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:
RANK | ARTIST | TITLE | YEAR | FACTOR | SPINS |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Percy Faith | Theme from A Summer Place | 1960 | 100 | 0 |
2 | Elton John | Candle in the Wind 1997 | 1997 | 100 | 1 |
3 | Paul Mauriat | Love Is Blue | 1968 | 99 | 0 |
4 | Highwaymen | Michael | 1961 | 98 | 0 |
5 | Chubby Checker | Pony Time | 1961 | 94 | 0 |
6 | Hugo Montenegro | The Good, the Bad and the Ugly | 1968 | 93 | 0 |
7 | Sensations | Let Me In | 1962 | 93 | 0 |
8 | String-A-Longs | Wheels | 1961 | 93 | 1 |
9 | S/Sgt. Barry Sadler | Ballad of the Green Berets | 1966 | 91 | 0 |
10 | Wayne Newton | Daddy Don't You Walk So Fast | 1972 | 91 | 0 |
11 | Connie Francis | Everybody's Somebody's Fool | 1960 | 90 | 0 |
12 | Brothers Four | Greenfields | 1960 | 88 | 0 |
13 | Jack Scott | What in the World's Come Over You | 1960 | 87 | 0 |
14 | Al Martino | I Love You Because | 1963 | 86 | 0 |
15 | Chuck Berry | My Ding-a-Ling | 1972 | 86 | 1 |
16 | Mar-Keys | Last Night | 1961 | 86 | 1 |
17 | Rebels | Wild Weekend | 1963 | 85 | 0 |
18 | R. Kelly & Celine Dion | I'm Your Angel | 1999 | 85 | 0 |
19 | Bobby Darin | You're the Reason I'm Living | 1963 | 84 | 0 |
20 | Chubby Checker & Dee Dee Sharp | Slow Twistin' | 1962 | 84 | 0 |
21 | Connie Francis | My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own | 1960 | 84 | 0 |
22 | Ferrante & Teicher | Exodus | 1961 | 84 | 0 |
23 | Billy J. Kramer & Dakotas | Little Children | 1964 | 83 | 0 |
24 | Johnny Tillotson | It Keeps Right On a-Hurtin' | 1962 | 83 | 0 |
25 | Inez & Charlie Foxx | Mockingbird | 1963 | 82 | 0 |
26 | Ray Charles Singers | Love Me With All Your Heart | 1964 | 82 | 0 |
27 | Az Yet f/Peter Cetera | Hard to Say I'm Sorry | 1997 | 82 | 0 |
28 | Sue Thompson | Sad Movies (Make Me Cry) | 1961 | 81 | 0 |
29 | Chantays | Pipeline | 1963 | 80 | 0 |
30 | Connie Stevens | Sixteen Reasons | 1960 | 79 | 0 |
31 | Melanie | Lay Down (Candles in the Rain) | 1970 | 78 | 1 |
32 | Frankie Avalon | Why | 1960 | 77 | 0 |
33 | Glenn Medeiros & Bobby Brown | She Ain't Worth It | 1990 | 77 | 1 |
34 | Brook Benton | The Boll Weevil Song | 1961 | 76 | 0 |
35 | Sweet Sensation | If Wishes Came True | 1990 | 76 | 1 |
36 | Murray Head & Trinidad Singers | Superstar | 1971 | 75 | 0 |
37 | Sounds Orchestral | Cast Your Fate to the Wind | 1965 | 75 | 0 |
38 | Dick & Dee Dee | The Mountain's High | 1961 | 74 | 0 |
39 | Paul Anka | (You're) Having My Baby | 1974 | 73 | 1 |
40 | Floyd Cramer | On the Rebound | 1961 | 72 | 0 |
41 | Jay & Americans | She Cried | 1962 | 71 | 0 |
42 | Steve Lawrence | Portrait of My Love | 1961 | 71 | 0 |
43 | Trini Lopez | If I Had a Hammer | 1963 | 71 | 0 |
44 | Connie Francis | Don't Break the Heart That Loves You | 1962 | 70 | 0 |
45 | Jimmy Jones | Good Timin' | 1960 | 70 | 0 |
46 | Divine | Lately | 1999 | 70 | 1 |
47 | Bert Kaempfert | Red Roses for a Blue Lady | 1965 | 69 | 0 |
48 | Donny Osmond | Sweet and Innocent | 1971 | 69 | 0 |
49 | Gary U.S. Bonds | Dear Lady Twist | 1962 | 69 | 0 |
50 | Natural Selection | Do Anything | 1991 | 69 | 0 |
51 | Serendipity Singers | Don't Let the Rain Come Down (Crooked Little Man) | 1964 | 69 | 0 |
52 | Jimmy Clanton | Go, Jimmy, Go | 1960 | 68 | 0 |
53 | Shanice | Saving Forever for You | 1993 | 68 | 0 |
54 | Sue Thompson | Norman | 1962 | 68 | 0 |
55 | Betty Everett & Jerry Butler | Let It Be Me | 1964 | 67 | 0 |
56 | Jackie Wilson | Night | 1960 | 67 | 0 |
57 | Jack Scott | Burning Bridges | 1960 | 66 | 1 |
58 | Jørgen Ingmann | Apache | 1961 | 66 | 1 |
59 | Martin Page | In the House of Stone and Light | 1995 | 66 | 1 |
60 | Ludacris f/Mary J. Blige | Runaway Love | 2007 | 66 | 0 |
61 | Linda Scott | Don't Bet Money Honey | 1961 | 65 | 0 |
62 | Highwaymen | Cotton Fields | 1962 | 65 | 0 |
63 | Osmonds | Down by the Lazy River | 1972 | 65 | 1 |
64 | Bent Fabric | Alley Cat | 1962 | 64 | 1 |
65 | Duane Eddy | Because They're Young | 1960 | 64 | 0 |
66 | Henry Mancini | Days of Wine and Roses | 1963 | 64 | 0 |
67 | Johnny Tillotson | Without You | 1961 | 64 | 0 |
68 | Conway Twitty | Lonely Blue Boy | 1960 | 63 | 0 |
69 | Kenny Rogers & First Edition | Something's Burning | 1970 | 63 | 1 |
70 | Mel & Tim | Starting All Over Again | 1972 | 63 | 0 |
71 | Richard Chamberlain | Theme From Dr. Kildare (Three Stars Will Shine Tonight) | 1962 | 62 | 0 |
72 | Steve Lawrence | Pretty Blue Eyes | 1960 | 62 | 0 |
73 | Tommy Page | I'll Be Your Everything | 1990 | 62 | 0 |
74 | Ace Cannon | Tuff | 1962 | 61 | 0 |
75 | Don McLean | Crying | 1981 | 61 | 0 |
76 | Patti Page | Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte | 1965 | 61 | 1 |
77 | Rythm Syndicate | P.A.S.S.I.O.N. | 1991 | 61 | 1 |
78 | Anita Bryant | Paper Roses | 1960 | 60 | 0 |
79 | Bill Anderson | Still | 1963 | 60 | 0 |
80 | Clyde McPhatter | Lover Please | 1962 | 60 | 0 |
81 | Sheena Easton | The Lover in Me | 1989 | 60 | 1 |
82 | Buckner & Garcia | Pac-Man Fever | 1982 | 59 | 0 |
83 | Danny Williams | White on White | 1964 | 59 | 0 |
84 | Diana Ross | It's My Turn | 1981 | 59 | 0 |
85 | Donny & Marie Osmond | Deep Purple | 1976 | 59 | 0 |
86 | Freddie & Dreamers | I'm Telling You Now | 1965 | 59 | 0 |
87 | Larry Verne | Mr. Custer | 1960 | 59 | 0 |
88 | Olivia Newton-John | Twist of Fate | 1984 | 59 | 0 |
89 | Troy Shondell | This Time | 1961 | 59 | 0 |
90 | Ricky Nelson | Young World | 1962 | 58 | 1 |
91 | 3T | Anything | 1996 | 58 | 0 |
92 | Kenny Rogers | I Don't Need You | 1981 | 57 | 0 |
93 | Kokomo | Asia Minor | 1961 | 57 | 0 |
94 | Fendermen | Mule Skinner Blues | 1960 | 57 | 1 |
95 | Pat Boone | Speedy Gonzales | 1962 | 56 | 0 |
96 | Shakespears Sister | Stay | 1992 | 56 | 1 |
97 | Shaun Cassidy | Da Doo Ron Ron | 1977 | 56 | 1 |
98 | 98 Degrees | Invisible Man | 1997 | 56 | 1 |
99 | Burl Ives | A Little Bitty Tear | 1962 | 55 | 0 |
100 | Arthur Lyman | Yellow Bird | 1961 | 54 | 0 |
101 | Horst Jankowski | A Walk in the Black Forest | 1965 | 54 | 0 |
102 | MC Hammer | Have You Seen Her | 1990 | 54 | 1 |
103 | Bone Thugs-n-Harmony | Look Into My Eyes | 1997 | 54 | 0 |
104 | Puff Daddy f/Jimmy Page | Come With Me | 1998 | 54 | 0 |
105 | Clay Aiken | This Is the Night | 2003 | 54 | 0 |
106 | Alice Cooper | You and Me | 1977 | 53 | 0 |
107 | Emilio Pericoli | Al di là | 1962 | 53 | 0 |
108 | Janet Jackson | Because of Love | 1994 | 53 | 0 |
109 | Lonnie Mack | Memphis | 1963 | 53 | 0 |
110 | Ron Holden | Love You So | 1960 | 53 | 0 |
111 | Timi Yuro | Hurt | 1961 | 53 | 0 |
112 | Ernie Maresca | Shout! Shout! (Knock Yourself Out) | 1962 | 52 | 0 |
113 | Cover Girls | Wishing on a Star | 1992 | 52 | 0 |
114 | R. Kelly f/T.I.& T-Pain | I'm a Flirt | 2007 | 52 | 0 |
115 | Charles Wright & Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band | Love Land | 1970 | 51 | 1 |
116 | Don & Juan | What's Your Name | 1962 | 51 | 0 |
117 | Helen Reddy | I Don't Know How to Love Him | 1971 | 51 | 0 |
118 | Kai Winding | More | 1963 | 51 | 0 |
119 | Rupert Holmes | Him | 1980 | 51 | 0 |
120 | Platters | Harbor Lights | 1960 | 51 | 1 |
121 | Hanson | I Will Come to You | 1998 | 51 | 0 |
122 | Chakachas | Jungle Fever | 1972 | 50 | 1 |
123 | Corsairs | Smoky Places | 1962 | 50 | 0 |
124 | Osmonds | Yo-Yo | 1971 | 50 | 0 |
125 | Madonna | You'll See | 1996 | 50 | 1 |
126 | Bazuka | Dynomite | 1975 | 49 | 0 |
127 | Jeanne Black | He'll Have to Stay | 1960 | 49 | 0 |
128 | Jamie Walters | Hold On | 1995 | 49 | 0 |
129 | Ferrante & Teicher | Theme From The Apartment | 1960 | 48 | 0 |
130 | Immature | Never Lie | 1994 | 48 | 1 |
131 | Partridge Family | Doesn't Somebody Want to Be Wanted | 1971 | 48 | 0 |
132 | Xscape | The Arms of the One Who Loves You | 1998 | 48 | 0 |
133 | Bill Pursell | Our Winter Love | 1963 | 47 | 0 |
134 | Donny Osmond | Go Away Little Girl | 1971 | 47 | 2 |
135 | Gary U.S. Bonds | School Is Out | 1961 | 47 | 0 |
136 | Color Me Badd | The Earth, the Sun, the Rain | 1996 | 47 | 0 |
137 | Nick Lachey | What's Left of Me | 2006 | 47 | 0 |
138 | Elvis Presley | Crying in the Chapel | 1965 | 46 | 2 |
139 | Ricky Martin & Christina Aguilera | Nobody Wants to Be Lonely | 2001 | 46 | 0 |
140 | Mac Davis | One Hell of a Woman | 1974 | 46 | 2 |
141 | Andy Williams | The Village of St. Bernadette | 1960 | 45 | 0 |
142 | Europe | Carrie | 1987 | 45 | 1 |
143 | Helen Reddy | You're My World | 1977 | 45 | 0 |
144 | Joanie Sommers | Johnny Get Angry | 1962 | 45 | 0 |
145 | Ral Donner | You Don't Know What You've Got (Until You Lose It) | 1961 | 45 | 0 |
146 | Royal Philharmonic Orchestra | Hooked on Classics | 1982 | 45 | 0 |
147 | Jessica Simpson | I Wanna Love You Forever | 2000 | 45 | 1 |
148 | Clint Holmes | Playground in My Mind | 1973 | 45 | 2 |
149 | Bill Black's Combo | White Silver Sands | 1960 | 44 | 0 |
150 | Bells | Stay Awhile | 1971 | 44 | 1 |