Part of what I’ve enjoyed about doing music research for a living is watching how big hit songs endure over time. How songs perform in research decades later is their refraction through a series of funhouse mirrors (radio programmer judgment, music-supervisor influence and other pop-culture moments, the movement of listeners through the 25-54 demographic window). Radio reacts to those variables and their change in output (often a culling of the oldest titles) influences the next respondents.
That songs do not endure equally is obvious enough. Five years ago, Rich Appel wrote a series of Billboard articles about how “Revisionist History” keeps “Santeria,” not “Macarena” on the radio. Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical,” a 10-week No. 1 and the biggest chart hit of the ‘80s, is long obscured by Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’,” the No. 9 hit from the same time in 1981-82 that became the most unavoidable gold title of our era. Recalculating the No. 1 song of each year, based on what was playing and selling in the mid-‘00s, Appel found the tilt was almost always to rock/pop titles that are kept in play by the combination of Classic Rock, Classic Hits, and the Adult Hits format perched between them.
Now, I’ve created a formula for looking at which hits have become the most (and least) “lost” over time, based in part on the distance they fell to their present-day radio obscurity. I used Billboard’s Top 100 songs of 1982 — the year-end chart of both “Physical” and “Don’t Stop Believin’.” The No. 1 song of the year received 100 points; the No. 2 song received 99, and so on. I divided those points by the number of NielsenBDS Radio spins each song received last week. The biggest songs of the time with the least airplay now had the highest “lost factor.” The range is substantial, from the most “lost” hit with a 59-score, “Pac Man Fever,” to the least, “Edge Of Seventeen” with an 0.001.
For a song like “Don’t Stop Believin’,” only the No. 73 song of the year, and now the most-spun of any song from 1982, according to Nielsen BDSRadio, the “lost factor” is negligible: .008. For “Physical, the year’s No. 1 song, the “lost factor” is a much higher 2.94, but it’s only the No. 26 “lost factor” when you rank the entire year. Newton-John’s follow-up, “Make a Move on Me,” a lesser-but-still-substantial hit at the time with virtually no spins now, has a “lost factor” of 17, making it the No. 7 most lost song of 1982.
Disagreement with this formula is inevitable — if you’ve read this far, you undoubtedly have your own strong opinion — but I hope you still find some diversion at this difficult time. Here are the 15 “most lost” hits of 1982, based on points for their standing for the year divided by the number of plays they receive now. In parenthesis is the “lost factor,” followed by the number of spins the songs received last week according to NielsenBDS.
- Buckner & Garcia, “Pac Man Fever” (lost factor: 59, spins last week: zero)
- Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, “Hooked On Classics” (45, 0)
- Donna Summer, “Love Is in Control (Finger on the Trigger)” (42, 0)
- Air Supply, “Sweet Dreams” (37, 2)
- Charlene, “I’ve Never Been to Me” (32, 2)
- Vangelis, “Chariots of Fire-Title” (30, 3)
- Olivia Newton-John, “Make a Move on Me” (17, 1)
- Commodores, “Oh No” (16, 2)
- Paul McCartney, “Take It Away” (16, 2)
- Little River Band, “Take It Easy on Me” (12, 5)
- Pointer Sisters, “Should I Do It” (12, 1)
- Daryl Hall & John Oates, “Did It in a Minute” (12, 3)
- Roberta Flack, “Making Love” (11, 5)
- Ray Parker Jr., “The Other Woman” (11, 7)
- Sheena Easton, “You Could Have Been With Me” (9, 4)
The songs with the highest “lost factor” tended to follow a pattern — softer pop songs, middling year-end placement (the highest went to Vangelis at No. 12), and almost no airplay now. The mini-boom in Soft AC stations over the last year has put Air Supply back on the radio, but not every title of theirs. And even for those stations, there are even softer titles that are left to a new group of even softer/older-leaning MOR stations, most of them not monitored, or outside monitored markets.
The highest “lost factor” songs often tended to be from the first half of 1982, an exceptionally soft and Adult Contemporary-leaning time for hit music. While there are major enduring songs from that part of the year — “Don’t Stop Believin’”; “I Love Rock & Roll” — pop music was undergoing a shift that made the second half of the year very different from the first. As Top 40 became more tempo- and current-driven over the next year, most of the “lost factor” leaders disappeared from the radio quickly. If you aren’t old enough to remember them as currents, you may have never heard them as gold titles.
But because songs don’t endure equally, they also don’t fade away symmetrically. There are a few pop songs that have regained their radio footing thanks to the new group of Soft AC stations — “Rosanna,” “Waiting for a Girl Like You,” “I Keep Forgettin’” — such that their “lost factor” is relatively low. Laura Branigan’s “Gloria,” which certainly feels like an “oh wow” song — is actually among the year’s top 20 most-played. “Through the Years” by Kenny Rogers, which might well have been very “lost” a few weeks ago, was among the five least-lost songs of the past week, owing to its airplay after Rogers’ death. That might be a one-week bump, but the loss of an artist has been known to return songs to radio long-term.
In between those hits that are truly lost and those that now punch well above their weight are a second tier of slightly less enduring pop/rock titles. Songs like “Harden My Heart,” “Somebody’s Baby,” and “Freeze-Frame” aren’t quite the reliable music research titles they were 5-10 years ago. But they still get significant airplay between Classic Rock, Classic Hits, and Adult Hits, and they probably don’t feel lost to a Ross on Radio reader at all. Other hits of the year like “Don’t Talk To Strangers” or “Eye in the Sky” get just enough airplay that they have relatively low “lost” scores (about a 1.5), but they probably would generate an “oh wow” if you heard them on the radio.
But most Classic Hits PDs just looking for an occasional song to spike in the “’80s at 8” or an all-‘80s weekend rarely have to dig that deep, and many are happy to just “play the hits.” Even listeners to specialty shows like Barry Scott’s The Lost 45s (to which we owe the “lost” concept), Ron Gerber’s Crap from the Past, or Appel’s That Thing With Rich Appel have their own favorites, cultivated over time with as much subjectivity as any large-market, hit-driven Classic Hits station.
Even as a believer in strategic variety who has had the leeway to throw in, say, “Don’t Talk to Strangers” a few times each year, I’ve probably only spiked five of those top 15, even on an all-‘80s weekend. Others seem like indulgences, or songs that I can no longer count on somebody even ten years my junior to know. Some seem like they’re off the radio for cause.
Vantage point is everything. My surprise and delight in encountering “Take It Away” is very different from my response to “I’ve Never Been to Me.” But whenever I write about 1981-82, regarded as a doldrum by most, I inevitably hear from readers who love any given song from that era. Others are seeking out the era for irony: “I’ve Never Been to Me” is catnip and “Take It Away” is a nonentity. The 42-year-old listening to Classic Hits was a toddler in 1982 and may not know either of them.
Meanwhile, here are the top six songs that are punching above their weight proportionate to their year-end ranking at the time. I’ve made it a top six because of the obvious outlier this week. In this case, the top song is the one with the most miniscule “lost factor.”
- Stevie Nicks, “Edge of Seventeen” (.001, 1,519 spins)
- Loverboy, “Working for the Weekend” (.005, 1,004 spins)
- Journey, “Don’t Stop Believin’” (.008, 3,561 spins)
- Kenny Rogers, “Through the Years” (.017, 116 spins in the week immediately following his death)
- Police, “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” (.019, 1,188 spins)
- Van Halen, “(Oh) Pretty Woman” (0.21, 615 spins)
The circumstantially affected Rogers number is one of the few songs that don’t follow a pattern of multi-format pop/rock hits heard now on Classic Hits, Classic Rock, Adult Hits, and sometimes Mainstream AC. “Through the Years” is also one of the few songs with a low “lost” ratio because it was only No. 99 for the year, so that even 116 spins represent proportionate airplay. It’s an outlier, but one that mostly proves the rule. That said, most of 1982’s Country crossovers get enough airplay somewhere that their “lost factor” is relatively low — and that’s not taking into account the growing number of gold-based Country stations, many of them in markets just below the monitoring threshold.
R&B oldies are also hard to evaluate. 1981-82 was the epicenter of the “disco backlash” and there were few crossovers that became hits, lost or otherwise. Patrice Rushen’s “Forget Me Nots” or Gap Band’s “You Dropped a Bomb on Me,” generally agreed to have become enduring hits for a while, never made the year’s top 100 to begin with. Some of those that did endure because of Urban AC (“Let It Whip,” “It’s Gonna Take a Miracle”) or the new Soft ACs (“Turn Your Love Around,” “One Hundred Ways”).
There are four R&B hits among the 15 “most-lost” titles. Two are in the “softer than soft” tier that hasn’t come back even at Soft AC — Roberta Flack’s “Making Love” and the Commodores’ “Oh No.” Donna Summer’s “Love Is in Control” was a superstar title that never felt like a real hit even at the time. But it’s ironic to see Ray Parker Jr.’s funk/rock “The Other Woman” – one of the first R&B hits to break through PD bias – not faring as well as songs it paved the way for, such as “Little Red Corvette” or “Beat It.” It’s too pop for Adult R&B stations and too aggressive for the new Soft ACs.
These are just the rankings for one year, but a key one in the resurgence of Top 40 radio. A true calculation of “lost factor” would look at the entire decade. The ‘90s rate their own calculations, and as those songs creep back on to the radio, they’ll likely change quickly.
How could Charlene have ANY spins? lol.
Many of the short-life songs are novelty records. Some fit a music genre that has become obsolete, such as disco. Others, like Charlene, may be payola records. Chart information is not as useful as one might think when it comes to programming gold-based formats. You’re really on to something important here, Sean. Not only can this guide us when it comes to pruning our active gold library, but it could also help us determine which records to add. Why even bother playing the novelty or fad records in the first place? We certainly should avoid the temptation to add bad records in exchange for favors or money. The audience should always come first in all our thinking and programming. Good article, Sean!
Thanks, Joe. As much as it pains me to say this, I think the Charlene hit was legit at the time. It began with Scott Shannon digging up a five-year-old song that Motown wasn’t working by an artist who wasn’t still active. There was no incentive to hype that song unless it worked itself. People who worked in radio at the time remember it as a legit reaction record. But it’s not a proud moment in pop history.
Thanks for the nod! “The Lost 45s” has been around since 1983 and listeners (not programmers) have always gotten the show. -Barry lost45.com
Great article Sean,
It always makes me slightly sad that Make A Move On Me has no real footprint anymore on the radio. I always lump it in with the later in the year “You Should Hear How She Talks About You” by Melissa Manchester – probably because they both come from writer Tom Snow – as a decent source of mildly upbeat pop during this transitional period of bland ballads and country crossovers. I get though that even 6 months after the latter peaked, this style was DOA as things shifted post Thriller and 2nd British Invasion took off.
The whole Play Gloria meme /rallying cry for the St. Louis blues certainly helped raised it’s profile in the past year.
I assume the main reason Charlene worked, despite sonically still sounding like it should be bumpering up with If You Leave Me Now in 1976 not I Love Rock & Roll, was that it shared playlist space with Chariots Of Fire and uber soft stuff like Making Love.
The ‘90s rate their own calculations
Most certainly. And t’s rather curious you would choose a year such as 1982 for your Lost Test. I mean, some of the issues that marred Top 40 during most of the 90’s are there, namely the doldrums (to a point, as you, um, point out in the article) and the relative lack of R&B crossovers. Even the early 90’s “White Flight” to Country was mirrored in ’82, since this was still the Urban Cowboy era.
It ended up being 1982 because I started with “Physical,” did “Don’t Stop Believin'” for comparison, then kept going. It’s certainly notable that the most lost songs are mostly from the tail-end of the era. But somehow “The Other Woman,” which I thought of at the time as a bright spot, is now as lost as the more AC-ish songs. At some point, I hope to do other years.
Any idea which station played “Make a Move On Me?” I’d like to start listening as soon as possible.
BDSRadio is showing two spins for ONJ/Make A Move this week–Me-TV-FM Chicago (you’ll have to stream the Burlington, Vt.,) version and Southern Wisconsin’s WBGR (Big FM). http://www.wekz.com/
Could incessant airplay in St. Louis during the Blues’ Stanley Cup run have been a major skewing factor in “Gloria” ‘s apparent popularity in 2019? I would think so.
And it seems Glenpwood75 beat me to that observation…
The “Gloria” question has come up in a few different places. The Blues exposure certainly helped. It also got exposure in the movie “Gloria Bell” last year as well. It’s definitely more on the pop culture radar than before, but only about 1/10 of its airplay actually came from St. Louis and on the week I checked, only one of three stations in the market was giving it more than 1-2x spins a week. It’s one of those ’80s songs that came back to the market about 15 years later because of WPLJ and WKTU. Since then, it’s regularly been a song you’d hear on AC or Classic Hits in the Northeast. It’s also a song that is probably getting some lift from the recent resurgence of Hot AC.