Thanks! So I was (mostly) right.
Then maybe they ought to control for that!
2, 4, 9, 6, 10 - Never heard of them
Marvin Gay, The Beatles, Johnny Cash - way under represented
Where’s Herb Alpert?
I meant, it was part of why it was a song we loved to hate at the time. 
They lost me at #10. That’s not even Olivia Newton-John’s best song, IMO, much less the 10th best song of the last 60 years.
Remember, the list isn’t claiming to name the best songs, just the most popular ones.
At #466 (“This Guy’s In Love With You”) and #544 (“Rise”), which makes some sense, as those are his only two #1 hits. (I’m actually surprised he had any. I do love me some Tijuana Brass, but I didn’t think he was a strong charter.)
I’m actually almost surprised that Notorius B.I.G.'s “Hypnotize” (which samples “Rise”) didn’t hit the Top 600. Like Alpert, he also had two number ones, that and “Mo Money Mo Problems.”
Because I’m geeky this way, I copied this entire list to an Excel sheet so I can see some relationships:
Top Years by # of entrants:
1976, 22
1990, 21
1985, 19
1973, 18
1991, 17
1982, 16
1980, 15
1959, 14
1960, 14
1978, 13
Worst Years, by # of entrants:
2018, 2
1966, 3
1965, 4
1963, 5
1992, 5
2002, 5
1964, 6
2017, 6
1958, 7
1971, 7
The Twenty-Two Deathless Classics of 1976, and their final rankings:
19, TONIGHT’S THE NIGHT (GONNA BE ALRIGHT)
40, SILLY LOVE SONGS
93, PLAY THAT FUNKY MUSIC
120, A FIFTH OF BEETHOVEN
175, DISCO DUCK (PART I)
185, I WRITE THE SONGS
218, (SHAKE, SHAKE, SHAKE) SHAKE YOUR BOOTY
247, DON’T GO BREAKING MY HEART
248, KISS AND SAY GOODBYE
266, DISCO LADY
269, LOVE ROLLERCOASTER
273, IF YOU LEAVE ME NOW
320, I’D REALLY LOVE TO SEE YOU TONIGHT
341, LOVE HANGOVER
385, DECEMBER, 1963 (OH, WHAT A NIGHT)
419, AFTERNOON DELIGHT
432, GET UP AND BOOGIE (THAT’S RIGHT)
453, THE RUBBERBAND MAN
547, MISTY BLUE
582, LOVE MACHINE (PART 1)
585, BOOGIE FEVER
591, RIGHT BACK WHERE WE STARTED FROM
The “1966, We Hardly Knew Ye” Awards:
62, I’M A BELIEVER
330, WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL
369, THE BALLAD OF THE GREEN BERETS
The “Billboard is our Bitch” Awards:
Mariah Carey, 10
Madonna, 7
Whitney Houston, 7
Bee Gees, 6
The Beatles, 5 (“Get Back” is labeled “The Beatles with Billy Preston”.)
Bruno Mars, 4
Elton John, 4
Katy Perry, 4
Taylor Swift, 4
Mariah! (Mariah Carey songs and their rankings)
ALWAYS BE MY BABY, 493
DREAMLOVER, 348
EMOTIONS, 335
FANTASY, 263
HERO, 435
I DON’T WANNA CRY, 551
LOVE TAKES TIME, 199
SOMEDAY, 430
VISION OF LOVE, 209
WE BELONG TOGETHER, 14
John! Paul! George! Ringo!
HEY JUDE, 12
I WANT TO HOLD YOUR HAND, 48
LET IT BE, 425
SHE LOVES YOU, 288
GET BACK, 327
Popular Music Styles:
(Style, # of songs represented)
Country, 23
Dance/Electronic, 27
Hip-Hop/Rap, 39
Jazz, 5
Latin, 3
Pop, 240
R&B, 155
Rock, 108
By Group Type:
(Group Type, Count)
Duo/Group, 233
Female, 143
Female/Duo/Group, 3
Male, 208
Male/Duo/Group, 1
Male/Female, 12
I uploaded it here: BBoard Top 600.xlsx - Google Drive
Pivot Charts seemed to have not made the transfer. Eh, they’re easy enough to recreate.
Well, I certainly learned some shit today.
Well, there you go. I know all the 1976 songs.
I don’t think I have ever heard 13 of the top 20. No Led Zeppelin. That list is a farce.
I don’t think Zeppelin songs much charted, though. Looks like they only had one top ten hit, Whole Lotta Love at #4. I wouldn’t expect to see them on a list like this, which presumably is based on individual song chart performance, given that it is compiled by Billboard. (Zep did great on the album charts, though.)
Actually, Mariah has 11 songs - I didn’t include “One Sweet Day” (#38), her duet with Boyz to Men. My bad.
It’s almost all the same sappy pop music, even if some of it’s technically in a different genre. The stuff that’s most like the stuff I listen to is the often the absolute worst of the songs by the artist, but I might just feel that way because their most pop-sounding songs are those most likely to be popular, and “pop-sounding” is the absolutely last thing I want in a song.
I think the methodology is complete garbage, even if I think the music is also garbage, not because I think changing it would get songs I like on the list, but because it seems to value longevity near the top of the charts over actual sales and play time. If your hit record came out during a period that relatively few hit records were produced for that decade, then your song came out higher on the list. It ends up being nearly a random walk through songs that happened to be major hits, with the order nearly entirely at random.
This, I’m sorry, makes no sense whatsoever.
There are 52 weeks per year. Every week is going to have a #1 song. Every year has the same number of #1 slots (52), every decade has the same number of #1 slots (520), etc. There can literally be no period in which “relatively few hit records were produced” due to the nature of what is being measured which is, again, their rankings on the weekly Billboard Top-100 chart from 1958-2018.
So… 1976 had 22 songs, 1966 had 3 songs. By your logic, are there more “hits” in the 1960s or the 1970s? (As I said, I can’t really reconcile your logic with what the numbers are telling me - seems to have been a lot of hits in both the '60s and 70s.)
I take it this list is just measuring the ubiquity of these songs? Because “Smooth” is not that good, but in '99-'00 you could not avoid it. Same for “How Do I Live” and “Party Rock Anthem” and basically the entire list. I mean, does anyone on planet Earth thing “Physical” is a better song than “Hey Jude?”
The list is of “the 600 most massive smashes over the chart’s six decades.” There is no talk of quality. That said, never liked either of those songs (and I love the Beatles.)
Anyone who has EVER equated charting on the Hot 100 with being a quality song is woefully uneducated about music, or just plain intentionally ignorant. Or they simply never listened to Macarena, though quite how they managed that, I’m uncertain. :eek:
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#3 I never heard “Mack the Knife” by Bobby Darin until searching for it after reading this list.
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“Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana is not in the list of 600 songs. Perhaps this one is not technically an eligible single. That song was seriously popular and overplayed circa 1991-1992. Personally, it’s not among my top 10 favorite Nirvana songs.
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#74 “WHOOMP! (THERE IT IS)” by Tag Team seems like an outlier to me since it didn’t even hit #1 on the Hot 100. Apparently, spending 7 weeks at #2 somehow enabled this tune to outrank hundreds of #1 hits.
Overplayed annoying songs are well represented on the list.
Surprising.
It peaked at #7 on the Hot 100, so that probably explains it. A lot of the ubiquitous grunge and alternative music of the early-to-mid-90s did not chart as high as you would think. And some of it wasn’t released as singles, but Smells Like Teen Spirit was. Nirvana actually had six singles that charted better than “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”
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.