Gonna Fade Now: Lost Hits of 1977

Usually, a hit movie is a good thing for a hit song’s endurance. Some of the most unavoidable ’80s titles–“Footloose”; “Don’t You (Forget About Me)”; “Eye of the Tiger”–are all-ages records, even for listeners who didn’t grow up with them, because of the still popular hit movies they come from.

But “Rocky” apparently doesn’t have the same influence now that “Rocky III” did on the longevity of Survivor’s hit. In our look at the “Lost Factor” and the hits of 1977, Bill Conti’s “Gonna Fly Now (Theme From Rocky)” has the eighth steepest trajectory between airplay then and airplay now. (Only Philly airplay keeps it from being higher.)

Same goes for a few other enduring movie franchises. Barbra Streisand’s “Evergreen (Love Theme From ‘A Star Is Born’)” is No. 15 on the list. A little further down, Meco’s disco reworking “Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band” is the No. 19 song.; (the London Symphony Orchestra’s original, also a hit at the time, is only No. 45, in part because it wasn’t as big a hit on the final year-end tally.

That said, most of those songs tick other boxes that have come to be familiar when we tally the “Lost Factor”–points for placement on the year’s top 100 divided by the number of spins in the U.S. and Canada over a seven-day period, according to BDS Radio. The “Star Wars” and “Rocky” themes are instrumentals; (plus, “Rocky” is represented by “Eye of the Tiger”). Streisand has become a regular presence in our “Lost Factor” articles among the “softest-of-the-soft” hits that even the new crop of Soft AC stations won’t play; (they represent her primarily through “Woman In Love”).

Elsewhere in the top 15 we see some now familiar patterns:

• Songs with retro elements (Helen Reddy’s MOR-ish 1964 remake; Dean Friedman’s Four Seasons homage, proving somehow less enduring than “Uptown Girl”; “Way Down,” the Elvis Presley song that rebounded on the charts after his death, and probably would not have made the top 100 otherwise);
• Songs by teen idols (Bay City Rollers, two by the Sylvers), particularly Shaun Cassidy’s remake of “Da Doo Ron Ron,” which had the double obstacle of being both teen and retro;
  
• More forgotten soft pop — Mary McGregor, Peter McCann, David Soul just below the chart at No. 16;
• A continued bias against female pop. There’s no such issue with Heart’s “Barracuda,” which got more than 1,300 spins for the week measured with a “lost factor” (or lack thereof) of 0.04;

Here are the top “lost factor” hits of 1977, 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 in the U.S. and Canada according to BDS in the week prior to my calculations (which took place in mid-June to avoid any spikes caused by holiday weekend countdowns and in a week unaffected by American Top 40 reruns).

1. Shaun Cassidy, “Da Doo Ron Ron” (lost factor 56, spins for the week 1)
2. Alice Cooper, “You and Me” (53, 0)
3. Helen Reddy, “You’re My World” (45, 0)
4. Dean Friedman, “Ariel” (32, 0)
5. Bay City Rollers, “You Made Me Believe in Magic” (25, 0)
6. Mary MacGregor, “Torn Between Two Lovers” (23, 4)
7. Peter McCann, “Do You Wanna Make Love” (21, 4)
8. Bill Conti, “Gonna Fly Now (Theme From ‘Rocky’)” (20, 4)
9. Alice Cooper, “I Never Cry” (19, 0)
10. Elvis Presley, “Way Down” (19, 2)
11. Sylvers, “High School Dance” (17, 0)
12. Kenny Nolan, “Love’s Grown Deep” (16, 0)
13. David Dundas, “Jeans On” (14, 2)
14. Sylvers, “Hot Line” (14, 2)
15. Barbra Streisand, “Evergreen (Love Theme From A Star Is Born)” (12, 8)

Often the songs with the highest “Lost Factors” are those that did just well enough to make the top 10 at the time, but not well enough to endure in stations’ recurrent and gold libraries. “Evergreen” is a rare exception of a megahit now lost to time. It was the No. 4 song of 1977.

We’ve seen Alice Cooper represented among 1979’s lost hits with “How You Gonna See Me Now,” the fourth and final of his late ‘70s ballad hits. Two more of them are represented here. And while we haven’t yet published our 1975 calculations, we can share that “Only Women (Bleed)” will be in that year’s top 15 as well. Because of his syndicated Classic Rock show, Cooper remains an unusual example of an act whose early ‘70s titles (including the No. 25 “No More Mr. Nice Guy”) play more than songs from the era now preferred by Classic Hits stations. And while “Only Women” probably paved the way for Kiss’ “Beth,” it’s “Rock & Roll All Night,” not the ballad, that represents the latter act at radio now.

Here are the songs that now get the most monitored spins at broadcast radio, compared to their year-end placing for 1977.

1. Fleetwood Mac, “Go Your Own Way” — only the No. 94 song of the year; remembered as bigger than it was because of the success of the Rumours album
2. Aerosmith, “Walk This Way”
3. Queen, “Somebody to Love”
4. Kansas, “Carry On Wayward Son”
5. Supertramp, “Give a Little Bit” — never really became a library staple in America until after the Goo Goo Dolls remake

We’ve noted in the past that pop/rock songs that can play on Classic Rock, Classic Hits, and “Bob-/Jack-FM”-type Adult Hits stations are the ones that most often endure disproportionately, at least until you get to the early ‘90s. There’s another possible factor at work. “Go Your Own Way” and “Walk This Way” peaked at No. 10. “Carry On Wayward Son” at No. 11. “Somebody to Love” at No. 13. Supertramp at No. 15. (Even the breakthrough of “The Logical Song,” two years later, was only No. 6.) As label staffs juggled multi-format success and rock cred, it seems there wasn’t always the same need to drive chart peak on the Hot 100.

There are two songs we can’t calculate here, including one of the R&B titles most known for its endurance through the years. “Brick House” by the Commodores and “Life in the Fast Lane” by the Eagles did not make the year-end chart. The Commodores’ title is most surprising, having peaked at No. 5. “Life in the Fast Lane” peaked at No. 11 (by that time, there was no need to hype any single from the “Hotel California” album any further). Generally, I’ve found the Billboard year-end charts to align reasonably well with my sense of what the hits were for a given year, even when weekly rankings are sometimes eccentric, but every year still has a head-scratcher or two in its omissions.

We’ve noted before that the (mostly) larger-market, (mostly) FM stations monitored by BDS don’t typically align with the musical frame of reference of a Ross On Radio reader, more likely to search out SiriusXM’s satellite decades channels or the “American Top 40” reruns that put any charted hit back on the radio at least a few times a year.

As our “Lost Factor” articles find a following, a few monitored broadcasters have actually deliberately begun playing some of the songs spotlighted. Triple-A WXPN Philadelphia’s Dan Reed recently devoted an hour to our 1979 calculations; KDRI (The Drive) Tucson, Ariz., PD Bobby Rich made a point of including “Theme From A Summer Place” by Percy Faith, thus far the most lost song of the last 60 years in the top 10, then tweeting it with acknowledgement to the column.

If you missed it, here’s our Lost Factor look at the top 100 songs of 1978.