The Daily Dose/April 29, 2024
By Gaylon Kent – America’s Funniest Guy™
Leading Off
Notes from around the human experience.
THE PLANET’S GOING TO HELL, BUT LET’S TALK SONG RANKINGS: Today’s Leading Off segment is inspired by yesterday’s trivia question, which concerned Billboard’s biggest song for 1962. The answer is Stranger on the Shore, by an English act named Mr Acker Bilk.
Dry, Technical Matter: That Billboard ranked it as their #1 song of the year is almost interesting because the song only spent one week at the top, a rather short amount of time for year-end chart-topper, especially when you consider three songs that year spent five weeks at #1.
Need To Know: Billboard’s specific formula for their year-end rankings is kept secret – sort of like the Colonel’s combination of eleven herbs and spices. But it is generally known to involve an inverse points system – a point for a week at #100, a hundred points for a week at #1 and so on – plus some other factors.
Oh, Jesus H: It should be noted, too, that over the years this system has resulted in a non-#1 song ending the year at #1.
WTF: We have never understood this methodology for ranking songs at all; for our money the most weeks at #1 takes precedence, with ties broken by the most weeks in the Top 10 and if that doesn’t break the tie, then most weeks in the Top 40 and then most weeks in the Hot 100.
Running The Numbers: Using this methodology, the #1 song of 1962 is I Can’t Stop Loving You by Ray Charles, which spent five weeks at #1 and eleven weeks in the Top 10, giving it the nod over two Four Seasons songs – Big Girls Don’t Cry and Sherry – which also spent five weeks at #1, but spent ten and seven weeks respectively in the Top 10.
The Bottom Line: This is boringly subjective, of course, and any chart issued by Billboard demands respect, but we disagree with them: peak position, followed by the assorted tiebreakers is, for our money, the only logical way of ranking songs. And using The Daily Dose methodology, Stranger on the Shore – with one week at #1 and eleven weeks in the Top 10 – would’ve been the 18th-biggest song of the year, not the biggest.
Today At The Site
Writing worth reading. Usually.
The Diary of a Nobody – Sparrow has a lousy day in the sack. Today’s Diary.
6.0 hours – none of them particularly great – for the day, a horrendous start to the sleep week…
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On This Date
Extra, extra, read all about it.
In 1945 – German Chancellor Adolf Hitler marries his longtime companion Eva Braun in a ceremony in Hitler’s bunker in Berlin. The pair had met in October 1929 when Braun was 17 and Hitler 40 and began seeing each other two years later. The pair had taken to the bunker on April 20 as Allied forces closed in on Berlin and their marriage would last one day, ending when both committed suicide the following day.
In 1876 – John Carbine of the Louisville Grays establishes a new major league record for most errors in a game by a first baseman in a 6-2 loss to the St Louis Brown Stockings. Carbine had five errors to establish a mark that has been tied several times and still stands and research into whose record he broke was inconclusive. Depending on when the other games that day started, it was either the ninth, tenth, or eleventh game in National League history and remains the oldest record in the major league record book.
In 1972 – Jerry Lee Lewis is at #1 on Billboard’s country chart – then known as the Hot Country Singles chart – for the second of three consecutive weeks with Chantilly Lace. It was the 17th of 60 country hits for Lewis and his seventh and final #1. The song also went #1 country in Canada, peaked at #43 on the Hot 100, and at #33 in Great Britain. In 1958 a version by The Big Bopper peaked at #6 on the Hot 100.
Some Philosophy Crap
The wisdom of the ages. Whatever.
[Charles V] was not mentally keen, except in judging men – which is half the battle…
Will Durant
The Story of Civilization, Vol VII: The Reformation
Answer To The Last Trivia Question
Knowledge is power.
Billboard’s #1 song of 1962 was Stranger on the Shore by Mr Acker Bilk which spent one week at #1, eleven weeks in the Top 10, and 21 weeks on the chart. It was the first #1 song on the Hot 100 by a British act.
Today’s Stumper
Match wits with Gaylon. It’s not that hard.
How did Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun kill themselves? – Answer next time
