"Suddenly Last Summer" - Motels

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...

I remember playing Suddenly Last Summer in September/October of 1983 on the radio.

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

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.

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...