Throwing back to the week of March 21, 1956, we find a host of repeats atop the Billboard singles chart — five songs I’ve already covered during Throwback Weekends and won’t bother listing now.
That brings us to #6, where Pat Boone’s ‘I’ll Be Home’ sat on its way to a peak at #5 the following week. Boone released this song a year after it was written by Ferdinand Washington and Stan Lewis, and a few months after doo-wop band The Flamingos dropped their own version.
The week of March 15, 1986, found Starship atop the Hot 100 for the second time. The first ‘Starship’ single to accomplish the feat was ‘We Built This City,’ which reached #1 in December of 1985.
That song is widely considered one of the worst of all time, so ‘Sara’ is an improvement simply by default. It’s certainly a better song than ‘We Built This City,’ and maybe even a somewhat good song, period? You tell me.
Throwing back to the week of March 14, 1976, sitting atop the Billboard Hot 100 is a classic disco doo-wop song that returned its legendary group to the #1 spot for the first time in more than a decade.
The Four Seasons had four #1 hits between 1962 and 1964 — ‘Sherry,’ ‘Big Girls Don’t Cry,’ ‘Walk Like a Man,’ and ‘Rag Doll,’ doo-wop hits that made splendid use of Frankie Valli’s falsetto. Another six singles made it into at least the top 20.
Today is my 29th wedding anniversary, so I was hoping a romantic song topped the Hot 100 the week of March 8, 1966. Alas, it was not to be.
Instead, we have ‘The Ballad of the Green Berets’ by Staff sergeant Barry Sadler. This simple march was a massive Vietnam War-era hit that wasn’t critical of the campaign, like most popular music of the time, but instead celebrated the men who fought in it.
Throwing back to the week of March 7, 1956, we find a couple of repeats atop the Hot 100: Kay Starr’s ‘Rock and Roll Waltz‘ and Nelson Riddle’s ‘Lisbon Antigua.’
Another instrumental track was hot on the heels of Riddle’s hit, and would soon overtake it. That was Les Baxter’s recording of ‘The Poor People of Paris.’ This was a take on the French song ‘La goualante du pauvre Jean,’ which translates to ‘The Ballad of Poor John.’ Somewhere along the line, somebody mistook “pauvre Jean” for “pauvres gens,” which means “poor people,” and that explains the title change.
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