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Post by chrislc on Jul 11, 2013 9:20:18 GMT -5
This should be fairly easy for those of you who keep this stuff on spreadsheets.
If you were to rank the hits of the 70s and 80s based only on # of weeks in the Top 10, what would the countdown look like?
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Post by jimmyg on Jul 11, 2013 9:50:06 GMT -5
Off the top of my head, (and how sad that I know this off the top of my head), the top three from the seventies would be
1. How Deep Is Your Love - The Bee Gees (17 weeks) 2. I Just Want To Be Your Everything - Andy Gibb (16 weeks) 3. Le Freak - Chic (15 weeks)
I know in the 80's that Hurts So Good spent the most weeks in the top 10 at 16 weeks. Eye of The Tiger, Waiting for a Girl Like You, and Physical spent 15 weeks in the top 10.
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Post by chrislc on Jul 11, 2013 10:16:29 GMT -5
Off the top of my head, (and how sad that I know this off the top of my head), the top three from the seventies would be 1. How Deep Is Your Love - The Bee Gees (17 weeks) 2. I Just Want To Be Your Everything - Andy Gibb (16 weeks) 3. Le Freak - Chic (15 weeks) I know in the 80's that Hurts So Good spent the most weeks in the top 10 at 16 weeks. Eye of The Tiger, Waiting for a Girl Like You, and Physical spent 15 weeks in the top 10. Thank you. I think this ranking might be more reflective of the songs that we remember as being the "biggest hits" when compared with ranking then by weeks at #1. To be in the Top 10 for three months, or four (!), means a song is a monster hit, in my opinion. It means it took such a long long time for listeners to tire of it.
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Post by woolebull on Jul 12, 2013 12:16:40 GMT -5
Off the top of my head, (and how sad that I know this off the top of my head), the top three from the seventies would be 1. How Deep Is Your Love - The Bee Gees (17 weeks) 2. I Just Want To Be Your Everything - Andy Gibb (16 weeks) 3. Le Freak - Chic (15 weeks) I know in the 80's that Hurts So Good spent the most weeks in the top 10 at 16 weeks. Eye of The Tiger, Waiting for a Girl Like You, and Physical spent 15 weeks in the top 10. Thank you. I think this ranking might be more reflective of the songs that we remember as being the "biggest hits" when compared with ranking then by weeks at #1. To be in the Top 10 for three months, or four (!), means a song is a monster hit, in my opinion. It means it took such a long long time for listeners to tire of it. Those are all massive hits, no doubt, but I also think it is a reflection on how the charts were tabulated as well. I think there is more than just coincidence that the three longest lasting Top 10's on the 70's and the four longest lasting Top 10's of the 80's all happened in a span of about five and a half years.
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Post by woolebull on Jul 12, 2013 12:26:03 GMT -5
I know in the 80's that Hurts So Good spent the most weeks in the top 10 at 16 weeks. Eye of The Tiger, Waiting for a Girl Like You, and Physical spent 15 weeks in the top 10. Add, "Another One Bites The Dust" in the 15 week category for the 80's.
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Post by chrislc on Jul 12, 2013 19:40:23 GMT -5
Thank you. I think this ranking might be more reflective of the songs that we remember as being the "biggest hits" when compared with ranking then by weeks at #1. To be in the Top 10 for three months, or four (!), means a song is a monster hit, in my opinion. It means it took such a long long time for listeners to tire of it. Those are all massive hits, no doubt, but I also think it is a reflection on how the charts were tabulated as well. I think there is more than just coincidence that the three longest lasting Top 10's on the 70's and the four longest lasting Top 10's of the 80's all happened in a span of about five and a half years. I think it might be interesting to adjust for that by multiplying the number of weeks a song stayed in the Top Ten by the total number of songs that made the Top Ten in the same year. For example, How Deep Is Your Love would be 17 X (number of songs that made the Top Ten in 1977 - when overlapping I would use the year the song made it into the Top Ten) So maybe it would be 17 X 60, or whatever. I don't have a Whitburn. Then if a song stayed in the Top Ten for 15 weeks in a year in which 68 songs made the Top Ten, it would have the same number of points as the 17 x 60 song.
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Post by woolebull on Jul 12, 2013 21:10:12 GMT -5
Those are all massive hits, no doubt, but I also think it is a reflection on how the charts were tabulated as well. I think there is more than just coincidence that the three longest lasting Top 10's on the 70's and the four longest lasting Top 10's of the 80's all happened in a span of about five and a half years. I think it might be interesting to adjust for that by multiplying the number of weeks a song stayed in the Top Ten by the total number of songs that made the Top Ten in the same year. For example, How Deep Is Your Love would be 17 X (number of songs that made the Top Ten in 1977 - when overlapping I would use the year the song made it into the Top Ten) So maybe it would be 17 X 60, or whatever. I don't have a Whitburn. Then if a song stayed in the Top Ten for 15 weeks in a year in which 68 songs made the Top Ten, it would have the same number of points as the 17 x 60 song. I think that would be a neat way to look at it. Someone, on one of our questions, actually had a listing of how many Top 10 hits there were for I think at least the Casey AT 40 years. I would like to see it through 1991. It would be interesting to see if you could get a semblance of a comparison between say, "Le Freak" and "What's Love Got To Do With It". I mean the charts became so fast by the mid 80's that by the time you get to 1986 you have four songs that spent three weeks at the top but only seven weeks each in the Top 10. I'd be curious how many songs after, "Say, Say, Say" spent 12 weeks in the Top 10 through the rest of the decade. I bet there weren't many.
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Post by jimmyg on Jul 13, 2013 8:23:34 GMT -5
I know from 85-89 that the only song to spend ten weeks in the top 10 was That's What Friends Are For. There were several songs in 1984 that spent 10 weeks in the top 10, and I think When Doves Cry spent 11 weeks in the top 10. Seems like the top songs of any given year between 85-89 spent 8 or 9 weeks in the top 10. Definitely much different than 80-83. I have seen that that is a problem when people try to compile charts for the entire decade, since the most popular songs end up being from 80-84, with very few songs from 85-89.
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Post by woolebull on Jul 13, 2013 8:58:22 GMT -5
I know from 85-89 that the only song to spend ten weeks in the top 10 was That's What Friends Are For. There were several songs in 1984 that spent 10 weeks in the top 10, and I think When Doves Cry spent 11 weeks in the top 10. Seems like the top songs of any given year between 85-89 spent 8 or 9 weeks in the top 10. Definitely much different than 80-83. I have seen that that is a problem when people try to compile charts for the entire decade, since the most popular songs end up being from 80-84, with very few songs from 85-89. I see it as a problem as well. According to your stats, "Harden My Heart" by Quarterflash spent more weeks in the Top 10 than any song from 1984 onward. I'm not sure about anyone else, but when I think of mammoth radio hits of the 80's, "Harden My Heart" isn't the first song to come to mind (though it was a decent size hit). You really are comparing apples to oranges once you get past 1983.
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Post by chrislc on Jul 13, 2013 10:06:07 GMT -5
I know from 85-89 that the only song to spend ten weeks in the top 10 was That's What Friends Are For. There were several songs in 1984 that spent 10 weeks in the top 10, and I think When Doves Cry spent 11 weeks in the top 10. Seems like the top songs of any given year between 85-89 spent 8 or 9 weeks in the top 10. Definitely much different than 80-83. I have seen that that is a problem when people try to compile charts for the entire decade, since the most popular songs end up being from 80-84, with very few songs from 85-89. I see it as a problem as well. According to your stats, "Harden My Heart" by Quarterflash spent more weeks in the Top 10 than any song from 1984 onward. I'm not sure about anyone else, but when I think of mammoth radio hits of the 80's, "Harden My Heart" isn't the first song to come to mind (though it was a decent size hit). You really are comparing apples to oranges once you get past 1983. Didn't Harden My Heart pretty closely parallel Physical for the weeks it was in the Top Ten? One would think those long stays in the Top Ten would have depressed the total number of songs making the Top Ten in 1981/82, which would be reflected in my formula idea. Maybe for songs that overlapped years during their runs in the Top Ten, we should average the total number of songs making the Top Ten in those two years. Does anyone out there know how many songs made the Top Ten in each of the years 1977-1982? This is what has always impressed me about I'm A Believer. 1966 and 1967 were the two years that the most songs made the Hot 100, and it cut through all of that competition to stay at #1 for so long. On the other hand there were some pretty lousy songs in the Top Ten at the end of 1966, which never made any sense to me.
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Post by jimmyg on Jul 13, 2013 13:05:54 GMT -5
There were 81, 76, and 71 top 10's in 1980, 1981, and 1982 respectively. For the sake of comparison, there were 112, 113, and 116 top 10's in 1987, 1988, and 1989.
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Post by chrislc on Jul 13, 2013 13:21:55 GMT -5
There were 81, 76, and 71 top 10's in 1980, 1981, and 1982 respectively. For the sake of comparison, there were 112, 113, and 116 top 10's in 1987, 1988, and 1989. Thanks very much. So an average of 76 in 80-82 and an average of 113.7 in 87-89. That means being in the Top Ten for 10 weeks in 87-89 would be the "same" as being in the Top Ten for 14.96 weeks in 80-82.
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Post by dukelightning on Jul 13, 2013 13:55:26 GMT -5
You can also see the difference in top 10s when looking at year end charts. In the early 80s, only one or two top 10 records did not show up on the top 100 of the year. In the late 80s, only one or two non-top 10 records showed up on the top 100 of the year.
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Post by vince on Jul 13, 2013 16:37:04 GMT -5
It is possible to calculate multipliers from the average number of top ten hits in a given time period. For the 1980's using the # of top 10 hits from Joel Whitburn's Pop Annual this is what I calculated.
multiplier = (# of top 10 hits in a year) / (average # of top ten hits per year in the time period)
For the 80's the average # of top ten hits per year is 96.5.
The multiplier is as follows:
80 0.884 81 0.808 82 0.736 83 0.902 84 0.922 85 1.119 86 1.130 87 1.161 88 1.171 89 1.212
For example "Hurts So Good" has 16 * .736 = 11.8 weeks in the top 10, "That's What Friends Are For" has 10 * 1.130 = 11.3.
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