EVERY Billboard #1 hit discussion thread 1958-Present

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by alphanguy, Jan 29, 2016.

  1. tmoore

    tmoore Forum Resident

    Location:
    Olney, MD
    WRT Johnny Winter -

    he played at Woodstock 1969, but I had never heard any of that material until it was included as bonus material on the Woodstock 40th Anniversary release.

    The song he played that was included on that release was "Mean Town Blues".
    I took an immediate liking to that song and it got added to my homemade Woodstock CD.
    A studio version of that track can be found on his LP "The Progressive Blues Experiment".
     
  2. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    We'll get back to this topic when we get to mid-1976, and I think you know what i'm talking about.;)
     
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  3. Hey Vinyl Man

    Hey Vinyl Man Another bloody Yank down under...

    Same here. For a long time I knew it best from the Simpsons episode where Otto 'sings' it; I happened to watch that once with the closed-captioning on and it identifies the song.
     
  4. Finchingfield

    Finchingfield Forum Resident

    Location:
    Henrico, Va
    Would you happen to have/know all the Hot 100 methodology changes over the years? I (and I'm sure others) would love to know all the changes over the years. Thanks in advance ;)
     
  5. Black Thumb

    Black Thumb Yah Mo B There

    Location:
    Reno, NV
    Wish I did have a comprehensive list. I didn't know about the '73 change until @tim_neely brought it up on this thread awhile back.

    The next big one I know of doesn't come until 1991 when they started using Soundscan data.
     
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  6. Bruce M.

    Bruce M. Forum Resident

    Location:
    Hilo, HI, USA
    At the risk of piling on, I'm another lifelong Macca fan who was never bowled over by "My Love." It's not terrible, just kind of forgettable to my ears -- Paul on autopilot.
     
  7. drad dog

    drad dog A Listener

    Location:
    USA
    I had to find a way into this thread. I heard Casey Kasem play ATYD on AT40. It had to be on there for that one week only.
     
  8. pablo fanques

    pablo fanques Somebody's Bad Handwroter In Memoriam

    Location:
    Poughkeepsie, NY
    Now THAT is some knowledge!
     
  9. george nadara

    george nadara Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    The original version of "Frankenstein," from 1970, credited to Johnny Winter...

     
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  10. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    I have to say, I like "My Love" more now than I probably have in 30 years. Maybe since I stopped listening to radio almost 20 years ago its absence has made my heart grow fonder. It's a beautiful song, unlike several of the other big hits this year, which were kitschy and kinda ugly and annoying. This must have been a real reprieve for radio listeners, although I think they'd have been better served by 6 weeks of "You Are The Sunshine Of My Life" at the top of the charts...

    We had a rainy day here and it occured to me I've always thought of this as a rainy day song, even though it was a hit during the middle of the late spring / early summer dry season in Arizona. Dunno if that has something to do with the weather at the time, maybe a later memory association of the song that I don't recall anymore, or just the sound and mood of the piece.
     
  11. Manapua

    Manapua Forum Resident

    Location:
    Honolulu
    Red Rose Speedway gets slagged a lot on this forum. I didn't buy the album at the time until a cousin was spinning it one day and I heard the Medley on Side 2. Maybe he was trying to duplicate the Abbey Road medley and while it's more on the light weight side, I quite enjoy it.

     
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  12. W.B.

    W.B. The Collector's Collector

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    One factor in "My Love's" (and Red Rose Speedway's) chart success, was the release around the same time of The Beatles 1962-1966 and ...1967-1970 (a.k.a. the "Red Album" and "Blue Album"). The afterburners would be felt on the charts for months afterwards for two other ex-mop tops, as we'll see . . .
     
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  13. pickwick33

    pickwick33 Forum Resident

    You mean he went back to the blues...
     
  14. Hoover Factory

    Hoover Factory Old Dude Who Knows Things

    Location:
    Spokane, WA
    It is probably my least favorite McCartney album. The only song I really like is “Big Barn Red.”
     
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  15. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    I associate the tune"Frankenstein" with the Arizona thunderstorm season because that's when it was in heavy rotation, along with two or three other hits we'll get to in the next few days.
     
  16. Black Thumb

    Black Thumb Yah Mo B There

    Location:
    Reno, NV
    Come on now! Red Rose Speedway was the 4th best album by a former Beatle in 1973! ;)

    The James Paul McCartney TV special is up on YouTube. Haven't seen it in ages, might just give it a rewatch to see if my less than fond recollections are accurate.
     
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  17. Black Thumb

    Black Thumb Yah Mo B There

    Location:
    Reno, NV
    You can't bring Frankenstein to life without lightning. :righton:
     
    Grant likes this.
  18. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

  19. AppleBonker

    AppleBonker Forum Resident

    Location:
    Seattle
    My Love

    Woh woh Woooooah woh
    Woh woh woooooooah woh

    Sorry, had to get that out of my system before I began talking about this one.

    [​IMG]

    My Love is an oddball love song in that it's really not about the person the singer loves, but about the singer himself. My Love does it good n' all (it? we'll leave which particular 'it' she does well to the imagination), but that she does it TO ME is what's really important. Woh woah woah woah indeed.

    The climax of that idea comes at the end. Paul is ready to hit us with his final statement of purpose, and the word he chooses to emphasize?

    MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

    And it's probably the longest 'me' in the history of popular song, if you include the full word, which is: meeeee--woh woh woh woh ... woah woah, woah woah, woooooooah.

    I think most love songs would hit the high point on HEEEEEERRRRRR or YOOOOOOUUUU, don't you agree? And normally Paul is so good with pronouns. Think how important it was in the early Fab days that they wrote songs like 'From Me To You' or 'She Loves You'. OK, there was Please Please Me, but that was an outlier!

    I have fun with Paul, but this is a perfectly lovely little song that probably only could have been written by a genius like Mr. McCartney MBE. It's not his fault that he also wrote masterpieces like Hey Jude, Penny Lane and Blackbird, all of which put My Love in the shade. My Love has another of his great little melodies, and though it isn't really rock, it has enough rock elements to barely pass the sniff test.

    And though it is one of his more solid songs of the era (small praise), you can't help but wish he could have sat down for another thirty minutes and worked the lyrics out a bit more. Again, the words aren't horrendous, but there was room for a couple more beautiful stanzas and not so many wohs.

    [​IMG]

    In 1972, after a couple of solo albums that had been fairly panned by the critics, Paul decided what he really needed to do was form another band, and thus was born Wings. Despite his best propaganda, absolutely no one believed he was creating a new group of equals a la the Beatles (Ex-Moody Blue Denny Laine had some heft, I suppose, but Paul squandered that by putting his photographer-not-keyboard-player wife into the band as well). Their first album was Wild Life, and it is generally considered the worst thing Paul did in the 70s (and I agree). When 'Bip Bop', which literally sounds like it was made up on the spot (I think it actually was) is one of the highlights of your album, you know you're in trouble.

    His singles at that time weren't much better. Give Ireland Back to the Irish was his big statement about the troubles in Ireland. It was predictably banned in the UK, but it wasn't exactly Masters of War. One line goes "Great Britain/you are tremendous/and nobody knows like me". Way to stick it to the man, Paul!

    He followed up that one with a version of Mary Had a Little Lamb. Yes, he released a nursery rhyme as a single. A few critics were so taken aback they even thought he was purposely trying to be ironic. Ah, 70s rock criticism!

    After that came Hi Hi Hi, and finally he showed that he was on the way back. It's not a great song, but at least it rocks and, when it got banned, showed he could get banned for a real reason. Sort of. You'd think it would be the drug references that would get him, but actually it was a misheard lyric: he sings 'I want you to lie on my bed, get you ready for my polygon'. What? OK, a typical first-thing-that-comes-to-mind line from Sir Paul, suggestive I guess, but also really oblique. But the BBC thought he was saying 'get you ready for my body gun', which is a lot less subtle. BANNED! Oh well, it helped his cred anyway, and it got to #10 in the States, where people are less easily offended by three dimensional shapes.

    Paul in 1973:

    [​IMG]

    Red Rose Speedway was the second Wings album, now credited to 'Paul McCartney and Wings' (so much for group of equals, huh?). It was a much bigger hit, climbing all the way to the top of the charts and spawning My Love, his second post-Beatles #1. Paul was originally looking to release a double album, but to be honest the quality of the music for the most part was still pretty sub-par (yes, in my opinion), so a single disc was probably more than enough. Some of the stuff that was cut was the music the other band members contributed (surprise!). The critics were merciless as usual, and even Paul in later years has admitted that he 'couldn't stand' the album. Fortunately, it was a step in the right direction, and his eventual breakthrough was just around the corner.

    1973 also saw the release of another Paul oddity: the TV special James Paul McCartney. First broadcast in April of 1973, the special came about as the result of a fight with Lew Grade, the British music publishing mogul who owned the Beatles' Northern Songs. Grade was angered that Paul was crediting his wife Linda for co-writing his songs, thinking McCartney was trying to get a bigger part of the financial pie by claiming she had something to do with his music. To get Grade off his back, Paul agreed to make the special, to be distributed by Grade.

    The show consisted mostly of music video-like performances of Wings and Paul solo songs from the era; he even throws in a few Beatles numbers, although they are in weird segments like one where pedestrians sing songs like A Hard Day's Night to comic effect. Perhaps the weirdest number is a song-and-dance routine called 'Gotta Sing Gotta Dance', which features a bunch of dancers dressed up to look half male half female.

    [​IMG]

    Included in the show is a performance of My Love, done with a full orchestra and the Wings gang. Here it is!



    PS - yes, the critics hated the TV special, too. My favorite review: 'James Paul McCartney is not the sort of programme you make a comeback with. It is the sort of programme you make a comeback from.' Ouch!
     
    Last edited: Mar 14, 2018
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  20. W.B.

    W.B. The Collector's Collector

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    Grant likes this.
  21. Hoover Factory

    Hoover Factory Old Dude Who Knows Things

    Location:
    Spokane, WA
    I don’t really care for “My Love” or “Red Rose Speedway” but I thoroughly enjoyed the TV Special. It had some fantastic live performances, the “Live and Let Die” sequence, and a great the segment where he’s playing his accoustic guitar and singing Blackbird, Bluebird, Heart of the Country. And I liked the “Gotta Sing Gotta Dance” routine.
     
  22. Hoover Factory

    Hoover Factory Old Dude Who Knows Things

    Location:
    Spokane, WA

    “In 1972, after a couple of solo albums that had been fairly panned by the critics...”

    Respectfully disagree. I personally think those solo albums were UNFAIRLY panned by the critics. “McCartney” is a fine album. A little laid back perhaps, but “Maybe I’m Amazed,” “Every Night,” “Junk,” “That Would Be Something,” etc. are wonderful songs. “Ram” is a masterpiece. I stopped paying attention to rock critics after listening to “Ram” bacuse it became obvious they had no idea what they were talking about.
     
  23. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    Except for a few exceptions, I think the pop audience was looking for soul music that was more exciting and edgy rather than safe and traditional.
     
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  24. Manapua

    Manapua Forum Resident

    Location:
    Honolulu
    Soul was pushing and pulling and stretching in various directions and right about now we were seeing the full flowering of the Gamble/Huff productions. The O'Jays, of course, kicked it into high gear with the Backstabbers album and in the summer of '73 we saw another 60s group debut with one of my favorite Soul tunes. The Intruders had been kicking around the music scene since the very early 60s and by the middle of the decade began consistently hitting the Pop charts. Though never a huge presence there, they did manage a Top 10 record with Cowboys To Girls but my favorite has always been Together which crazy as it seems now, only managed a #48 showing. This song was played all the time here and even got remade in 1980 by Tierra and did considerably better (#18). Anyways, the group released their best tune (IMO) in the summer of '73. Proto-disco, as many of the G/H songs of the era were and dealing with an all too familiar black urban experience, I'll Always Love My Mama boasts a fantastic arrangement, production and vocals that sustain it's nearly 7 minutes of glory. This should have been huge.

     
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  25. John22

    John22 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Northern Germany

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