The Daily Dose/September 6, 2021
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy
Leading Off
Notes from around the human experience.
OH, JESUS H: While wondering what the dullest thing we could possibly write about today was, we thought about an item in Sunday’s popular On This Date segment which noted that on Sept 5, 2009, the Black Eyed Peas were at #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 with I Gotta Feeling. The song would spend 14 weeks at #1.
Dry, Technical Matter: Here’s where it gets almost interesting: in rankings issued at appropriate times, Billboard ranked I Gotta Feeling as the 4th-biggest song of 2009 and the 5th-biggest of the decade.
Fly In The Ointment: Just for funsies, we checked the Billboard 60th Anniversary Hot 100 (2018) and found the song ranked 7th and further research yielded the tidbit that I Gotta Feeling was the highest-ranked song from the Double Aughts in the survey and therefore it is entirely logical to call it the #1 song of both 2009 and the Double Aughts.
Oh Yeah: Research into Billboard’s methodologies for rankings for both charts was – perhaps for the best – unsuccessful. Whatever method they used, however, is not in step with the Official Daily Dose Chart Ranking Methodology.
Get Your Notebooks Out, Class Is In Session: For our money, the only way to rank #1 songs is by weeks at #1. If tiebreakers are needed you go to weeks in Top 10, weeks in Top 40, weeks on Hot 100. If there is still a tie – something we don’t want any more than you do – you can refer to weeks at #2, #3, etc, until you have a winner.
FunFact: Using this method, Mariah Carey’s 2005 hit We Belong Together was the biggest song of the Double Aughts. It, too, spent 14 weeks at #1, however, it’s 23 weeks in the Top 10 is one more than the 22 weeks accumulated by I Got A Feeling and it is right that Billboard ranked it the #1 song of that decade. However, for reasons we’re positive Billboard thought good, We Belong Together ranked #14 on the 60th Anniversary Hot 100, seven big notches below I Got A Feeling.
The Bottom Line: Oh, hell, screw it. We need a drink. Have a good holiday.
Today At The Site
Writing worth reading. Usually.
The Diary of a Nobody – Sparrow explains that sold out means sold out. Today’s Diary.
And as we’ve discussed here before, being sold out is a lot like being pregnant: either you are or you aren’t: there aren’t varying levels of sold outness…For example, there’s not “sold out” “double sold out” and “completely sold out”; either you are sold out or you have vacancies and tonite we were sold out…
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On This Date
The long march to today.
In 1901 – President of the United States William McKinley is shot by Leon Czolgosz in Buffalo. McKinley was shot twice in the abdomen and would die on Sept 14th from gangrene. Czolgosz was arrested immediately and would be tried, convicted and executed within 45 days. McKinley was succeeded by Vice President Theodore Roosevelt and was the third president to be assassinated, after Abraham Lincoln and James Garfield.
In 1946 – The All-American Football Conference plays its first game with the Cleveland Browns defeating the Miami Seahawks 44-0 before 60,000 fans at Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium, then the largest crowd to see a professional football game. The AAFC would last for four seasons before folding with the Browns winning all four league titles. The Browns, San Francisco 49ers and the original Baltimore Colts would later join the NFL.
In 1952 – England’s Vera Lynn is at #1 on Billboard’s Best Sellers in Stores chart – a predecessor to the Hot 100 – for the ninth and final consecutive week with Auf Wiederseh’n, Sweetheart, the first foreign act to top a Billboard pop chart. It was the third of seven top 40 hits for Lynn, her second of three Top 10 hits and remains her only #1 song. The song also peaked at #10 in Great Britain and was Billboard’s fifth-biggest song of the year. Lynn died in 2020 at 103.
Some Philosophy Crap
The wisdom of the ages. Whatever.
If my skin is thick, I will survive a great deal. If I am sensitive, I will perish.
Ernst Weiss
Georg Letham, Physician and Murderer
Answer To The Last Trivia Question
Knowledge is power.
The record for most consecutive weeks at #1 on a major Billboard singles chart for an act is 54, done by Eddy Arnold and his Tennessee Plowboys, who topped the Juke Box Folk Records chart with five different songs from November 15, 1947 through December 3, 1948.
Today’s Stumper
Match wits with Gaylon. It’s not that hard.
Who was the first British act to have a #1 song on the Hot 100? – Answer next time!
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