Hot 100 Debuts - February 1982

While thumbing through his well-worn copy of Billboard Hot 100 Charts - The Eighties, HERC's wandering attention began to focus on the weekly debuts of 1982, and as he looked at the new songs that appeared each week, he began rating each week as if it were a college sport recruiting class with its future performance already recorded.  If you know HERC, you know he loves deriving new numbers out of other numbers. (Top 40 Index? K-Tel Scale?)  Soon the abacus and the slide rule were out as a mathematical formula was hammered into shape that would actually assign a number to each song based on six variables involving chart positions and weeks charted.  Five of the six variables are:

• debut position (higher is better),
• peak position (higher is better),
• weeks between debut and peak (shorter is better),
• total weeks spent on Hot 100 (more is better),
• positions between debut and peak (more is better).

This week, we're taking a look at the 34 New Entries (as Billboard calls them) that hit the chart in February 1982. (Coincidentally, January also saw 34 different chart debuts.) After last week, someone much smarter in the ways of algorithms and formulas questioned HERC's ciphering and sure enough, there was an error in the order of operations that was inconsistent with HERC's stated goals.  The correction was made and the numbers were reformulated and re-posted in that first week.  HERC also added a column where he asterisks the songs that will be on his Favorite Songs Of 1982 list.

Hot 100 debut	debut pos		title	artist
2/6/1982	63	*	I Love Rock N Roll	Joan Jett & the Blackhearts	214
2/6/1982	77	*	Do You Beleive In Love	Huey Lewis & the News	195
2/6/1982	80		Theme From Magnum P.I.	Mike Post	156
2/6/1982	81		Here To Love You	The Doobie Brothers	75
2/6/1982	82		Why You Wanna Try Me	Commodores	73
2/6/1982	84	*	(Oh) Pretty Woman	Van Halen	184
2/6/1982	88		Opposites Do Attract	All Sports Band	48
2/6/1982	89		You Can	Madleen Kane	50
2/6/1982	90		Natural Love	Petula Clark	72
2/6/1982	95		Be Mine (Tonight)	Grover Washington Jr	20
2/6/1982	98		Power Play	Molly Hatchet	11
2/6/1982	99		Start It All Over	McGuffrey Lane	9
					92
2/13/1982	69	*	Make A Move On Me	Olivia Newton-John	199
2/13/1982	70		On The Way To The Sky	Neil Diamond	152
2/13/1982	73	*	Juke Box Hero	Foreigner	156
2/13/1982	77		Pop Goes The Movies	Meco	135
2/13/1982	85		Nobody Said It Was Easy	LeRoux	170
2/13/1982	86	*	Mama Used To Say	Junior	145
2/13/1982	87	*	Find Another Fool	Quarterflash	174
2/13/1982	88	*	Apache	Sugarhill Gang	99
2/13/1982	89		Steppin' Out	Kool & the Gang	26
2/13/1982	90		Goin' Down	Greg Guidry	173
					143
2/20/1982	67	*	Freeze-Frame	J. Geils Band	203
2/20/1982	73	*	Edge Of Seventeen	Stevie Nicks	186
2/20/1982	84		Never Give Up A Good Thing	George Benson	100
2/20/1982	85		Shine On	George Duke	122
2/20/1982	86		Memory	Barbra Streisand	100
2/20/1982	90		Summer Nights	Survivor	81
2/20/1982	93		Running	Chubby Checker	24
					117
2/27/1982	69		Baby Makes Her Blue Jeans Talk	Dr. Hook	157
2/27/1982	82	*	'65 Love Affair	Paul Davis	198
2/27/1982	85		Don't Let Me In	Sneaker	78
2/27/1982	87		Sleepwalk	Larry Carlton	60
2/27/1982	88	*	Get Down On It	Kool & the Gang	187
2/27/1982	89		Memories Of Days Gone By	Fred Parris & the Five Satins	61
					124

Just like it did in January, Week Two proves to be dominant with an average of 143 points per song followed by Week Four (124), Week Three (117) and Week One (92).  Two things stand out on the above chart for HERC: 1) We have debuted our first eventual Number One song with Joan Jett's Arrows cover and 2) Kool & the Gang released a flop single ("Steppin' Out" debuted and stayed at #89 for two weeks before dropping off the chart) and quickly followed it up two weeks later with one of HERC's favorites ("Get Down On It" which featured "Steppin' Out" as its B-side).  

No oversights or shenanigans on the charts to report this time around but there's always next time.  HERC has committed to a twelve week cycle to finish posting all of the debuting songs of 1982 and this here is week two so tune in next week to see what songs made their chart debut in March 1982.