Pop music’s resurgence was peaking in 1999. Top 40 radio was varied — truly embracing Hip-Hop and R&B for the first time in a decade; still drawing heavily from Modern AC; welcoming a Latin crossover mini-boom; embracing a third wave of teen acts, as Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera joined ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys.
Not surprisingly, it’s the teen acts of 1999 who dominate our Lost Factor rankings of the year’s hits that now receive the least radio airplay. Unlike earlier teen booms, there are certainly Britney, Backstreet, and ‘N Sync songs that are easy to hear now on Throwback Thursday, the handful of all-‘90s stations, and at every wedding. But teen acts also dominate the songs that didn’t endure.
Because of those Throwback Thursdays and all-‘90s stations, the average Lost Factor calculations from 1999, the most recent year we’ve looked at to date, are relatively low. In 1997, when Top 40 was beginning to rebound with help from Hanson and the Spice Girls, the average Lost Factor —our calculation of year-end Top 100 points divided by BDSradio spins for the previous week — is an 8.30. For 1999, it was a 3.46. There are only three songs in the year’s Top 100 that get no airplay at all now.
We haven’t calculated Lost Factor for every year between 1995-99 yet, in part because the Billboard charts have more quirks in those years, including mega-hits that never became commercial singles and thus never made the year-end Hot 100. By 1999, Billboard had begun allowing non-singles to make the Hot 100. By now, we were also starting to see animpact, common today, of songs without significant Mainstream Top 40 airplay — not just R&B but Country hits in some cases.
Here are the 15 “most lost” hits of 1999, based on points for their standing for the year divided by the number of plays they receive now. In parentheses is the Lost Factor, followed by the number of spins the songs received in the U.S. and Canada according to NielsenBDS in the week prior to my calculations.
- R. Kelly & Celine Dion, “I’m Your Angel” (lost factor 85, spins last week 0)
- Divine, “Lately” (70, 1)
- 98 Degrees, “Because of You” (32, 0)
- Jordan Knight, “Give It to You” (19, 2)
- Mariah Carey, “I Still Believe” (16, 4)
- Mo Thugs (Bone-Thugs-N-Harmony), “Ghetto Cowboy” (14, 1)
- Total f/Missy Elliott, “Trippin’” (14, 3)
- Joey McIntyre, “Stay the Same” (9, 0)
- Silk, “If You (Lovin’ Me)” (6, 7)
- ‘N Sync, “God Must Have Spent (A Little More Time on You)” (6, 10)
- 98 Degrees, “I Do (Cherish You)” (5, 6)
- JT Money, “Who Dat” (5, 9)
- Jewel, “Hands” (4, 11)
- ‘N Sync & Gloria Estefan, “Music of My Heart” (4, 1)
- Will Smith, “Wild Wild West” (4, 18)
Compared to other years we’ve looked at, there are no more than five songs that most people would think of as big consensus pop hits in 1999 — the Jewel and Will Smith songs chief among them. At least six of the 15 titles could be classified as boy bands/teen idols, a constant trait of high Lost Factor titles over the years.
The No. 1 Lost Factor title, “I’m Your Angel,” is undoubtedly informed by R. Kelly’s disappearance from the radio in recent years, but it wasn’t much of a radio record at the time, charting largely on sales and the momentum of two hot acts at their chart peak. “When a Woman’s Fed Up,” a song that did have some presence until Adult R&B radio mostly stopped playing R. Kelly, is the No. 16 song on this list.
Because there are now some all-’90s stations and more ’90s airplay, here are some signature hits of the year that are not lost now: Will Smith’s “Miami” (0.32), Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ La Vida Loca” (0.34), and Eagle-Eye Cherry’s “Save Tonight” (0.15). It perhaps helps Smith that the most prominent monitored ’90s channel is in Miami.
It’s worth noting that even though there were a number of mostly-Country and mostly-R&B/Rhythmic Top 40 songs on the year-end chart, not all of those songs have a high Lost Factor. It helps that ‘90s R&B and even Hip-Hop have become the center of the Adult R&B format. A song such as “Nobody’s Supposed to be Here” by Deborah Cox that lives primarily at that format now still has a Lost Factor of 0.5. Maxwell’s “Fortunate” has an 0.29.
Similarly, the handful of Country-only songs that made the Top 100 still receive airplay in part because they were the Country songs big enough to make the Hot 100 in the first place. Three of the top five songs with the lowest “Lost Factors” are Country and only one, Lonestar, was a crossover hit. These are the songs that punched above their weight with the most spins proportionate to their year-end placing.
- Goo Goo Dolls, “Iris” (1,827 spins)
- George Strait, “Write This Down” (392 spins)
- Britney Spears, “ … Baby One More Time” (2,732 spins)
- Kenny Chesney, “How Forever Feels” (453 spins)
- Lonestar, “Amazed” (375 spins)
