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Song of the Day #5,784: ‘The Bolter’ – Taylor Swift

The release of a highly anticipated album by a major artist is cause for celebration in these parts. And those album drops typically result in a countdown of my favorite tracks (as with Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter last month) or even a song-by-song dissection (as with Lana Del Rey’s Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd last year).

Taylor Swift’s latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, has been a trickier prospect. For one thing, the album — after the surprise 2 a.m. drop of its unpublicized second half — features 31 tracks and runs for more than two hours. And while I’m not categorically opposed to turning a month and a half over to one album, I don’t relish the idea either.

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Song of the Day #5,783: ‘Hello, Dolly!’ – Louis Armstrong

For almost the entirety of 1964 so far, in these Throwback Weekends, The Beatles have dominated the Hot 100. The band owned the top of the chart for 14 consecutive weeks with three different songs reaching #1.

So who finally dethroned the Fab Four? Would you believe it was 62-year-old jazz legend Louis Armstrong with a demo of the title track from the Broadway musical Hello, Dolly!?

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Song of the Day #5,782: ‘Cross Over The Bridge’ – Patti Page

Throwing back to the week of May 1, 1954, we find two repeats topping Billboard’s singles chart: Perry Como’s ‘Wanted’ and Jo Stafford’s ‘Make Love to Me.’ This was the fifth straight week that those songs occupied the top two spots, with Como in #1 for four of them.

At #3 is ‘Cross Over the Bridge,’ a song originally written in 1945 by Bennie Benjamin and George David Weiss. The recording that received the most success was this one, by singer Patti Page. Page was the top-selling female performer of the 50s, having already scored four #1 hits before this one made it to #2.

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Song of the Day #5,781: ‘How Do You Talk to an Angel’ – The Heights

So far, all of the TV themes that reached #1 have come courtesy of one-hit wonders. Our final example comes from a one-song wonder.

Fictional band The Heights appeared on a TV show of the same name, a musical drama that had a four-month run on Fox in 1992. ‘How Do You Talk to an Angel,’ performed by cast member Jamie Walters, became the show’s theme song and landed in Billboard’s top spot for a couple of weeks in November of that year.

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Song of the Day #5,780: ‘Miami Vice Theme’ – Jan Hammer

Nearly a decade passed before another TV theme song reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was 1985, when my 13 year-old self was living in South Florida and basking in the coolness of Miami Vice.

Composer/producer Jan Hammer’s electronic theme epitomizes the sizzling style of the Michael Mann-produced cop show. I can’t hear this song without picturing the terrific opening credits sequence, with its flock of flamingoes, fast cars and boats, and the bikini-clad windsurfer dipping her head in the ocean.

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