Tag: Top 40

The Bottom of the Top #15

John Winkelman

I started these posts because I thought that the 40th spot in the top 40 would show much more variety and frequent change than would the top spot. So imagine my surprise when last week’s #40 for 1977 was also this weeks #40 for 1977. Congratulations, Mr. Silvetti, for your consistency in the face up the constant upward pressure from the music marketing machine.

This was another week where I had not heard any of these songs before (other than Mr. Silvetti, whose “Spring Rain” is one of those which, even if you have never heard it, you have heard it). Two of the names are familiar – Roberta Flack and Simply Red, but to the best of my knowledge i have not heard those songs before. The other two, Lidell Townsell and Allure, I have neither heard of nor heard those songs, though “Head Over Heels” caused a faint frisson of nostalgia. So maybe there is something there.

1977: Bebu Silvetti, “Spring Rain”

1982: Roberta Flack, “Making Love”

1987: Simply Red, “The Right Thing”

1992: Lidell Townsell, “Nu Nu”

1997: Allure Featuring NAS, “Head Over Heels”

The Bottom of the Top #14

John Winkelman

Before anything else, I want to give props to Top 40 Weekly, where I have been getting the info necessary to make these posts.

I have standardized the naming convention for these posts around the relevant week of the year, as determined by the order in the listing at Top 40 Weekly.

This week’s Bottom of the Top came with a couple of familiar names – Ray Parker, Jr. of “Ghostbusters” fame and Huey Lewis, who needs neither introduction nor explanation.

Of these songs, I have hear the first three. “Spring Rain,” certainly, because, apparently, how could I have not heard it? “The Other Woman” vaguely rings a bell. I would have been in seventh grade, I think, and slowly discovering music which was not country. And of course “I Know What I Like” was all over the place in 1987, which bridged my last year of high school and my first year of college, when I would have (finally!) had regular access to MTV (insert joke about the relevance of the “M” therein).

The latter two, by RTZ and Crystal Waters…maybe? Time and the entropy of memory have blurred a lot of details of the nineties.

1977. Bebu Silvetti, “Spring Rain”

1982. Ray Parker, Jr., “The Other Woman”

1987. Huey Lewis and the News, “I Know What I Like”

1992. RTZ, “Until Your Love Comes Back Around”

1997. Crystal Waters, “Say If You Feel Alright”

A Music Experiment, Of Sorts

John Winkelman

So I had this idea a while back, that every now and then I would do a survey of the #1 songs in the weekly top 40 of bygone years. I thought it would be fun to make weekly posts, tracing the ebb and flow of music styles and tastes.

But when looking through lists of past hits, I noticed that songs which hit #1 tend to stay there for a while. They are well known, and while interesting as a source of nostalgia, such posts could quickly become repetitive, as the same songs stay in the #1 position for weeks at a time.

So rather than picking the top of the top, I decided to go with the bottom of the top. The songs at #40 on the weekly top 40 change wildly from week to week, and many were mere blips in pop culture, surfacing for a week then disappearing, never to be heard again.

These were the songs I often heard while milking cows on Sunday mornings for most of the 1980s. Casey Kasem or Rick Dees usually hit the top 10 well after morning milking was done, and I would be back at the house taking care of things which kept me out of range of a radio.

Now I am going to go back in time, and select song #40 of the weekly top 40, for the historical week which corresponds to the present week in the year 1977, 1982, 1987, 1992, and 1997. Five years, five years apart, from 45 years ago to 25 years ago. That means I will be able to make 259 weekly posts like this before I repeat a week. And at that point, assuming the continued existence of me, the internet, blogging, etc., I will look at shifting things around. It will be a good problem to have.

This post series will mostly simply be links to music videos, but if a song comes up which brings a sense of nostalgia or deja vu, I might write something about that.

And with that, here are the songs, ordered by year, with links to artist information.

1977: The Andrea True Connection, “N.Y., You Got Me Dancing”

1982: Charlene, “I’ve Never Been to Me”

1987: Glass Tiger, “I Will Be There”

1992: Ozzy Ozbourne, “Mama, I’m Coming Home”

1997: No Mercy, “Where Do You Go”