Entire Year (or decade) charts?
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Topic: Entire Year (or decade) charts?
Posted By: NightAire
Subject: Entire Year (or decade) charts?
Date Posted: 15 November 2023 at 11:21pm
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I understand that Billboard put out a Hot 100 for each year, but has anyone ever taken EVERY song that hit the charts in a particular year and put them in order?
This chart might be 500 songs long, but I'd like to be able to look at songs that didn't make the year-end charts but maybe didn't miss them by much. Another alternative would be every Hot 100 song of the decade, in popular order. (Now we're talking a list thousands of entries long.) I'm looking specifically for the 1980s as that's what my station plays, but I'm sure other decades would be fascinating, too. I have the weekly charts but the effort involved in calculating chart positions for all those songs is completely overwhelming to me. Does anybody know if anyone who's already done "the hard work" for me, or do I need to fight through this project by hand? ------------- Gene Savage http://www.BlackLightRadio.com - http://www.BlackLightRadio.com http://www.facebook.com/TulsaSavage - http://www.facebook.com/TulsaSavage Tulsa, Oklahoma USA |
Replies:
Posted By: Paul Haney
Date Posted: 16 November 2023 at 2:31am
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Gene, if you need entire yearly rankings, our Pop Annual does that job. Of course, it's based on Joel's "unique" system of
ranking songs based mainly on peak position, not "chart points." We've published decade rankings up to a point, but not every song of each decade. However, there are a series of books by Dann Isbell and Bill Carroll that do rank the 60s, 70s and 80s using their point system that may interest you. You can easily search for those books online. |
Posted By: aaronk
Date Posted: 16 November 2023 at 6:51am
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Yes, the Pop Annual has been one of my go-to Record Research books for years. ------------- Aaron Kannowski http://www.uptownsound.com" rel="nofollow - Uptown Sound http://www.919thepeak.com" rel="nofollow - 91.9 The Peak - Classic Hip Hop |
Posted By: PopArchivist
Date Posted: 16 November 2023 at 9:04am
This is the way. ------------- Favorite two expressions to live by on this board: "You can't download vinyl" and "Not everything is available on CD." |
aaronk wrote:Posted By: NightAire
Date Posted: 16 November 2023 at 11:59pm
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Paul, Aaron, PopArchivist, it appears my path forward is clear. :-)
Thank you so much for the advice! These publications look like they would be very helpful. ------------- Gene Savage http://www.BlackLightRadio.com - http://www.BlackLightRadio.com http://www.facebook.com/TulsaSavage - http://www.facebook.com/TulsaSavage Tulsa, Oklahoma USA |
Posted By: Paul Haney
Date Posted: 17 November 2023 at 6:37am
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This seems like a good time to mention that our next Record Research project will be an updated Pop Annual. We are talking about perhaps starting it
in 1950 instead of 1955. It would go all the way thru 2023. |
Posted By: kingofskiffle
Date Posted: 17 November 2023 at 10:10am
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That sounds like an excellent idea. Would starting in 1940 add too much to
it? I can easily see that more pages does really add a lot to the size, but that may just be another 35 pages, assuming all those from Pop Hits 40-54 were included. |
Posted By: Paul Haney
Date Posted: 17 November 2023 at 11:10am
We're still talking it over. The 1940s really were a different animal than even the early 1950s with all the big band stuff. And yes, page count is always an issue. Don't forget we're adding 7 years from 2017-2023 and I'm sure you know how many charted songs there are per year in recent years. |
Posted By: JMD1961
Date Posted: 18 November 2023 at 2:47am
Count me in. I'd love to have the rest of the 50s added to the book to round out the decade. |
Posted By: torcan
Date Posted: 18 November 2023 at 6:53pm
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Just out of curiosity, didn't record companies keep records
of how many singles (and albums) were pressed/shipped/sold? That would be the true representation. I always prefer to rank via "chart points" rather that just peak position if true sales numbers weren't available, but I guess if the companies did keep that info they'd probably never release it publicly, would they? |
Posted By: mjb50
Date Posted: 18 November 2023 at 8:10pm
Ha. In 2006, an intern from Atlantic emailed me and asked if I could supply him with complete discographies of 12" singles released on Atlantic, Elektra, Warner Brothers, Tommy Boy, Cold Chillin' and Sugarhill. So no, I get the impression most labels were just living in the moment. Their job was to make and sell records, not help chart/discography nerds and librarians of the future. Right around the time the records were made & sold, sure, someone had that info. But I think most of those filing cabinets were emptied long ago... especially if any of it might be incriminating. |
Posted By: torcan
Date Posted: 19 November 2023 at 12:55pm
OK. Along the same lines, how exactly were gold and platinum awards calculated? I know the record company had to pay a fee and request the RIAA to audit the numbers to determine if it actually sold 500,000 or 1,000,000 copies, right? Exactly what did they have to submit? Anyone know exactly how it worked? |
Posted By: Hykker
Date Posted: 20 November 2023 at 6:58am
And let's not forget that the number of copies pressed/shipped does not always equal the number of copies sold. Lots of stuff went into cutout bins, to salvage stores or into the dumpster. I recall seeing ads in Billboard back in the early 70s for LPs I'd never even heard of that "shipped platinum". |