# Billboard's Top 100 songs of the past 60 years... **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 17, 2019, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/billboards-top-100-songs-of-the-past-60-years/827938 "2019-01-17T18:10:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![installLSC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/54ee81/32.png) [@installLSC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/installLSC)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2019, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/billboards-top-100-songs-of-the-past-60-years/827938/101 "2019-02-10T17:40:18Z")
As a bonafide chart geek, there are some important things to remember: The Hot 100 only measures a song’s popularity during its original hit run. So if you’re wondering why “Bohemian Rhapsody” or “Dancing Queen” aren’t higher, that’s because most of their popularity postdates their original chart run. Chart runs became a lot longer after the 80s, due to better monitoring of airplay/sales and radio becoming much slower in dropping hit songs. So anything 90s and later will have an unfair advantage. The Hot 100 has always had a lot of flaws. They’ve never measured sales of albums or music video play to figure a song’s popularity. Until fairly recently, non-top 40 airplay wasn’t used. And Billboard has been as helpless as the rest of music industry in figuring out to how to measure YouTube/Spotify play correctly. So treat these lists with massive grains of salt. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2019, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/billboards-top-100-songs-of-the-past-60-years/827938/102 "2019-02-10T17:55:12Z")
The list IMHO includes a lot of songs that are pretty good. There are a lot that I wouldn’t put on my Spotify playlist though. And older songs are massively unrepresented; they include some excellent ones and some mediocrities. These lists are not going to satisfy everyone. I feel the 80s and 90s, Jazz, and non-English music are underrepresented. The You Tube factor skews things as well — Despacito, for example, is a decent song but I could easily think of several better Spanish songs which I prefer. ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2019, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/billboards-top-100-songs-of-the-past-60-years/827938/103 "2019-02-11T02:19:50Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Yes, it would be nice to see what the methodology for Billboard is in compiling this list. I would probably have started with a weighted point system of some sort, with #1 equal to 1/1 point and #100 equal to 1/100 points (so two weeks at number 2 would be equal to one week at number 1), or something less finely tuned that would create a graph that exhibits characteristics similar to 1/x. (A more precise way would be to actually see what %age of sales/plays #1 typically corresponds to vs #2 vs #3 vs #4, etc., and weigh that way. Or just use raw sales numbers, somehow normalized for the time period they’re being used in, and figure out a scoring system based on that.) > > But, anyhow, point being, as remarked earlier in the thread, it’s a pity the methodology wasn’t available. Well, you know, [post #80 kinda dealt with that](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21458841&postcount=80)… ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2019, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/billboards-top-100-songs-of-the-past-60-years/827938/104 "2019-02-11T02:48:21Z")
> [@DSYoungEsq](#): > > Well, you know, [post #80 kinda dealt with that](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21458841&postcount=80)… I _thought_ I saw that post, but I don’t see the actual methodology laid out there in the link. Am I missing something? There’s just some vague words I see there, but nothing where, say, the kids playing at home can tally up the scores themselves. That’s what I mean when I want to see “methodology.” (ETA: And that’s a list to a different ranking, isn’t it? Am I going crazy here? What does that have to do with the list in the OP? That has to do with artists, and not songs.) ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2019, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/billboards-top-100-songs-of-the-past-60-years/827938/105 "2019-02-11T14:51:06Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > I _thought_ I saw that post, but I don’t see the actual methodology laid out there in the link. Am I missing something? There’s just some vague words I see there, but nothing where, say, the kids playing at home can tally up the scores themselves. That’s what I mean when I want to see “methodology.” (ETA: And that’s a list to a different ranking, isn’t it? Am I going crazy here? What does that have to do with the list in the OP? That has to do with artists, and not songs.) > [@Billboard](#): > > Methodology: The Greatest of All-Time 60th Anniversary Billboard Hot 100 **Songs** and Artists rankings are based on weekly performance on the Hot 100 (from its inception on Aug. 4, 1958, through July 21, 2018). Songs are ranked based on an inverse point system, with weeks at No. 1 earning the greatest value and weeks at lower spots earning the least. Due to changes in chart methodology over the years, eras are weighted differently to account for chart turnover rates during various periods. Artists are ranked based on a formula blending performance, as outlined above, of all of their Hot 100 chart entries. Bolding mine. While we cannot know the _exact_ points system, it appears that, unless they added points for being #1 (which appears unlikely from the results), then each week at #1 was worth 100 pts, each week at #2 was worth 99 points, etc. There appears to have been a multiplier of some sort applied to times when the chart didn’t see heavy song turnover. I would guess this is certainly true of later years (the 2000s), where songs have tended to stay at #1 longer. But the paragraph certainly gives us enough to go on to understand why a song that spent relatively little time at #1 might have finished high on the list; longevity will be prized over short-term fame. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2021, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/billboards-top-100-songs-of-the-past-60-years/827938/106 "2021-05-25T14:13:07Z")
Gonna bump this one for all the Billboard chart nerdz - today is the 30th Anniversary of Billboard integrating SoundScan into the rankings, completely changing people’s understanding of what was _really_ popular… and not. There’s a pretty good article in The Ringer about this: > **[How SoundScan Changed Everything We Knew About Popular Music](https://www.theringer.com/music/2021/5/25/22452539/soundscan-billboard-charts-streaming-numbers)** > > Thirty years ago, Billboard changed the way it tabulated its charts, turning the industry on its head and making room for genres once considered afterthoughts to explode in the national consciousness [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/billboards-top-100-songs-of-the-past-60-years/827938.md?page=5)