Chart Flashback: Billboard's Hot 100 Turns 54!!!

[Anyone else feel like they're playing catch up?  HERC was hoping to have this post up and out last week but, as the saying goes, life happens.  So here it is.]

www.yourlogoresources.com

Prior to August 4, 1958, Billboard magazine published a variety of pop record charts including Most Played In Jukeboxes, Best Sellers In Stores, Most Played By Jockeys and the Top 100 - an aggregate of the previous three charts listed with extra weight given to Best Sellers. With the August 4th issue, Billboard debuted their Hot 100 chart and had discontinued the other charts listed above except Best Sellers which lasted until October 1958.

The Hot 100 is still going strong today.  It is still compiled using singles sales but now that includes physical and digital download data. Radio plays still factor in and so do on-demand streams - like the Spotify playlists below.

The research library here at the Hideaway is littered with books devoted to the history of the Billboard charts including definitive ones by Joel Whitburn and Fred Bronson.  What we're gonna do today is go back to the beginning of the Hot 100, list the Top 10 and then skip forward six years at a time (listing the Top 10 each time) until we find ourselves with last week's Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100.  Why six?  That is HERC's lucky number!  [Check the post times of his blog entries.]

August 9, 1958

August 8,1964 [missing the #1 song: "A Hard Day's Night"]

August 8, 1970

August 7, 1976 [missing #4 "Let 'Em In" and 
#7 "Got To Get You Into My Life"]

August 7, 1982 [missing #3 "Abracadabra"]

August 6, 1988 [missing #9 "Pour Some Sugar On Me"]

August 6, 1994

August 5, 2000

August 5, 2006

August 4, 2012

That's all folks!