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80smusicfreak
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Joined: 14 October 2004
Location: United States
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Posts: 527
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| Posted: 21 September 2013 at 3:21pm | IP Logged
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EdisonLite wrote:
| ...I decided to look around again and just found a CD in VG condition for $16 (+$3 postage), so I bought it. |
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If it's an original on Warner Bros. 64532, I'll trade ya... ;-)
Quote:
| I recently bought an Eddie Rabbitt CD called "Number One Hits" and this song was excluded ... for the obvious reason that it didn't reach #1 country. But despite the fact that people here are saying it wasn't a big hit, it did reach #2 on the country charts, and I consider that big. Had it gone one notch higher, it would have been included on this "Number One Hits" CD, along with "Step By Step" and the other #1s from the "Step by Step" album, which were all included on the #1's CD. |
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While I don't dispute that "IDKWTS" hit #2 on the country chart in Billboard, don't forget, back in the early '80s, it was MUCH more fluid than the pop chart. In fact, when I started buying the magazine weekly back in '83, even though I've never been a huge fan of country music, it was always interesting to open it up & see what the new #1 country song was, lol. In fact, it just so happens that the only country chart book I even own is Whitburn's lone Country Annual from 1998, and since we're talking 1981-82 here, it reveals the following:
1981 - a whopping 47 #1 country hits, w/ only FIVE lasting two weeks there, vs. a mere 16 #1 pop hits, w/ THREE holding there for 9-10 weeks! (And total chart hits were 561 country vs. only 408 pop.)
1982 - again, a whopping 47 #1 country hits, w/ only FIVE lasting two weeks there (carbon copy of '81), vs. a mere 15 #1 pop hits, w/ FOUR holding there for 6-7 weeks! (Total chart hits were 510 country vs. only 424 pop.)
So in those days, it was much easier to have a high-charting song on the country chart, especially if you were a veteran (which of course ER was, by '81). And after hearing "IDKWTS" on my newly-acquired Step By Step CD for the first time in what must be 30 years (never bothered to look it up & play it on YouTube, or the like), I can certainly hear why it's more or less been forgotten over time. It's obvious to me that as the third single from the album, its high performance on the country chart was merely due to being a "coattail rider" on the first two (i.e., the title track and "Someone Could Lose a Heart Tonight"), both of which genuinely deserved to be big, and certainly earned their pop crossover appeal (and thus reached a wider audience)...
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JMD1961
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Joined: 29 March 2005
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| Posted: 21 September 2013 at 4:06pm | IP Logged
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Heh. The country chart in the '80s was just funny. You stopped too soon. Go back to your annual and look at 1985 & 1986. Each of those years had 51 #1 hits, with only one spending two weeks at the top. In both cases, that 2 week stay can directly be attributed to Billboard's frozen chart at the end of the year.
I read that program managers at country stations in the '80s were encouraged by labels to "drop" songs off their playlists (the source that Billboard used to determine the charts at the time) once they reached the top. If you look at the week-by-week listings under each #1 hit in 1986, you'll see that it's not unusual for a song to drop from #1 out of the Top 10 or, in a few cases, all the way out of the Top 20.
This practice caused lots of criticism of the country charts at the time, and was the main reason why Billboard made the country chart the first one they used monitored airplay to create.
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Santi Paradoa
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Joined: 17 February 2009
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| Posted: 28 February 2014 at 7:58pm | IP Logged
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BTW, in case anyone is still looking for this song on CD:
Universal Music recently released an Eddie Rabbitt volume
in their Icon budget CD series that includes "I Don't Know
Where To Start." This disc only has songs from the later
part of Eddie's career since his catalog is currently
split and not all under UME.
__________________
Santi Paradoa
Miami, Florida
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Top 40 Music on Compact Disc : Chat Board
Topic: Missing Top 40 hit from Eddie Rabbitt
