This week brings a fun mix of 40s, four of which I have heard before, and the last, “Gangstas Make the World Go Round”, was on here last week. I like the odd synchronicities which occur over decades, which could be catnip for statisticians of a particular mindset. For instance, Simon and Garfunkel’s “Wake Up, Little Suzie” was at #40 five years (or more specifically 4 years and 51 months) before Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al” which was on the list at the 1987 spot last week.

Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam made a splash my senior year of high school, and though I have not heard “Head to Toe” in, well, decades, it immediately brought back that slight despair of being a senior in high school and still riding the bus, but fortunately the bus drivers knew what to play to keep the inmates calm.

I do not recall having ever heard of M.C. Brains, but “Oochie Coochie” was familiar, so I probably saw it on MTV at some point.

And Westside Connection was on here last week.

I suppose an interesting narrative could be pieced together from which songs were in which place on which week, looked at not as a progression through the years, but as 52 core samples which, in a given location in consensus space is a stack of snapshots of what was going on “right now, only in 1987.” And once you have data, you can twist and squeeze it to form a narrative, and tell stories vertically rather than horizontally.

1977: Wings, “Maybe I’m Amazed”

1982: Simon and Garfunkel, “Wake Up, Little Suzie”

1987: Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam, “Head to Toe”

1992: M.C. Brains, “Oochie Coochie”

1997: Westside Connection, “Gangstas Make the World Go Round”