At the beginning of September 2018, I stumbled upon a Spotify playlist called Every Number One Song on Billboard created by harveydent,da.1 As a musician and a data junkie, I’d always been fascinated by the Billboard Hot 100 number ones, but harveydent,da gave me an effective tool to search through and listen to them. So that’s what I did. I started searching and listening. Not methodically but randomly. And I was surprised with what even cursory searches turned up.
There have been 12 number one hits where the lead artist was named Bob – 13 if you count B.o.B – but none by Bob Dylan.2
The only U.S. states to appear in the title of a number one are California (Hotel California by the Eagles, California Love by 2Pac feat. Dr. Dre, and California Gurls by Katy Perry feat. Snoop Dogg), Georgia (Georgia on my Mind by Ray Charles, Midnight Train to Georgia by Gladys Knight & the Pips, and The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia by Vicki Lawrence), and Kansas (Kansas City by Wilbert Harrison (18 May 1959) [6.7]).3
At 96 seconds, Maurice Williams & the Zodiacs’ 1960 hit Stay [8.3] is still the shortest song to ever get to number one.
Thanks to Queen and XXXTentacion chart topping artist names have spanned the entire alphabet.
The second song to top the charts – Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blue (Volare) by Domenico Modugno (18 August 1958) [6.3] – is unlike 99% of number ones because it contains no English lyrics.
But where was Bruce Springsteen?4 How did Ringo Starr top the charts twice before John Lennon even did it once? And why were Elton John’s number ones not his best songs? I was confused. I felt like the misty-eyed lover in the The Platters’ powerful ninth number one, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes (19 January 1959) [8.7], my vision clouded by the passage of time. I hadn’t realized that public tastes shifted so dramatically over the decades, once-unpopular works now hailed as masterpieces and ubiquitous hits of yesteryear fading from our consciousness by the day.
As both a musician and a data enthusiast, I was intrigued. I decided to listen to every song to ever top the Billboard Hot 100, working chronologically from the beginning. To color my listening, I would build a dataset that tracked a variety of facts and figures about the songs in hopes of seeing if the typical tales I’d heard about popular music held up to statistical scrutiny. The years covered in each blurb I wrote would be denoted an era. Each section in every blurb would be titled with a lyric from one of the era’s number ones. This is first era. It covers 53 number ones, starting with Ricky Nelson’s Poor Little Fool (4 August 1958) [4.0] and progressing week-by-week through Pat Boone’s Moody River (19 June 1961) [1.7].
I’ve collected a ton of data as I’ve journeyed through these songs. Some things I’m tracking are pretty basic, like title and artist. Others are related to music, like key and time signature. Others are related to lyrics, like average word length and readability. Still, others are related to demographics, like artist age and songwriter gender.
On top of this, I’ve developed a simple metric that attempts to define how good a song is.5 It boils down to averaging three independent ratings on a scale from 1 to 10. Two of the people rating songs were consistent throughout this entire process: me6 and a pop culturally savvy friend of mine. The third rater changed regularly, usually after a stint of 25 songs. I wanted to rotate people through this third position so that I could get variety of perspectives. If you're curious about the best and worst songs of this era, jump to the end of this blurb.
I’ll usually put the date a song first reached number one in parenthesis after the song title or artist (e.g. Mother-in-Law by Ernie K-Doe (22 May 1961)). Ratings will typically be found in brackets after the date (e.g. It’s All in the Game by Tommy Edwards (29 September 1958) [4.3] ).7 I will also only list dates and ratings for number ones that topped the charts in the era that I’m currently writing about.
This raises the question: Why does this first era focus on the week of 4 August 1958 through the week of 19 June 1961? Primarily, because the Billboard Hot 100 did not exist before 4 August 1958. Since it has been the foremost popular music chart for decades, its inception seems like a nice start date. Because of that, Big Hunk o’ Love (10 August 1959) [6.0] is Elvis Presley’s first number one and not Jailhouse Rock or Hound Dog or one of his earlier, more well-known hits. It’s also why we don’t see Frank Sinatra appear until the late 1960s and why famous big band leaders like Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman are absent.
But why did I stop at the week of 19 June 1961 for this era? The 53rd song seems like a random place to stop. And it is. We generally think of popular music history by decade because (a) we use base 10 arithmetic and (b) it’s easier to compartmentalize in our minds. But decadal divisions make just as much sense as a random date. When a year or a decade ends, trends don’t stop. Indeed, we can look back and identify popular styles over stretches of time, but rarely are things created or destroyed on certain dates. Things evolve.8 It may be just as useful to think of 2 September 1968 through 18 January 1972 as a musical era as it is to think about 1980 to 1989 as a musical era.
Still, I tried to concoct some reason for my stopping point. I chose Pat Boone’s Moody River because it exemplifies a few different tropes of this period that we are going to discuss. Additionally, Boone proves a natural pair with Ricky Nelson, the era’s first chart-topping artist: both were once massively9 popular10 but have largely seen their stars fade as time has gone by. Bookending this era with those two illustrates an important lesson in popular music and, for that matter, life: Time shows no mercy.11
Billboard was founded in 1894 as a trade magazine that covered advertising and bill postings. Over time, they began to report on entertainment and celebrity gossip, eventually shifting almost all their focus to the music industry.
Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, they began to publish a variety of charts, including Best Sellers in Stores, Most Played by DJs, and Most Played in Jukeboxes, to track the most popular records in the United States. In late 1958, they introduced the Hot 100, which aggregated music data across all formats in an attempt to determine the true most popular singles in America each week, the number one record being the most popular, the number two record being the second most popular, and so on.
Throughout the decades the Hot 100 has evolved, accounting for streams and digital sales, among many other sources, and while it has faced scrutiny, it remains the premier authority on the most popular songs in the United States. But as everybody knows, you don’t have to look far to find things that were once popular that show their age.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. Everything ages. That said, I break time’s weathering of popular songs into a few different categories: tastelessness, saturation, technological changes, and of-its-era. They are not mutually exclusive, but they are distinct enough to note separately.
The Hot 100 has been around for 64 years. 64 years isn’t a very long time. In fact, it’s well below the average lifespan of an American. But in another sense, 64 years is a very long time. The world changes fast and with it our perception of what is acceptable does too. For example, the lyrics in Elvis Presley’s Stuck on You (25 April 1960) [5.3] now come across as predatory (i.e. "Hide in the kitchen, hide in the hall / Ain’t gonna do you no good at all / Cause once I catch you and the kissing starts / A team of wild horses couldn’t tear us apart"). Additionally, Ricky Nelson’s wooing of his "china doll" in Travelin’ Man is inappropriate, along with the stereotypical Native American chanting throughout Johnny Preston’s Running Bear (18 January 1960) [5.3]. This type of aging does the most damage to a song because it’s the hardest to look past.
There’s an old joke that goes something like, "I don’t understand why everybody makes such a big deal about Hamlet. It’s just a bunch of famous sayings strung together by a stupid plot." In other words, Hamlet is overdone. The joke, of course, is that Hamlet is only overdone because others have copied it endlessly. Hamlet was the first. It’s a retroactive cliché.
Certain songs age this way too. The prime example from this era is Chubby Checker’s The Twist (19 September 1960) [6.7]. First off, The Twist suffers from genre saturation. Rock n’ roll – a once cutting-edge sound – has gone from counterculture to ordinary culture. It has been subsumed by the mainstream, and it rears its head in a variety of unrelated genres. In fact, decades after its dominance, much popular music in American remains informed by the rock tradition.
On top of this, The Twist itself is saturated. Not only did Checker release a sequel, Let’s Twist Again, but scores of artists – from the irrelevant to the legendary – have recorded their own twists. Dear Lady Twist by Gary U.S. Bonds. Tequila Twist by The Champs. Twist and Shout by The Beatles. The Basie Twist by Count Basie. Everybody’s Twistin’ by Frank Sinatra. Mister Twister by Connie Francis.12 Twistin’ Postman by The Marvelettes. Twistin’ the Night Away by Sam Cooke. Your Sister Can’t Twist (But She Can Rock & Roll) by Elton John. The Wilbury Twist by The Traveling Wilburys. The Denial Twist by The White Stripes. And so on. Though saturation is not a sin, it can make a song feel like it's going to be played at a retirement home's barbecue.
We used to record on tape. Now we record on computers. This has changed the sonic quality of number ones. Take Alley Oop by The Hollywood Argyles (11 July 1960) [6.3] as an example. It’s much lower fidelity than contemporary number ones. Though you can simulate this sound quality, most artists don’t.
Also, formats change. We used to buy vinyl. Then we bought cassettes. Then CDs. Then digital downloads. Now we stream.13 Vinyl has physical limits on how much sound it can hold without losing quality. The longest number one in this era was the four-and-a-half minute El Paso by Marty Robbins (4 January 1960) [7.0]. While it’s safe to generalize that most number ones are under five minutes, you can now theoretically release a ten-and-a-half hour epic.14
While saturated songs also sound like they are of a specific era, the difference here is that of-its-era songs have not been subsumed by the mainstream. They seem aged because they are using musical and lyrical motifs that are no longer popular. When you hear ornate, playful strings on Save the Last Dance for Me by The Drifters (17 October 1960) [9.0] and Will You Love Me Tomorrow by The Shirelles (30 January 1961) [9.0], you know that those songs weren’t released two weeks ago. Those elements are era specific.
Let’s talk about a few of-its-era motifs that date things specifically to this era: narrative storytelling, death, and free time vocal introductions. I’ll start with the first two because they are both lyrical.
While most songs have some vague story, there are 10 number ones in this era that have narratives, meaning a plot with a loose beginning, middle, and end. Of those 10 narrative-driven songs, at least eight are about death.
Take The Kingston Trio’s Tom Dooley (17 November 1958) [4.0] as an example. Opening with some spoken word, it’s a folk number, notable for its weaving of three voices, that succinctly recounts Tom Dooley murdering a woman, his attempted escape, and his subsequent sentence to hang.
While 8 songs is not many in absolute terms, it’s more than I was expecting given the dismal topic. I then came to learn that within this bleak tradition there was a notable subgenre that made up half of this era’s death narratives: teenage tragedy songs. These songs usually feature two teens in a doomed relationship that results in one dying and the other swearing to reunite in the afterlife.
During the seven-week period from 4 January 1960 to 21 February 1960, three consecutive teenage tragedy songs topped the charts. The first was El Paso – the sprawling Tex-Mex flavored epic that follows the blood-soaked love triangle of two cowboys and Feleena, a dancer at Rosa’s Cantina – followed by Running Bear (18 January 1960) – the sax-wailing rocker about two lovers seperated by a river that they both drown in while trying to meet – and capped off with Mark Dinning’s Teen Angel (8 February 1960) [4.7], a song so depressing that it was allegedly banned by some radio stations.
So where did this despairing trope come from? It was likely a confluence of factors, some complex and some quite simple.
- The Birth of the Teenager: The word "teenager" can only be traced back to 1912, and it didn’t become commonplace until the 1950s. The concept of teenage years likely grew from the decline in child labor, compulsory education, the proliferation of the automobile, and the post-WWII economic boom, which led to more leisure time. With the rise of the teenager quickly came the notion of teenage rebellion. In fact, in 1953 J. Edgar Hoover warned, "[T]he nation can expect an appalling increase in the number of crimes that will be committed by teenagers in the years ahead." In a certain way, death could be romanticized as the ultimate act of rebellion.
- Musical Deaths: Many famous musicians died prematurely in the years leading up to and during this era, including Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, Eddie Cochran, Richie Valens, The Big Bopper,15 and Buddy Holly.
- Language: The word die is rife with gloomy rhymes, including goodbye, lie, and cry.
- Death & Disease: Throughout the first half of the 20th century, there were a variety of tragedies: WWI, the Influenza Pandemic, the Great Depression, WWII, the Holocaust, the Korean War, the threat of nuclear annihilation, etc.
This plot device actually goes back centuries in both literature (e.g. Romeo and Juliet) and music (e.g. Barbra Allen). Given the historical ubiquity of infant mortality, economic depression, and violence, the simplest explanation is likely that tragic death used to be more common and, even though there were unique factors that influenced the death narratives in this era, the lack of popular songs about death post-1965 is historically anamolous. This would also offer an explanation as to why death and destruction feature in songs of this era that aren’t even about teens. As an example, take Larry Verne’s Mr. Custer (10 October 1960) [2.3], a novelty record recounting a terrified American soldier’s perspective during the Battle of Little Big Horn.16
Though it has never been as prevalent after this era, this device has occasionally been resurrected. Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell is probably the most grandiose take on the teenage tragedy song, an extravagant, nine-minute rock epic about two lovers and a motorcycle crash. Eminem’s Stan, not about romantic passion but rather a deranged fan, could also be deemed a teenage tragedy song. Additionally, hits from the late-2010s, including Billie Eilish’s bury a friend, XXXTentacion’s SAD!, and Powfu’s death bed (coffee for your head), readily use morbid imagery to evoke emotion.
The other of-its-era device is the free time vocal introduction. Most popular songs have a time signature, or a way to count rhythm, and, for that matter, the time signature is usually a variant of 4/4 or 3/4. 4/4 is the typical one-two-three-four count – think Billie Jean by Michael Jackson – and 3/4 is a waltz, like Piano Man by Billy Joel or Perfect by Ed Sheeran. Occasionally, parts of songs have no time signature, sometimes called free time, meaning that nobody is closely abiding by a specific count.
17% of number ones in this era have free time sections. The most common place for this free time section to occur is a vocal section at the beginning of the song. The somber lullaby Mr. Blue by The Fleetwoods (16 November 1959) [4.7]17 and the murderous rocker Stagger Lee by Lloyd Price (25 August 1958) [7.0] both illustrate this idea. Though the majority of each of these has a clear rhythm – namely 4/4 – both open with a free time vocal section (i.e. Mr. Blue: "Our guardian star lost all his glow / The day that I lost you / He lost all his glitter the day you said, 'No' / And his silver turned to blue / Like him, I am doubtful that your love is true / But if you decide to call on me / Ask for Mr. Blue" | Stagger Lee: "The night was clear / And the moon was yellow / And the leaves came tumbling down").
Interestingly, it’s not just free time vocal introductions that are dated, but vocal introductions generally. In an interview with Bob Dylan, interviewer Bill Flanagan observes, "A lot of singers leave off the intros when they record these songs [from the Great American Songbook] ... The Beatles occasionally wrote an intro to a song (‘to lead a better life, I need my love to be here …’) but hardly any other composers of your [Dylan’s] generation or after did." If we define a vocal introduction as a lyrically-driven section of music that begins a song and is not a verse or a chorus, then Flanagan is correct. Not only are they rarely written, but when old songs that contain them are performed today, they are often ignored. For example, the eternal Over the Rainbow has an introduction. It is rarely included in performances.
The typical narrative surrounding pre-British Invasion American pop music is that the early-1950s were replete with revolutionary sounds impeded by a variety of misfortunes. Elvis was drafted into the army.18 Jerry Lee Lewis married his 13-year-old cousin.19 Little Richard found Jesus.20 Chuck Berry was arrested for transporting a minor across state lines. And Buddy Holly died in a plane crash. In short, popular music was trapped in a long, depressing dark age until The Beatles hit the scene a few years later.
If the number ones from 4 August 1958 through 19 June 1961 are testament to anything, it’s that this narrative is a myth. Not only was there incredible music before the British invaded, but there was also incredible variety. We’ll talk about the bests of this era in the next section, so let’s focus on variety now. To do this, we’ll look at the four number ones from July through September 1959.
This quartet began with Paul Anka’s waltzing pop song Lonely Boy (13 July 1959) [4.0] before it was dethroned by Elvis Presley’s relentless rock n’ roller Big Hunk o’ Love (10 August 1959). After that, The Browns’ plainspoken folk song The Three Bells (24 August 1959) [5.3] got to number one before being supplanted by Santo & Johnny’s semi-conscious instrumental Sleep Walk (21 September 1959) [7.7]. Across these four songs we encounter three time signatures (i.e. free time, 4/4, 3/4), three genres (i.e. rock n’ roll, pop, folk), a multitude of instruments (i.e. violin, brass, piano, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, pedal steel), and an assortment of vocal stylings (i.e. compare Anka’s stately annunciation to Presley wild yawp). Honestly, listening to these songs consecutively is jarring. I was floored by how four vastly different songs could have mass appeal in such a short period. This foursome also brings up two other important things about this era: Elvis Presley and instrumentals.
Of the 43 artists to top the charts in this era, only 7 did it more than once. For 6 of those 7 artists, "more than once" means twice. The outlier is Elvis Presley, who did it five time, despite his aforementioned stint in the army. While his first two – Big Hunk o’ Love and Stuck on You – harken back but pale in comparison to his raucous rock n’ roll before his conscription, the last three – It’s Now or Never (15 August 1960) [8.3], Are You Lonesome Tonight? (28 November 1960) [7.7], and Surrender (20 March 1961) [7.0] – are stunning. They pull from an array of influences, including Italian music and vaudeville, and showcase Presley’s vocal range both within and across genre. Given his cultural prevalence and how he is endlessly parodied, it’s easy to forget how talented he was.
Of the 53 chart toppers in this era, 5 were instrumentals. I didn’t expect more than one in such a short period. This expectation was not just overturned by the number of instrumental chart-toppers but also their time atop the charts. In fact, two spent more weeks at number one than the average song in this era. Bert Kaempfert’s trumpet-driven reverie Wonderland by Night (9 January 1961) [7.3] did it for three. Percy Faith’s lush beauty Theme from A Summer Place (22 February 1960) [5.3] did it for nine.
As I’m at the beginning of my journey through the number ones, I can’t say if this era shows more comparative variety than others, but I feel comfortable celebrating what I’ve seen, especially given the blandness that this era is typically characterized by. But what drove this variety?21
To emphasize an earlier point, you don’t have to go back that far to see a wildly different world. On top of different social mores and societal structures, how we think about, how we consume, and how we transmit popular music has changed. Those changes drove much of this variety.
This era was still emerging from a world without recordings. Before the advent of such, a song’s popularity was tracked through sheet music sales. Word-of-mouth also played a large part in how people became aware of different songs. If you wanted to jam to After the Ball – the biggest hit of the 1890s – you couldn’t tune into your local pop radio station or queue it up on your favorite streaming service. You either had to wait for Aunt Ginny to start playing it in the parlor, head to your local dance hall and hope the pianist whipped it out, or learn it yourself. Without recordings, songs weren’t necessarily associated with a single artist.22 This meant covers were not only common but expected. For example, while The Brown’s The Three Bells was at the top of the charts, another version of the song by Dick Flood reached number 23.23 It seems odd from a contemporary perspective, but it would not have been strange to a consumer of popular music in this era because they weren’t that far removed from a world without records.24 Thus, it’s not surprising that we see 42% of songs in this era are either covers or very clearly based off another work.25 It might seem counterintuitive, but I think this factor helped generate a ton of variety. Because songs were frequently covered, you had to make sure that your version stood out. Take the song Blue Moon as an example.
Blue Moon was originally a ballad written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart in 1934. Over the years it has been covered often, appearing as the instrumental theme on the 1930s radio show Hollywood Hotel, adorned with ornate strings by Mel Tormé in 1949, and injected with jazzy flare by Billie Holiday three years later, among many other versions. When The Marcels took a crack at Blue Moon in 1961 [7.3], they went in a completely different direction, using their vocal gymnastics to reimagine the decades old tune in the doo wop idiom.
This also illustrates how artists could interpret songs outside of the genres they typically worked in. Even if a song were originally written for an opera that didn't mean it couldn't be redone by a rock n' roll group. This genre cross-pollination was especially potent in this era because these few years were a musical juncture of sorts. While rock n’ roll and folk were becoming more popular, jazz was on the decline. That’s why we can see a mind-numbing instrumental like Lawrence Welk’s Calcutta (13 February 1961) [3.3] be replaced at the top of the charts by the electrifying Pony Time by Chubby Checker (27 February 1961) [5.3].
Finally, you could argue that popular music was less monolithic in this era. Not everyone had televisions, the internet did not exist, and the record and telecommunications industries were less concentrated. Things spread more slowly thus making it possible for popular music not to be dominated by singular ideas.26
I’ll close with some musical musings, along with a discussion of the bests and worsts of the era. But before that, I want to clarify these ratings a bit more. Again, this is not an exact science, and I am not trying to pretend that it is, but if you want to glean anything from these ratings, I’d say that 1.0-3.9 ranges from egregious to listenable, 4.0-5.9 from below average to average, 6.0-7.9 from above average to great, and 8.0-9.9 from superb to near perfect. A 10.0 is irreproachable.
Runaway by Del Shannon (24 April 1961) [9.7] – This song makes a break-up feel like the end of the world. Del Shannon keeps you engaged at each stop. First, it’s the fuzzy guitar. Then it's the cascading piano. Then the soaring falsetto. Then the twisting proto-synth. Allegedly, when Del Shannon recorded this song, he sang the whole thing flat. Harry Balk, the producer, had to speed up his vocal so it would be on pitch.27
Georgia on My Mind by Ray Charles (14 November 1960) [9.7] – When I listen to this song, the first thing that strikes me is the Hoagie Carmichael-crafted melody. It’s a thing of beauty. But Charles manages to pull more beauty out of each note than any other singer could. Yes, he was a piano player. And his jazzy piano fills rival the melody in their beauty. But Charles’s instrument was his voice, creating new harmonies with subtle slurs and slides that make Georgia feel like your home even if you’ve never been there.
Running Scared by Roy Orbison (5 June 1961) [9.0] – Though radically different in style than Charles, Orbison’s voice was also an emotive force. Because of that, he didn’t need much to make a song work. The beginning of this song is proof of that. It’s just Orbison singing about his insecurities over an acoustic guitar (i.e. "Just running scared / Each place we go / So afraid / That he might show").
But that first verse is deceptive. Each one after adds additional musical elements, the song a gurgling volcano. First it's percussion. Then strings. Then wistful back-up vocals. When the song reaches its climax, Orbison's voice is quavering over the full band. "My heart was breaking, which one would it be?" he bellows. "You turned around and walked away with me." In just over two minutes, Orbison has conveyed more emotion than most could in a 300-page novel.28
Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini by Brian Hyland (8 August 1960) [1.0] – Earlier I said at least eight narrative-based songs were about death. This is arguably the ninth. It’s about a girl who is embarrassed by the "itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka dot bikini" that she is wearing and runs from place-to-place to stay covered up. She starts in a "locker," or changing room, then runs to a blanket, and then into the water. But the last verse and the outro leave me with a few questions.
Now she's afraid to come out of the water,And I wonder what she's gonna do.Now she's afraid to come out of the water,And the poor little girl's turning blue.…From the locker to the blanket,From the blanket to the shore,From the shore to the water,Guess there isn't any more.There's an argument to be made that the closing lines of each stanza suggest that the "little girl" has drowned: she’s "turning blue" and then "isn’t any more." I guess "turning blue" could be getting cold, but I think this irritating song is more sinister than it seems.
The Ballad of New Orleans by Johnny Horton (1 June 1960) [1.3] – Jimmy Driftwood, an Arkansan educator, wrote this song to pique his students’ interest in American history. It must have worked because the composition went on to win Song of the Year at the 1960 Grammy’s after being popularized by Johnny Horton. Sadly, this educational banjo tune about the military triumphs of Andrew Jackson largely amounts to propaganda, very boring propaganda for that matter.
Moody River by Pat Boone (19 June 1961) [1.7] – This song is confusing. It’s a teenage tragedy song, thus depressing by nature, but the arrangement is driven by a cheery piano. I’m not even sure that the narrator is upset that his lover has drowned herself out of shame for her infidelity.
I’ve developed a metric to measure which songs sparked the most disagreement among the three judges and to break ties in the preceding two sections.2 The aforementioned Teen Angel by Mark Dinning was by far the most divisive, with the three individual ratings coming in at 1, 4, and 9. I didn’t like it because the narrative was absurd and the stop-and-start rhythm ruined the song’s pace. That said, others found the melodramatic teen tragedy powerful.
This is a space for me to call out some songs that didn’t make it into the body of the text. It doesn’t mean they are good or bad. I just think they are noteworthy for some reason.
To Know Him is to Love Him by The Teddy Bears (1 December 1958) [8.0] – Composed by superproducer-turned-murderer Phil Spector while he was still a teen, this sweet song is noteworthy as the only song Spector was involved with where he was a member of a performing group.30 The title was allegedly inspired by words etched on Spector’s father’s tombstone.
The Chipmunk Song by The Chipmunks (22 December 1958) [2.7] – I never knew that this song hit number one, but it provides an important life lesson: Even if you are wildly popular for decades, you may still be profoundly annoying.
Cathy’s Clown by The Everly Brothers (23 May 1960) [9.0] – This is one of three songs that tied Running Scared in both rating and divisiveness.31 It’s very efficient, neither a musical nor lyrical element wasted. While the Everly’s close vocal harmony is the centerpiece, the percussion – going from a stately snare to flavorful work on the ride cymbal – is what really drives the song.
This is where I’ll chronologically list all the other songs that still haven’t been mentioned. If there is something interesting about any of these, I’ll footnote it.
Little Star by The Elegants (25 August 1958) [5.7].32 It’s Only Make Believe by Conway Twitty (10 November 1958) [8.0]. Venus by Frankie Avalon (9 March 1959) [2.3]. Why by Frankie Avalon (28 December 1959) [3.0].
Beyond a presumable Batman lover, I don’t know who harveydent,da is. That said, I am thankful for them.↩
Dylan has written a chart-topping song - more on that later - but it’s difficult to conceive how one of the most popular and celebrated artists of the 20th century could never have topped the charts himself.↩
While I was surprised that no chart topper has ever had New York in the title, I was just sad that none had featured my home state, New Jersey.↩
Never the artist on a chart topper, one of Springsteen's songs went to number one by another group. More on that later.↩
Objectivity doesn’t exist in popular music. But if I surveyed 100 people on their preference for either I’m Sorry by Brenda Lee (18 July 1960) [6.7] or Heartaches by the Number by Guy Mitchell (14 December 1959) [3.7], even if 99 out of 100 preferred the former, it would still be interesting to hear what the one person saw in Guy Mitchell’s staid tale of lost love. We’ll ruminate on these ratings throughout, but think of them more as conversation starters than conversation enders.↩
Obviously.↩
As this melody was composed by Charles C. Dawes, Vice President to Calvin Coolidge, it is the only number one written by a U.S. Vice President and, for that matter, Nobel Peace Prize laureate.↩
Trigger Warning for Creationists: Popular music is neither created nor destroyed; it evolves, otherwise known as my First Law of Popular Music. ↩
I like Nelson’s music. Along with chart-topping hits Poor Little Fool and Travelin’ Man (29 May 1961) [5.3], he cracked the Hot 100 seventeen more times. He attempted a country music comeback in the 1970s and was reportedly booed at Madison Square Garden until he started playing oldies. He died in a plane crash in 1985.↩
I don't like Boone's music. Along with releasing a bizarre album of hard rock covers called In a Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy in 1997, he is best known for bastardizing songs written by black artists so white DJs would play them and his dedication to both conservative and Christian causes.↩
For songs that time has been quite merciful to, see The Rolling Stones. For faces that time has not been merciful to, see The Rolling Stones.↩
Francis was one of the biggest stars of the late 1950s and early 1960s. She topped the charts twice in this era with two songs penned by Howard Greenfield and Jack Keller: Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool (27 June 1960) [4.3], a song that sounds like it's backed by a baseball stadium organ, and My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own (26 September 1960) [5.3], a meandering country tune.↩
And some people started buying vinyl again. This is my Second Law of Popular Music: Let enough time pass and things that are old inevitably become new again.↩
More on how computers affected popular music later.↩
J.P. Richardson (a.k.a. The Big Bopper) wrote Running Bear, one of the notable teenage tragedy songs.↩
Though racist language pops up in a few number ones in this era, Mr. Custer contains the most egregious example: "There's a redskin a-waitin’ out there, just fixin’ to take my hair / A coward I've been called cause I don't want to wind up dead or bald."↩
Because they also topped the charts 31 weeks earlier with Come Softly to Me (13 April 1959) [8.0], The Fleetwoods were the first act to top the Hot 100 twice. Like the rest of their discography, their two number ones barely rise above a whisper but are entrancing. They've been my favorite discovery thus far.↩
Between 1958 and 1960, at the height of his popularity, Elvis was stationed in Friedberg, West Germany as a member of the U.S. army. Though he was offered the chance to enlist in Special Services and just entertain troops, he decided to serve as a regular soldier. Despite being unable to record, this period was very consequential for him. Not only did his mother die, but he started using the drugs that would eventually kill him, and he met Priscilla Beaulieu, a 14-year-old army brat who was ten years his junior, that he’d later marry.↩
Lewis’s life was turbulent. He was married seven times and was a murder suspect in one of his spouse’s deaths.↩
In 1982, Little Richard presided over the marriage of Steve van Zandt, Bruce Springsteen’s guitar player. Springsteen was the best man. In a 2019 interview with Vice, van Zandt described the wedding as "[B]lissful chaos. Of course [Little Richard] lied and said he’d done it before … He became a preacher in ‘59, but it was one of those evangelical things … so I’m probably not legitimately married."↩
More on measuring musical variety later. ↩
In an interview with Conan O’Brien, Elvis Costello captured this perspective while recounting how his mother worked in a record store: "[People] thought in terms of interpretations of songs. People would quite often come in and sing to my mother in the shop … And they wouldn’t know any of the words. They wouldn’t know the title. They would just sing the melody of the song, and she would have to try to decode it and then recommend a rendition."↩
Dick Flood is arguably the most unfortunate name in the history of popular music.↩
An even more extreme example of this phenomenon was when three different versions of the song To Each His Own got to the top of Billboard’s pre-Hot 100 National Best Selling Retail Records Chart in 1946. In fact, during the same year, five versions of the song simultaneously charted in the top ten of Billboard's pre-Hot 100 Most Played Jukebox Records chart.↩
E.g. Dave "Baby" Cortez’s The Happy Organ (11 May 1959) [4.7] samples liberally from the traditional song Shortnin’ Bread. Bobby Darin’s Mack the Knife (5 October 1959) [8.3] comes from The Threepenny Opera. Brenda Lee’s I Want to Be Wanted (24 October 1960) [6.3] is an English rewrite of the Italian song Per Tutta La Vita.↩
We’ll address many of these ideas later, but it’s worth a word on the deregulation of telecommunications because it won't come up again. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was the first major overhaul of telecommunications law since 1934. The law was supposed to incite more competition, but it ended up having the opposite effect, especially in radio, which saw a ton of consolidation. Some argue that this has led to less regional programming variety.↩
This highlights my Third Law of Popular Music: If somebody describes some musical element or tradition as ‘not real music,’ they inevitably like a song that utilizes that element or some variation of it. So next time some old fogey shouts about how pitch correction is synonymous with the death of civilization, ask them if they've ever rocked out to Runaway, and then clue them in on how they should repent for wallowing in the pleasures of manipulated vocals.↩
Orbison first tried hitting this final note in his falsetto, but producer Fred Foster suggested he sing it in his full voice. When he went for it, the string players backing him were so astonished that they allegedly stopped playing. They had to do one more take to get it right.↩
More specifically, this metric measures the average absolute pairwise distance between all three scores. The score ranges from 0.0 to 6.0, where 0.0 means we are in complete agreement and 6.0 means that one person rated the song a 10.0 and another rated it a 1.0. ↩
Despite being one of the most successful and respected producers of the 1960s, Spector became increasingly reclusive in the intervening decades. In 2003, he was convicted of murdering actress Lana Clarkson. He died in prison in 2021. ↩
The other two were mentioned earlier: Save the Last Dance for Me by The Drifters and Will You Love Me Tomorrow by the Shirelles. Both are quite similar. They are doo-wop-influenced tunes orchestrated with strings, written by legendary songwriters (i.e. Doc Pomus & Mort Shuman | Carol King & Gerry Goffin), and notable, among other reasons, for their simple, yet moving lyrics.↩
Given that Little Star is a half-rocking, half-doo-woping remake of the lullaby Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, it's another great example of how artists in this era were looking across genre for influences.↩