Strongest and weakest September AT40 charts

[80sat40fan]

Many people here discuss their favorite years or eras on AT40. I thought it would be fun to see which years had particularly strong or weak charts during this month, the month of September. I looked at the charts from the middle of the month for each year of the Casey and Shadoe eras of AT40 (September 13 - 19), and asked myself how many of these songs I would like to hear on an oldies station. I took the rankings by each decade, and here's my list:

1970s:
(1) 1976, (2) 1978, (3) 1979, (4) 1972, (5) 1977, (6) 1970, (7) 1975, (8) 1973, (9) 1971, (10) 1974

1980s:
(1) 1985, (2) 1983, (3) 1989, (4) 1984, (5) 1988, (6) 1986, (7) 1987, (80) 1982, ... big gap... (9) 1980, (10) 1981

1990s (Shadoe era only):
(1) 1991, (2) 1990, (3) 1992, ... huge gap... (4) 1993, (5) 1994

I was surprised 1974 was my lowest ranked year of the '70's, and I was really surprised to see 1989 rank as high for the '80's. Not surprised by the fall off in '93 and '94.

Other than 1980 and 1981, I had 30 or more hits selected from each of the AT40 September charts of 1982 - 1989. I had anywhere from 24 - 35 songs I would want to hear from the '70's September charts. I must like a lot of music on AT40.

Feel free to agree or disagree with my rankings... If you have a favorite or least favorite September based on the charts, please chime in.

[mkarns]

In roughly descending order:

1970s:
1979, 71, 72, 77, 76, 73, 78, 74, 75, 70

1980s:
1983, 87, 89, 86, 82, 85, 84, 80, 81, 88

1990s (using Casey's Top 40/Radio & Records):
1994, 91, 95, 96, 92, 93, 99, 97, 90, 98

Even the lower ranked ones I don't actually dislike; they're just more hit and miss, with more weak songs.

[matt]

OK, so this is a fun and interesting topic, and one I feel the need to reply to. Here goes...

70's: 1979, 77, 76, 74, 78, 72, 75, 73, 70, 71
-1979 is the best set of September songs to me...and it's not even close. Great set of songs all throughout that month - 9/15/79 and 9/22/79 are two of my favorite all time shows.
-Guess I'm not as down on 1974 as everyone else--I have to admit I enjoy the majority of '74 countdowns that I've heard, though the high number of bad novelty songs is annoying.
-The early 70's are not as high on my list, probably because I don't have any personal memories to go with several of those songs.

80's: 1983, 87, 84, 85, 89, 80, 82, 86, 81, 88
-1983 is one of the best years ever for music, and September was no exception.
-In any other month 1985 would probably rank higher for me, but September was perhaps the weakest month of '85. Even still, I have it at #4 on my list.
-Maybe it's just bad memories for me, but August 1988 - May 1989 was one of the weakest times for music in the 80s.

90's: 1991, 93, 90, 92, 94
-Looks like everyone is in agreement that 1991 was a good September. '91 was overall one of my favorite years of the 90s.
-I didn't go past 1994 either...in part because AT40 ended by then, but in part because I didn't really listen to Top 40 music in the mid-late 90s.