Even sought this one out on YouTube, but have no memory of ever hearing this one at all.
I was going to say Madonna (0 top-100 songs), but… and I understand it’s a timing (1958-2018) issue… but NO Elvis? Really?
If you had come to me and said “John, I’m a Billboard expert and “Smooth” is the #2 song of all time, and LeeAnn Rimes holds strong at #5”, I would have just laughed and laughed and laughed…
Was Boyz to Men really that big? I remember all the listed songs, but 3 in the top-100 songs of all time?
Ed Sheeren has as much representation in the top-100 as Elvis, Madonna, U2, and Elton John combined. (Elton has 2, but one was a quartet and the other was a remake. None of his original work made it no higher than 192.)
Objective as they could be, given the varying ways Billboard has tabulated the Top-100 over the years. I think they just decided to go by a descending point system where a week @ #1 was 100 points, #2 was 99, #3 was 98, etc. Reading the descriptions, it’s pretty obvious that songs that hung around forever did better than those which shot to #1 and then dropped like a rock.
There’s only one song that I see in the Top 100 that I’m completely unfamiliar with: #30 Next - “Too Close.” I was out of the country from 1998-2003, so that’s my excuse. Otherwise, I recognize everything else (if not always by title–but pulling it up on Youtube, I knew it.)
Some surprises:
Uptown Funk is really #4? I know it was a popular tune, but it didn’t seem more popular than songs like Blurred Lines (#51) or Happy (#79). I wonder if it has to do a bit with how Billboard tallies the number one hits now, with the pop music scene and the ways of getting to music (radio, streaming, etc.) being so fractured.
I am also shocked that “Rush Rush” is Paula Abdul’s biggest hit. I was a Paul Abdul fan during the Forever Your Girl (and she had I think, what four #1s from that album, and two more charters–looke like “The Way That You Love Me” at #3, and “Knocked Out” at #41). And, really, “Rush Rush” is the big one? I’m surprised. I owned Spellbound, but it was largely forgettable to me.
That’s pretty weird, man. It was a pretty pervasive song, considering it also featured Rob Thomas of Matchbox 20. It woulda been on every top 40 radio station, not “easy listening.” I’m trying to remember if it was on the alternative rock stations I listened to at the time. Probably not… but man, it was out there.
I worked in a movie theater when it came out and it was on the in-house soundtrack. So I heard it about 30 times each shift as I swept popcorn. It’s quite possible that I have a very skewed sense of this song. I also feel that I could play it on guitar without knowing how to play guitar, I’ve heard it so much.
But, yeah, “Smooth” was everywhere. I actually didn’t realize until fairly recently (like within the last five years) that it was nominally a Santana track. It was just kind of generic background top 40 Latin-influenced pop rock to me.
Same exact list for me. Since they didn’t provide links, I wasn’t going to bother to see if I really knew some of them, but just didn’t recognize by name or artist.
FWIW, “Smooth” is really more of a Rob Thomas song with Santana being his backup band, than a Santana song. Totally different era, totally different sound from “Black Magic Woman” and the like.
ETA: Going through the top 50, I recognized 5 or 6 out of each group of 10. Going through the last 50, it was down to more like 3-5 out of every 10. A lot smaller drop-off than I would have figured.
