In a new annual tradition, I’ll start January by recapping Billboard’s Hot 100 songs of the previous year. If I’ve been good about keeping an ear open to “What the Kids are Listening To,” I should get pretty far down the list after weeding out the songs I’ve already featured.
Last year, I made it all the way to #27 before reaching a song new to the blog. This year, I didn’t do nearly as well. My first entry was the #9 song of 2023.
Yesterday I looked back on my past year of blogging, so today is about the year to come. Here are some of my plans for 2024:
Hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable New Year’s Eve!
Last year around this time, I wrote a post detailing all the plans I had for the blog in 2023. Today, I’ll revisit that outline to see how I did.
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.
Meet Me In Montauk 