The 150 Most Lost Songs of All (1960-2009)

Nearly three years ago, I looked at Billboard’s top 100 hits of 1982 to get a sense of how songs had endured at radio proportionate to their success at the time. That year marked a transition from ’70s soft-rock holdovers to the mid-’80s CHR comeback. It was also the chart year with the oft-quoted example of a No. 9 hit (“Don’t Stop Believin’”) enduring more than a 10-week No. 1 (“Physical”). The ’80s were also a good place to start our “Lost Factor” calculations because they were influential years for many Ross on Radio readers, but still heard refracted on so many formats by those who came after.

Encouraged by your response, I extended our Lost Factor calculations to cover a 40-year stretch from 1960-99. When I tabulated the Lost Factor Top 100 for those years, I found out that even the lost hits of the ’80s and ’70s weren’t nearly as lost as those of the ’60s, particularly the pre-Beatles early ’60s. While recency plays some role — even some once-ubiquitous ’60s oldies were now disappearing from radio — the ’90s were our second-most lost decade, led by songs from one of Top 40’s worst doldrums. 

As it turns out, the lost hits of the ’00s aren’t so lost either. There are certainly big records that have disappeared (Jessica Simpson’s “For You”). There are big chart songs that you may have never heard on the radio to begin with (Clay Aiken’s “This Is the Night”). There are artists who have disappeared for reasons beyond the appeal of their songs, although I don’t think “Thoia Thoing” would be on the radio much, even if R. Kelly’s “Ignition” were still an airplay staple. But ’00s hits have an advantage over the ’90s variety. Not only are ’00s songs still heard on many contemporary radio stations, they’re taking a greater role on today’s radio, particularly as current music struggles.

This week, as the grand finale to my first round of Lost Factor articles, I’ve recalculated last year’s Top 100 to cover the 50-year period 1960-2009. I’ve also expanded that listing to 150 songs, in part because only one ’00s song would make the top 100: “Runaway Love” by Ludacris & Mary J. Blige. Not even Clay Aiken would make the Top 100. The final tally for the decades was:

58% ’60s — most of them from before 1964

15% ’70s 

6% ’80s — with only one song from CHR’s dominant years of 1983-86

17% ’90s

4% ’00s

I’m wrapping up the first round of Lost Factor calculations for a variety of reasons both editorial and logistical. I finished my 2000-09 calculations just ahead of the closing of Broadcast Data Systems. While I’ve already made the transition to Mediabase data for another long-running Ross on Radio story, its radio-station panel is different enough that any inclusion of 2010-22 data would best be accomplished by starting over with an apples-to-apples comparison.

In addition, 2009 was also a turning-point year for Top 40 music, marking the transition to a more EDM-driven sound that still influences today’s hits, even if they include fewer party-rock anthems. The last decade has also been marked by more Aiken-type chart hits that were never driven by radio play. The appeal of the Lost Factor is based on “ubiquitous then, unheard now.” But what if songs weren’t experienced much on the radio to begin with?

Because the ’00s are represented here by only a handful of titles, the composition of what sort of songs have the highest Lost Factor doesn’t change much at all. The 22% of the top 100 comprised by teen pop over the decades holds exactly when you expand by 50 titles and a decade of new offerings (33 songs out of 150). 

Similarly, Donny Osmond remains the artist with the most hit songs missing from airplay today, with his solo outings, Donny & Marie Osmond duets, and Osmonds group hits counting for a total of five songs. Early-’60s hitmaker Connie Francis is second with three titles. Among artists who had their biggest hits in the last 30 years, only R. Kelly has two entries.

By comparison, only four Hip-Hop songs are represented in the top 150 — fewer than Osmond-related projects. Of those four, only one of those songs (M.C. Hammer’s “Have You Seen Her”) was a song that truly printed as a hit at the time. That song was part of a broader universe of early-’90s “rhythmic pop” that is often lost now. But with so many “throwback Hip-Hop” and library-based CHRs starting to pop up, actual Hip-Hop hits mostly have a place to go now. 

 Lost Factor was computed by dividing the year-end chart points for each of the Billboard Top 100 songs of the year by the number of spins measured in a seven-day period by BDSradio. Monitored stations are generally found in the top 150 markets and are programmed differently from stations such as SiriusXM’s ’70s on 7 or ’80s on 8. So even if you’ve encountered one of these songs recently on a countdown or a satellite channel, mainstream commercial radio remains a reliable indicator of their presence in pop culture.

Lost Factor spins were measured over different weeks between April 2020 and October 2022. That’s an inconsistent period with slightly different reporting panels, including the growth of stations playing the ’90s and ’00s. I nevertheless found that few songs changed significantly when I went back and redid the math in different weeks. (I’m sad to report that “Twist of Fate” by Olivia Newton-John received no spins when measured in 2020, and none in this week’s Mediabase, even after her passing and the song’s exposure in Stranger Things.)

You can see more about methodology here, and all of my Lost Factor articles in one place as well.

Here are the Top 100 songs with the highest Lost Factor between 1960 and 2009: