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Song of the Day #6,496: ‘Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)’ – Cher

The Righteous Brothers stayed at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 the week of April 19, 1966, with ‘(You’re My) Soul and Inspiration.’ That song would surrender its perch the following week.

At #2 was Cher’s ‘Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down),’ a track written by Sonny Bono and released on her sophomore solo album, The Sonny Side of Chér. This was the highest-charting song of Cher’s solo career until her trio of #1 hits in the 70s with the increasingly problematic titles ‘Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves,’ ‘Half-Breed,’ and ‘Dark Lady.’

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Song of the Day #6,495: ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ – Elvis Presley

We’re throwing back to the week of April 18, 1956, and the 50s just got interesting!

While Les Baxter’s instrumental ‘The Poor People of Paris‘ held on to the #1 spot for the sixth straight week, it was about to be unseated by the song at #2.

That was Elvis Presley’s ‘Heartbreak Hotel,’ the King’s first of 17 chart-topping hits on the Hot 100 (or the Best Sellers in Stores chart, as it was called before 1958).

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Song of the Day #6,494: ‘Second Hand News’ – Fleetwood Mac

Concluding a countdown of my favorite albums of 1977…

#1 – Rumours – Fleetwood Mac

If you ask somebody to name iconic albums, chances are it won’t take long for them to say Rumours.

Fleetwood Mac’s 11th album, but only second with Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks onboard, is the sixth best-selling album in the United States and the eighth worldwide. It’s an album everybody knows and loves, across generations and musical tastes.

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Song of the Day #6,493: ‘Get it Right the First Time’ – Billy Joel

Continuing a countdown of my favorite albums of 1977…

#2 – The Stranger – Billy Joel

I recently played today’s SOTD for my wife and she said she’d never heard it before. How could that be, I asked, when she’s a big Billy Joel fan and this is the eighth of nine tracks on The Stranger, arguably the greatest Billy Joel album?

It turns out she didn’t know the ninth song, ‘Everybody Has a Dream,’ either.

We realized that she never really listened to The Stranger as an album, despite being completely familiar with its first seven tracks.

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Song of the Day #6,492: ‘Miracle Man’ – Elvis Costello

Continuing a countdown of my favorite albums of 1977…

#3 – My Aim is True – Elvis Costello

Earlier this week I selected the Talking Heads’ debut album for this list, and today I’m featuring a debut album by an artist I love even more: Elvis Costello. Imagine getting your first taste of both of those acts in the same year!

I wrote about My Aim is True almost 16 years ago as part of my Costello Weekends series, and I think it’s been long enough that I can repurpose a few of those paragraphs here.

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