ATRL Contributor
Member Since: 4/5/2014
Posts: 5,828
|
Pre Soundscan Era #1s/#2s/#3s
Everyone knows I have talked a lot about the much more rapid turnover of songs prior to Billboard changing the Hot 100 in November 1991, and that means many songs likely got ripped off from what should have been much longer stays at the top from 1985-91. The worst of all is actually the song that had the longest stay, "Everything I Do, I Do It For You", which was #1 for 7 weeks in the summer of 1991. But Billboard had already started posting its electronic airplay charts, and this song concurrently spent 8-10 weeks at #1 on Airplay (I can't remember which) and 17 weeks at #1 on Sales, meaning it should have spent around 14 weeks at #1, and broken the record.
This thread is for the older-timers and those with a knowledge of the pre-Soundscan Hot 100. I want to create a list of songs between 1985-1991 (after Like A Virgin, when we went more than 6 years without a song spending more than 4 weeks at #1) that either got ripped off because of chart methodology or bad timing. Who else out there can remember that far? And there were strong sellers kept out of #1 by weak sellers too, so I included #2s and #3s in here. I can go back as far as mid-1984 ("When Doves Cry, which spent 5 weeks at #1, was the #1 song when I started following Billboard), but with Like A Virgin getting 6 weeks in late 1984 and early 1985, and its quick rise and fall, I think that was about right.
|
|
|