The 100 Most Lost Songs of the ‘60s

I started listening to pop radio in 1967, around the time that Top 40 radio started playing oldies in a more regular way. But by then, many of the ‘60s songs with the highest “Lost Factor” were already gone from the radio. In fact, less than half are songs I grew up hearing on the radio on any regular basis.

“Lost Factor” mathematically calculates whether songs are currently receiving airplay proportionate to their hit status at the time by awarding points for year-end chart placement and dividing them by the number of weekly broadcast radio spins they get today. Of the top 102 Lost Factor songs (including a three-way tie for No. 100), only about 40% are songs that I heard on a regular basis.

• There are only 10 songs that I remember hearing as current hits on the radio, not surprising since 71% of the songs in question are from the pre-Beatles years, 1960-63; 22% are from the year 1960 alone.
• There are another six that I remember hearing either as gold or in other settings (e.g., hearing Bent Fabric’s “Alley Cat” in gym class).
• There are another 20 that were a regular part of the Oldies stations that I listened to during the nostalgia craze of the early ‘70s. All of those songs were long gone from the “safe list” that emerged when Oldies had its late ‘80s/early ‘90s format resurgence.
• There are five songs, from “Mockingbird” to “My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own,” that I learned because they were remade over the next decade or so.

The top 100 of the 1960s is an expanded version of a top 15 list that ran last July, a few months after we began our Lost Factor calculations. Even that list was full of instrumentals, early ‘60s titles, and one early ‘60s instrumental, “Theme from ‘A Summer Place,’” that had a perfect 100 score — a No. 1 song of the year that had gotten no plays at BDSRadio-monitored stations in the previous week. 

Now that we’ve expanded to 102 songs, they include:

• 25 instrumental hits;
• 24 artists that would now be considered MOR acts, not including instrumentals;
• 17 artists that were considered teen idols (in general, the likes of Steve Lawrence and Connie Francis were classified MOR, even though you could have made a case for them as either);
• Six folky songs from the early ‘60s hootenanny era of pop music;
• Three songs that would be considered bubblegum; a lot of late ‘60s bubblegum is scarce on the radio now, but the Lost Factor scores are generally lower than the early ‘60s MOR, not surprising when we’re talking about 60-year-old songs.

Connie Francis is the artist who makes the most appearances among the 102 songs (with three titles). Those with two range from Chubby Checker and Gary “U.S.” Bonds to piano duo Ferrante & Teicher to bubblegum’s 1910 Fruitgum Company, the only late ’60s act with more than one title.

The Lost Factor within the top 102 songs stretches from the 100 score for “Theme From ‘A Summer Place’” to a 45 score for the last three songs. By comparison, the ‘70s’ top 100 ranges between 91 at the top and 14 at the bottom. As the passage of time would suggest, the ‘60s songs are a lot more gone from broadcast radio.

Here are the Top 100 Lost Factor Hits of the ‘60s. None received more than two spins for the week we calculated. (BDSRadio monitors mostly large- and medium-market stations. It does not include SiriusXM’s 60s on 6, although many of these would be “oh wow” songs even there.)

We also looked at which songs overperform their year-end chart placing. These are songs with the lowest “Lost Factors” that now receive more than 100 spins a week at radio. These calculations were revised on April 17 from our initial tabulation. Thanks to an e-mail from reader Daniel O’Connor, we realized that not all eligible songs had been included; (this did not in any way impact the Top 100 Lost Factor songs above).