Hot 100 Debuts - March 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?)  Long story short, HERC devised a formula which has since been tweaked that allows songs to be compared based on more than just their chart position, whether it be debut or, more often, peak.  He's applying said formula to every song to debut on Billboard's Hot 100 in 1982 and writing up weekly posts on each month's debuts.  Similar projects have been done before by others most notably Chris Stufflestreet's Music Mayhem blogs which reviewed each debuting single on the Hot 100 in both the Seventies and Eighties.  (Sadly, Chris passed in the Fall of 2012 but his blogging legacy lives on.)  Another forerunner of HERC's project is John Michaelson's super mega informational Hot 100 Singles Chronology site and it's equally attractive sister site, Weekly Top 40.  In particular, this page from the former which lists every single to debut on the Hot 100 in 1982 in chronological order.  This is HERC's third post on the subject of debuts in the Hot 100 and covers March 1982.  Unlike the first two months of 1982 which saw 35 debuts each, this one features 36.

Hot 100 debut	debut pos		title	artist
3/6/1982	57	*	Don't Talk to Strangers	Rick Springfield	208
3/6/1982	80		Making Love	Roberta Flack	183
3/6/1982	84		I've Never Been To Me	Charlene	205
3/6/1982	86	*	Don't You Want Me	Human League	211
3/6/1982	87		Shanghai Breezes	John Denver	143
3/6/1982	88	*	Always On My Mind	Willie Nelson	201
3/6/1982	89		Please Don't Stop Me Baby	The Boys Band	82
3/6/1982	90		The Longer You Wait	Gino Vannelli	26
3/6/1982	95		Never Thought I'd Fall In Love	The Spinners	14
					141
3/13/1982	80		I'll Try Somethng New	A Taste Of Honey	125
3/13/1982	82		If I Had My Wish Tonight	David Lasley	133
3/13/1982	83		On A Carousel	Glass Moon	104
3/13/1982	88	*	Lonely Nights	Bryan Adams	33
3/13/1982	93		Sad Girl	G.Q.	20
3/13/1982	96		If I Could Get You	Gene Cotton	34
					75
3/20/1982	66	*	Did It In A Minute	Hall & Oates	191
3/20/1982	77	*	The Other Woman	Ray Parker Jr.	203
3/20/1982	78	*	Hang Fire	Rolling Stones	166
3/20/1982	79	*	Empty Garden (Hey Hey Johnny)	Elton John	183
3/20/1982	81		Let's Hang On	Barry Manilow	141
3/20/1982	82	*	Man On The Corner	Genesis	126
3/20/1982	90		Make Up Your Mind	Aurra	62
3/20/1982	92		Over The Line	Eddie Schwartz	24
3/20/1982	96		All Nigth With Me	Laura Branigan	66
					129
3/27/1982	70	*	The Beatles Movie Medley	The Beatles	183
3/27/1982	75	*	Still In Saigon	Charlie Daniels Band	161
3/27/1982	78	*	Since You're Gone	The Cars	123
3/27/1982	80	*	Fantasy	Aldo Nova	163
3/27/1982	82		The Gigolo	O'Bryan	92
3/27/1982	83		I'll Drink To You	Duke Jupiter	88
3/27/1982	84		Hollywood	Shooting Star	65
3/27/1982	85		Stars On 45 III (A Tribute To Stevie Wonder)	Stars On 45	150
3/27/1982	86		One To One	Carole King	115
3/27/1982	87		I'm In Love Again	Pia Zadora	115
3/27/1982	88		My Girl	Donnie Iris	157
3/27/1982	90		Circles	Atlantic Starr	129
					128

Three months in and we have over a hundred songs; a tidy little data set.  Let's look at some of the other data generated from this subset of the charts.  The average song thus far has debuted at 82 and risen to 40.  It has spent an average of 12 weeks on the chart, seven of them rising and five of them falling.  On average, the song scores a 126 using HERC's formula.  

			from 106 songs
	title	artist	score	debut position	peak posisition	total weeks
	Average Song	Average Artist	126	82	40	12
	Median Song	Median Artist	128	84	39	11

Let's check those numbers again in three weeks to see if they hold true.  One thing we need to remember is that these charts, the charts before Soundscan and BDS made them all too accurate, are works of art produced by a small group of individuals given a small set of data and infulencing not just a multi-billion dollar industry but also setting trends and tastes for millions of chart followers.  Followers like HERC.  And probably you.