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You're listening ad free on Amazon Music. This episode of Hit Parade is presented by Best Buy. A special note to all Hit Parade listeners. Hi, this is Chris Mullanfi. As you might be able to tell, I've been fighting off the bug that's going around this holiday season, so my voice is a little raw on this episode. Also, due largely to my illness and the resulting production issues this month, Slate plus listeners will receive part two of this episode at the end of the month. My thanks to PLUS members for understanding and I hope you enjoy part one of our Hits of the Year episode. Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate Magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanfi, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number One? Series on today's show in the closing weeks of 2022, this song is making a lot of year end lists as it was by Harry Styles. In addition to its critical acclaim, it made the 10 best singles lists of Rolling Stone, the Guardian, NME, Entertainment Weekly, and Consequence of Sound as it was also dominated Billboard's Hot 100 this year. To be exact, the lead single from the Harry's House album topped America's flagship pop chart for an amazing 15 weeks. Not only the longest run at number one for any song this year, but one of the four longest runs on top for any single ever. So when it came time for Billboard to reveal its year end list, the one where the chart bible ranks the best performing songs of 2022, Stiles contemplative bop just had to wind up on top, right? I mean, 15 weeks at number one? A slam dunk for top single of the year, surely? Think again. A couple of weeks ago, Billboard announced that this song, Heat Waves by Glass Animals, was the actual number one song of 2022. Unlike the critics, this wasn't a subjective call by Billboard. That's just how the chart data landed. Even though Heat Waves spent only five weeks at number one, literally one third as long as Harry's as it was.
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Sometimes all I think about is you. Late nights in the middle of.
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Year end upsets like this are not uncommon in Hot 100 history. Since the chart's earliest days, there have been long lasting number one hits.
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Fancy Gloves though. Where's old Maggie Heath baby? So there's never, never a trace that.
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Wind up falling short in the final tally to songs with fewer weeks at number one. There wasn't as many as there was a while ago. We fired once more and they began to run down to Mississippi. And sometimes these winning songs are a little random. Like you'll get to the end of a year and think to yourself, yeah, there were some big hits this year like this, Or this, Or this, Or even this. And then Billboard will make its big year end announcement and a nearly forgettable song will upset all of those better remembered contenders. More often than not, the big year end song is obvious. A record that dominated the culture, That was just inescapable. Or that even set an all time chart record. But sometimes that year end chart dominator is a flash in the pan. An artist who turns out to be a one hit wonder can have the biggest hit of the year.
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Cause you had a bad day, you take it one down, you sing a sad song just to turn it around. You said you don't know.
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Maybe it's a one off single that won critical acclaim. Or maybe it's a one off that you still can't quite believe happened at all. Today on Hit Parade we will discuss the strange math that produces Billboard's top song of the year and run down all of the winners over the decades. It's an eclectic roster of hits from.
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The legendary like A Bridge Over Troubled.
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Water to the widely loathed.
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This is how you remind me of what I really am. It's not like you.
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To those whose legacy has yet to be written. And that's where your hit parade marches today. The first week of December 2022 when Billboard magazine announced that the top single of the year was Glass Animals Heat Waves. It might kick off a hit making streak for this four man alt pop band from Oxford, England. Or it might be the start and end of their reign as American hitmakers. Will they be a Beatles, a blondie, a black eyed peasant? Or are Glass Animals fated to go the way of Domenico Moduno, Los Del Rio or Daniel Powder? We won't be able to answer that last question, but we can rank Heat Waves in the pantheon of year end number ones. It's maybe the strangest ever parade of pop. Even if you're not a baby boomer. I myself was born after the so called Boom. 1965 was an objectively amazing, amazing year for pop music. And it was reflected on the charts that year. So many great songs topped the Hot 100. The one with the most weeks at number one in 65 was the Rolling Stones first ever American chart topper. I Can't get no Satisfaction which spent four weeks on top. Information. The Stones rivals the Beatles had a great year too. Five straight number ones in 65 alone for the Fab Four from I feel Fine through Yesterday. Speaking of Yesterday, that Paul McCartney ballad also spent four weeks at number one yesterday.
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All my troubles seem so far away now.
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It looks as though the Supremes were also on a hot streak that year with two weeks at number one apiece for Stop in the Name of Love, Back in My arms Again and I.
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Hear a symphony Whenever you're near I hear a symphony.
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And their Motown brethren were having a great year too with number ones for both the Temptations. And the Four Tops.
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Sugar pie, honey bun, you know that I love you.
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There were multi week number ones by the duo who called themselves the Righteous Brothers. And a new folk rock duo who called themselves Sonny and Cher.
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I got you baby.
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All repeat. All of these classics were number one hits. And yet when Billboard put out its year end issue in December 1965, not a single one of these songs ranked as the top song of the year. In fact, the top song of 65 hadn't even gotten to number one. It had been a number two hit, an ebullient party record that sounded like this. Wooly Bully by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs in the summer of 65. Woolly Bully had only gotten as high as the runner up slot, but Bully was a long lasting hit riding the chart for 18 weeks, a relative eternity in an era when big hits cycled on and off the chart in as little as 10 weeks. The Beatles Yesterday for example was gone in just 11 weeks and that was a four week number one hit. Wooly Bully was the first hit in Hot 100 history to best all comers on the year end chart despite peaking in the runner up slot. It wouldn't be the last, nor would it be the only year end topper to pull off an upset over records that had spent a month or even months at number one. I often say that chart following is my sports and like annual predictions for a sports MVP. I enjoy guessing what will be Billboard's top Hot 100 song of the year. If you're like me, you probably got addicted to this when you first heard a year end countdown on the radio.
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I'm Casey Kasem and this is American Top 40 special survey of the 100 biggest records in the USA during 1983. And we're up to the biggest of the biggest. The 1 most popular song of the year spent 20 weeks in the top 48 of those weeks at number one. And here it is, the number one song of 1983. Every Breath youh Take by the Police.
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By the way, the year end Hot 100 isn't Billboard's only annual survey. The magazine also does year end lists for virtually everything it ranks. The year end Billboard 200 album chart is also widely followed, whether the victor is the Monkees More of the Monkees album in 1967 then I saw Her.
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Face, Now I'm a Believer.
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Fleetwood max rumors in 1977. Or Bon Jovi's Slippery When Wet in 1987. Sorry, I just can't play one of those guys songs again. Anyway, the year end album chart is interesting to a point, but for much of its existence it was driven only by sales, a pretty straightforward metric. More recently, the album chart combines sales tracks and streams, which makes the formula more compelling, but the result still fairly predictable. Like I could have told you months ago, the top Billboard 200 title of 2022 was going to be Bad Bunnies Un verano Sinti because that album spent more weeks on top of the chart than anything this year. It's exciting. The first all Spanish language number one album of the year in America, but not a surprise. The reason chart geeks like me pay the most attention to the year end hot 100 is that. Well, first of all, it's what we used to hear counted down on the radio. But also, the year end Hot 100 is a real contest. Since its founding in 1958, the Hot 100 has always had a bespoke formula, averaging record sales and radio airplay, and for the last decade plus, it's also included streamed tracks. That formula is intricate enough that there's some actual suspense over the year end Hot 100 result. We don't always know how the math is going to shake out. Like last year for instance. In 2021, I was betting the year end Hot 100 number one song would be something by Olivia Rodrigo, BTS or the Weeknd, who all scored big number one hits that year. Instead, I was shocked and delighted when it turned out to be Dua Lipa's Levitating, a song that, like Woolly Bully by the way, peaked at number two. To be clear, more often than not the predictable thing does happen. In 1991, for example, no song spent longer on top of the Hot 100 than Brian Adams ballad Everything I Do, I do it for you. It ruled the Hot 100 for seven weeks and as expected, Billboard named it the number one song of 91.
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You know it's true. Everything I do, I do it for you.
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But how often does the opposite happen? To be exact, in the 65 years Billboard has named a top Hot 100 song of the year 26 out of 65 times a song other than the one with most weeks at number one has taken the crown, so basically an upset result about 40% of the time. Some of the songs that seemingly got robbed include 1969's Aquarius, Let the Sunshine in by the 5th Dimension, which spent six weeks on top more than any other hit that year and didn't take the year end title. Debbie Boone's you Light Up My Life, which spent a then unprecedented 10 weeks on top of the Hot 100 in 1977 but didn't wind up on top for the year, you.
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Light up my life, you give me hope.
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Or Brandy and Monica's the Boy is Mine, which commanded the summer of 1998 with 13 big weeks at number one and couldn't seal the deal at year end. Even Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankees Despacito featuring Justin Bieber, which tied an all time chart record in the summer of 2017 with a staggering 16 weeks at number one. Yep, even Despacito fell short. I'll reveal the songs that defeated these seemingly commanding hits later in the episode. For now, in the first part of this episode, let's run down some guidelines that explain why these apparent anomalies happen. I can't bring justice to Despacito, but I can at least explain what why it fell short year end guideline 1 chart longevity trumps Chart Peak. In 2020, the weekend's techno pop throwback Blinding Lights spent four weeks atop the Hot 100. That's impressive, but it wasn't the longest chart topping run of that year. Two hits by rapper Roddy Ricch did better in 2020. His TikTok Fueled hit the box, which spent 11 weeks at number one from January through March.
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Joe Deals We've been tripping like 80s.
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And three months later, Rich's duet with DaBaby Rockstar spent seven weeks on top and wound up the song of the summer in that sad peak pandemic and protest year.
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Brand new Lamborghini cop car with pistol on my like I'm a cop.
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But neither of those Roddy Rich related hits took the title for 2020. The box wound up third for the year, Rockstar fifth. Both fell short of Blinding Lights, Which had longevity on its side. The weekend's Jam was already sitting in the top 40 as the chart year began. It cracked the top 10 by March and it never left the top 10 for the rest of the year, even as those two Roddy Rich hits came and went during its run, Blinding Lights amassed not only tons of streams and sails, but but also record breaking radio airplay. It was on top of Billboard's Radio Songs chart for 26 weeks literally half the year from April through October on the Hot 100. Its four weeks at number one might seem modest, but Blinding Light's sheer persistence was what won the day. This, by the way, also explains what happened this year between Harry Styles and Glass Animals. Sure, Harry's as it was topped the chart for more weeks.
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You know it's not the same as.
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But Glass Animals Heat Waves was on the chart practically all year. Heat Waves was already in the top 10 the first week of the chart year and stayed there for nearly five months before Harry's hit even showed up. All those extra weeks of chart data for Glass Animals and easily trumped Styles in their year end Hot 100 matchup. In other words, if the first three rules of real estate are location, location, location, you might say the first three rules for year end Billboard chart placement are longevity, longevity, longevity. That's been true since the days of the Stones versus Sam the Sham in 65. Satisfaction's 14 weeks on the Hot 100, even though four of them were at number one, were no match for Wooly Bully's 18 weeks during that chart year. You may notice I keep using the phrase chart year. What does that mean? Isn't a year just a calendar year? Not exactly. Billboard announces its year end charts in early December, so its chart year typically runs from early December through late November, which partially explains my next observation. Year end guideline 2 the last Christmas Factor. What you're hearing is a take on the holiday hymn Silent Night by Scottish singer Susan Boyle. It was the last track on her debut album, I Dreamed a Dream, which was a blockbuster when it arrived the week of Thanksgiving 2009. If you were buying a CD to give your mom that year, you were probably buying I Dreamed a Dream. The debut album by the Britain's Got Talent discovery sold over 3 million copies in the US alone during the holiday season of 2009. That made Susan Boyle's I Dreamed a Dream the number one album of the year, but not 2009. It was Billboard's top album of 2010 because all of those sales fell into the magazine's 2010 chart. This happens a lot with albums. Whatever is selling well during the previous year's Christmas season often tops the following year's album ranking. But it happens a lot with singles, too. If a song is piling up airplay and sales in the closing weeks of the prior year, it has a huge leg up in the year end Hot 100 competition. Some examples include Rod Stewart's Tonight's the Night, a number one hit in late 1976 that became the number one Billboard song of 1977. Or Olivia Newton John's Physical, a late 1981 chart topper that was named the number one song of 1982. Or Whitney Houston's now legendary cover of I Will Always Love you, the song that dominated Christmas 1992 and became the number one song of 1993. By the way, I'm calling it now, 12 months hence when Billboard announces the top songs of 2023. This song that's been number one for the last six weeks in 2022 will, I bet place highly or even top the year end chart. Taylor Swift's smash Anti Hero it's me.
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Hi I'm the problem, it's me at tea time everybody check back with me.
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In a year to see if I was right. The last Christmas guideline goes hand in hand with the longevity guideline. The point is, the more weeks a song has to amass chart points, the better its chances in the year end Billboard derby. Again, that's just math. Of course. This assumes Billboard had the math right in the first place. Year end Guideline 3 the methodology used to be Murky. At the end of 1966, Billboard in print claimed that the number one song of the year was California Dreaming by the Mamas and the Papas. Now no shade on the song, which is an all time classic, but it peaked at number four on the Hot 100. Could a number four hit be the biggest song of the year? Mathematically it's possible if implausible, but it would have been the only time that ever happened. Apparently Billboard agreed that this was incorrect. Some years later and chart historians are murky on when and why they did this, the magazine re ranked 1966 instead claiming that this number one hit was the top song of that year. Courage Taken from the Green Beret I'll talk a bit more about Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler's Ballad of the Green Berets later. It's not a great song, but it was a legitimately big hit. Five weeks at number one, the most of any song in 66, and it sold millions. Still, it's weird that 1966 has two official Billboard year end number one songs. It suggests that there was a fudge factor on the charts back in those pre computerized times, another bugaboo of the analog charts era. Certain songs that peaked near the end of the year sometimes just got left off the year end surveys entirely. They didn't even enjoy that last Christmas bump. Radio analyst Sean Ross, a recent guest on Hit Parade the Bridge discussing his lost hits project, has identified dozens of so called ghosted hits that never got a year end ranking at all, even if they topped the Hot 100. These include the Beach Boys December 1966 number one hit Good Vibrations, which wasn't ranked by billboard in either 66 or 67.
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I'm picking up Good Vibrations, she's giving.
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Me excitations the Partridge Family's November 1970 number one hit I Think I Love you, which didn't make Billboard's 1970 or 71 rankings. And even Prince and the Revolution single Purple race, a number two hit in November 1984 that got left off both the 84 and 85 lists. One can speculate about how these hits fell from through the cracks in an era when the charts, including the year end charts, were compiled quite literally by hand. Fortunately, Billboard's data integrity has improved dramatically over the years, especially since their charts were computerized in the Soundscan era beginning in 1991. As we've discussed in several prior Hit Parade episodes, the magazine now piles up all of the sales, streaming and radio data it collects over each 52 week period, and the magazine is scrupulous about ranking any hit that made the chart during those 52 weeks. It's actually now quite common for big hits that straddle two years to make the year end rankings for both years. For example, Santana's Smooth featuring Rob Thomas was a 12 week number one smash. It reigned over the Hot 100 from mid October 1999 through mid January 2000 and accordingly it placed highly on both year end lists in 1999 at number 19 for the year and in 2000 at number two for the year. The same went for Rihanna's longest lasting number one hit We Found Love featuring Calvin Harris. It spent 10 weeks on top from November 2011 through January 2012. On the 2011 year end chart We Found Love came in 69th. Nice. On the 2012 chart it ranked 8th. By the way, Rihanna, one of the biggest chart stars of the 21st century century has never had a Billboard year end hot 100 number one. Which brings up another curious point. Year end guideline four superstardom doesn't necessarily help. What do Madonna, the Rolling Stones, Donna Summer, Diana Ross and the Supremes, Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, the Notorious, BIG and Eminem all have in common, I mean besides induction into the Rock and Roll hall of Fame. Despite boasting multiple hot 100 toppers none of these chart titans ever landed a year end Hot 100 number one. Madonna came close in 1985 when her late 84 smash Like a Virgin, a six week number one hit, ranked number two for the year. So did Donna summer, who in 191979 had two of the top 10 songs of the year. Hot Stuff ranked seventh for 79 and Bad Girls ranked second. As Donna Summers results indicate. The issue with these mega stars is that they are competing with themselves. When an artist has a year like summer had in 79, or Madonna had in 1985, or Biggie had in 1997 when he both died and scored two posthumous number ones. Questions that's how most of these so Billboard's Year End Hot 100 probably won't be led by any one of these hits. Fans are spreading their love around to multiple songs by that hit maker. For example, let's consider Mariah Carey, by any reckoning the biggest Hot 100 star of the 1990s. But during that decade she didn't top the year end chart. Not even once. Not with her first hit, 1990s Vision of Love, a four week number one.
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I had a vision of a club and it was all that you've given to me.
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Nor her 1995 blockbuster fantasy and eight week number one. Nor her 1996 mega blockbuster One Sweet Day with Boyz II Men which was on top for 16 weeks.
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Glorious shining down on me from heaven like so many friends.
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Carrie did eventually score a year end Hot 100 number one. I'll discuss it later. But it wasn't until the 2000s, well after the peak of her Imperial period. Period. Because by then Maria wasn't blocking her own path to year end dominance. One last thing, if superstardom can't guarantee you a year end number one is the inverse True. Does a year end number one hit for a fledgling act ensure stardom? Not really. This is Eyes Wide Open, a song that got nowhere near a year end Billboard chart. It spent just one week on the regular Hot 100 at number 96. It's by the Belgian Australian alt pop singer songwriter known as Gautier. And I'm playing it because it was the immediate follow up to this massive hit. Somebody that I Used to Know by Gautier, featuring the singer Kimbra, an eight week number one that Billboard named the top song of 2012. Somebody won near universal acclaim from critics and the industry. It even took home the Grammy for record of the year. But that did nothing to make Gaultier a regular hitmaker. After Eyes Wide Open, Gaultier never returned to the hot 100 year end. Number ones really don't have coattails. Whether you are an established superstar or a newbie on the charts, it can be hard to follow up the year's dominant song. After Kim Karnes topped the year end Hot 100 with her 1981 smash Bette Davis Eyes, she never returned to the top 10. Her immediate follow up draw of the cards stalled at number 28. Cher didn't do any better in 1999 when she generated her celebrated late career number one hit, Believe. Her follow up Strong Enough peaked at a dismal number 57. Cher hasn't been back to the top 40 since. In short, whether it comes from Whitney Houston or Sam the Sham, a Billboard year and number one song has to be viewed, as Melly Mel might say, as something of a phenomenon. It might lead to piles, more hits, or none at all. It might define the year in music or wind up a head scratcher in a trivia game. It might be the song an artist is remembered for or become, decades later, just another hit. Do these 65 songs from 1958 through 2022 have anything in common? Not much. But in the second half of our show, I'm not only going to play them all, I'm going to rank. When we come back, From Domenico Moduno to Glass Animals, I count down the best, worst and most random year end Hot 100 Number ones of all time. Only a couple of acts ever repeated. If you're generous, maybe three. One of them is this guy. All will be revealed and I guarantee they'll be several songs that make you go huh? Non Slate plus listeners will hear the rest of this episode in two weeks. For now, I hope you've been enjoying this episode of Hit Parade. Our show was written, edited, and narrated by Chris Melanfy. That's me. My producer is Kevin Bendis, Derek John is Executive Producer of Narrative Podcasts and Alicia Montgomery is VP of Audio for Slate Podcasts. Check out their roster of shows@slate.com podcasts. You can subscribe to Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts, in addition to finding it in the Slate Culture feed. If you're subscribing on Apple Podcasts, please rate and review us while you're there. It helps other listeners find the show. Thanks for listening and I look forward to leading the Hit Parade back your way. We'll see you for part two in a couple of weeks. Until then, keep on marching on the one. I'm Chris Melanfi. This holiday episode of Hit Parade was brought to you by Best Buy Shop. Great deals on gifts now at best. That's fine.
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I'm never gonna dance again. Guilty feet I've got.