Ross on Radio’s calculation of the “lost factor” for the various hits of the ‘80s has resonated with music lovers and chart fans at a time when we all need the diversion. I’ve been calculating the distance between a song’s strength at the time (as seen through its finish on the year-end chart) and its current airplay, or lack thereof. So far, with your urging, I’ve looked at:
- The most-lost songs from 1982, the year that the early ‘80s doldrums turned to resurgence;
- The missing hits of 1984, considered by many to be the center of Top 40’s comeback;
- The hits of 1989 — recency should be on their side, but many are just as lost, especially as the mass-appeal CHR of the mid-‘80s became a format of hair ballads and New Kids on the Block.
Finally, this week, I’ve calculated the top 100 most “lost” songs of the entire ‘80s. Also, the top 10 for each of the remaining years. (I figured I wouldn’t make you wait for seven more articles.) In running all these calculations, there were other observations and “liner notes” that I wanted to share.
What’s being measured? We have plenty of data on which Classic Hits are still present on the radio (or, now, generating streams). What’s being measured here isn’t just obscurity, but a very specific thing — whether a song endured proportionately to its strength at the time. Songs were awarded points based on year-end position, which were divided by the number of spins they receive now.
There are certainly songs that radio people would think of as “lost,” such as Steel Breeze’s “You Don’t Want Me Anymore.” That song peaked at No. 16 in 1982, the first year I looked at. It certainly sounded like a hit for a few weeks, but in the end, it didn’t even make the year-end Top 100. While that song is certainly a turntable fave for people who were in radio at the time, it never had the impact in the moment of “Make a Move on Me” or “The Other Woman” or the other “lost” leaders from that year.
What I saw here largely reinforced the lessons of nearly 20 years of working with radio’s music research. By and large, it was very hard for a song to endure if it didn’t make it into power rotation in the first place. In a lot of cases, the songs that have the highest lost factors are the songs that I remember as having made the bottom reaches of the top 10 for a few weeks, not songs that became consensus powers at the time. A true smash like “Physical” or “You Light Up My Life” (I also looked at 1977-78 just for fun) might have indeed been shunted aside, but not to the same extent.
There are certainly numerous cases of mid-chart songs taking hold over the years, usually with some help from pop culture (e.g., Peter Gabriel, “In Your Eyes”), and there are certainly numerous songs that test from Classic Rock airplay alone. But for the most part, the exceptions prove the rule. People can’t remember songs that they never quite got to know in the first place. Part of what music research does is helping radio people understand the gap between what they heard (“we played the hell out of Steel Breeze”) and what the audience remembers.
What you need to know about the calculations. I’m grateful that the formula has resonated with readers and that, if you know the songs and have any sense of what radio plays, the top and bottom of the lists make sense to you. There are things I am willing to disclose about the calculations:
- I looked at airplay over the previous seven days in Nielsen BDSRadio, but I calculated the various years at different times over a period of two weeks or so. I will say that when I spot checked random songs a few weeks later, they were usually in a similar spin range.
- The Nielsen BDSRadio information I had easiest access to included spins for both the U.S. and Canada. There are certainly some songs — not all of them benefited by being Canadian content — that might have had a somewhat higher lost factor with the U.S. only. And I did not average the Billboard year-end with that of Canada’s R.P.M. or The Record when calculating points.
- If a song was No. 40 for the year, it got the same 61 points whether it had one spin or no spins. This wasn’t an issue when I calculated the year-end, because no two songs had the same numerator. When I calculated the decade, I broke ties in “lost” points in favor of making the song with no airplay more “lost.”
- When calculating the biggest hits of the decade, I set aside one song from the 1980 Top 100 that would have otherwise made the decade countdown. “No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)” by Barbra Streisand & Donna Summer had peaked well before January 1, 1980. Because of Billboard’s year-end spillover, it made the 1980 countdown, but it’s really a ‘70s song. Similarly, I calculated points for a half-dozen 1989 hits that were on the 1990 year-end listing. One of them, Taylor Dayne’s “With Every Beat Of My Heart” makes the top 65 list of songs from 1985-89.
All in all, I’m happy that the overall results made sense and created a consistent picture. Nobody has chosen to quibble over these or other statistical issues, but please be assured that I am happy to go back and address them as any forthcoming MacArthur Foundation grant stipulates.
What about “Gloria” and other questions of context? One of the questions that a number of readers did ask immediately was about Laura Branigan’s “Gloria.” Why did that song endure when so many other up-tempo pop records by similar female acts of that era (Olivia Newton-John, Sheena Easton, Melissa Manchester) disappeared? Wasn’t it all that St. Louis airplay following the song’s adaptation as a Stanley Cup anthem for the Blues?
Actually, “Gloria” gets about 15 spins a week in St. Louis across three stations. It’s an apparent power for one, but the other two treat it like the 2-3 spins-per-week nugget that it is in many other places. And it’s also a power in markets like Minneapolis that are disinclined to celebrate the Blues’ hockey triumph. Much of the strength for that song comes from the Northeastern markets where a pop/disco record would have been expected to do well over the years.
Some other issues of context:
- There were certainly cases of songs that might have been “lost” for years being elevated by their topicality. The Kenny Rogers songs from 1982 that had received more airplay following his death got fewer spins the next week, but did not recede to the place they probably would have been a year ago. John Lennon’s “Nobody Told Me,” a song that became lost almost instantly, is actually getting a handful of spins now because its lyrics resonate in these “strange days indeed.” It’s hardly all over the radio now, but as the No. 81 song of 1984, it’s easy for it to punch above its weight at the time with a relatively few spins.
- Not all spins have the same weight, of course. Most of the stations monitored by Nielsen BDSRadio are large- or medium-market stations that want to “play the hits,” but there are certainly outliers that would be more inclined to play an occasional Little River Band song. But some songs don’t even get those spins.
- Over the course of the ‘80s, the Billboard charts were certainly more credible at some times than others. I was happy to say that the year-end rankings seemed reasonable and didn’t institutionalize many week-to-week eccentricities. The oddest inclusions in a year-end ranking of songs that never felt like hits were Daryl Hall & John Oates’ “Wait for Me” (which peaked at No. 18 in the weekly rankings) and Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Fall in Love With Me” (No. 17). Conversely, it seems like “Edge of Seventeen” by Stevie Nicks should have done better than No. 100 for the year, but it peaked at No. 11 at the time; it seems bigger now because it endures.
- The Billboard charts are going to be an issue, however, when it comes time to look at the ‘90s, because of the number of major songs that were never commercial singles, many of which (“When I Come Around,” “Killing Me Softly”) are among the most enduring songs of the decade.
Your mileage may vary, especially if you subscribe to SiriusXM. As this subject spread to social media, one reader asked why she was always hearing Oingo Boingo’s “Just Another Day.” That song got eight Nielsen BDSRadio spins last week; (not bad, actually, for a No. 85 hit at the time). But her sense of that song as enduring came from its airplay on SiriusXM’s First Wave channel.
In general, the SiriusXM stations that play some current music in major formats are monitored by BDSRadio and Mediabase. Stations such as First Wave or 80s at 8 that are less concerned with “playing the hits” as a WLS-FM Chicago or KRTH (K-Earth 101) Los Angeles might know them aren’t included in these calculations. The sort of music lover who might have most enjoyed these calculations is, in general, the person most likely to go beyond research-driven major-market Classic Hits stations.
That said, I listened to SiriusXM ‘80s on 8 for an hour. Out of 15 songs, I head only two with a “lost factor” of greater than 1.0—Billy Ocean’s “Loverboy” (3.5) and the Jets’ “Crush On You” (1.9). There were three more songs for which no “lost factor” was determined because they didn’t make the year-end top 100: Alison Moyet’s “Invisible” (five spins at broadcast radio this week); Buster Pointdexter’s “Hot Hot Hot” (11); and Van Halen’s “Love Walks In” (the leader at 63). Much of ‘80s on 8 also lives in the same pop/rock and new-wave place as FM radio.
Rock The Everything: We’ve already established that the songs that most endure at radio are those that can live on both Classic Rock and Classic Hits formats as well as the Bob- and Jack-FM Adult Hits stations in between. A pop song like “Gloria” or “Hungry Eyes” not heard on Classic Rock might have a chance if it becomes an AC staple. After a while, I was able to guess with surprising accuracy how many spins per week a song had gotten based on the formats that still played it,
As somebody who sees a lot of radio research, I can say after this project that certain songs endure because they hit the sweet spot with pop/rock-leaning radio station program directors, as much as with listeners. I’ve never seen “Rock the Casbah” as more than a middling tester. It still gets more than 1,000 spins a week. I would certainly never begrudge that song airplay because, yes, it’s the Clash. But it’s definitely there because it’s a sonic fit with other songs that do test, some PDs want some art with their science, and some PDs who can’t do music research copy those who do.
Thanks for the clarification on SiriusXM. I assume that “Love” isn’t monitored since they play a lot of the softer songs appearing on these lists, including 1981’s “lost” top three.
I also appreciate the “No More Tears” disclaimer. I was expecting that one to show up somewhere.
Coming soon, 1979! I’m going to give “No More Tears” special dispensation to show up there.