CHART FLASHBACK: AT40 July 4, 1981

The date July 4th, our beloved and much celebrated Independence Day here in the States, is an important date in American Top 40 radio show history as well. It was on that date in 1970 that the first show aired and nearly every year thereafter, a Special Anniversary Countdown aired on American Top 40 the weekend closest to the Fourth of July instead of the week's usual Top 40. Thirty-five years ago today, on July 4th, 1981, the Special Anniversary Countdown was, according to Casey Kasem's proclamation at the beginning of the broadcast, "the 40 biggest hits of John, Paul, George and Ringo as The Beatles and on their own" from 1964-1981. Here are the 51 songs from that episode of AT40, in the order they were played:

40

39

38

EXTRA

37

36

35

34

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33

32

31

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30

29

28

EXTRA

27

26

25

24

23

EXTRA

22

21

20

19

18

EXTRA

17

16

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15

14

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13

12

11

10

09

08

EXTRA

07

06

05

04

03

02

01

THE WHOLE SHEBANG

Coincidentally on that week's Billboard Hot 100 chart, there were two Beatles related songs in the Top 10:

02

07

And just in case you were wondering, the song below was the Number One song on the Hot 100/Top 40 for the week ending July 4, 1981, enjoying the second week of its four week reign atop the chart:

01

Though Casey never did another Beatles-centric countdown, Billboard colunmist Fred Bronson created an updated and expanded 100 song countdown of the Beatles charted hits in his 2007 book Billboard's Hottest Hot 100 Hits. Though the AT40 methodology was never revealed, Bronson uses a seemingly similar method of ranking the singles based on chart performance. For the sake of this post, we're only interested in the songs that have been released since the AT40 Countdown in 1981 that rank within Bronson's Top 40. Here are those new songs along with Bronson's exclusive rankings:

37

27

23

04

02