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Todd Ireland
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| Posted: 12 August 2008 at 5:27pm | IP Logged
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According to abagon, the actual and printed commercial 45 run time of the Motel's "Suddenly Last Summer" is 3:40. I only post this info because the database CDs containing this song range from 3:34-3:42.
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NightAire
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| Posted: 17 September 2010 at 10:57pm | IP Logged
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Fascinating bit of trivia I just stumbled across thanks to Wikipedia:
The Motels - Suddenly Last Summer (wikipedia)
The song has the distinction of being the only Motels song to reach the #1 position on any music chart.
I looked it up, and by golly... they're right!
Only The Lonely & Suddenly Last Summer both went to #9 on the pop charts. Only The Lonely must have stayed on the pop charts longer or something because it made the year-end chart for '82 while Suddenly Last Summer did NOT.
However, on the Top Tracks (rock) chart, Only The Lonely only went to #6 while Suddenly Last Summer went to #1.
I just thought this chart action was interesting, and had to share! :) It's funny, to me, how they can dance around like this...
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sriv94
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| Posted: 18 September 2010 at 7:28am | IP Logged
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NightAire wrote:
Only The Lonely & Suddenly Last Summer both went to #9 on the pop charts. Only The Lonely must have stayed on the pop charts longer or something because it made the year-end chart for '82 while Suddenly Last Summer did NOT.
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Couple of thoughts. "Suddenly Last Summer" was a 1983 hit. But I believe its chart run criscrossed the 1983 and 1984 chart years (I think Billboard used a "November to October" format for defining its years). So it's possible "Suddenly Last Summer" might be in the 1984 year-end chart.
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eriejwg
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| Posted: 18 September 2010 at 11:10am | IP Logged
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I remember playing Suddenly Last Summer in September/October of 1983 on the radio.
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NightAire
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| Posted: 18 September 2010 at 7:21pm | IP Logged
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I remember hearing Suddenly Last Summer played at LEAST as often as Only The Lonely on a local hip top-40 station.
...Then again, I remember them hitting "Take The L (Out Of Lonely)" pretty hard, too...
As fat as it showing up on on the '84 (or any other) year-end chart: I have copies of those charts (awful Xeroxes from years ago), and they match up to this online listing:
Longbored Surfer - Charts
...And I don't find it in '82, '83 or '84.
Let me know if you do! If it's in there, I've missed it and need to add it to our regular rotation.
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Gene Savage
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aaronk
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| Posted: 18 September 2010 at 8:10pm | IP Logged
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You ought to consider using PopRadioTop20.com. Whomever put those charts together did a really nice job. "Suddenly Last Summer" shows up at #58 for 1983.
All of the '80s charts are based on R&R CHR, and he used a point system to devise the year end charts. That way, a song like "Suddenly" wouldn't get part of its chart run counted toward '83 and the other part '84, as often times happened with the official year-end charts.
Edited by aaronk on 18 September 2010 at 8:10pm
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sriv94
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| Posted: 18 September 2010 at 8:21pm | IP Logged
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Going through the AT40 charts from the "Old Radio Shows" web page, "Suddenly Last Summer" first hit the top-40 on 9/17/83, peaked at #9 on 11/19/83 (fell to #13 the following week) and dropped out of the 40 on 12/17/83 (it was #28 on 12/10).
So the issue is that if Billboard's chart year did indeed run from November to October, it hadn't reached its peak for the 1983 chart year (11/82 - 10/83) and fell off the chart fairly quickly after reaching its peak, thereby not earning enough points to place in the 1984 year-end chart (11/83 - 10/84). Take a song like "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic"--we associate that song with being a 1981 hit (peaked at #3 on 12/5/81), but notice that it didn't place in the 1981 year-end chart, while it did place in the 1982 year-end chart (finishing at #79).
Edited by sriv94 on 18 September 2010 at 8:22pm
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NightAire
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AaronK, I agree his charts are excellent; in fact, I do have them bookmarked as a reference.
However, choosing Billboard as my reference has caused the station to play the 45s people bought more than play what stations were playing. There's several excellent threads on here where I think R&R is being compared to Billboard... you end up with songs that didn't show up on Billboard scoring high on R&R, and the reverse.
I've debated about "figuring in" the R&R charts. The result of me using Billboard is that (as was pointed out above) my 1980 category has leftovers from 1979. Additionally, there are songs from late 1989 that aren't airing.
However, people pick up on songs slowly... so while a song may have shot up the charts in 1979, for many people it may not have "registered" fully until 1980... a 1989 song may have become obvious to them in 1990... so this is a problem I'm willing to live with (for now).
One area where I've already used the R&R charts is where a song appeared on two years' charts. Gloria by Laura Branigan was at #75 in 1982 & #56 in 1983. Since 1983 songs come up more often than 1982 songs in my rotation, I left Gloria in '83 to give it as fast a turnover as possible, and replaced it in '82 with the song that charted highest on R&R without making the Billboard year end chart: Valley Girl by Frank & Moon Unit Zappa.
It's a real "oh wow!" tune when it plays amongst all the other "safe" hits. :)
I hope we're not boring anybody with this discussion... I love debating the merits of various charts and rotations for my all-80s station! ALL input is appreciated.
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Indy500
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There's also the MTV factor.
Going by Billboard you would list John Waite's "Change" as a 1985 hit, but I think of the song as an 82/83 song as the original video enjoyed heavy rotation on MTV at that time.
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NightAire
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| Posted: 19 September 2010 at 2:25pm | IP Logged
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Indy500: Excellent point. MTV was a heavy influence, and tended to pick up songs faster.
On the flip side, Billy Idol might not have ever had a real hit with Mony Mony had MTV not picked up the live video, years later.
However, in addition to adding songs to a playlist, MTV could also cut out hits. If there wasn't a video, there wasn't MTV airplay. Especially in the first part of the decade, MTV played what they could get their hands on... not always the most popular songs, just the songs with a video attached.
Additionally, MTV wasn't available everywhere, especially at first. I was trying to find stats on market penetration by year but failed... I only know that Tulsa, Oklahoma was one of the VERY first markets to get MTV... which is why a station which labeled itself as "The Music You See On MTV" did so well here 1983 - 1985. :)
My thought is this: if MTV played it and people liked it, they bought the record (so it showed up in Billboard). If people heard it on the radio (as reported in R&R) and liked it, they bought the record (& again it showed up in Billboard).
What songs weren't just liked by program directors? What songs weren't just played on MTV because they had videos? Which songs did people like, wherever they may have heard it? The songs listed in Billboard.
That's a bit of oversimplification, of course... certainly there was chart manipulation, and the number and quality of records out in any particular week could certainly color the charts.
This is something, over time, I'll need to continue to examine and re-examine. I'd love to find an online archive of MTV's 80s playlists, or their "charts" if they had them.
The station tends to be pretty tame right now because of pulling the Billbaord year end pop charts: Dan Fogelberg, Neil Diamond, Barry Manilow, Barbara Streisand, Bette Midler, Will To Power, Anita Baker, Debbie Gibson, Whitney Houston, Sheena Easton, Lionel Richie, etc.
I remember 80s radio being a bit more aggressive... but I'm not having any problems gaining an audience and get lots of compliments, because nobody's playing this mix, not even the thousands of 80s stations online.
And, we do get Ratt, Poison, Quiet Riot, Golden Earring, The Clash, Sammy Hagar, Def Leppard, Loverboy, Guns 'n' Roses... so it's a wide variety, I suppose.
BTW... I don't remember that John Waite song at ALL. How weird is that? It didn't make the year-end charts, anyway...
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Indy500
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Oh, I bet you do. A great forgotten 80's tune. Didn't become a hit until featured in the movie Vision Quest a few years later and John Waite was a bigger name after "Missing You."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApZ1aD8nYEk
I can also think of a few tunes that were rereleased due to exposure on MTV. "White Wedding" by Billy Idol and "Should I Stay or Should I Go" by the Clash being two.
By the way, I was in Weatherford, OK from 81 to 84. Didn't have MTV but we had Night Flight, Night Tracks on WTBS and Friday Night Videos. But I saw MTV when I went back home to Houston in the summers.
Edited by Indy500 on 19 September 2010 at 2:59pm
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aaronk
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| Posted: 19 September 2010 at 9:04pm | IP Logged
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NightAire wrote:
| AaronK, I agree his charts are excellent; in fact, I do have them bookmarked as a reference. |
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Yeah, I just wanted to make sure you knew about them. One other thing you may consider is going by the charts in Fred Bronson's "Hottest Hot 100 Hits" book. Rather than using the Billboard year-end charts that were published at the end of the year, he also uses a point system. Again, a song can only be on one year end chart, and all of the song's chart run is counted. "Suddenly Last Summer" shows up as #68 for 1983.
While using the official year-end charts is a fine way to go, you might miss out on some of those hits that were split between two years.
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NightAire
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| Posted: 19 September 2010 at 9:25pm | IP Logged
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Indy500: You win... :-) Now that I hear it, I do remember it... had to blow the dust off that memory. That IS a good tune!
I'd watch MTV over at my uncle's, and watched Friday Night Videos when my parents would relinquish the TV. :)
AaronK, you may have a good point. If there are songs that were wildly popular that fell between the cracks on Billboard's charts, that's something I need to look at.
One of the most glaring problems I've found with using Billboard (& this was discussed in another thread, too) is that songs like Madonna's "Into The Groove" don't show up at ALL because they were a B-side, never released as a single.
I don't know if there are other songs like that... but it wouldn't surprise me.
The book you're talking about; is it this one?
Amazon.com: Billboard's Hottest Hot 100 Hits
Wouldn't that just be Billboard's charts?
I think I'm now going to have to go back to that website and compare it to Billboard's year-end charts... darn it! :)
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aaronk
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Gene, that's the book. I have two different editions, but they are both older than the one in your link.
Quote:
| Wouldn't that just be Billboard's charts? |
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No, they aren't the charts that appeared in the year-end issues of Billboard. The magazine's year-end charts are restrained to certain dates (November to October, or whatever they are). The charts in the book don't have cut off dates. So, if a song peaked in a certain year, but continued to chart for several weeks into the following year, all of those extra weeks are counted toward the song's year end rankings.
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aaronk
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NightAire wrote:
| I don't know if there are other songs like that... but it wouldn't surprise me. |
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Another one that someone recently brought up is "All My Love" by Led Zeppelin. There are probably few airplay-only hits that never had commercial 45s, especially when you're talking about records that would have made the year-end top 100.
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Indy500
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NightAire wrote:
Indy500: You win... :-) Now that I hear it, I do remember it... had to blow the dust off that memory. That IS a good tune!
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Just out of curiosity. I have all the Billboard charts but I don't have any radio play charts. Do you show "Change" getting much radio airplay before its re-release in 1984? If so, what months?
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RichM921
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| Posted: 20 September 2010 at 7:15pm | IP Logged
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NightAire wrote:
Additionally, MTV wasn't available everywhere, especially at first. I was trying to find stats on market penetration by year but failed... I only know that Tulsa, Oklahoma was one of the VERY first markets to get MTV... which is why a station which labeled itself as "The Music You See On MTV" did so well here 1983 - 1985. :)
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My area didn't get MTV until 1983 and doing some "lazy man" research awhile back, I found that many other areas of the country didn't get it until then as well. So I believe that may be the starting point of MTV's national influence.
As for the John Waite song, I don't remember ever seeing the video or even hearing it on the radio in '83. I do remember it from the "Vision Quest" soundtrack because I bought the album. Then in the late '80s when I started listening to AOR stations, I finally heard it on the radio.
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NightAire
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Indy500: My resource (which actually originated with AaronK) doesn't even list that song charting in radio airplay:
John Waite
He does note:
...The chart on 10/15/76 was a top 30 chart, and remained that way until 1983, therefore "weeks on chart" for song hitting in this time period means weeks on the top 30.
From June 1983 until May 1995, the chart was again 40 songs...
So R&R claims the song never hit the top... 30? 40?
KROQ, 91X & Q101 don't list it, either:
Radio Hit List -- Search
Tunecaster has him on their pop charts for three weeks, starting March 16th @ #23, climbing to #20 the next week, then #17 before falling off the charts the next week:
Pop Top 20 Countdown for March 30, 1985
I find nothing on their website to determine how they come up with their charts.
Unfortunately, I don't currently have a copy of the weekly charts from the 80s from Billboard; that's on a wish list to Santa. ;-)
Wikipedia shows the song charting on Billboard's mainstream rock chart in 1982 (going to #16) and on its re-release in '85, making it up the Billboard Hot 100 to #54 when it was put on the Vision Quest soundtrack:
John Wait Singles - Wikipedia
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Indy500
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Thanks for the info.
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torcan
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aaronk wrote:
One other thing you may consider is going by the charts in Fred Bronson's "Hottest Hot 100 Hits" book. Rather than using the Billboard year-end charts that were published at the end of the year, he also uses a point system. Again, a song can only be on one year end chart, and all of the song's chart run is counted. "Suddenly Last Summer" shows up as #68 for 1983.
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I have Fred Bronson's book (third edition), and while I certainly respect his work, I disagree with the way he compiled the year-end charts. He stated that each song is ranked in the year reaches its peak - so if a song hit No. 1 the last week of December one year, but continued at No. 1 for several weeks of the next year, he ranked it in the former year. To me that's not right. It achieved its greatest popularity in the following year and I think should be ranked with those songs.
But I guess we all have different opinions on how to count those songs split between years.
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Topic: "Suddenly Last Summer" - Motels
