An AT40 special countdown idea never considered (Top 40 #2s)

[dth1971]

I know some posters on the AT40 Fun and Games site had posted some ideas for past AT40 Specials never made or considered by Watermark and the AT40 staff such as the "#1 Instrumentals of the 1970's". And Casey once mentioned in a 1982 AT40 show plans for the "Top 40 Albums of the 1970's-early 1980's" that never came to be. But here's my own idea for a never made AT40 Special that would have fit in the 15th. anniversary of AT40 in July 1985 (If Casey never took the week off the July 6-7, 1985 weekend in favor of Charlie Van Dyke guest hosting AT40): "The #2 Hits Of The Past 15 AT40 Years" featuring Casey counting down the top 40 songs that peaked at #2 missing the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 used for AT40 from July 1970 (The launch of AT40) up to early 1985). What do you think a "Top 40 #2 songs of the Past 15 AT40 Years" would have been like? Like I know some #2 songs of the past AT40 years like "Electric Avenue", "Hurts So Good", "Dancing In The Dark", "Baker Street", and "Open Arms" would be featured. And ranked at #1 would be the 10 week #2 song "Waiting For a Girl Like You" by Foreigner.

[mrjukebox]

That's a special I certainly would've enjoyed listening to.

[jlthorpe]

Since "Hurts So Good" was the only #2 song that made AT40's Top 40 Hits of the 80s So Far special, it would probably rank higher than "Waiting for a Girl Like You".

[doofus67]

This is a really good idea. It's been done on the '60s Satellite Survey back in the summer of 2014, when Lou Simon was still hosting. They used Dann Isbell's Ranking the '60s. Well, here's how the top #2s of the original Casey era (7/11/70 thru 8/6/88) would stack up, with Bill Carroll's follow-up books, Ranking the '70s Version 2.0 and Ranking the '80s, as my sources. Bill's scoring system gives more weight to the higher chart positions, #2 through #5, than the method that AT40 would have used. As you'll notice, it also favors records from the early '70s. Sometime soon, I'll explain it in greater detail. Appropriately, the countdown would start with a song that has the number two in its title.

#	Song	Year	Score
1	Waiting for a Girl Like You	1981	9492
2	One Less Bell to Answer	1970	8252
3	We've Only Just Begun	1970	7946
4	Hurts So Good	1982	7863
5	I Gotcha	1972	7415
6	Never Can Say Goodbye	1971	6735
7	Y.M.C.A.	1979	6688
8	Baker Street	1978	6584
9	Rosanna	1982	6431
10	Mr. Big Stuff	1971	6412
11	Gloria	1982	6294
12	The Rubberband Man	1976	6224
13	What's Going On	1971	6148
14	Superstar	1971	6147
15	Woman	1981	6131
16	All out of Love	1980	6080
17	Get Up and Boogie	1976	6038
18	Being with You	1981	5997
19	Rainy Days and Mondays	1971	5962
20	Put Your Hand in the Hand	1971	5931
21	Take Me Home, Country Roads	1971	5913
22	I'd Really Love to See You Tonight	1976	5901
23	Don't Talk to Strangers	1982	5887
24	She's a Lady	1971	5875
25	Electric Avenue	1983	5865
26	Ride Like the Wind	1980	5822
27	Dancing Machine	1974	5817
28	Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue	1977	5775
29	Open Arms	1982	5744
30	Say It Isn't So	1983	5735
31	Nobody Does It Better	1977	5633
32	Dream Weaver	1976	5609
33	Boogie Nights	1977	5598
34	Shame on the Moon	1983	5590
35	Right Back Where We Started From	1976	5570
36	Dancing in the Dark	1984	5565
37	Love to Love You Baby	1976	5547
38	Start Me Up	1981	5491
39	Love on the Rocks	1980	5450
40	Just the Two of Us	1981	5413

[johnnywest]

That was a spotlight on AT10 several years ago.

[OnWithTheCountdown]

Indeed it was...twice. List

[Michael1973]

Rick Dees did this as a special in 1988, but true to form there was a lot of inconsistency in his list.

[dth1971]

Jul 13, 2024 8:06:33 GMT -5 Michael1973 said:

Rick Dees did this as a special in 1988, but true to form there was a lot of inconsistency in his list.

How was the Rick Dees #2 special countdown like? Is it even on the Rick Dees app?

[OnWithTheCountdown]

I don't believe Rick has shows on demand on his app. I remember in 2009 he had many shows from the 80s and 90s that you could listen to on demand, but sometime by 2012 that had changed, and hasn't been that way since, to my knowledge.

[doofus67]

For this ranking, I turned to the scoring method used by Dann Isbell and Bill Carroll for the first edition of Ranking the '70s, published in 2015. Like the system in Version 2.0 onward, it's based on the entire Hot 100 and on calendar years rather than "survey periods." So, no need for projected scores. Unlike the system in Version 2.0 onward, a fixed point value was assigned to each chart position. So, no need for bonus points. These values, if plotted on a graph, would form somewhat of a parabolic curve. Where the line straightened out was from #31 on down; there, the scale became reverse-rank.

Dann and Bill also phased in a statistical process called normalization, to smooth out the inevitable score gap between mid-'70s songs and late-'70s songs. In his later books, including Version 2.0, Bill took normalization a major step further and devised a formula that essentially applied it to all records in all periods of time. For more, here's a link to the Ranking books web site:

ranking.rocks/methodology

Here's how the basic scale broke down. This is the method that I've been using for all of my Fantasy year-end and special rankings.

Position	Point value
#1	1000
#2	824
#3	658
#4	529
#5	434
#6	345
#7	310
#8	277
#9	246
#10	217
#11	190
#12	184
#13	178
#14	172
#15	166
#16	145
#17	140
#18	135
#19	130
#20	125
#21	100
#22	96
#23	92
#24	88
#25	84
#26	80
#27	78
#28	76
#29	74
#30	72
#31-100	70, 69, 68, etc., down to 1 point for #100 (reverse rank)

And here's my list of #2s from that perspective:

#	Song	Year	Score
1	Waiting for a Girl Like You	1981	11099
2	Hurts So Good	1982	9093
3	Rosanna	1982	7474
4	Gloria	1982	7461
5	Woman	1981	7423
6	Being with You	1981	7262
7	Baker Street	1978	7170
8	Don't Talk to Strangers	1982	7068
9	Y.M.C.A.	1979	7066
10	Open Arms	1982	7057
11	All out of Love	1980	6845
12	Electric Avenue	1983	6732
13	One Less Bell to Answer	1970	6595
14	Dancing in the Dark	1984	6555
15	Just the Two of Us	1981	6555
16	Start Me Up	1981	6507
17	Shame on the Moon	1983	6494
18	Love on the Rocks	1981	6444
19	Theme from "Greatest American Hero"	1981	6423
20	Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue	1977	6396
21	I Gotcha	1972	6381
22	Say It Isn't So	1983	6359
23	We've Only Just Begun	1970	6331
24	Do You Really Want to Hurt Me	1983	6282
25	The Girl Is Mine	1983	6246
26	Ride Like the Wind	1980	6238
27	More Than I Can Say	1980	6148
28	The Rubberband Man	1976	6057
29	Nobody Does It Better	1977	6040
30	Boogie Nights	1977	6005
31	We Got the Beat	1982	5944
32	The Wild Boys	1984	5886
33	Dancing Machine	1974	5853
34	Slow Hand	1981	5846
35	I'd Really Love to See You Tonight	1976	5814
36	Get Up and Boogie (That's Right)	1976	5775
37	Party All the Time	1985	5728
38	Somebody's Watching Me	1984	5690
39	Making Love out of Nothing at All	1983	5666
40	Girls Just Want to Have Fun	1984	5526

[LC]

Interesting that 80% of the top 10 are from 81/82....

[doofus67]

Yeah, interesting in a not-so-good way. Do you guys and gals think I should crunch the numbers one more time? I could do a hybrid of the two methods.

[LC]

I'm not sure a recalc would help much. You're basically dealing with the differences in chart eras. When songs spend an average of 25-30 weeks on the chart where 15-20 used to be the norm, of course they'll rack up more points.

[vince]

I think a hybrid would still favor hits from periods were the chart activity was slower, through not as much. The first countdown you posted with normalization is probably a more accurate measure of how big the hits were when compared to each each other.

[albe]

Would love to see what the Top 40 #2s for each year 70-89 looks like.