1966 Billboard Year End chart

And then there's "Some Kind Of Wonderful" by Grand Funk. Billboard's year-end Top 100 placed it at #6 for the
year 1975, in what was most likely a huge calculation error. Even as a kid, I thought that was strange.

Edited by Paul Haney

I agree that the Billboard year-end charts are flawed,
but mostly because of the cut-off dates. There were some
years the cut-off was something like early October, which
didn't allow for a true year-end ranking. I never
understood why the cut-off for some of those years was so
early - does it really take them that long to figure it
out?

When ranking the top songs of the year, both peak
position and chart longevity have to be taken into
consideration. Ignoring one isn't a true reflection of
the year's top hits.

Cases in point: in 1982, John Cougar's "Hurts So Good"
peaked at No. 2 for four weeks, but spent 16 weeks in the
top 10 - one of the longest of the '80s - and 28 weeks on
the Hot 100. Certainly this song was a bigger hit
overall than Lionel Richie's "Truly", which spent two
weeks at No. 1, 10 weeks on the top 10 but only 18 on the
entire Hot 100.

REO Speedwagon's "In My Dreams" spent 30 weeks in the
chart in 1987 but only peaked at No. 19. Tom Petty's
"Jammin' Me" may have peaked a notch higher, but only
spent 12 weeks on the entire chart. The REO song had
much more staying power.

I consider Breathe's "Hands To Heaven" - a No. 2 hit from
1988 - to be a much bigger hit than Michael Jackson's
"Dirty Diana", which hit No. 1 for one week. "Hands To
Heaven" spent more than twice as long on the chart.

Those lower-peaking songs sold and were played enough to
remain among the top 100 songs for much longer periods of
time, so they would have accumulated more sales and
airplay over the course of the chart run than those
higher-peaking hits.

To me, you have to consider both to get a true ranking.
I think chart longevity does count for something.

Take for example "Woolly Bully" by Sam The Sham and The Pharaohs. Peaked at #2 on the weekly charts, but was the Billboard #1 record of the year for 1965. I love this record, hearing it always puts a big smile on my face !!

Paul Haney wrote: This is exactly the kind of thing that used to drive Joel Whitburn crazy. I can still hear him saying "How can the #1 record of the year not even make it to #1 on the weekly charts! Doesn't make ANY sense!"

So how DID it achieve that ranking? Chart longevity? 18 weeks was a long time to be on the charts in 1965, but one would think that
"Satisfaction"'s 4 weeks at #1 would have trumped that.

Hykker wrote: Paul Haney wrote: This is exactly the kind of thing that used to drive Joel Whitburn crazy. I can still hear him saying "How can the #1 record of the year not even make it to #1 on the weekly charts! Doesn't make ANY sense!" So how DID it achieve that ranking? Chart longevity? 18 weeks was a long time to be on the charts in 1965, but one would think that "Satisfaction"'s 4 weeks at #1 would have trumped that.

Excellent question, I've always wondered about this myself. So going by the chart positions week by week:

Satisfaction: ....................67-26--4-2-1-1-1-1-2-2-6-16-31-41
Woolly Bully: 87-82-61-45-24-14-10-8-5-2-2-3-3-4-5-11-17-36

When you add up the inverse points (where a #1 = 100 pts, a #100 = 1 pt), assuming that's what Billboard did for their year-end charts, you get this:
Satisfaction = 1213 inverse points
Woolly Bully = 1399 inverse points

So if you compare head to head like I've lined them up, of the Top 10 weeks Satisfaction wins 8 of them, Woolly wins 1, but Woolly wins 3 weeks after the Top 10, and 6 weeks before the Top 10. So Woolly wins 10 weeks, Satisfaction wins 8.

Comparing inverse points of the Top 10 weeks:
Satisfaction = 889
Woolly = 867

Comparing inverse points of the non-Top 10 weeks:
Satisfaction = 324
Woolly = 532

So while Satisfaction has 22 more Top 10 inverse points, Woolly has 208 more non-Top 10 inverse points. And that's how Woolly beat Satisfaction, more weeks on the chart, and higher positions outside the Top 10.

Fascinating, interesting...