of the economy, the subprime mortgage crisis: a failure to see the problem with lending $4.6 trillion to 27 million unqualified home buyers whose current and future job prospects are at the same time being offshored to China and other developing countries. China’s economy thrived during the Great Recession.

Banks had made the so-called “non-traditional” loans, but it was good ‘ol Uncle Sam that’d set up the rules and incentives, and taxpayers wound up footing the bill: hundreds of billions in TARP bailouts of “troubled assets.” “Too big to fail,” was the new catchphrase as the new President Barack Obama was settling into the White House: banks that had to be bailed out because not doing so would tank the economy even worse.

Consumer credit card debt also totally out of control, nearly doubling during George W. Bush’s presidency. Simply ignoring basic economic rules and realities and living beyond your means: a feature of American life in the ’00s, ever since 20-something computer geeks in the ’90 started becoming overnight tycoons with little more than an intriguing idea, a bit of buzz and a good PowerPoint for investors.

Free music on internet filesharing platforms, also a part of that, of course. And it all hit the fan at the end of ’08. Nine million jobs lost. $13 trillion in household net worth, gone. Stocks in freefall. 567 Circuit City stores, closed, one of the last big box retail stores where you could buy CDs. Tower Records, Virgin Megastores, HMV and most other music chains, already 2-4 years in the rear view.

And ironically the Recording Industry Association of America chose that moment, with annual revenue from legal paid downloads on iTunes and other platforms hitting a billion for the first time in ’08, to stop suing individual fans for filesharing. 35,000 lawsuits since 2003 according to the Wall Street Journal.

But besides signing up for Facebook, playing Angry Birds on their iPhones or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare on their xBox 360s, or hitting theaters to make The Hangover the biggest R-rated Comedy ever (that’s appropriate, right?), what do young Americans in tough times do? Well, they dance of course!

Whether it’s Big Bands in ballrooms in the Great Depression, or Discos in the late ’70s, when the chips are down, no better escape, so in ’09, Electronic Dance Music finally went mainstream Stateside a full two decades after the Rave scene exploded across the U.K. and Europe.

Top40 Radio went all-in, big-name EDM DJs and producers started collaborating with Pop Singers and soon U.S. electronic music festivals like Electric Daisy and Ultra were drawing Woodstock-sized crowds, and everyone’s idea of what a Pop hit was supposed to sound like got a major update.

#10 Kings of Leon – Use Somebody

But we’re going to kick off our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown with something different that managed to make the cut at #10 by sticking around on the charts for a crazy long time, 57 weeks, longer than every other song in ’09 except for one, but only got as high as #4. Three brothers from a suburb of Nashville, sons of a traveling Preacher and their cousin, who landed a deal with RCA in ’02.

Their early stuff made them critics’ darlings and got them on Alternative radio along with The Strokes, Killers, White Stripes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs with their Southern take on the ’00s Garage Rock Revival, but the hits off their ’08 album Only by the Night made them the biggest Alternative crossover act of the late ’00s. It’s Kings of Leon’s second charting single and only career top 20 hit, “Use Somebody.”

Chart longevity, just about the only way Rock or Country songs were making the top 10 on year-end Hot100 rankings in the ’00, and there were only a handful of #1s by acts who also made the Mainstream or Modern Rock Airplay charts, almost all from the first three years of the decade, but Kings of Leon’s “Use Somebody” was a late ’00s standout with its 57 weeks on the Hot100.

Now, the last 15 of those weeks were in Billboard‘s 2010 chart year, so not counting those, they have it at #14 for ’09. But at Chartcrush since we don’t have to compile a chart before New Years with incomplete information, we count songs’ full chart runs and rank them in the year they earned most of their points, and that puts “Use Somebody” at #10 for ’09: one of four songs here on our ’09 Chartcrush Countdown that didn’t make Billboard‘s top 10 on the year, and the only Rock song.

#9 Lady Gaga – Poker Face

At #9, the first of two this hour by the newcomer who more than anyone signaled the arrival of Pop’s new EDM era. Nelly Furtado’s “Promiscuous” and Justin Timberlake’s “SexyBack” were the first hits in ’06, both futuristic-sounding Timbaland productions. Then Rapper Kanye West sampled EDM trendsetters Daft Punk on his chart topper “Stronger” in ’07, and heading into ’08, none other than Britney Spears dove in headfirst into the new sound on her first album in four years, Blackout.

But unlike those, this Singer was a blank slate and her debut inching up the chart for 22 weeks in late ’08 was the mirror image of major economic indicators falling before hitting rock bottom in January just as the song was hitting #1, which gave it—and her—a cultural relevance that’s rare in Pop history.

We’ll be hearing that debut hit later in the countdown, but at #9, her more distinctive second hit that entered the Hot100 in January and was in the top 10 all Spring as she unleashed her unique persona on the world and critics started comparing her to Madonna. At #9, Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, a.k.a. Lady Gaga. “Poker Face.”

“Poker Face” was #1 for just one week in April, but would’ve had nine if not for the Black Eyed Peas, who locked down the #1 spot with two hits for a combined 26 straight weeks immediately after, all the way to October, a new Hot100 record. Gaga got stuck at #2 for eight weeks after hitting #1, but “Poker Face” did make Lady Gaga the first artist since Christina Aguilera in 2000 to top the Hot 100 with her first two hits, and her debut album The Fame yielded two other top 10s besides.

Quite a start, and from her start honing her over-the-top Pop Art schtick in New York’s underground Gay and Drag scene, Gaga’s mission, she told Out magazine in ’09, was “to inject Gay culture into the mainstream [and] turn the world Gay.” Gay marriage, the latest front in the Postmodern Culture Wars, and Miss California Carrie Prejean for one suddenly found herself with a target on her back after Gossip Blogger Perez Hilton didn’t like her answer to his question about it in the Miss USA Pageant, said it was why she didn’t win, and put her on blast. Pageant owner Donald Trump among others pointed out that even the President, Obama, believed marriage should be between men and women, but Prejean eventually lost her title anyway.

#8 T.I. featuring Rihanna – Live Your Life

Now, when Billboard added paid digital downloads to its Hot100 calculus in 2005, it was the first new purely consumer-driven chart component, well, ever, the only other being sales of physical singles, which had dwindled to next to nothing by 2000: all formats, vinyl, cassette, CD. So for the first half of the ’00s, the Hot100 was basically an Airplay chart.

Well, by 2009, legal, paid mp3 downloads on Apple’s iTunes and other platforms were raking in $2½ billion a year as fans rushed to get the latest earworm on their iPods, and since ’07, iPhones for 99 cents a song. Still just a drop in the bucket compared to the download volume on filesharing platforms, none of which was factored into the charts, but enough that huge one-week 20-plus position jumps to #1 started happening pretty regularly, not just once in a blue moon or when there was a new American Idol winner.

Well for a time, the Rapper at #8 here on our Chartcrush Countdown of 2009’s top 10 hits was the undisputed King of massive download-driven one-week chart jumps. “Whatever You Like” went from #71 to #1 in a single week in ’08, but in ’09, he broke his own record when this one went from #80 to #1 its second week. At #8, it’s T.I. featuring Rihanna, “Live Your Life.”

Nope, not a glitch; that’s the ending! On the album, the last word’s on a fading delay but they left that off the Radio version we just heard for some reason.

T.I. recorded his ’08 album Paper Trail at home in Atlanta under house arrest on gun charges he later spent most of 2011 in prison for, and he did a lot of his court-ordered community service speaking to Teens about staying out of trouble. His shout-out to the troops in Iraq at the beginning of “Live Your Life,” #8 on our 2009 edition of the Chartcrush Top Ten Coundown Show: a rare example of a major ’00s hitmaker engaging with world affairs. Just a quick shout-out, but people noticed.

They noticed Rihanna on the hook too, of course, a big boost: the first of Re-Re’s many, many guest appearances on hit Rap records, but “Live Your Life” also got juice for sampling the cheesy Moldavan ElectroPop track that New Jersey Vlogger Gary Brolsma lip-synched and chair danced to in his 2005 “Numa Numa Dance” vid, one of the first ultra-viral videos, from the pre-YouTube Flash platform Newgrounds.

Producer Just Blaze had made the beat as a goof, but when T.I. urgently needed something, that’s what he got, and in a chart environment increasingly influenced by meme culture, it was the biggest hit of his career. His record 79 position jump from #80 to #1 in one week didn’t stand long. Britney Spears beat it literally the next week when “Womanizer” jumped from #96 to #1, and then Kelly Clarkson’s “My Life Would Suck Without You,” #97 to #1 just a couple months later. Once Streaming overtook downloads, epic chart jumps ceased being all that noteworthy. 2015 to 2023, four out of every 10 #1s debuted at #1.

By the way, “Live Your Life,” another of the four songs in our countdown that’s not in the top 10 on Billboard‘s year-end Hot100 ranking. Since its chart run straddled ’08 into ’09, they have it at #18 for ’09 and #37 for ’08. Again, at Chartcrush we sum up every song’s full run, and then rank it in whichever calendar year it earned the most points. All of “Live Your Life’s” six weeks at #1 were in late ’08, but its 16 weeks descending the chart January to April make it a 2009 hit.

#7 Jay Sean featuring Lil Wayne – Down

And we have a similar situation at #7, but in this case the song straddles ’09 into ’10, not ’08 into ’09. Billboard has it at #20 for ’09, #41 for 2010, but factoring its full run puts it at #7 for ’09.

Remember that epic 26-week run at #1 I mentioned that forced “Poker Face” to #2 for eight weeks in the Spring? Well this is the song that ended that streak in October, and as it scaled up the charts late Summer, the Singer-Songwriter told Billboard the song was conceived as a distraction from everything being so down in the dumps. “Why don’t we write a song to take everyone’s mind away from being down?” he said.

With everyone talking up India’s Bollywood movie industry in ’08 and ’09 and Slumdog Millionaire set in India sweeping the Oscars, it was kind of a no-brainer to sign the top name out of London’s thriving South Asian music scene to a U.S. deal, and Lil Wayne’s Cash Money Records pounced. Wayne’s even on the track, heavily AutoTuned as usual. The Singer didn’t know that was gonna happen until he heard the finished song.

What’s not on the track? Any trace of India besides the Singer’s heritage, but between “The Macarena” in ’96 and “Despacito” in 2017, U.S. hits with overt World influences? Virtually non-existent. At #7 it’s Kamaljit Singh Jhooti, British-born son of Indian immigrants, a.k.a. Jay Sean, “Down.”

Jay Sean with Lil Wayne, “Down,” #7 here on our 2009 edition of Chartcrush. Sean had been big in the U.K. and really big in India and some other places and Cash Money’s Stateside gamble with him paid off with “Down,” but his follow-up “Do You Remember” only got to #10, and from there the hits got scarcer and scarcer so essentially, he was a one-hit wonder. But just as he intended, “Down” was a definitive Great Recession hit.

#6 Lady Gaga featuring Colby O’Donis – Just Dance

The definitive Recession hit, though, is up next at #6, and I already talked it up pretty good introing the Singer’s second hit we heard back at #9, “Poker Face.” This was her first, just a little less than a year before “Down’s” run on the charts, but with the same message to go get completely hammered and sweat it out on the dancefloor: the time-tested antidote to the panic of watching helplessly as your hopes and dreams evaporate into a surreal fog of oddly-calm talking heads on TV.

Although she couldn’t have predicted the economic Armageddon that would fuel its success when she wrote the song in January of ’08, the title couldn’t be more clear about what to do. At #6, again, Lady Gaga, “Just Dance.”

#6 on our Chartcrush countdown of 2009’s top 10 hits, Lady Gaga’s “Just Dance,” co-written with Producer RedOne and Akon, still hot after his string of hits in ’06 and ’07. He was originally the featured Male Singer on it, but his label had a problem with that so he recruited his protégé Colby O’Donis. It’s still an uncredited Akon doing the fill-ins on the verses though.

Gaga wrote the song having just moved from New York to L.A. to complete her album The Fame, and later recalled that she had “one shot to write the song that would change [her] life” and she wrote it in ten minutes hungover from the night before! It took 22 weeks to top the chart: the longest climb to #1 since Creed’s “Arms Wide Open” in 2000.

#5 Taylor Swift – You Belong with Me

OK at #s 5 and 4, check this out, we’ve got a twofer: back-to-back songs in the countdown by the Millennial Teen who was already a phenom in Country since ’06, the year after her fellow Millennial Carrie Underwood won American Idol Season Four and started a mid-’00s gold rush for new Female Country crossover talent. LeAnn Rimes’ abrupt shift to Pop hadn’t worked out as planned, and GenX superstars Shania Twain, Faith Hill and Jewel, all struggling.

Now Carrie Underwood herself went on to sell over 20 million albums in the U.S., but this Singer’s relatable songs and instinct for Pop hooks, especially after going all-in on Pop in the mid ’10s, made her music’s first Billionaire “solely from songwriting and performing,” according to Forbes in 2023. Jay-Z, Rihanna and Jimmy Buffett had already hit ten digits, but with side-hustles in fashion, beauty and spirits brands, et cetera.

And she scored her first two big Hot100 hits in 2009. Neither of them got to #1 but both were top 10s and among the top five longest charting hits of the year. At #5, the later of the two on the calendar, on the chart 50 weeks, May ’09 to April of 2010, which of course splits its run between Billboard chart years so they’ve got it at #11 for ’09 and #57 for 2010. But adding it all up, it’s #5 for ’09. It’s Taylor Swift, “You Belong with Me.”

Taylor Swift, “You Belong with Me,” #5 on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown for 2009 and the video that beat out Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” for Best Female at the 2009 MTV VMAs, prompting Rapper Kanye West to jump onstage, grab the mic from Taylor in the middle of her acceptance speech and proclaim that “Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time.” Later Beyoncé won the night’s top prize, Video of the Year, but if you didn’t know Taylor Swift before that, you did now!

Kanye’s stunt made national headlines in a year of intensifying racial politics Obama’s first year as President, and just two months after the President’s Beer Summit with a Black Harvard Professor and the White Cambridge, Massachusetts Cop he, Obama, had earlier implied was guilty of racial profiling.

Post Kanye and VMAs, Taylor Swift was everywhere, hosting Saturday Night Live, guesting on CSI, and on the big screen, a cameo in the Hannah Montana movie and a part in the rom-com Valentine’s Day. And seven cuts from the Platinum Edition of her second album Fearless racking up enough downloads to make the Top40 in November.

#4 Taylor Swift – Love Story

But her biggest hit of ’09, #4 in the countdown, was the lead single from Fearless at the beginning of the year: kind of a sleeper hit. It peaked at #5 its second week in the Fall of ’08 when the album came out, but faded over the next two months, only to rebound and re-enter the top 10 in January and stay 11 weeks. 49 weeks on the chart altogether, one less than “You Belong with Me,” but by a slim margin, a stronger chart run on points. At #4, again Taylor Swift: “Love Story.”

With her first album in ’06, the magazine PopMatters had described Taylor Swift as “Country music, Disney style,” adding that she “speaks to a constituency…pretty much ignored since LeAnn Rimes.” With Fearless though, critics were nearly unanimous in praising the maturity of her songwriting. “Love Story,” Fearless‘ lead single and biggest hit, #4 our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown for 2009.

But technically not her first top 10 hit. That was “Change,” a free iTunes download that dropped in August ’08 to promote AT&T’s Team USA Soundtrack CD, and also used by NBC for their nightly Beijing Olympics highlights. Yes, free downloads did factor on the chart, but only on legit platforms. It only charted two more weeks after debuting at #10 though, so “Love Story” was Taylor’s first proper big hit. The top-charting song from her debut in ’07 was “Teardrops on My Guitar,” which peaked at #13.

#3 Jason Mraz – I’m Yours

So I’ve been talking a lot this hour about chart longevity because it was the decisive factor that got several songs into our top 10 on the year. But none more so than our #3 hit, which broke LeAnn Rimes’ all-time record for weeks on the Hot100 set in 1998 with “How Do I Live.” Before all was said and done, it’d notched 76 weeks, never getting higher than #6, but all those weeks add up!

It made Billboard‘s year-end top 10 for ’09 too, and they didn’t even count the first 21 of those 76 weeks that fell into their 2008 chart year. Those were enough to make it their #27 song of ’08 as well as #7 for ’09, but when you ignore those arbitrary “chart year” delineations and factor the song’s entire 76-week run into the calendar year in which it had the majority of its chart action—our Chartcrush ranking method—it comes out #3 for ’09. It’s Virginia-raised, San Diego-nurtured Singer-Songwriter Jason Mraz (he honed his chops in the same coffee shop where Jewel started out in the ’90s): “I’m Yours.”

Jason Mraz’s “happy little Hippie song,” as he was calling it in interviews, “I’m Yours” at #3. In 2016, Stereogum‘s Chris DeVille included Jason Mraz in a “lineage of peppy young White guys slinging folky Pop songs that both Teens and their adult Chaperones can appreciate,” citing Gavin DeGraw, Jack Johnson and John Mayer before, and Ed Sheeran and Lukas Graham after; all solo acts.

But literally one week after “I’m Yours'” dropped off the chart in October of ’09, Train’s “Hey, Soul Sister” debuted and scratched the same itch for the next 54 weeks on its way to being the #4 Hot100 hit, and Billboard‘s #2 Adult Contemporary song, of 2010. “I’m Yours” was #1 on that ranking for ’09. Adult chaperones, indeed!

Mraz’s record 76 weeks on the Hot100 with “I’m Yours” held for four years. Imagine Dragons’ “Radioactive” notched 87 in 2014.

#2 Black Eyed Peas – Boom Boom Pow

And that gets us down to the top two songs here on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown for 2009 and another twofer. Yup, the top two songs of the year: both by the same act: only year for that ever in our Chartcrush rankings all the way back to 1940.

I mentioned them back before we heard Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” at #9: the act whose record-breaking 26 consecutive weeks at #1 with their two back-to-back hits kept “Poker Face” out of the top spot for eight weeks. Their dominance in ’09, along with Lady Gaga, signaled the arrival of the Electro-Dance Pop sound that soundtracked the Millennial generation’s cultural peak, when almost everyone in the media’s target 18-34 demographic was a Millennial, roughly 2011 to 2015. And we get to hear their two back-to-back #1s in chronological order. First up, #1 for the first 12 of the 26 weeks, from April to the 4th of July, at #2 it’s The Black Eyed Peas’ “Boom Boom Pow.”

Will.i.am was the Black Eyed Peas musical and marketing visionary with his “bubble” production philosophy redefining the pursuit of commercial success as art, but Fergie was the star of the show in ’09. The Peas had been charting hits since ’01, including three top 10s, but Fergie’s string of five solo top 10s off her album The Dutchess (including three #1s) in ’06 and ’07 set the table for the Peas’ surge in ’09 with their fifth album The E.N.D.

“Boom Boom Pow,” the lead single, intended for clubs, but when radio jumped all over it too, even Will was surprised. “There’s no such thing as a radio song anymore,” he told Billboard. “Radio is what the people want.”

“Boom Boom Pow” had to be cleaned up for the AM/FM airwaves and that’s the version we just heard here on our 2009 edition of Chartcrush. But no language restrictions on satellite radio, and with Shock Jock Howard Stern taking millions of his listeners with him to Sirius XM, by ’09, terrestrial radio was worried enough that the Radio Edit of “Boom Boom Pow” doesn’t just remove the profanity; it also scrubs the word “satellite” from Will’s line “here we go satellite radio” halfway through the song!

#1 Black Eyed Peas – I Gotta Feeling

At #1 of course, the Peas’ biggest hit of the year, #1 for the second half (plus two) of that record-breaking 26-week run, 14 weeks, July to October. Like Jay Sean’s “Down,” according to Fergie, a party song specifically to lift people up during the financial crisis.

But as it turned out, the week it took the top spot from “Boom Boom Pow,” Pop fans had a brand new reason to be shocked and dismayed: the sudden death of Michael Jackson from an OD of an anesthetic his personal doctor gave him as a sleep aid. On July 11, Michael grabbed nine of the top 10 spots on the Pop Catalog Albums chart, and five of the top 10 on the Hot Digital Songs chart. And kept that up for weeks, but didn’t affect this song’s run at #1 on the Hot100. Again, The Black Eyed Peas, with “I Gotta Feeling.”

“Boom Boom Pow” at #2 and “I Got a Feeling” at #1: Black Eyed Peas snagging the top two spots on our 2009 Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown: the only year with the same act at #’s 1 and 2 on our Chartcrush rankings, 1940 to now, but it’s happened three times in Billboard: Beatles 1964; Usher 2004, and Justin Bieber 2016. For ’09, Billboard had “I Gotta Feeling” at #4, as you might’ve guessed, because its chart run, split between their ’09 and 2010 chart years. They have it at #29 for 2010 as well. But counting that whole chart run makes it 2009’s biggest hit by a mile.

Bonus

That’s the fourth song in our top 10 with a chart run that spilled over into 2010 and didn’t get fully counted in Billboard‘s ranking, and another two that didn’t because they started out in ’08. Of those six year-straddling hits, “I Gotta Feeling” and Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours” should’ve ranked higher and did in our Chartcrush rankings but still made Billboard‘s top 10. The other four, not so lucky, as I’ve been pointing out.

To review, Kings of Leon’s “Use Somebody,” T.I. and Rihanna’s “Live Your Life,” Jay Sean & Lil Wayne’s “Down” and Taylor Swift’s “You Belong with Me:” none of those four made Billboard‘s top 10, only because of when they were hits during the year. So unfair! So we correct the record. But those four coming in to our Chartcrush top 10 for ’09 bumps four songs out from Billboard‘s, so in the time we have left, just to be thorough, let’s look at those!

#19 The All-American Rejects – Gives You Hell

We had Kings of Leon at #10, a genuine crossover from the Alternative chart; #1 there for three weeks. Billboard had a different Rock band at #10, but their big Hot100 hit got little-to-no airplay on Rock stations, Alternative or Mainstream. Those audiences and stations by the late ’00s shunning Bands and songs perceived to be too far to the Pop side of the Rock spectrum, like, apparently, The All-American Rejects’ “Gives You Hell.”

Billboard‘s #10 song of 2009, “Gives You Hell,” The All-American Rejects, Emo Rockers from Oklahoma who broke through on the Alternative chart in ’03 with “Swing, Swing,” but couldn’t find a new lane once the Pop charts moved on from Emo heading into the ’10s. #19 on our Chartcrush ranking we counted down the top 10 from earlier this hour, but “Gives You Hell” was their last hit.

#13 Kanye West – Heartless

Billboard‘s #9 song was the year’s biggest hit by the late ’00s top Rapper, nudged to #13 on our ranking, Kanye West’s “Heartless.”

Kanye’s album 808s & Heartbreak continued what he’d started in ’07 on Graduation, blazing the trail of bringing EDM sounds into Hip-Hop. “Heartless,” the album’s biggest hit.

#18 Beyoncé – Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)

I mentioned Kanye’s stunt snagging Taylor Swift’s mic at the MTV Awards earlier to proclaim another video the greatest of all time. Well that song was #8 on Billboard‘s year-end chart, and shakes out at #18 on our Chartcrush ranking for ’09. Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).”

Billboard‘s last issue of 2009 not only recapped the year, it recapped the whole decade, and named Beyoncé the top-charting Female of the ’00s. The video for “Single Ladies,” Kanye West’s GOAT of videos, sparked a cross-cultural dance craze that introduced the world to jazz hands and inspired a parody on Saturday Night Live featuring Queen Bey and a trio of men including Justin Timberlake. “Halo,” “If I Were a Boy,” “Sweet Dreams,” and “Diva:” four other ’08 and ’09 top 10s from her album I Am Sasha Fierce.

#11 Flo Rida featuring Ke$ha – Right Round

And finally, Billboard‘s #6 song of 2009 just misses the top 10 on our Chartcrush ranking we counted down earlier at #11. Based on a New Wave dance hit from 1985, Dead or Alive’s “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record),” it’s his second #1 after “Low” in ’08, Flo Rida’s “Right Round.”

“Right Round,” Flo Rida’s ’09 Hip-Hop party anthem that introduced Ke$ha, for whom big things were right round the corner in the new decade. Her solo debut “TiK ToK” was the #1 song of 2010.

And that, folks, is gonna have to be a wrap for our 2009 edition of the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show. I’ve been your host, Christopher Verdesi. Thank you for listening and hey, if you like what you heard, go check out our website, chartcrush.com for a written transcript and link to the podcast version of the show, plus our full top100 chart, interactive chart run line graph and other hott extras that we do for every year we count down, ’40s to now. It’s all on the website, again, chartcrush.com.

It’s a different year every week on this show, so be sure and tune in again next week, same station, same time, for another year and another edition of Chartcrush.

::end transcript::

::start transcript::

Welcome to The Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show. I’m your host, Christopher Verdesi. Every week, we dive deep into a year in Pop music and culture and count down the top ten hits according to our exclusive recap of the weekly Pop charts published at the time in Billboard, the music industry’s top trade mag. This week we’re turning the clock back to 1981, a pivotal year in American culture, politics and music, as the world mourned the loss of former Beatle and counterculture icon John Lennon and watched former Movie Star and California Governor Ronald Reagan take the oath as President. And then he got shot.

Lennon and Reagan, both targets of assassin’s bullets only four months apart. Reagan survived, Lennon didn’t, but both shooters were deranged fans. That was new. And Reagan’s would-be assassin didn’t even have anything against the President; he was just trying to impress the young Actress he was obsessed with, Jodie Foster!

Now all segments of Pop Culture grew by double digits in the ’70s as media flooded the zone, but none more than the music biz, which nearly doubled as Boomers continued to engage with albums and performers not just for passive entertainment, but as extensions of their own identities: one of the striking features of the Baby Boom generation. The downside, though: with all that next-level showbiz fame, wealth and adoration, the creeping awareness among fans that their idols lived in a completely different world from them. And some fans needed to be reminded that “hey, you’re a spectator, not a participant.”

The wall in between? Well, the best-selling album of 1980 grappled with that exact issue. Pink Floyd’s epic The Wall, inspired by a incident that couldn’t be more emblematic of the growing separation between audience and performer in the ’70s: Floyd’s Roger Waters luring a loud, unruly fan to the edge of the stage while trying to play a quiet song, and contemptuously spitting in his face. In his ensuing angst about actually having done that, Waters imagined a literal wall across the stage separating Band and crowd.

So changing dynamics between fans and celebs, very much on fans and celebs’ minds, especially after Lennon and Reagan were shot, but just add that to the already long list of concerns as the ’80s began: inflation, soaring prices, unemployment, urban decay, moral decline.

“There was Vietnam, then Watergate, then the hostages in Iran,” Bruce Springsteen summed up in a Rolling Stone interview. “We were beaten, hustled, then humiliated, and I just think people need to feel good about their country.”

So in politics we got Reagan. In theaters, the enduring Rocky, Star Wars, Superman and Indiana Jones franchises; on TV, ABC became the #1 network in primetime with ’50s throwbacks Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley and jiggle shows like Charlie’s Angels and Three’s Company. And in music, something, anything to replace Disco after it spectacularly imploded mid-’79.

Closest thing there is to an iron-clad rule in Pop: when people’s spirits are down and anxieties up, they crave the trancelike escape and release of the ballroom, disco, rave, EDM festival, what have you, and Dance Music surges in popularity. But like Springsteen picked up on, heading into the ’80s, people just said “enough!” and even though not much improved on paper for nearly three years into Reagan’s presidency, pride, engagement, confidence and optimism were back in style.

Now how that going to translate to the charts exactly, no one really knew, and with AM Top40 radio on life support and Pop migrating to FM so Sony Walkman listeners could enjoy the hits in stereo, Billboard in 1981 was saying “no longer is there an exclusive Top 40 anything, just an ever-changing multitude of Top 40s, depending upon genre.” Once MTV launched in August of ’81, it quickly became the new center of gravity, but before that it was an unpredictable, but sometimes exciting mishmash of sounds.

#10 Dolly Parton – 9 to 5

And Country was big in the mix. Country Rock titans The Eagles, still dominant and Kenny Rogers at the top of his game. And John Travolta’s next project after personifying the Disco and ’50s Nostalgia crazes in Saturday Night Fever and Grease? 1980’s Urban Cowboy.

So first up at numbers 10 and 9 as we get things rolling here on our 1981 Chartcrush countdown, back-to-back Country crossovers. At #10, the Oscar-nominated title tune by one Country’s top Female Singer-Songwriters from her screen debut co-starring Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin about a trio of ladies who scheme against their sexist Male boss. It’s Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5.”

Dolly Parton, “9 to 5,” only the second time a Female artist topped top both the Country and Pop charts with the same single. Jeannie C. Riley was first in 1968 with “Harper Valley PTA.” It wasn’t Dolly’s first top ten hit on the Hot100; that was “Here You Come Again” in ’77. But it was her first and only #1. Very different story over on the Country chart though: 24 #1s there from 1970 to 1991.

Speaking of Kenny Rogers, his Lionel Richie penned smash “Lady” was #1 the last six weeks of 1980, and because Billboard‘s 1981 “chart year” began with their October 4, 1980 issue, they had “Lady” at #3 for ’81. At Chartcrush, though, we don’t do “chart years.” Instead we count every song’s full run in whichever calendar year it was strongest, so we have “Lady” at #2 for 1980, where it belongs, and our ’81 countdown is Rogers-free.

#9 Eddie Rabbitt – I Love a Rainy Night

But there’s another Male Country crossover act, more in line with the Urban Cowboy archetype, who beat ‘ol Kenny on the Hot100 Artists ranking for ’81 by a lot, and he’s at #9 in our lead-off Country twofer here on the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show with the song that replaced “9 to 5” at #1, the last consecutive Country Crossover #1s in Hot100 history to date. A staple of road songs compilation CDs for years to come, at #9 it’s Eddie Rabbit’s “I Love a Rainy Night.”

Also a staple of road songs CDs, Eddie Rabbit’s previous hit “Driving My Life Away,” #5 in October of 1980. And then “I Love a Rainy Night,” #1 for two weeks in March of ’81, and he had one more top-fiver in October, “Step by Step,” before his chart action declined in ’82, but he kept scoring top ten Country hits ’til right about the same time Dolly Parton’s chart fortunes faded, the first years of the ’90s, when Country’s neo-Trad renaissance swept away many of the ’80s smoother, more polished Pop-Country hitmakers.

#8 Christopher Cross – Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do)

At #8 we have another Soundtrack hit and the Oscar winner for Best Original Song. “9 to 5” was nominated; this won, from the film about a heavy-drinking New York heir played by Dudley Moore who falls for a shoplifting waitress from Queens played by Liza Minelli. For the score, the studio tapped the Singer-Songwriter whose debut album and its first two singles were all over the radio and the charts while the film was in production.

The Director was nervous about his lack of experience, though, so instead they brought in seasoned pro Burt Bacharach. But he did get to co-write the theme song with Bacharach, and record it for the film. Good thing, because despite his 1980 hits “Ride like the Wind” and “Sailing” and his big night at the Grammys, the next two singles off his debut didn’t connect like the first two, so he needed another hit fast, and he got it. His biggest yet. At #8 it’s Texas Singer-Songwriter Christopher Cross with “Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do).”

Theme from Arthur, “Best That You Can Do” at #8 here on our Chartcrush Countdown of 1981’s top 10 hits.

By the time Christopher Cross’ second album dropped in ’83, he’d lost some weight, ditched the scruffy facial hair and upgraded his wardrobe, but his look and style still didn’t translate to MTV, and the album’s lead single only got to #12. But “Think of Laura” was a surprise hit off the album months later after ABC started using it to promote its red hot daytime Soap General Hospital and its missing-presumed-dead heroine Laura Spencer. As it turned out, the album’s only top 10 hit. General Hospital, quite the hitmaking juggernaut in those years.

#7 Kool and The Gang – Celebration

Next up at #7, the top Black act of ’81 on the Hot100 and Billboard‘s #2 Soul Singles Artist of the year. Stevie Wonder was #1 with, among other hits from his Hotter than July album, his Bob Marley homage “Master Blaster.” Marley, diagnosed with terminal cancer in the Fall of ’80.

And if you’re wondering, Michael Jackson was between albums in ’81; Thriller came out at the end of ’82.

Now, our #7 song: baseball fans were among the first to hear it on NBC TV spots plugging the 1980 World Series, but what really juiced it on the charts: news broadcasts playing it in the coverage of the end of the Iran hostage crisis in January after 444 days, right as Ronald Reagan was being sworn in as President. Two weeks later, after a ticker-tape parade for the hostages in New York January 30, it hit #1. It’s Kool & The Gang, “Celebration.”

“Celebration,” since ’81 a staple of weddings, parties, and Democrat Walter Mondale’s campaign in 1984, but he didn’t have much to celebrate, losing to Reagan in a 49-state landslide.

Kool & The Gang notched their first top ten hits “Jungle Boogie” and “Hollywood Swinging” in ’73 and ’74, but then came Disco and for three years their “loose and greasy approach to Dance music” as Rolling Stone‘s Geoff Hines put it, was a dud on dancefloors. Not even having a track on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack helped, and adding strings and Female vocals to the mix just alienated their existing fans.

But as soon as Disco hit the skids in late ’79, they were back with J.T. Taylor as Lead Singer, and “Ladies Night” was their first top ten in over five years. Then “Too Hot” in ’80, and “Celebration” in ’81, their first #1 and #7 on our 1981 Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown.

Despite MTV not playing any R&B ’til CBS forced their hand with Michael Jackson in ’83, Kool & The Gang still managed to score another top 10 in ’82, “Get Down on It,” and then later, with MTV support, “Joanna,” “Fresh” and “Cherish” in ’84 and ’85.

#6 Foreigner – Waiting for a Girl like You

So Billboard launched its Mainstream Rock chart in March of ’81: their weekly ranking of Airplay on FM Rock stations. Could’ve used that during the glory days of Album Rock in the ’70s, right? But better late than never!

Well our Rock Band at #6 had been scoring Hot100 hits since their debut album in 1977 with “Feels like the First Time” and “Cold as Ice,” then “Hot Blooded” and “Double Vision” off their second in ’78, all top 10s that virtually defined mainstream Rock in the late ’70s.

Well, their third album Head Games in ’79 wasn’t quite as successful, but after two members left the band, they hit the ’80s as a foursome, so the title of their fourth album in ’81, just the number 4, had a double meaning.

Its lead single was the Rocker “Urgent,” and got them back into the top ten in September, but around Thanksgiving this Ballad hit #2, and stayed there for the next ten weeks, #2! It never got to #1 but it’s #6 here on our 1981 edition of Chartcrush: Foreigner’s “Waiting for a Girl like You.”

Missy Elliott’s “Work It” got stuck at #2 behind Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” for ten weeks in 2002 into ’03, but until then, Foreigner’s “Waiting for a Girl like You” had that record all to itself: weeks at #2 without ever getting to #1.

Later here our 1981 edition of the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show we’ll be hearing the song that was #1 for nine of those ten weeks from late November ’81 to late January ’82.

All those weeks, by the way? In Billboard‘s 1982 chart year, which began October 31, 1981, so you’ll find them both on Billboard‘s 1982 year-end Hot100, not ’81. Now here at Chartcrush, since we don’t have to get a year-end issue printed and mailed by New Years, we can count every song’s full chart run, even if it goes from one year into the next, and rank it in whichever calendar year it earned the most ranking points. Just think of it as correcting the record.

Foreigner stayed hot for the rest of the ’80s, and if you’re wondering, yes, they finally did get to #1, in 1984 with another Power Ballad, “I Want to Know What Love Is.”

#5 Rick Springfield – Jessie’s Girl

So before General Hospital was rescuing songs like Christopher Cross’ “Think of Laura” and Patti Austin & James Ingram’s “Baby, Come to Me” from the depths of obscurity and making them hits in ’83 and ’84, our next act at #5 got some of his chart mojo playing a character on the show. From ’81 to ’83 he was Rock Singing Surgeon Dr. Noah Drake. Before that he’d been an early ’70s Teen Idol along with David Cassidy and Donny Osmond, spent the Disco years doing one-off acting roles, and right before he landed the part on General Hospital, he’d cut his first album in four years. Its lead single is #5: Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl.”

“Jessie’s Girl,” Rick Springfield, #5 on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown of 1981’s biggest hits. It took its sweet time moving up the chart: 18 weeks to #1 August 1st, the same week MTV launched. He never got to #1 again, but scored another four top 10s over the next few years, and got another look in 2013 when Nirvana Drummer and Foo Fighters founder Dave Grohl featured him in his documentary Sound City about L.A.’s Sound City Studios, where Nirvana recorded Nevermind and Springfield had recorded his album, Working Class Dog, ten years before.

#4 John Lennon – (Just Like) Starting Over

At #4 another veteran making a comeback after five years, but in this case his absence wasn’t because Teen Beat and 16 stopped putting him on their covers, or he couldn’t score hits, or because he was sidelined by Disco or anything like that. No, in ’75, his second son was born so he decided to step off the merry-go-round (as he put it in another song), and be a full-time Dad.

But in 1980 he was back with a new album, shorter hair, clean shaven, slicker clothes and a new bounce in his stride. He even disavowed his early ’70s radicalism and liked Reagan! “What the hell was I doing fighting the American Government,” he wondered in a 1980 Newsweek interview, “just because Jerry Rubin couldn’t get…a nice cushy job?” Jerry Rubin, Yippie founder and Chicago Seven radical-turned-Yuppie multimillionaire in the ’80s.

The album Double Fantasy, seven songs each by him and wife Yoko Ono, dropped in November of ’80, and its lead single out at the same time was the appropriately titled “(Just Like) Starting Over.” At #4, John Lennon.

“(Just Like) Starting Over,” only the fourth song to hit #1 after the artist’s death. Otis Redding’s “Dock of the Bay,” the first in 1968, then hits by Janis Joplin and Jim Croce in the ’70s.

Would it and Double Fantasy‘s next two hits “Woman” and “Watching the Wheels” have been as big as they were if John Lennon had lived? Well, critics for the most part hated the album, but it was selling, and John had plans to tour North America and Europe in ’81, which would have reintroduced him to a whole new generation of late Boomers and first-wave Gen X-ers in their late teens and 20s.

That generational cohort sometimes informally called Generation Jones, since they don’t neatly fit into either the Baby Boom or Gen X. Lennon’s story arc had mirrored youth culture more than any other icon of his era. Would that have continued for Jonesers in the ’80s?

Double Fantasy went on to win Album of the Year at the 24th Grammys in ’82, which Yoko was there to accept.

#3 Diana Ross and Lionel Richie – Endless Love

Next at #3, the breakout Singer from Motown’s biggest ’60s Group The Supremes who went solo at the beginning of the ’70s, duetting with the breakout Singer-Songwriter of one of Motown’s biggest ’70s Groups, The Commodores, whose last two hits before his solo career began in the ’80s overlapped the duet on the charts.

For six weeks in late Summer, both the duet and The Commodores’ “Lady (You Bring Me Up)” with him singing lead were in the top 10. Then his last big ballad with the group, “Oh No,” was on its way to its peak of #4 as the duet slipped to #2 after holding down the top spot for nine weeks, August into October. At #3, it’s Diana Ross, coming off her big Post-Disco year in 1980 with “Upside Down,” “I’m Coming Out” and “It’s My Turn,” together with Lionel Richie, “Endless Love.”

Lionel Richie like Diana Ross also had a big year in 1980, just not as a solo act yet, or even as part of the Commodores, but as the Songwriter and Producer of Kenny Rogers’ “Lady,” which was #1 for six weeks. Richie also wrote and co-produced “Endless Love” we just heard at #3 here on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown for 1981: the top charting Duet of all time according to Billboard.

It was the last of Diana Ross’ six solo #1s, and the first of Richie’s five from ’81 to ’85, and it was from a soundtrack. Endless Love the movie, also memorable for being Tom Cruise’s movie debut: a short scene where he brags to friends about trying to burn down a house when he was eight.

In 1994, Luther Vandross and Mariah Carey’s cover of “Endless Love” made it all the way to #2.

#2 Kim Carnes – Bette Davis Eyes

Now to most folks after, say, 1991, “alternative” is not the first word that comes to mind when our #2 song comes on, but Billboard in ’81, trying to identify the next big thing, trumpeted the fact for the third year in a row, a “New Music”-adjacent Rock record was their #1 hit of the year.

Now our Chartcrush #1 for ’81 is a different song, this is #2, but the larger point, of course, was right, and once MTV started catapulting New Wave tracks by previously unknown Brits and Aussies into the top ten in ’82, the question was settled. At #2 it’s Kim Carnes, “Bette Davis Eyes.”

Village Voice critic Robert Christgau snarked that ”Bette Davis Eyes” is Rod Stewart’s best work since ”Maggie May.” Of course, not Rod Stewart; it was L.A. Singer-Songwriter Kim Carnes’ synthy, New Wavey cover of a Bluesy deep album cut in 1975 by the woman who co-wrote it, Jackie DeShannon: #1 for nine weeks and the #2 song on our 1981 edition of Chartcrush. It would’ve been ten weeks, but Stars on 45’s Discofied medley of (mostly) Beatles hits moved up from #2 for one week in the middle of its run on top.

In the late ’60s Kenny Rogers (there’s that name again) had been in a latter-day lineup of the Folk ensemble New Christy Minstrels with Carnes and her hubby, so in 1979, he tapped them to write songs for his concept album Gideon about a fictional Texas Cowboy, and “Don’t Fall in Love with a Dreamer” from that was a #4 hit: a Rogers/Carnes duet. Then her own fifth album in 1980 got her back in the top ten with her cover of Smokey Robinson’s “More Love.”

But “Bette Davis Eyes” was by far her biggest hit. It was everywhere in the Spring and Summer of ’81 and won Record and Song of the Year at the Grammys. Bette Davis herself (the movie legend; aged 73 in 1981) thanked her for making her cool in the eyes of her teenaged grandson and “a part of modern times.” And as I mentioned, it was Billboard‘s #1 song of the year.

#1 Olivia Newton-John – Physical

But we have a different #1, the song that kept Foreigner’s “I’ve Been Waiting for a Girl like You” at #2 for nine weeks at the end of ’81 spilling over into ’82, but recall from when we heard that back at #6, Billboard ranked both on its 1982 year-end Hot100 chart, not ’81, since their ’82 “chart year” began with their first issue in November ’81.

Again, at Chartcrush we go by calendar years, not arbitrary “chart years,” and for songs whose runs go from one year to the next, we rank their full chart runs in the year they racked up the most points. So Billboard‘s #1 song of 1982 becomes our Chartcrush #1 for 1981.

And actually, that’s awesome because it lets us say a little more about the biggest disruptor in music for a very brief window in ’81 before MTV shook everything up. The clunky first model in 1979 sold moderately well but the lighter, smaller Walkman II that appeared in February ’81 was the real game changer. They weren’t cheap, about what a decent smartphone cost in the 2020’s inflation-adjusted, but tens of thousands of them sold, and the centerpiece of Sony’s marketing? Fitness!

For the first time ever, you could bring your own tunes with you out for a run or skate or workout at the gym. By November, Time magazine was heralding “The Fitness Craze” on its cover with a group of spandex and headband-wearing folks and the tagline “America Shapes Up,” and this song was topping the Hot100. Yeah, the Walkman did that! At #1, Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical.”

With the Fitness Craze only just breaking, not at all clear at the time whether “Physical” was about working out or sex. Looking at the lyrics, clearly sex; but watch the video, working out… and sex, which got it banned here and there, and even MTV scrubbed the ending where a group of toned, oiled-up dudes in the gym ignore Olivia taking a shower in silhouette, and instead start eyeing each other!

“Physical” was the culmination of Olivia Newton-John’s real-life image transformation from sweet girl-next-door on her mid-’70s hits to naughty sexpot: the exact transformation that happens with Sandy, the character she played in the Grease movie opposite John Travolta in ’78. Written with Rod Stewart in mind, rejected by Tina Turner for being too sexual, but snapped up by, of all people, Olivia Newton-John after a moment’s hesitation, and it was her biggest hit, tying the then-Hot100 record with ten weeks at #10, which stood until Boyz II Men got 13 with “End of the Road” in 1992. Olivia made the top 10 three more times in ’82 and ’83, but “Physical” was the last of her five career chart-toppers.

Bonus

So that’s our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown for 1981, but we’re not quite done yet. With “Physical” and “Waiting for a Girl like You” coming in to our top ten from Billboard’s 1982 ranking, plus “Arthur’s Theme” when you factor its full chart run and not just the weeks within their ’81 chart year, that displaces three hits from Billboard‘s official published year-end top ten, so to be thorough despite the flaws in Billboard‘s methodology, let’s look at those three. I mentioned earlier that Kenny Rogers’ “Lady,” #3 on the year in Billboard, was really a 1980 hit, so that one’s in our 1980 countdown.

#12 REO Speedwagon – Keep On Loving You

But the song Billboard had at #10 on the year was a legit 1981 hit: a Rock Group that’d been around ten years touring relentlessly, but only denting the charts. But their perseverance finally paid off when they hit the jackpot with their 1981 album Hi Infidelity and its biggest hit, REO Speedwagon’s “Keep On Loving You.”

REO Speedwagon’s “Keep On Loving You,” #10 on the year in Billboard; bumped down to #12 by the three hits coming in to our Chartcrush top ten for 1981 we just counted down.

#11 Daryl Hall and John Oates – Kiss on My List

And finally, in our bonus segment of songs that made Billboard‘s top ten for ’81 but not ours, the hit they had at #7 which just misses our top ten at #11, by a Philadelphia Duo who scored three top tens in ’76 and ’77 but then slumped badly peak Disco and came back bigger than ever in ’81 with this hit: Daryl Hall & John Oates’ “Kiss on My List.”

Pop fans and MTV couldn’t get enough of Hall & Oates’ patented brand of Pop/R&B fusion. “Kiss on My List,” the first of their five #1’s in the first half of the ’80s, and besides those they notched seven top tens to become Billboard‘s top-charting Duo of all time, ahead of such luminaries as the Everly Brothers, Simon & Garfunkel and Carpenters.

Well that’s all we’ve got for you here on our 1981 edition of the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show. I’ve been your host Christopher Verdesi and I want to thank you for listening. Hey, if you want more, you’re gonna want to check out our website, chartcrush.com, where you’ll find links to stream all our Chartcrush episodes online, plus written transcripts, chart run line graphs, our full top 100 charts and other awesome extras. Again, that website: chartcrush.com. We count down a different year every week on this show, 1940s to now, so tune again next week, same station, same time, for another edition of Chartcrush.

::end transcript::

::start transcript::

Welcome to the Chartcrush Top 10 Countdown Show. I’m your host, Christopher Verdesi. Every week on Chartcrush, we do a dive deep into a year in Pop music and culture and count down the top 10 songs of the year according to our exclusive recap of the weekly Pop charts that were published at the time in the music industry’s leading trade mag, Billboard. This week on Chartcrush we’re counting down 1994, one of the last years before the internet transformed how we shop, get our information, and, eventually, how we mostly communicate with each other.

Only 13% of Americans were online in 1994, almost all on OSP’s: “online service providers” (CompuServe, Prodigy, DELPHI, America Online), and accessing those via (at best) 28.8 kilobit per second dial-up modems over regular phone landlines.

Websites and browsers existed, but didn’t take off ’til the free version of Netscape Navigator came out in ’95, then Microsoft’s Internet Explorer later in the year. The Web usually gets the blame for ending the American monoculture: that core set of Pop hits, movies, TV shows, opinion leaders et cetera that almost everyone knows. But in reality, the Pop culture menu was already getting pretty unwieldy by the start of the ’90s.

In music, the Sony Walkman had killed AM Top40 in the early ’80s as Pop migrated to FM, which has better sound, but just a fraction of the reach of AM, geographically. MTV held things together for a while, but by the late ’80s, Rap and Modern Rock from America’s inner cities and college campuses, respectively, were selling so many albums that Billboard had to give them their own separate charts: the first new genre charts since Mainstream Rock in ’81. And MTV created Yo! MTV Raps and, for alternative, 120 Minutes.

But the final nail in the coffin of the monoculture was in ’91 when Billboard ditched its 50 year old system of weekly retail and radio surveys and revamped the charts to reflect actual retail barcode scans and independently monitored radio spins. Turns out their survey panels had been more than a little biased in favor of Boomer artists and sounds, which had kept the illusion of a monoculture alive, but at the expense of emerging GenX sounds, Alt Rock and Hip Hop, and in Country, Neo-Trad.

All kinds of wacky leftfield stuff started making the charts after Billboard flipped that switch, but by ’94, the year we’re counting down here on this week’s Chartcrush, another chart problem was eroding the Hot100’s credibility; namely, it was still a singles chart, not a songs chart, and with the demise of the 7-inch vinyl 45 after 1988, well, who wants a cassette or CD with just two songs on it like a 45 has? Same effort as an album to get it in and out of the player, right?

I mean, labels still made them, and some folks did buy them, but by far the ones that sold best were in genres that already had a tradition of putting extended Dance or alternate mixes of tracks out on 12-inch vinyl. There the new formats were a solution, not a problem, and so-called “maxi-singles” were hot items at retail, with mixes not out anywhere else. So once the 45 went bye-bye, Hip-Hop, Dance and R&B had a huge advantage on the Hot100 over song-is-the-song genres like Rock and Country with Billboard keeping its singles-only rule.

In ’95, that really came into focus when a song hit #1 on the Pop Airplay chart for eight weeks, but was ineligible for the Hot100. The Rembrandts’ theme song from NBC’s hit TV show Friends, “I’ll Be There for You:” not out as a single. You had to buy that album. After that, people started saying the Hot100 was broken, and lots more examples over the next few years, so for ’95 ’til Billboard finally rescinded its singles-only rule at the end of ’98, our Chartcrush shows use the Airplay charts to compile our rankings.

Now ’94 did have one top 5 Airplay hit that wasn’t eligible for the Hot100, Counting Crows’ “Mrs. Jones.” That would be our #10 song if we were going by the Airplay chart, but other than that, Airplay and Hot100 were still mostly in sync in ’94.

#10 Ace of Base – Don’t Turn Around

Both year-end rankings, for example (Hot100 and Airplay), have three songs in the top 10 by the same act: needless to say a very rare occurrence! Elvis Presley in 1956, The Beatles in ’64, Bee Gees in ’78 and these guys with our #10 song in ’94. That’s it ’til Usher notched three in 2004.

But the group was a flash in the pan: everywhere one minute; where-are-they-now file before they even knew what was happening! Color Me Badd, Kris Kross, Vanilla Ice and Sinéad O’Connor: others with similar story arcs in the first half of the ’90s. At #10, here’s the first of the three hits we’ll be hearing this hour by Swedish Reggae Pop Quartet Ace of Base: “Don’t Turn Around.”

Ace of Base had a song in the top 10 on the weekly chart from October 16, 1993 to September 10, ’94, 48 weeks. That’s a record for the ’90s that not even the decade’s top Hot100 act Mariah Carey could match! “Don’t Turn Around,” their third hit on the calendar, peaking at #4 for four weeks in the Summer and the #10 song of 1994. We’ll be hearing their two even bigger smashes from earlier in the year straight ahead here on our 1994 edition of the Chartcrush Top 10 Countdown Show.

#9 John Mellencamp and Me’shell Ndegeocello – Wild Night

But first we have a bit of ’70s and ’80s throwback for you at #9: ’70s because the song was first a hit in ’71 for the guy who wrote it, Van Morrison (off his album Tupelo Honey); ’80s because it’s that decade’s top-charting Heartland Rocker, the #6 artist of the ’80s adding up all his Hot100 chart points.

The song missed the top 10 on Billboard‘s year-end Hot100 at #15, but only because the tail end of its chart run (15 weeks) was after their November 26 cut-off for the ’94 chart year, not counted. At Chartcrush with the benefit of hindsight and not having to get an issue done before New Years, we get to factor songs’ full chart runs, and then we rank them in whichever calendar year they racked up the most points.

He seems almost out of place on a ’94 playlist, let alone a top 10 countdown, but numbers don’t lie! In the top 10 for 13 weeks, peaking at #3 for two in September, it’s John Mellencamp, formerly John Cougar, teaming up with Neo-Soul Bassist Me’shell Ndegeocello on “Wild Night.”

There’s a harder rocking version of “Wild Night” on John Mellencamp’s ’94 album Dance Naked, also with Me’shell Ndegeocello on bass, but it was the toned down semi-acoustic version we just heard at #9 on our Chartcrush Top 10 Countdown for 1994 that was the promo single sent to radio. Mellencamp’s first top 10 since “Cherry Bomb” in ’87, and as it turned out, his last.

#8 Lisa Loeb and Nine Stories – Stay (I Missed You)

Our #8 hit also had an acoustic version on the single, dubbed the “Living Room Mix:” Rock, Pop and Country acts doing what they could in the mid-’90s to catch up in the singles market with Hip-Hop, Dance and R&B where 12-inch singles had been a thing for years. In this case, though, radio played the main version from the album, which was a soundtrack: that’s the only soundtrack cut in the countdown, and the first song by an unsigned artist ever up ’til then to hit #1. From Ben Stiller’s GenX-defining movie Reality Bites, at #8 it’s Lisa Loeb and Nine Stories, “Stay (I Missed You).”

Lisa Loeb and Nine Stories, “Stay (I Missed You)” from Reality Bites. Loeb had written the song a few years earlier, about being in love with someone who lacks the maturity to reciprocate, perfect for the movie. So when star Ethan Hawke who lived across the street from Loeb in New York, heard it and gave the demo to Ben Stiller, that was that. By the way, Hawke also shot the video for “Stay,” right in Loeb’s apartment.

#7 Mariah Carey – Hero

At #7, the Diva who was the #1 Hot100 act of the entire ’90s decade with the biggest of her three charting hits in ’94: the second hit off her 1993 blockbuster album Music Box. The first, “Dreamlover,” our #3 song of 1993. It’s her eighth #1 hit since she exploded onto the charts in 1990 with “Vision of Love,” of course, Mariah Carey, still with hubby, mentor and label CEO Tommy Mottola in ’94 doing the down-the-middle Adult Contemporary Diva thing on “Hero.”

I mentioned Ace of Base’s streak with one or more hits in the top 10 for 48 straight weeks in ’93 and ’94. Well at the same time, Mariah Carey was racking up 39 straight weeks with her string of three hits off Music Box making her second on that ranking. “Hero,” the second of those, #1 for four weeks December ’93 and January ’94 and #7 on our Chartcrush Countdown of ’94’s biggest hits.

She did even better in ’95 and ’96: 42 weeks in the top 10 with the three hits from her next album Daydream.

“Hero,” written by Mariah and collaborator Walter Afanasieff for Gloria Estefan to do for the 1992 movie Hero starring Dustin Hoffman and Geena Davis. Tommy Mottola vetoed that though, insisting Mariah to do herself, which of course she did. Luther Vandross’ “Heart of a Hero” was what wound up in the film, but that didn’t chart.

#6 Ace of Base – All That She Wants

Next, the hit that started it all for the year’s top chart act, not just in the U.S., but their first big European smash too, and the one legendary A&R man and Arista Records Founder/Honcho Clive Davis heard vacationing on a yacht in the Mediterranean in ’92. Even though it was peak Grunge back home, he knew he had to break this synthy Euro-Ragga-lite act from Sweden stateside. Hey, that’s why he was Clive Davis, right? At #6, Ace of Base again, with “All That She Wants.”

Well we’re counting down the top 10 hits of 1994 here on this week’s edition of Chartcrush and that was the second of the three Ace of Base hits in our countdown, “All That She Wants,” #6. No, she doesn’t want another literal baby; she’s just looking to move on to the next guy: common misconception with that song; they’re Swedish, English isn’t their first language!

Group founder Jonas Berggren, his singing sisters Jenny and Linn, and Ulf Ekberg all hailed from blue-collar Gothenburg on the West coast of Sweden, a Heavy Metal town, and although he wasn’t a Rocker at all, Jonas got the group’s moniker tweaking the title of Motorhead’s “Ace of Spades.”

Things got rolling for them after they sent their demo tape to Stockholm-based Producer/DJ Denniz PoP, who’d produced the record they built their whole sound around, Nigerian-Swedish Singer Kayo’s Reggae-lite “Another Mother.”

So Denniz pops the tape into his Nissan’s cassette deck for the drive home and it’s a big yawn for him. But then he can’t get the tape to eject! So two weeks of repeated listening gets him thinking about how he can mold their track “Mr. Ace” into a hit. The result? We just heard it, “All That She Wants,” their breakthrough, #1 on all the European charts. From there, Clive Davis reissues their 1992 album Happy Nation in the U.S. with two new songs as The Sign, and it goes 9-times Platinum and is Billboard‘s #1 album of ’94.

#5 Toni Braxton – Breathe Again

And speaking of Arista Records, in 1990 they put out a single by a Baltimore-area Sister Act that only barely scraped the R&B chart, but the guy who ended up running Arista in the ’00s, Producer Antonio “L.A.” Reid heard it. He and his partner Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds had just signed TLC to the Arista subsidiary they were building, a mashup of their names, LaFace Records, so they didn’t need another Girl Group, but they were in the market for a Diva to compete with Whitney and Mariah, and the oldest of the five sisters fit the bill, so it was bye bye Braxtons, the Girl Group, and hello Toni Braxton, solo act.

Her 1993 debut sold 10 million, topped the album chart and got her and LaFace three Grammy Awards including Best New Artist. At #5 it’s the second hit off the album: “Breathe Again.”

“Breathe Again,” #5 on our Chartcrush Countdown of 1994’s top 10 hits. Toni Braxton’s second top 10 peaking at #3 for three weeks in early ’94 right after “Another Sad Love Song” made it to #7 in the Fall of ’93. Both those hits, written by Babyface and produced by L.A. Reid, Babyface and Daryl Simmons. Toni’s sophomore album Secrets in ’96 did even better than her debut and gave her a pair of #1s, “You’re Makin’ Me High” and “Un-Break My Heart:” one of the top Pop Divas in a decade of Pop Divas.

#4 Celine Dion – The Power of Love

And at #4 we have another, dubbed by Billboard among others the “Queen of Adult Contemporary” because no Female has scored more #1s on the AC chart all the way back to 1961, 11, and our #4 song is her third. But it’s also the first of her three #1s on the Hot100, all mid- to late-’90s.

The song had already hit #1 in the U.K. in 1985 for the Singer-Songwriter who wrote it, Jennifer Rush, and it was a top 20 AC hit for Air Supply in the U.S. that same year. Then Laura Branigan charted a version on the Hot100 in ’87 making it a bona fide modern-day standard! But it was this Singer who got to drop the mic on it when her version went to #1 for four weeks in February and March. At #4, Celine Dion’s “The Power of Love.”

The lead single from her album The Colour of My Love, Celine Dion’s “The Power of Love,” produced by David Foster fresh from doing Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You,” which was 1993’s biggest hit. Foster went way back with Celine to the ’80s when she was cutting albums in French and little known outside her native Quebec, and he produced half the songs on her first English album in 1990. But “Power of Love” was her first Foster-produced hit. In ’96, they did it again with “Because You Loved Me.”

#3 Ace of Base – The Sign

OK, at #3 on our 1994 edition of The Chartcrush Top 10 Countdown Show, the best-selling single of the year and the song Billboard named #1 on its year-end Hot100.

Why isn’t it #1 on our Chartcrush ranking? Well, starting with the switch to actual retail barcode scans and monitored airplay for compiling the charts in ’91, Billboard also changed its ranking method for most of its year-end charts to summing the raw sales and airplay counts that had accumulated through the year instead of a formula based on weekly chart positions. And why wouldn’t they? It’s more accurate.

That raw data, though? Locked away in Neilsen and Billboard‘s vaults so we couldn’t refer to it even if we wanted to. Actually, though, we don’t want to because one of our main value propositions here at Chartcrush is ranking every year, ’40s to the present, using the exact same ranking method that’s based on Billboard‘s published weekly charts. And since that proprietary underlying data doesn’t even exist before Billboard‘s switch to Soundscan for barcodes and Broadcast Data Systems for radio spins in ’91, ranking based on chart positions is the only way to stay consistent.

So we’re sorry Ace of Base, but there were two songs in ’94 with stronger chart runs than your biggest hit, so it’s #3, not #1. But hey, you still get an historic three songs in the top 10 on the year, same as in Billboard. It’s the new original they were working on when Clive Davis brought them to New York to brainstorm about repackaging their album for U.S. release, and they used the title for the album as well. At #3, “The Sign.”

Ace of Base’s second and biggest U.S. hit, #1 for four weeks March into April, pushed to #2 for the four weeks that R. Kelly’s “Bump ‘n Grind” was on top, and then it reclaimed the top spot for two more weeks in May, “The Sign.”

1993 was Reggae’s big year on the U.S. charts: Inner Circle’s “Bad Boys” (the them of Fox’s hit show Cops), Snow’s massive hit “Informer,” UB40’s even more massive “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” Billboard unveiled a dedicated Reggae chart in ’93, and Alternative radio was on board too. So Clive Davis interrupting his Mediterranean vacation to sign Ace of Base in ’92, not as leftfield a move as it might appear at first blush.

And it sure as heck paid off. “The Sign” was everywhere in ’94. Stephanie Tanner’s Band Girl Talk even did it on ABC’s sitcom Full House, and later when Trey Parker and Matt Stone needed a song to epitomize the mid-’90s for an episode of t heir Comedy Central hit cartoon South Park, “The Sign” was a no-brainer. But Ace of Base faded fast, only making the top 10 one more time after 1994: their cover of Bananarama’s “Cruel Summer” in ’98. And that was it.

For his part, though, Producer Denniz PoP got backing from Arista’s parent company BMG, built Cheiron  Studios, brought in wannabe Glam Rocker Max Martin, and together they made Cheiron the epicenter of the late ’90s Teen Pop explosion. Backstreet Boys, one of their first projects. Sadly, Denniz died of cancer in 1998 at just 35, but Max Martin, one of the top Producers of the ’00s and ’10s after crafting Britney Spears’ breakthrough “..Baby One More Time” in ’98.

#2 All-4-One – I Swear

At #2 in our Chartcrush Countdown of 1994’s top 10 hits, another David Foster production. Recall that he also helmed Celine Dion’s “Power of Love” we heard at #4 and Billboard named him the year’s top Singles Producer.

Here he is pulling a Mitch Miller (the early ’50s Producer who got Tony Bennett to do Hank Williams’ “Cold Cold Heart”) remaking a recent Country hit into a #1 Pop hit with a version of John Michael Montgomery’s “I Swear” by a Black L.A. Vocal Quartet. Atlantic Records President Doug Morris had the idea and set it all up, but Foster did produce it. At #2 it’s All-4-One’s “I Swear.”

Kentucky Singer John Michael Montgomery’s original of “I Swear” was #1 on the Country chart for four weeks and even got to #42 on the Hot100 in 1993, but All-4-One conquered the Hot100 with their version six months later, stayed at #1 all of June and July, 11 weeks, and took home the Grammy for Group Pop Vocal Performance. #2 here on our Chartcrush Top 10 Countdown for 1994.

Their next big hit was also a Montgomery cover that peaked on the Hot100 six months after the original on the Country chart: “I Can Love You Like That” in ’95. For a while it seemed like All-4-One might be the next Boyz II Men, but nope. Their last Hot100 entry stalled at #30 in ’96 while Boyz’ continued scoring massive hits…

#1 Boyz II Men – I’ll Make Love to You

…including our #1 song, their biggest hit yet, which is saying something! “End of the Road,” #1 for 13 weeks and the #1 song of 1992.

But then in ’94, after Lisa Loeb’s “Stay” replaced All-4-One on top for three weeks, their next chart topper tied Whitney Houston’s then-record of 14 weeks at #1, and it’s the #1 song of 1994 using our Chartcrush ranking method that goes by weekly chart positions.

Over at Billboard, it was #1 the last week of the ’94 chart year, November 26, with 17 weeks still to go in its run. Not counted, so it’s #3 on the year but had they been, the song likely would’ve beaten Ace of Base’s “The Sign” for the #1 spot on their year-end Hot100 as well. Again, at Chartcrush, for our rankings we factor every record’s full chart run, and at #1 for 1994? It’s Boyz II Men’s “I’ll Make Love to You.”

Philadelphia’s Boyz II Men on good ‘ol Motown with the #1 song of 1994, “I’ll Make Love to You.” Billboard described their sound in ’94 as “guys next door” and a counterbalance to “the aggressive nature of this year’s music,” alluding there to the tension between R&B and Hip-Hop, which boiled over in early ’94 when a Black Women’s group barricaded a Nobody Beats the Wiz store in DC that was selling Gangsta Rap records, got big headlines, and helped initiate House and Senate hearings into Hip-Hop lyrics.

Despite all that (or maybe in part because of it), Gangsta Rap albums by Snoop Dog, Ice Cube, Easy-E and Bone Thugs-n-Harmony all made Billboard‘s top 100 albums of 1994, still with almost no airplay outside big cities, and in ’95, a Hip-Hop watershed when Billboard named Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” the #1 Hot100 single of the year.

So that’s our top 10 countdown here on our 1994 edition of Chartcrush. Again, our ranking based purely on chart positions on Billboard‘s weekly Hot100, while Billboard, starting in 1992 was adding up actual sales and radio spin units from behind-the-scenes to get their year-end rankings.

So, some differences in ranking positions within the top 10 comparing our ranking to Billboard‘s, most notably, the shakeup at #1 where we have Boyz II Men; Billboard had Ace of Base’s “The Sign.” But the songs in our top 10 vs. Billboard‘s sync up pretty well: nine in common: all except the one we have at #9. John Mellencamp’s “Wild Night,” which missed Billboard‘s top 10 at #15 on the year because they didn’t count the tail end of its run, which spilled over into their 1995 chart year.

#16 Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart and Sting – All for Love

Instead, at #8, Billboard had a second soundtrack cut besides Lisa Loeb’s “Stay (I Missed You)” that’s in both ours and Billboard’s top 10s. From The Three Musketeers, it’s Bryan Adams, teaming with fellow Boomers Rod Stewart and Sting on “All for Love.”

Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart and Sting’s “All for Love,” Billboard‘s #8 song of 1994, that title riffing on the Three Musketeers’ motto “All for one, one for all.” We’ve got that one at #16 on our Chartcrush ranking for 1994.

Adams, something of a Soundtrack god in the ’90s. “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You” from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, #1 in 1991, “All for Love” in ’94, and then, “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?” from the offbeat Johnny Depp rom-com Don Juan de Marco in ’95. All #1 hits.

And that’s gonna have to wrap things up for our 1994 edition of the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show. If you like what you heard and you want more, check out our website, chartcrush.com, for a written transcript of the show and a link to stream the podcast version online, plus killer extras like our full top 100 chart and interactive line graph of the actual chart runs of the top 10 songs. We do that for every year, ’40s to the present, and it’s all on the website. Again, that’s chartcrush.com.

I’m Christopher Verdesi, your host. Thanks for listening, and be sure and tune in again next week, same station and time, for another year, and another edition of Chartcrush.

::end transcript::

::start transcript::

Welcome! This is the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show and I’m your host, Christopher Verdesi. Every week on Chartcrush, we do a deep dive into a year in Pop music and culture and count down the top 10 songs according to our exclusive recap of the weekly Pop charts published at the time in Billboard, the music industry’s top trade mag. This week on Chartcrush it’s 1966, a great, transformative year in Rock, Soul and R&B and Pop.

Just check out some of these songs that hit #1. Simon & Garfunkel’s breakthrough “The Sound of Silence” was #1 the last week of 1965 and the first week of ’66, and then reclaimed the top spot from The Beatles for a week in late January. Lou Christie’s ultra-catchy Four Seasons-riffing “Lightning Strikes” for a week in February followed by Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.”

Then the Spring brought The Young Rascals’ “Good Lovin’,” Percy Sledge’s Soul heartbreaker “When a Man Loves a Woman” and The Rolling Stones’ “Paint It, Black,” immediately followed in June by The Beatles, back at #1 with “Paperback Writer.” It’s run on top interrupted for a week by Nancy’s dad Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night.” And we’re only half-way through the year!

Summer kicked off with a pair of Garage Rock nuggets: Tommy James & The Shondells’ “Hanky Panky” and the three-chord stomper “Wild Thing” by The Troggs, avatars of England’s Troglodyte movement: kids forsaking civilization and reverting back to cave dwelling. New York’s Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Summer in the City” appropriately topped the chart for three weeks in the dog days of August, and then it was back to school with Donovan’s “Sunshine Superman” and The Supremes’ “You Can’t Hurry Love.” The Supremes’ also soundtracked Thanksgiving ’66 with “You Keep Me Hangin’ On,” and The Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” was #1 while folks did their Holiday shopping in mid-December.

Wow, what a year, huh? But even more astonishing: none of those #1’s I just ran down were among the year’s top 10 hits we’ll be counting down this hour. Wait, what?! Yep, you heard me right. 1966 was such an explosive year in Pop, with literally dozens of era-defining hits that when you look at the charts, didn’t rank nearly as high as you’d think, and/or had surprisingly brief chart runs when they came out, yet they impacted pop culture for decades and still rack up tens of millions of plays on streaming platforms to this day.

Statistically, when you look at just songs that’ve cracked the top 10 and how long they stayed on the Hot100, top 10s in 1966 had an average total chart life of less than 12 weeks. That’s lower than any other year in chart history. As soon as records got traction, something else hit, and it was on to that: boom, bang zoom!

For comparison, in 2015, 12 weeks was the average for how long top 10 songs stayed… in the top 10! Average weeks on chart for top 10s in 2015: 35 weeks. Hard to imagine hits coming and going as fast as they came and went in 1966.

So if all those iconic #1s I just ran down aren’t in our countdown of 1966’s top 10 hits, what songs are? Surely they must be even better and more iconic, right? Well, after decades of nostalgia, recontextualization and reprioritization, our countdown (again, based solely on what was topping the charts at the time) might have a few surprises in store. But you can be the judge of that!

#10 The Mamas & The Papas – Monday Monday

At #10, one of the top acts in the second wave of Folk Rock, right on the heels of the first in ’65 when The Byrds’ jangly version of Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” hit #1 in April prompting Bob Dylan himself to plug in and “go electric” at the Newport Folk Festival in July. And a series of big hits in the new genre in Summer and Fall: Sonny & Cher, The Turtles, Barry McGuire, and Dylan’s own “Like a Rolling Stone,” clocking in at an unheard-of-on-AM Top40-radio six-plus minutes.

But for ’66 there was a whole new crop, and one of the biggest was The Mamas & The Papas. Their biggest hit in ’66 kicking off the countdown at #10: “Monday Monday.”

Mamas & Papas: John Phillips, his wife Michelle, Lead Singer Denny Doherty and “Mama” Cass Elliott. “Monday, Monday,” at #10 as we count ’em down here on our 1966 edition of The Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show. Not their first hit but their biggest, #1 for three weeks in May after their debut “California Dreamin’” had stalled out at #4 in March.

Phillips had already been a successful Folkie with his group The New Journeymen, and Denny and Cass had both been in The Mugwumps, but once The Byrds hit and Dylan shocked the Folk world by plugging in at Newport, they formed The Mamas & The Papas and moved out to L.A. You can hear their origin story in their own words in their #5 hit in 1967, “Creeque Alley.”

After “Monday Monday,” they hit the top 10 again at the end of June with “I Saw Her Again” and had a total six hits on the charts in ’66. Adding it all up makes them the #5 Hot100 act of ’66.

But Denny and Cass’s fellow ex-Mugwumps John Sebastian and Zal Yanovsky stayed in New York and the group they started, The Lovin’ Spoonful, did even better: five top 10’s in ’66: “Daydream,” “Summer in the City,” “Do You Believe in Magic” and two others, and they shake out as the #2 Hot100 artist of ’66, behind only The Beatles. Simon & Garfunkel also made the top 10 on that ranking at #7, with their string of five charting singles in ’66 starting with “The Sound of Silence.”

#9 The Four Tops – Reach Out I’ll Be There

Switching to Motown for our #9 hit. After five years of explosive growth, Berry Gordy, Jr.’s Detroit-based empire roared into ’66 with more top 10s than ever in a single year: 13. But no #1s ’til Fall when they scored three, all the work of star Songwriting/Production team Holland-Dozier-Holland, Lamont Dozier and brothers Brian and Eddie Holland, best known for writing and producing The Supremes’ hits, and two of those three Motown chart toppers in the Fall of ’66 were The Supremes: “You Can’t Hurry Love” in September and “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” in November.

Sandwiched between in October though? H-D-H’s top Male act, #9 on our Chartcrush Countdown of 1966’s biggest hits, The Four Tops’ “Reach Out I’ll Be There.”

Coming off their first #1 in ’65, “I Can’t Help Myself,” the Four Tops struck again with “Reach Out I’ll Be There,” #9 on our 1966 edition of The Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show. Their next two singles were also big hits, “Standing in the Shadows of Love” and “Bernadette,” and they eclipsed The Temptations as Motown’s top-charting Male group in ’67. But Holland-Dozier-Holland split with Gordy and Motown in ’67, and the Temps surged back with a bold new sound their longtime Songwriter/Producer Norman Whitfield pioneered, Psychedelic Soul.

The Tops soldiered on with their new Producer, Frank Wilson who also took the reins with The Supremes, but they didn’t score any more big hits until they too split from Motown to sign with ABC/Dunhill and “Ain’t No Woman (Like the One I’ve Got)” produced by Steve Barri became a pre-Disco Top40 staple and peaked at #4 in 1973.

#8 Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels – Devil with a Blue Dress/Good Golly Miss Molly

Now Motown wasn’t Detroit’s only musical export. The original “Twist” group, Hank Ballard & The Midniters were from the Motor City, as was Del Shannon, whose “Runaway” was one of the top hits of 1961. And after The Beatles hit, Detroit’s Garage Rock scene was unique for its Soul/R&B influences. Bob Seger, Ted Nugent and high-energy Proto-Punk bands The MC5 and Iggy & The Stooges, all products of that in the ’60s. And harder-edge Rolling Stone alternative Creem magazine started out in Detroit in ’69.

But the first Detroit Rockers to conquer the Hot100 post-Beatles were this next act at #8. Four Seasons mastermind Bob Crewe heard their demo, went to Detroit to see them open for the Dave Clark Five and signed them to his new label in ’65 hoping to cash in on the popularity of Wilson Pickett’s Soul Shouting R&B same as he had with Doo Wop in ’62 with the Four Seasons.

Crewe was the Arranger and Producer of their records and they made the top 10 in late ’65 with “Jenny Take a Ride,” but that was just the warm-up. The Young Rascals’ “Good Lovin’” and Pickett’s “Land of 1,000 Dances” hit in the Spring and Summer, and then this late in the year. #4 for four straight weeks November and December, Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels, their medley, “Devil with a Blue Dress/Good Golly Miss Molly.”

Bruce Springsteen used “Devil with a Blue Dress/Good Golly Miss Molly” as a concert finale, but Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels made it the #8 record of the year in 1966 by our ranking here on the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show.

Now there are two versions of Billboard’s year-end Hot100 chart for 1966, the one published at the end of ’66, and a revision for a research packet they did circa 1970 that uses a slightly more modern ranking methodology. They’re quite different, but don’t look for “Devil with a Blue Dress” near the top of either of those because it was a hit so late in the year, extending into early ’67, and Billboard only factors weeks within its “chart year,” which splits ranking points between years.

At Chartcrush though, we count every song’s entire chart run regardless of when it was a hit during the year, and rank it in whatever year it had the most of its chart action. No point splitting!

#7 The Monkees – Last Train to Clarksville

OK, on to #7. The Beatles turned a corner in 1966. After over two years of nearly constant touring and recording, two movies, endless publicity events, John Lennon’s observation to a London Evening Standard reporter in March of ’66 that The Fab Four were “more popular than Jesus,” when it was publicized Stateside in late July, sparked protests, record burnings, radio boycotts and even death threats.

Their 18-date North American stadium tour was in August at the height of that backlash. And there were other controversies too: statements critical of America and Americans, a thumbs up for Vietnam draft dodgers and the gruesome original “butcher cover” of Yesterday and Today, their U.S.-only album cobbled together with singles and songs omitted from American versions of other albums. So after the tour wrapped, the Fab Four retreated from public view and hunkered down for months in the studio to make their classic Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album.

So in late Summer when NBC teased its new sitcom about a Rock group, modeled after the Beatles films A Hard Day’s Night and Help!, the kiddos ate it up. And as John, Paul, George and Ringo exited the limelight, Peter, Mike, Davy and Micky and their made-for-TV “Prefab Four” group stepped right in. The half-hour show debuted September 12: Monday nights at 7:30 Eastern right before I Dream of Jeannie, now in “living color,” like the rest of NBC’s primetime lineup for the first time ever, and just nine episodes in on November 5, their debut single hit #1. At #7? The Monkees’ “Last Train to Clarksville.”

TV group The Monkees’ first hit, “Last Train to Clarksville,” #1 for a week in November and #7 here on our 1966 edition of The Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show. Their second was even bigger, “I’m a Believer:” seven weeks on top at the start of ’67.

The Monkees sang on their records (Micky Dolenz there on “Last Train to Clarksville”). Everything else, though? Legendary L.A. studio session group The Wrecking Crew, who played on hundreds of records in the ’60s, and not just ones by made-for-TV groups. The week after “Clarksville” topped the Hot100, The Monkees’ debut LP topped the album chart for the first of 13 weeks, which was just one shy of the record for Rock Bands atop the album chart set by The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night in ’64. By the way, their next set More of the Monkees shattered that record with 18 weeks in ’67.

#6 The Association – Cherish

So fun fact: between The Mamas & Papas “Monday Monday” in late May and this next hit at #6 in late September, none of the songs that hit #1 are in our top 10 countdown. The entire Summer!

Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman,” #1 for two weeks May into June: that shakes out at #25 on our ranking. The Beatles’ “Paperback Writer,” two weeks on top June into July, #28. The Rolling Stones’ “Paint It, Black,” also two weeks in July: #20. The Troggs’ “Wild Thing,” two weeks July into August: #19. The Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Summer in the City,” three weeks at #1 in August: that one just misses our top 10 at #11; The Supremes’ “You Can’t Hurry Love,” two weeks in early September: #13 on our ’66 ranking. And three others.

So what’s going on there? Well it’s like I laid out in the intro: with so many great records coming out, songs just weren’t staying on the chart very long. Now we’d love to factor that in to our rankings, but to do that we’d need the underlying sales and airplay data the weekly charts were based on so we could weight the weeks throughout the year. Maybe then we’d have a couple Summer #1s in our countdown, or maybe not, but alas, all we can go by is the weekly chart positions, so a #1 in a hot sales week gets the same points as one in a less-hot week. No way to differentiate.

Having said all that, though, finally in the last week in September, a #1 that’s in our top 10! It’s another Southern California group, like the Mamas & Papas and Monkees, that coalesced out of a loose 13-member Folk collective called The Men at Hollywood’s Troubadour Club.

Along with other L.A. acts, they pioneered the new Soft Folk “Sunshine Pop” sound, but they got off to a shaky start when despite their clean-cut look, their first hit, “Along Comes Mary” earlier in ’66, landed on The Gavin Report‘s tip sheet of songs with drug references. “Mary,” slang for pot. Which all but killed its airplay along with The Byrds’ “Eight Miles High.” This one’s clean as a whistle, though. At #6 it’s The Association, “Cherish.”

“Cherish,” #1 for three weeks in late Summer and #6 on our countdown of the top 10 hits of 1966 here on this week’s Chartcrush. The Association scored an even bigger hit in ’67: the more upbeat “Windy,” which hit #1 for three weeks despite its numerous thinly-veiled drug references. That hit right after they were one of the top-billed acts at Monterrey Pop, the three-day festival that kicked off the Summer of Love in the Bay Area: first to take the stage Day 1.

#5 The Beatles – We Can Work It Out

Now despite the Beatles’ tumultuous second half of ’66 after John Lennon’s “bigger than Jesus” scandal, the first half of the year Beatlemania was still fully intact coming off Help!, their second movie and its album and singles. Rubber Soul dropped at the end of ’65 and as was their custom, a new single at the same time with songs not on the album. Well, both sides of that single made the top10, but the one that’s #5 on our countdown was the favorite on radio: #1 its fourth week on the Hot100 in early January, whereupon it battled Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence” for the top spot all month. “We Can Work It Out.”

Beatles “We Can Work It Out” at #5 on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown of 1966’s biggest hits. “Day Tripper,” the flip-side. That peaked at #5. Both songs feature both Paul McCartney and John Lennon’s vocals: typical on The Beatles’ first hits, but it was getting rare as they increasingly wrote independently. Want to know who really wrote a Lennon-McCartney song? Just listen to who’s singing it!

#4 ? and The Mysterians – 96 Tears

Now The Beatles and the British Invasion didn’t just inspire copycat made-for TV groups like The Monkees. American Teens in the tens of thousands in the mid-60s were picking up instruments, practicing with their buddies in their parents’ garages and having a go at stardom. Start-up labels looking to make a quick buck with the next “Louie Louie” snapped up these groups and put out their records, and they often got played on local radio right alongside the latest chart hits, so a young Band could be as big as The Beatles or Stones in their hometown even if they didn’t break through nationally.

But some did break through nationally. “Wooly Bully” by Texas’ Sam the Sham & The Pharaohs, the #7 song on our 1965 Chartcrush ranking (Billboard had it at #1 on the year!). But no left-field American Garage Rock combo was ever able to top the weekly Hot100 until Tommy James & The Shondells’ “Hanky Panky” in July, yet another Summer ’66 #1 not in our countdown! Then The Troggs’ “Wild Thing,” although they were British.

But then, right before The Monkees’ “Last Train to Clarksville,” this nugget by a Latino group out of Michigan, sung by their enigmatic dark-sunglass-wearing Frontman and propelled by an ultra-catchy Vox Continental organ riff. At #4, #1 for just one week but in the top 10 for nine, same as The Monkees, it’s Question Mark & The Mysterians’ “96 Tears.”

Why 96 tears? Well, Songwriter/Frontman Rudy Martinez, a.k.a. “Question Mark,” says that number, 96, has a deep philosophical meaning for him, but to date he hasn’t elaborated. Mysterians indeed! 1966, the pinnacle of American Garage Rock on the charts. The Outsiders’ “Time Won’t Let Me,” #5 in April; Paul Revere & Raiders’ “Kicks,” #4 in May; The Cyrkle’s “Red Rubber Ball” and Tommy James’ “Hanky Panky” in July; Sam the Sham again with their next hit “Lil’ Red Riding Hood” in August; The Count Five out of San Jose, California with their Yardbirds-inspired “Psychotic Reaction,” #5 in October, and beyond the top 10 and national charts, hundreds more.

#3 The Righteous Brothers – Soul and Inspiration

Heading back to Southern California for #3 on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown for 1966: the Duo who got to headline Producer Phil Spector’s crowning achievement with his “wall of sound,” “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” in ’65: heavy reverb, orchestration, backup choirs, et cetera. Spector spent tens of thousands of precious 1964 dollars getting that record just right, only to see the Duo bolt from him and his label first chance they got. And their new deal prohibited them from working with Spector, for which he sued and eventually won a massive settlement.

But in the meantime, they had to produce their follow-up themselves. Fortunately, they were paying attention, and they even had a soundalike song by the same writers who’d penned “Lovin’ Feelin'” for them, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. And the Spector-free result not only nails the wall of sound, it topped the chart a week longer than “Lovin’ Feelin’!” At #3, The Righteous Brothers, “(You’re My) Soul and Inspiration.”

Righteous Brothers: Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield: “(You’re My) Soul and Inspiration,” #3. As big a triumph as it was to replicate Phil Spector’s sound, the era’s most acclaimed Producer, “Soul and Inspiration” was The Brothers’ last top 10 hit before fading from the charts and splitting in ’68. But in 1974 they regrouped to put an exclamation point on the whole early ’70s Early Rock Nostalgia boom with their #3 hit, “Rock and Roll Heaven.” And in ’87, Bill Medley, this time without Bobby Hatfield, was back at #1 with his Duet with Jennifer Warnes on “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” from Dirty Dancing.

#2 The New Vaudeville Band – Winchester Cathedral

Well we’re down to the small numbers here on our 1966 edition of the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show, and with all the enduring classics that charted in ’66, kinda shocking that the top two are songs that were all but forgotten by the end of the ’60s.

At #2, a throwback to the golden age of British Music Hall, the U.K.’s Vaudeville, 30-40 years in the rear-view by ’66. It’s a studio band hired by the Songwriter, Geoff Stephens, and Singer John Carter cupped his hands in front of the mic to make his vocal sound like late ’20s Crooner Rudy Vallée, famous for singing through a megaphone.

Like Mitch Ryder’s “Devil with a Blue Dress” we heard back at #8, its chart run spilled over into ’67, so its last several weeks were not factored and it doesn’t appear on Billboard‘s year-end Hot100 at all, but counting its full chart run reveals it as the #2 song of 1966. It’s The New Vaudeville Band’s “Winchester Cathedral.”

New Vaudeville Band, “Winchester Cathedral,” the #2 song of 1966 here on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown; believe it or not, the 1967 Grammy winner for Best Rock Record, and Rock fans for years used that as a reason to ignore the Grammy Awards. But maybe they were on to something. Donovan’s “Mellow Yellow” and British Duo Peter & Gordon’s Music Hall throwback “Lady Godiva” were also in the top10 along with “Winchester Cathedral” in December. And further down on the charts in those weeks, even sillier stuff like “The Eggplant That Ate Chicago” by Dr. West’s Medicine Show & Junk Band.

And Paul McCartney for one was never the same after those hits; like his permission slip to open the nostalgia floodgates. “When I’m 64,” “Your Mother Should Know,” “Honey Pie,” just a few of the Beatle songs his bandmate John Lennon allegedly liked to dismiss as “Paul’s Granny music.” So maybe the Grammys got it right; “Winchester Cathedral” had legs.

#1 SSgt Barry Sadler – The Ballad of the Green Berets

The #1 song of ’66 though, not so much. U.S. troops in Vietnam more than doubled in ’66: nearly 400,000 by the end of the year, and polls showed that most Americans supported the war. But with protest escalating and most Folk and Pop acts who chimed in voicing antiwar sentiments, a record by a wounded Green Beret extolling the virtues of the cause and the bravery of the troops in combat was bound to be a hit.

But no one, hawk or dove, could’ve predicted how big a hit: #1 for five straight weeks in March while tens of thousands picketed at the White House as part of an International Day of Protest organized by The National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam, precursor to MOBE. The #1 song of 1966 is Army Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler’s “Ballad of the Green Berets.”

Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler, “Ballad of the Green Berets.” The #1 song of 1966 and the top selling single of the year. Sadler wrote it recovering from his wounds as a Green Beret medic in Vietnam, and his pro-military, pro-Vietnam message: much different from what came later in the ’60s as protest escalated and public opinion turned. But it was also different from the military and patriotic music of the past; the muscular Male-chorus bravado of Mitch Miller’s 1955 “Yellow Rose of Texas,” say. His Folky clipped, understated vocal and acoustic guitar set a new template that endured for years, just not on the charts.

Bonus

Well there ya have ’em, the top 10 songs of 1966 according to our Chartcrush ranking. In ’67, for the first time, Billboard started adding bonus points to songs’ point totals in its year-end tabulations for weeks at #1 to better reflect the hockey stick effect with sales and airplay as you approach #1, and they continued to refine that formula over the next 25 years, but in ’66 it was still just a simple inverse-rank point system.

And of course, Billboard was only counting weeks within its chart year, not songs’ full chart runs as I’ve been pointing out. So five of the songs we just heard this hour in our countdown are not in Billboard’s top 10 for the year.

To review, New Vaudeville Band’s “Winchester Cathedral” and Mitch Ryder’s “Devil with a Blue Dress” were hits too late in the year to have their chart runs fully counted. Similarly, The Beatles’ “We Can Work It Out:” the first two weeks of its run in calendar 1965, not counted. And The Righteous Brothers’ “Soul and Inspiration” and The Mamas & Papas’ “Monday Monday,” each with three weeks at #1, get boosted into our top 10 adding in those bonus points that are a key part of our Chartcrush ranking method we use consistently for every year. But those five coming in to our top 10 displaces five from Billboard’s, so, just to be thorough, we’ll do a mini-countdown of those.

#69 Paul Revere & The Raiders – Kicks

Billboard’s #9 song was by a Band originally from Idaho, relocated to L.A., and by ’66, ensconced as regulars on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand TV spinoff Where the Action Is and fixtures of the Sunset Strip youth scene in Hollywood with their colonial era costumes in response to the British Invasion. It’s Paul Revere & The Raiders, with “Kicks.”

Nah, they’re not talking about a sneaker shortage; “Kicks” was mid-’60s Teen slang for getting high, and the song by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil (same team who wrote The Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'” and it’s ’66 follow-up “Soul and Inspiration” we heard at #3) was an anti-drug song, first offered to The Animals, but snapped up by Paul Revere & The Raiders. It only peaked at #4, but 12 of its 14 weeks on the chart were in the top 40 so on the strength of that it made Billboard’s year-end top 10, which, again, was based on a simple inverse-rank point system. On our Chartcrush ranking, “Kicks” comes out #69.

#21 Frank Sinatra – Strangers in the Night

Billboard’s #8 song of ’66 as we continue our mini-countdown of Billboard‘s year-end top 10 songs missing from our Chartcrush Top Ten we counted down earlier: the final solo #1 by none other than Frank Sinatra, 26 years after his first chart hits singing with Tommy Dorsey & His Orchestra before World War 2, “Strangers in the Night.”

Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night,” Billboard’s #8 song of 1966, #21 on our Chartcrush ranking we counted down the top 10 from earlier in the show. He hadn’t had a #1 single since “Learnin’ the Blues” in 1955 but with over 30 best-selling albums since then, Grammy and Oscar winner, host of the Oscars in 1962, he was still going strong at 50.

One night in ’68, CBS-TV exec Fred Silverman couldn’t shake that “doo-be-doobie-doo” scat thing Sinatra does at the end, and the next day in a development meeting for a new cartoon about a Teenage singing group that solves spooky mysteries, he changed the name of the dog in the show from “Too Much” to “Scooby-Doobie-Doo.”

#14 Nancy Sinatra – These Boots Are Made for Walkin’

Now Frank wasn’t the only Sinatra who was red hot in ’66. Daughter Nancy Sinatra scored Billboard’s #6 hit of the year, #1 for a week in late February, seven in the top 10 and #14 on our Chartcrush 1966 ranking, “These Boots Are Made for Walkin'”

Before “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’,” Nancy Sinatra’s singing career was going nowhere despite her famous name, so Dad intervened and got Country Singer-Songwriter-Producer Lee Hazelwood to recast her as the Mod, platinum blonde, go-go booted Biker chick in “Boots.” Soldiers in Vietnam adopted it as their theme for their endless foot patrols after her “Boots tour” with the U.S.O. Then, later in ’66 she starred with Peter Fonda in Roger Corman’s outlaw biker flick, Wild Angels, and her makeover was complete.

#30 Jimmy Ruffin – What Becomes of the Brokenhearted

Next up in our mini-countdown of songs from Billboard‘s year-end top 10 nudged out of our Chartcrush Top Ten countdown for 1966 we heard earlier, the older brother of Temptations Lead Singer David Ruffin, who outsold everything that the Temps had out in ’66 with his very first charting single. #3 on the year in Billboard, it’s Jimmy Ruffin’s “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted.”

Jimmy Ruffin, “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted.” Billboard had it at #3 even though it only got to #7 on the weekly chart. But it racked up 17 total weeks in a year when the average for top 10’s was less than 12, and that simple inverse point ranking method: very generous to songs with long chart runs. It shakes out at #30 on our Chartcrush ranking for 1966.

#18 The Mamas & The Papas – California Dreamin’

And finally on our 1966 edition of Chartcrush, another 17 weeker that never hit #1, but Billboard has it as their #1 song of ’66! I mentioned it when we heard their second hit “Monday Monday” at #10. Here again, The Mamas & The Papas, their breakthrough, “California Dreamin’.”

Mamas & Papas, “California Dreamin’, Billboard’s #1 song of 1966 thanks to its 17 weeks on the chart. Again, longevity, much less decisive in our Chartcrush rankings so we have it at #18, but that’s not too bad for a song that peaked at #4!

And on that note, it’s gonna have to be a wrap for our action-packed 1966 edition of the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show. Hey, if you like what you heard and you want more, I hope you’ll visit our website, chartcrush.com for a written transcript of the show and a link to stream the podcast version online, plus hip extras like our full top 100 chart and interactive line graph of the actual chart runs of the top 10 songs. Which we do for every year, ’40s to the present, and it’s all on the website, again, chartcrush.com.

I’ve been your host, Christopher Verdesi and I want to thank you for listening, and be sure and tune in again next week, same station and time, for another year, and another edition of Chartcrush.

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