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Post by Michael1973 on Jun 5, 2015 17:34:40 GMT -5
I recently realized that Bob Seger's 1983 hit "Even Now" fell off the Hot 100 from #48. Does anybody know if this is a record for the 1980s? I know high droppers were common in the early rock era, and again after the introduction of recurrent rules in the 1990s, but they seemed to be pretty rare in the 1980s.
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Post by doofus67 on Jul 13, 2015 9:37:48 GMT -5
Betcha thought you weren't going to get a response to this, huh, Michael? Well, it's a great question, one that deserves to be looked into and followed up on.
I've gathered the biggest droppers throughout the decade. I spent the last several weeks picking away at this. Of course, it required going back through ten years' worth of charts. I used the Ultimate Music Database, which shows a running total of a song's weeks on the chart, side by side with its final total. There were a few surprises and a few obscure tunes that I'd never heard of.
Here they are in chronological order:
"Mistrusted Love," Mistress...peaked at #49 on 12/22/79, held at #49 on 1/5/80, then dropped off the chart. "Haven't You Heard," Patrice Rushen...dropped to #66 on 3/22/80, then off the chart. "Computer Game," Yellow Magic Orchestra...dropped to #64 on 3/29/80, then off the chart. "Where Does the Lovin' Go," David Gates...dropped to #67 on 3/29/80, then off the chart. "Too Hot," Kool & the Gang...dropped to #62 on 5/17/80, then off the chart. "Take You Tonight," Ozark Mountain Daredevils...peaked at #67 on 6/14/80, held at #67 on 6/21, then dropped off the chart. "Hot Rod Hearts," Robbie Dupree...dropped to #65 on 11/15/80, then off the chart. "Don't Let Me In," Sneaker...peaked at #63 on 3/20/82, held at #63 on 3/27, then dropped off the chart. "Another Sleepless Night," Anne Murray...dropped to #55 on 3/27/82, then off the chart. "Are You Serious," Tyrone Davis...peaked at #57 on 1/22/83, held at #57 on 1/29, then dropped off the chart. "All Touch," Rough Trade...peaked at #58 on 1/22/83, held at #58 on 1/29, then dropped off the chart. "You Are," Lionel Richie...dropped to #50 on 5/14/83, then off the chart. "Even Now," Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band...dropped to #48 on 5/28/83, then off the chart. "Don't Cry," Asia...dropped to #64 on 10/22/83, then off the chart. "Vox Humana," Kenny Loggins...dropped to #65 on 5/25/85, then off the chart. "Oo-Ee-Diddley-Bop," Peter Wolf...dropped to #67 on 5/25/85, then off the chart. "Control," Janet Jackson...dropped to #62 on 2/28/87, then off the chart. "Walk Like an Egyptian," Bangles...dropped to #67 on 2/28/87, then off the chart.
So, after all this, you're absolutely right. "Even Now" was the biggest dropper. Good job!
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Post by retroguy on Jul 15, 2015 14:18:59 GMT -5
Betcha thought you weren't going to get a response to this, huh, Michael? Well, it's a great question, one that deserves to be looked into and followed up on.
I've gathered the biggest droppers throughout the decade. I spent the last several weeks picking away at this. Of course, it required going back through ten years' worth of charts. I used the Ultimate Music Database, which shows a running total of a song's weeks on the chart, side by side with its final total. There were a few surprises and a few obscure tunes that I'd never heard of.
Here they are in chronological order:
"Mistrusted Love," Mistress...peaked at #49 on 12/22/79, held at #49 on 1/5/80, then dropped off the chart. "Haven't You Heard," Patrice Rushen...dropped to #66 on 3/22/80, then off the chart. "Computer Game," Yellow Magic Orchestra...dropped to #64 on 3/29/80, then off the chart. "Where Does the Lovin' Go," David Gates...dropped to #67 on 3/29/80, then off the chart. "Too Hot," Kool & the Gang...dropped to #62 on 5/17/80, then off the chart. "Take You Tonight," Ozark Mountain Daredevils...peaked at #67 on 6/14/80, held at #67 on 6/21, then dropped off the chart. "Hot Rod Hearts," Robbie Dupree...dropped to #65 on 11/15/80, then off the chart. "Don't Let Me In," Sneaker...peaked at #63 on 3/20/82, held at #63 on 3/27, then dropped off the chart. "Another Sleepless Night," Anne Murray...dropped to #55 on 3/27/82, then off the chart. "Are You Serious," Tyrone Davis...peaked at #57 on 1/22/83, held at #57 on 1/29, then dropped off the chart. "All Touch," Rough Trade...peaked at #58 on 1/22/83, held at #58 on 1/29, then dropped off the chart. "You Are," Lionel Richie...dropped to #50 on 5/14/83, then off the chart. "Even Now," Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band...dropped to #48 on 5/28/83, then off the chart. "Don't Cry," Asia...dropped to #64 on 10/22/83, then off the chart. "Vox Humana," Kenny Loggins...dropped to #65 on 5/25/85, then off the chart. "Oo-Ee-Diddley-Bop," Peter Wolf...dropped to #67 on 5/25/85, then off the chart. "Control," Janet Jackson...dropped to #62 on 2/28/87, then off the chart. "Walk Like an Egyptian," Bangles...dropped to #67 on 2/28/87, then off the chart.
So, after all this, you're absolutely right. "Even Now" was the biggest dropper. Good job!
Very interesting report. Thanks for the research and posting! |
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Post by Hervard on Jul 17, 2015 20:43:03 GMT -5
In late 1988, "Downtown Life" by Hall & Oates almost dropped off the Hot 100 from the upper half of the chart (#50). It fell to #100 the following year. Definitely an oddity by late-80s standards!
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Post by renfield75 on Jul 18, 2015 15:34:51 GMT -5
Hmm, found something very odd on the June 4, 1983 Hot 100 chart (the week "Even Now" dropped off from #48): Looking at the "Hot 100 A-Z" publisher listing (just below the Hot 100 on the actual Billboard chart page) "Even Now" is listed at #70...down from #48. Which would have made more sense for the charts at that time. However, on the actual chart, Prince's "1999" re-entered at #70 and began it's successful second chart run. On the Hot 100 A-Z section, "1999" is not listed at all. Was Bob Seger supposed to be #70 that week, with "1999" a last minute substitution when Billboard realized it was being re-promoted and had enough points to chart?
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Post by torcan on Jul 19, 2015 11:15:08 GMT -5
Hmm, found something very odd on the June 4, 1983 Hot 100 chart (the week "Even Now" dropped off from #48): Looking at the "Hot 100 A-Z" publisher listing (just below the Hot 100 on the actual Billboard chart page) "Even Now" is listed at #70...down from #48. Which would have made more sense for the charts at that time. However, on the actual chart, Prince's "1999" re-entered at #70 and began it's successful second chart run. On the Hot 100 A-Z section, "1999" is not listed at all. Was Bob Seger supposed to be #70 that week, with "1999" a last minute substitution when Billboard realized it was being re-promoted and had enough points to chart? Good catch! If this is what happened, I really wonder why the No. 100 song didn't drop off, and all other songs from 71-100 be one position lower. If "Even Now" had enough points to be No. 70, and was taken off because "1999" had to re-enter, even with the new chart director at the time it makes you wonder about the validity of the charts, because if that's what happened the end result doesn't make sense... |
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Post by doofus67 on Jul 25, 2015 22:21:45 GMT -5
Hmm, found something very odd on the June 4, 1983 Hot 100 chart (the week "Even Now" dropped off from #48): Looking at the "Hot 100 A-Z" publisher listing (just below the Hot 100 on the actual Billboard chart page) "Even Now" is listed at #70...down from #48. Which would have made more sense for the charts at that time. However, on the actual chart, Prince's "1999" re-entered at #70 and began it's successful second chart run. On the Hot 100 A-Z section, "1999" is not listed at all. Was Bob Seger supposed to be #70 that week, with "1999" a last minute substitution when Billboard realized it was being re-promoted and had enough points to chart? Good catch! If this is what happened, I really wonder why the No. 100 song didn't drop off, and all other songs from 71-100 be one position lower. If "Even Now" had enough points to be No. 70, and was taken off because "1999" had to re-enter, even with the new chart director at the time it makes you wonder about the validity of the charts, because if that's what happened the end result doesn't make sense... Excellent catch. We'll never really know, will we? |
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Post by mct1 on Jul 27, 2018 22:27:09 GMT -5
Hmm, found something very odd on the June 4, 1983 Hot 100 chart (the week "Even Now" dropped off from #48): Looking at the "Hot 100 A-Z" publisher listing (just below the Hot 100 on the actual Billboard chart page) "Even Now" is listed at #70...down from #48. Which would have made more sense for the charts at that time. However, on the actual chart, Prince's "1999" re-entered at #70 and began it's successful second chart run. On the Hot 100 A-Z section, "1999" is not listed at all. Was Bob Seger supposed to be #70 that week, with "1999" a last minute substitution when Billboard realized it was being re-promoted and had enough points to chart? I just stumbled across another instance of this, just two weeks later. The week of June 18, 1983, "Mr. Roboto" by Styx was by far the highest dropper off the Hot 100, falling from #71. In the "Hot 100 A-Z" publisher listing at the bottom of the page, however, it is listed at #81. On the actual chart, #81 is shown as "Europa And The Pirate Twins" by Thomas Dolby, which was debuting. The listing for "Europa And The Pirate Twins" has only the title and artist. It has no songwriter or producer information, and doesn't even list the record label and catalog number. All of that information would be added the following week. Its absence from the June 11 chart is consistent with the idea that the song was a last-minute addition that week. Good catch! If this is what happened, I really wonder why the No. 100 song didn't drop off, and all other songs from 71-100 be one position lower. If "Even Now" had enough points to be No. 70, and was taken off because "1999" had to re-enter, even with the new chart director at the time it makes you wonder about the validity of the charts, because if that's what happened the end result doesn't make sense... I've been studying the Hot 100 charts from this era recently, and I get the distinct impression that Billboard would first determine how many songs would debut, then once that was established, they would determine which songs would fall off. Whether a particular song fell out of the Hot 100 seemed to be heavily influenced by whether it "needed" to fall out to accommodate the number of debuters that week. Most of the songs that fell out had been dropping the previous week, although this wasn't true 100% of the time. There must have been some aspect of Billboard's chart methodology that made it much harder (though certainly not impossible) for a song that hadn't been dropping to fall off. So if in a given week, there were five debuters, there was a good chance that most or all of the five songs that fell off would be drawn from the five lowest droppers the previous week. And if there were ten debuters, there was a good chance that most or all of the ten songs that fell off would be drawn from the ten lowest droppers the previous week. Let's imagine a week when the ten lowest droppers the previous week had been #79, #88, #89, #91, #95, #96, #97, #98, #99 and #100. If there were five debuters, the five songs that fell off were probably going to be #96, #97, #98, #99 and #100. But if there were ten debuters, the ten songs that fell off probably weren't going to be those five plus the next five songs up (#91, #92, #93, #94 and #95). They were probably going to be those five plus the next five droppers (#79, #88, #89, #91, #95). Whether the song at #79 remained on the chart seemed to have more to do with the number of debuters than anything else. If there were ten or more debuters, that song was likely a goner, because Billboard would probably "need" it to fall off. If there were fewer than ten debuters, there may not have been a "need" for it to fall off, so it stood a good chance of staying on. Against that backdrop, it makes sense that Billboard didn't automatically kick off the song at #100 and simply drop everything below the song that had been added down a notch. If one more song needed to fall off, Billboard would look to the next-highest dropper, not to the song at #100. What doesn't quite make sense in these cases is that "Even Now" and "Mr. Roboto" weren't the next-highest dropper (or even anywhere close to being the next-highest dropper). Even understanding how Billboard typically did things, why Billboard decided that those songs should be the ones that fell off isn't clear to me. The week that "Mr. Roboto" fell off, there were eleven debuters. The previous week, "Mr. Roboto" was the seventeenth lowest song that was dropping. The ten lowest songs that had been dropping the previous week all fell off (all had been #88 or lower), but when Billboard apparently decided they needed one more song to fall off, they skipped over six songs and went with "Mr. Roboto". I don't understand why. In addition, note that Billboard seems to have initially placed "Mr. Roboto" at #81, and all six of those other songs were lower than #81. If those six songs were all less popular than "Mr. Roboto", why didn't one of them fall off instead? The week "Even Now" fell off was similar. The previous week, I count more than twenty songs below "Even Now" that were dropping. There were twelve debuters. The other eleven songs that fell out were the nine lowest songs that had been dropping the previous week (all had been #89 or lower), a song that had been holding at its peak position of #82 ("Fools Game" by Michael Bolton), and a song that by my count was the eighteenth lowest song that was dropping the previous week ("Separate Ways" by Journey, #69). In addition, Billboard seems to have initially placed "Even Now" at #70, and there were several songs below that were dropping. When Billboard apparently decided they needed one more song to fall off, why did they choose "Even Now" rather than one of those other songs? Maybe there was some other aspect of Billboard's chart methodology that explains this, but it's not obvious to me. The songs that were initially selected to fall off mostly make sense, but the last-minute additions really don't. |
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Post by dth1971 on Jul 28, 2018 10:13:39 GMT -5
In 1982, "The Beatles Movie Medley" by the Beatles almost fell out of Billboard's Hot 100 from #20 dropping to #92.
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Post by Hervard on Jul 28, 2018 18:26:17 GMT -5
In 1982, "The Beatles Movie Medley" by the Beatles almost fell out of Billboard's Hot 100 from #20 dropping to #92. Yeah - the biggest Hot 100 drop of the 1980s! Given that, I'm surprised that there were only two large drops off the Hot 100 in 1982. |
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Post by matt on May 31, 2019 10:52:57 GMT -5
In 1982, "The Beatles Movie Medley" by the Beatles almost fell out of Billboard's Hot 100 from #20 dropping to #92. Yeah - the biggest Hot 100 drop of the 1980s! Given that, I'm surprised that there were only two large drops off the Hot 100 in 1982. That is bizarre -- so many drops of 50+ notches out of the top 40, but so many songs that landed in the 90's before they fell out of the top 100 completely. Those chart dynamics were really odd, and though they probably did keep a decently accurate account of what songs were popular, the position by position accuracy has to be questionable. |
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