Top 100 Lost Songs of 1970-74

The song with the second-highest “Lost Factor” of the early ‘70s is hard to hear on the radio now. But it was also hard to hear Chuck Berry on the radio in 1972. I was in New York for the summer when “My Ding-a-Ling” was on its way to No. 1. But Top 40 powerhouse WABC added it, then dropped it after a few days. Plus, I was listening to the more MOR-leaning WNBC to hear Imus. I heard plenty of double entendre that summer, just not that song very much. In fact, of any song since I began listening to current music, “My Ding-a-Ling” is probably the No. 1 song that I have heard least on the radio.

1972 also gave us the “Lost” leader of the early ‘70s — “Daddy Don’t You Walk So Fast.” Many of the high “Lost Factor” songs, big hits that don’t endure on the radio today, were already throwbacks when they were new, and 1972 was a key year in the ‘50s and early-‘60s revival that put Wayne Newton back on the radio, along with Berry, Elvis Presley, Rick Nelson, Sammy Davis Jr., and many others. 

One reason songs fade with time is because subsequent generations don’t attach the same feelings to them; for retro-sounding songs, listeners not only have to carry memories of what songs meant to them in 1972, but they also have to summon their memories of an earlier era (or, if they’re under retirement age, what they learned from parents or American Graffiti.)

Since April, we’ve been calculating the “Lost Factor” of every song that made the Billboard year-end Top 100 between 1960 and 1994. Our formula is points based on year-end chart position divided by the number of monitored spins a song received over a seven-day period. Those spins are at the mostly large- and medium-market stations monitored by BDSRadio. They don’t include Sirius XM’s ‘70s on 7, but mostly FM stations playing what they perceive as safe and enduring hits. 

Our calculations for the ‘70s were done earlier this year. So there’s one significant asterisk. Two weeks ago, Bobby “Boris” Pickett’s “Monster Mash” not only wasn’t lost, it was big enough to rechart in the U.K. for a week. Ten days before Halloween, I heard it blaring from a car, and I’m not sure if it was the radio or this podcast that the driver was playing. 

Here are the 100 songs from 1970-74 with the highest Lost Factor:

As we did with 1975-79, we tallied certain characteristics of songs (and some songs fit into more than one category). Among the top 100 songs there were:

• 33 titles that could now be classified as MOR. Besides the No. 1 title, Helen Reddy places three titles in the top 100. So does Cher, two as a solo artist and one as half of Sonny & Cher.
• 27 R&B titles, once again including a number of records that I consider among the greatest of the era, beginning with the No. 9 “Starting All Over Again” by Mel & Tim. Early ‘70s R&B isn’t just disadvantaged by the lack of play from today’s Classic Hits stations (which do less with the ‘70s overall) but, because this is all-format airplay being tallied, from a lack of airplay even at Adult R&B stations, many of which start in the late ‘70s or now in the ‘80s. Look for more on this in a forthcoming column.
• 12 songs by teen idols, half of them by an Osmond — Donny, Donny & Marie, or the Osmonds.
• 12 songs that could be considered throwback-sounding/deliberately retro at the time.
• Nine novelty songs, although if you counted any slightly quirky ‘70s story song, the count could be considerably higher. Jim Stafford, known for his country/pop novelties, had three songs in the Lost 100, although I didn’t code “Spiders & Snakes” as a novelty.
• Eight songs that had some connection to movies and Broadway, including two from Jesus Christ Superstar.
• Seven songs from the early ‘70s “Jesus Rock” category, ranging from the aforementioned two titles to Sister Janet Mead’s “The Lord’s Prayer.”
• Seven songs that could be considered bubblegum — again, for some people, that’s anything that’s goofy and from the ‘70s, but we went for songs like “Yo-Yo” by the Osmonds and Daddy Dewdrop’s cartoon show cover “Chick-a-Boom.”

Meanwhile, these are the songs with the lowest “Lost Factor” scores of the ‘70s. Most are songs that remain Classic Rock mainstays, although a few are songs aren’t as heavily spun on today’s radio, but make the cut because they have a relatively low year-end placing to outperform (e.g., “Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone” or “Won’t Get Fooled Again”).