HERVARD'S GRAND FINALE!!! (BIG LIST ON PAGE 200)
Jul 4, 2016 8:48:14 GMT -5
FreakyFlyBry, JessieLou, and 1 more like this
Post by Hervard on Jul 4, 2016 8:48:14 GMT -5
Happy Fourth Of July, everyone! You've probably been wondering what this Grand Finale business in my siggy is all about? Well, if you've been thinking that it is a guessing game – you are absolutely right! But this is not just any guessing game. It is a biggie – a very biggie! The past three guessing games have all been Top 1000s of the past three decades. Since this decade is not yet over with, you might think that I've come up with one for the 1970s. Not quite. What I have done is taken my Personal Top 30 charts from 1975 through 1999 and compiled – get this – the TOP 2500 SONGS OF THE LATE 1900S!!
Yes, you read right, this game is going to put those Top 1000 games to shame. But let's face it – when I got the Top 1000 of the 2000s – So Far game on, I was less than enthused, so I decided that we might as well forget about the Top 1000 of the 2010s, since musical quality has gone down even more over the past few years. So I decided, for my final guessing game, to shoot for something big. Over the past year, I have been diligently working on computing up the songs that have charted on my Personal Top 30, double-checking for miscalculations, and entering them into a database. Then, I worked on breaking the many, many, many ties, and finally, the list was complete!
In doing this, I discovered at least three things - “I Wanna Dance With Somebody Who Loves Me” by Whitney Houston was not the only song that peaked at #11 on my chart (in fact, it was far from it), “Come On Eileen” peaked higher than #30 (though it is still not on the list, since it only spent seven weeks on the chart, getting as high as #21), and my musical taste has changed immensely in the past 20 years - some of the songs on this list are ones that now get “No. Just no” status my commentaries, while other songs that I love did not appear on my charts, although some of that was because I couldn't find any clips of the songs that I was unfamiliar with – remember, I wrote most of these charts in the late 1990s, which was before AT40 Flashback and YouTube. I was at the mercy of Amazon and Barnes & Noble, which, in many cases, did not have clips of the songs I was trying to find. Anyway, I would not rely on any of my chart critiques for help in guessing these songs.
As for my chart, well, it evolved over the “years”. In the 1970s, it moved at normal speed, but in the 1980s, it began moving much faster. Since I was familiar with many more songs, especially as of 1983, many songs hit my chart, and it was very rare for a descending song to spend more than one week below #10 (and, in 1983, there were many cases where a song fell clean off my chart from inside the Top Ten). The fast charts continued through 1992, then, in 1993, when the charts were written in real time, plus the volume of new music dropped noticeably, my charts slowed way down. So it was impossible to fairly compare them with songs from the 1970s and 1980s. I could have used some sort of weighting system, but that would not produce an accurate chart, so yes, the songs from the first two decades will be ranked lower than the bigger hits of the 1990s, but that just goes to show you how the variety of music played on the radio changed over 25 years' time.
Well, without further ado, let's get started:
2500) An a cappella cover of a song that hit #1 over 30 years before.
2499) Wow - right above an a capella song is another one. This song was the only Top 40 hit by a man known for his unique vocal techniques.
2498) This song was definitely NOT a cappella. It was the fourth hit for this woman born in Norwich, England. Her first three singles (including the first in which she was the featured vocalist) were upbeat dance hits. This one was a ballad, which you might say was about a room that was overbuilt.
2497) Another song by an English act - this one a dance group from Liverpool, who had two Top 40 hits in the 80s. This was the first one, about something that can make you very dizzy.
2496) A song about the importance of not being apathetic to the homeless.
GOOD LUCK!
(The big list is posted in a topic of its own, due to its immense size).
Yes, you read right, this game is going to put those Top 1000 games to shame. But let's face it – when I got the Top 1000 of the 2000s – So Far game on, I was less than enthused, so I decided that we might as well forget about the Top 1000 of the 2010s, since musical quality has gone down even more over the past few years. So I decided, for my final guessing game, to shoot for something big. Over the past year, I have been diligently working on computing up the songs that have charted on my Personal Top 30, double-checking for miscalculations, and entering them into a database. Then, I worked on breaking the many, many, many ties, and finally, the list was complete!
In doing this, I discovered at least three things - “I Wanna Dance With Somebody Who Loves Me” by Whitney Houston was not the only song that peaked at #11 on my chart (in fact, it was far from it), “Come On Eileen” peaked higher than #30 (though it is still not on the list, since it only spent seven weeks on the chart, getting as high as #21), and my musical taste has changed immensely in the past 20 years - some of the songs on this list are ones that now get “No. Just no” status my commentaries, while other songs that I love did not appear on my charts, although some of that was because I couldn't find any clips of the songs that I was unfamiliar with – remember, I wrote most of these charts in the late 1990s, which was before AT40 Flashback and YouTube. I was at the mercy of Amazon and Barnes & Noble, which, in many cases, did not have clips of the songs I was trying to find. Anyway, I would not rely on any of my chart critiques for help in guessing these songs.
As for my chart, well, it evolved over the “years”. In the 1970s, it moved at normal speed, but in the 1980s, it began moving much faster. Since I was familiar with many more songs, especially as of 1983, many songs hit my chart, and it was very rare for a descending song to spend more than one week below #10 (and, in 1983, there were many cases where a song fell clean off my chart from inside the Top Ten). The fast charts continued through 1992, then, in 1993, when the charts were written in real time, plus the volume of new music dropped noticeably, my charts slowed way down. So it was impossible to fairly compare them with songs from the 1970s and 1980s. I could have used some sort of weighting system, but that would not produce an accurate chart, so yes, the songs from the first two decades will be ranked lower than the bigger hits of the 1990s, but that just goes to show you how the variety of music played on the radio changed over 25 years' time.
Well, without further ado, let's get started:
2500) An a cappella cover of a song that hit #1 over 30 years before.
2499) Wow - right above an a capella song is another one. This song was the only Top 40 hit by a man known for his unique vocal techniques.
2498) This song was definitely NOT a cappella. It was the fourth hit for this woman born in Norwich, England. Her first three singles (including the first in which she was the featured vocalist) were upbeat dance hits. This one was a ballad, which you might say was about a room that was overbuilt.
2497) Another song by an English act - this one a dance group from Liverpool, who had two Top 40 hits in the 80s. This was the first one, about something that can make you very dizzy.
2496) A song about the importance of not being apathetic to the homeless.
GOOD LUCK!
(The big list is posted in a topic of its own, due to its immense size).