Throwing back to the week of January 5, 1974, we find Jim Croce at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 with the beautiful love ballad ‘Time in a Bottle.’
Sadly, Croce had died the previous September in a plane crash that also took the lives of five others — including bandmate Maury Muehleisen, who played guitar on this song.
My final song of 2023 is the first song to reach #1 in 1964. Today we throw back to the week of December 27, 1963, when Bobby Vinton’s ‘There! I’ve Said it Again’ sat at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100, just behind ‘Dominique‘ by The Singing Nun, a week before it hit the top spot.
This was Vinton’s third #1 on the chart, following ‘Roses Are Red (My Love)‘ in July of 1962 and ‘Blue Velvet‘ in October of 1963. He would top the chart one more time, with 1964’s ‘Mr. Lonely.’
Bobby Vinton was the Drake of the early 60s.
I’ve been very happy with Throwback Weekends, with one exception. As I mentioned last week, the 2010s have been a pain, primarily because I was blogging during that decade so I’ve already featured many of the hits of the day.
To address that issue, I’m changing things up a bit starting this weekend. I will now start my Throwback rotation in the 50s and end in the 00s. But wait, you might say, the Billboard Hot 100 didn’t start publishing until 1958! And you would be right. But Billboard did release a singles chart through out the 50s that gathered the “Best Selling Popular Retail Records” each week. So that’s what I’ll be using to cover 1953 and beyond.
The 2010s has not been a good decade for Throwback Weekends, as the songs atop the Billboard Hot 100 did not shift much that year. It is also a year I was already blogging, so newcomers to the list have often already been featured here.
This week, at least, the glut of familiar songs among the top ten paid off. I had to drop all the way to #13 to find a song I haven’t written about, and it happens to be a perfect thematic fit on this Christmas Eve — ‘Little Drummer Boy’ by the a cappella group Pentatonix.
Today we’re throwing back to the week of December 20, 2003, when the Christmas season was dominated by Outkast. The Atlanta-based rap duo held the top two spots on that week’s Billboard Hot 100 with ‘Hey Ya!‘ and ‘The Way You Move,’ two classics from the era.
Because I’ve featured those songs already, I’m moving on to #3, where singer (and future chef) Kelis peaked with her song ‘Milkshake.’
Meet Me In Montauk 