The Daily Dose/January 21, 2019
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy
Leading Off: The Biggest Song Ever…Maybe
Yesterday in the popular On This Date feature we highlighted The Twist by Chubby Checker, which was spending its third and final week at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 this week in 1962. It was the second time The Twist had hit #1 and it remains the only song to top the Hot 100 in separate chart runs, a tidbit I know all trivia buffs will appreciate.
Now, The Twist might not be the biggest selling single of all-time, and it is 13 weeks behind the Hot 100’s all-time leaders for most weeks at #1, but we’ve always felt The Twist deserves to be called the biggest hit because it went to #1 twice. Every other #1 song only went to #1 once.
There are different ways of ranking songs, though. Ages ago (and today, actually, thanks to the magic of the Internet) I used to listen to the radio show American Top 40 hosted by Casey Kasem. You may have, too. While we generally enjoyed the show, Casey would annoy me by using a different methodology for ranking songs in his year end survey. The AT40 staff would assign points depending on a song’s chart position and songs were ranked based on the points they earned and not their peak position. (Whether points were based on Hot 100 or Top 40 performance was never entirely clear, at least to me.)
This led to some whack rankings. You would have a #1 song rank below #50 for the year, while at the same time songs that peaked at #2 or #3 would finish the year in the Top 10. Heck, in 1973 Why Me by Kris Kristofferson peaked at #16 but spent 19 weeks in the Top 40 and 38 weeks in the Hot 100 – both extraordinary totals – and finished in the runner-up spot on Casey’s Top 100 of 1973 countdown.
We’ve never understood this, frankly. Call us traditionalists, but a song’s ranking should be solely based on its peak position. You can further break it down by weeks at #1 and if that’s a tie most weeks at #2 and so on. But for our money a song that spent even one week at the top is bigger than the couple of songs that spent ten weeks at #2, so making #1 on two separate chart runs trumps everything. Billboard tends to agree with this, too, consistently ranking The Twist #1 on the assorted All-Time charts it has run, usually on a significant anniversary of the Hot 100.
Today At The Site
The Diary of a Nobody: Sparrow wishes guests would stop puking in their rooms, plus he has the latest water readings from the hotel.
I was sitting here reviewing my findings from today’s testing when BOOM it hit me, let’s test the snow outside!!!…I had no idea what to expect…I didn’t know whether our snow was OK or whether it was riddled with acid rain…As it turned out, it’s the lowest ranking we’ve had so far, trailing only the 001 produced by the filter at The Shire.
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On This Date
In 1861 – Jefferson Davis, calling it the saddest day of his life, resigns from the United States Senate, twelve days after his home state of Mississippi had seceded from the Union. Two days later Davis, a graduate of the United States Military Academy, was appointed a major general in the Army of Mississippi and on February 9th would be inaugurated president of the Confederacy.
In 1979 – The Pittsburgh Steelers defeat the Dallas Cowboys 35-31 in Super Bowl XIII, becoming the first team to win three Super Bowls. The Steelers would win their fourth Super Bowl the following year and their record for Most Super Bowl Wins now stands at six. The national anthem was sung by the Colgate 13 and the halftime show was a tribute to the Caribbean. It was the fifth and final Super Bowl played at the Orange Bowl in Miami.
In 1984 – Yes is at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for their first and only time with Owner of a Lonely Heart. The song would spend two weeks at #1 and was Billboard’s eighth biggest hit for 1984. Owner of a Lonely Heart remains the group’s only appearance at the top of a Billboard chart: the song also went to #1 on the Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, while Yes’s highest charting album a was 1972’s Close to the Edge, which peaked at #3.
Quotebook
Order is the mother civilization and liberty; chaos the midwife of dictatorship.
Will Durant
The Story of Civilization: The Reformation
Answer To The Last Trivia Question
Dick Enberg was the play-by-play announcer for the UCLA/Houston basketball Game of the Century. Bob Petit was his color commentator.
Today’s Stumper
What are the two songs that have spent ten weeks at #2 on the Billboard Bot 100? –Answer next time!
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