The World's Music Charts

Previous Comments (newest first)

18 Aug 2023

EDM track, song name, artist

Had a police siren sampled at the start and again during it, girls jumping in a pool, heavy drinking I think. Video starts with a hotel room and thingslying around from a party the night before, then a guy in the mirror, dressing up to be a cheesy fake cop.+

2 Oct 2022

90's or 2000 Country Love song

Just remember a music video. A blonde man, with a guitar, dress jeans, white shirt and a jacket, walking in the desert singing. He goes to a bar and do a small show. I remember this song now, 'cause the song "in case you didn't know by brett young" have a similar melody in his chorus.

19 Jul 2021

90's Country song

It mentions laying under a tree at night looking at the stars

28 Jun 2021

any updates for recent years

Good morning, I follow this site, will there be any more updates or not please.

Almost certainly

9 Mar 2021

2010s song i cant find

I dont remmeber the lyrics but im pretty sure that it was talking about thelgbtq community and the music was these two women infront of a white wall and they were lipsyncing to the song and they had red lipstick and one had some sunglasses

3 Jun 2020

90s song i cant find

90s MTV video with giant woman walking on a feild (hills i think)leavingpurple egg foot prints+

2 May 2020

The future

Hi, guys! I've just been wondering one thing so I figured I might as well askit. I am trying to find a polite way of structuring this inquiry, this is no way meant to be insulting or derogatory. But have you guys been thinking about passing this site on to younger contributors if and when you get old enough or bored enough with this project? It would be a real shame to abandon such a profound collection of chart data. Thank you for answering my question.

That is a good question, which is hard to answer.

The first answer is that modern charts have much better coverage and consistency than older ones. Since the year 2000 it has been possible to obtain weekly charts for all the largest music markets. This allows us to do some stats and get consolidated charts for every year, month and day. We have applied this approach in the chart2000.com site. We try and keep that up to date (it currently goes to May 2022).

The approach taken on this site works very well for combining weekly and annual charts with lists of best selling, prizes and "best of" charts. It also does a reasonable job of estimating when there are gaps in the coverage from one country to the next. However, this does mean that each item has to be assigned to a particular year, so, for example the song "Running Up That Hill" is from 1985 and any success in 2022 would be folded into the 1985 data. While this compromise is great for the type of chart data available from 1900 to 1995 it becomes less and less suitable as reliable full coverage data becomes accessible.

In addition the current trend for long listings of "featured" artists makes is hard to get a consistent set of artist names. The tsort approach, that is to have a "definitive" list of names, already tends to combine acts with similar names (for example the 1960s UK band "Nirvana" and the 1990s US band "Nirvana"). In contrast the chart2000 approach employs mappings, which works better for the type of artist names encountered since 2010.

So our view is that there are good reasons for not expanding tsort's coverage much beyond 2010. Which we feel is pretty well done in the current data. Meanwhile the chart2000 data provides a much more appropriate approach to the data after 2000, so we try and keep that up to date. Of course we've failed in that attempt lately due to pressures of work and difficulty with communication when our key contributor was working in Saudi last year.

Of course you may disagree and feel that there would be benefit from extending the tsort type approach beyond 2010. We have tried to provide all the chart data in the CSV files that you would need. We have also made a set of Perl modules publicly available ("MusicRoom") and we could send lists of artist, song and album names if you are interested in working on it. The existing software is "quite large" and it is unlikely that any other developer would be able to maintain it.

17 Apr 2020

song

dark sounding song about walking back and forth past a graveyard i believe50's and i believe it was a african american group

3 Sep 2019

1900s Top 100 Chart Missing

The recent update as I notice seems to have remove the top 100 song page for1900s. Would you be able to fix this? Much thanks.

That error has now been fixed, thanks for noting it

1 Aug 2019

Top Country Songs 1950-1970 each year

I'm trying to pinpoint the top 100 Country/Western songs for each year from1950-1970 with little success. +Some charts (like one's 1955 chart) have their #1 song as one that appeared as #1 for only 1 week (in 1955 "Sixteen Tons"). +This can't be correct because for 1955, "In the Jailhouse Now" was #1 for 20+ weeks. Can you please point me to a chart that would have the correct Top 100 Country/Western songs for each year. +Thank you very much! William

Since Country & Western music is only really a thing in North America the Billboard Charts would be the place to look. The Billboard Country chart started in 1958, so there is no chance of getting anything reliable earlier than that. Some sources claim that the Billboard "Jukebox" chart from the early 1950s is "Country" but that claim looks dubious to us.

I suspect you have found a personal chart rather than something based on analysis of a contemporary chart.

8 Apr 2019

Song

all night gonna see the sunrise just bring some whiskey and some beer

4 Feb 2019

am looking for a song where a guy was wearing I think a green outfit and Ithink he was in the desert with a car

1 Feb 2019

Country music prison song

It may be included in the title, but there is a reference to 40lbs of(blank)prison chain? Probably from the 50s or 60s originally.

16 Aug 2018

Josh

This site is awesome! Keep up the good work.+

30 Apr 2018

2017 Library of Congress (NRR) Inductees

There are (13) Singles & (9) Albums from 'National Recording Registry' thats/b updated. The Singles are by Victor Herbert & Orch., Canario y Su Grupo, Mississippi Sheiks, Ink Spots, Clara Ward & Ward Singers, Bill Haley & Comets, Tony Bennett, Temptations, Arlo Guthrie, Kenny Rogers, Chic, Kenny Loggins & Gloria Estefan & Miami Sound Machine. The Albums are by Artur Schnabel, Merle Travis, Harry Belafonte, Sound of Music Soundtrack, Steve Reich & Richard Maxfield & Pauline Oliveros, Groucho Marx, Fleetwood Mac, Run-DMC & Yo-Yo Ma.

30 Apr 2018

2018 Grammy Hall of Fame Inductees

There are (18) Singles & (7) Albums that s/b updated. The Singles are by SamCooke, Aerosmith, Public Enemy, Parliament, Hugh Masekela, Four Tops, Gladys Knight & Pips, Nat King Cole (Trio), Whitney Houston, Thomas Alva Edison, Billy Paul, Andy Williams, Billie Holiday, Rolling Stones, Louis Armstrong, Leon Russell, David Bowie & Arthur 'Big Boy' Crudup. The Albums are by Jimi Hendrix, Dr. Dre, Linda Ronstadt, Johnny Cash, Nirvana, Queen & Mike Oldfield.

All the 2017 and 2018 inductees have been added

30 Apr 2018

2017 Grammy Hall of Fame Inductees

There are (21) Singles & (4) Albums that s/b updated. The Singles are byJackson 5, David Bowie, Arlo Guthrie, Cab Calloway, Bonnie Raitt, Beach Boys, Sonny & Cher, Elvis Presley, R.E.M., Rod Stewart, Lalo Schifrin, Nirvana, Deep Purple, Mississippi John Hurt, Blind Willie McTell, Sly & Family Stone, Everly Brothers, Dion, Louis Armstrong, Mills Brothers & Lesley Gore. The Albums are by Billie Holiday, Merle Haggard, Prince & N.W.A.

All the 2017 and 2018 Grammy Hall of Fame inductees have now been added

27 Dec 2017

The data after 2010

Hey, there. I am still amazed by how much data you guys have been able toamass over the years so this is by no means a derrogatory question, I don't mean to be rude in any way. But I've just been wondering whether the data after 2009 (meaning 2010-today) will ever be as trustworthy as the data before that or if it will always be a lesser (meaning containing less charts) version of the years before that and therefore we should look to chart2000 for reliable data? Because, even though the data at chart2000 is incredibly vast, it only showcases which songs were successul in a particular year, having songs that charted later in the year in a lower position than they'd have had at this site. Either way, if you decide to answer, thank you very much for your time. And, once again, this isn't meant in any way as a derrogation, rather just me wanting to clarify stuff up for myself.

That is a hard question to answer. First of all, as you say, the Chart2000 site does focus on shorter timeframes than this site, so it is better for giving an impression of a particular year (for example). This does mean that the particular boundaries (for example the start of the year) take on more significance. However there are CSV files on that site covering success for the decades, they get closer to what you want.

When we first started the site (in 2007) there was no data available for charts after 2010 (for some reason!). As time goes on we've gathered more up to date data and try and improved the coverage. At the moment the results up to, lets say 2012, look "fairly reasonable". Obviously as time goes on we'll try and keep adding charts to push that date. Honestly though there are a number of things that make that harder:

More recent charts/ music employ the meaningless term "featuring", which makes assigning music to artists harder and harder

Measured by revenue modern music is not as significant as it used to be. And this is certainly true for the small number of heavy contributors to the site (who are all getting older)

Our revenue (which comes from the small level of advertising we do) has dropped (because of ad-blockers etc) to the point where it is hard to justify doing the extra work

We hope that we will be able to continue expanding our input charts so our results from five years ago continue to be "reasonable".(and in 10 years time that should be up to 2022).

9 Apr 2017

This is the lyrics to the beginning of the song

Babe do me right make all my dreams come true tonight cause I'm in love forthe first time in my life. I was a singer without a song to sing tell she came into my life. I was a man that's been born again Thank you baby, Thank you baby.+

15 Feb 2017

when i need you baby, love can't come between us+

31 Jan 2017

Artist list

Is it possible to see a top 1000 artist list which is based on the combination of albums and songs?

If you download the CSV file you can decide how to combine results from songs and albums and generate your own list

30 Jan 2017

Garth Brooks

Garth Brooks is rated as one of the top-selling album acts of all time, but inspite of several recognizable hits, he fails to chart any song at all among the top 5000 of all time. Why do you suppose virtually any album he released rocketed up the charts, whereas his songs are not represented here in spite of their seeming ubiquity at the time? If it's because they weren't popular outside the rural American market, wouldn't that be true in similar extent of his albums as well? I'm baffled but eager to understand.

Garth Brooks biggest hit two hit songs were "Friends in Low Places" (1990) which manaaged a peak of 36 in the UK and "Lost in You" (1999) which peaked at 5 in the US (and 70 in the UK). If you contrast that with (for example) the 100th biggest song of 1990 "Fantasy" by Black Box (a top 10 hit in 3 countries and a hit in 10) and the 100th song of 1999 "Mi Chico Latino" by Geri Halliwell (number one in one country, top 10 in one other and a hit in 8). Personally I don't know either of those songs both of which had considerably more international success that the Garth Brooks songs.

Garth Brooks has had a significant number of major albums, that is why he is the 66th in the list of album artists. His top album here, for example, was number one in both Billboard and CashBox charts and a hit in two other countries. In contrast by any reasonable measure none of his songs had much success, even across the whole of the USA (he has not yet had a single top 4 hit in the Billboard Hot 100 for example).

7 Sep 2016

Response to question on song year 1963

I just discovered your site. +I noticed a question from April 2014 concerninga song from late 63-early 64 with lyrics about a small town girl in a big town world. +On the off-chance that person reads this, the song he is looking for is "Big Town Boy" by Canadian singer Shirley Matthews. +Link is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCTdx37QoAg.

1 Sep 2016

side line

There's a line in the song that goes he is standing on the the side line looking like to

30 Aug 2016

MTV Video Music Awards, a Playground for the Next Generation - WOW!

Hi to all visitors tsort.info forum. I want to share with you the latest news about MTV Video Music Awards. Since MTV revived its highest honor the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award at the network's annual Video Music Awards in 2011, it has gone to Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, Beyonce and Kanye West, a lineup of artists who, from the beginning of their careers, understood the power of a well-executed music video. That's partly because of their ages: Like MTV, Ms. Spears, Mr. Timberlake and Beyonce were born in 1981, and Mr. West was born in 1977. They're old enough to have lived through the era in which MTV dominance was integral to a pop star's ascendance. Even if the channel's relationship with music was in decline during the peak of their own careers, they understood its legacy, and executed top-notch videos accordingly. Please move topic if forums this was not chosen correctly.

16 Jul 2016

All my respect.

In reading the conversations with many people who seem to lack a third grade skill of reading your site before posting opinions or subjective, baseless commentary, you maintain a tact and veer away from personsal atracks (for the most part unless their ignorance is really begging to be pointed out). Kudos, to you and all of your colleagues and/or collaborators hard work in sorting the data and creating a methodology to explain your results.

I think my only suggestion I might give to help is, maybe (and forgive me if I missed it somewhere on your site), take artist's song data and give a higher weight so songs that stayed higher on charts longer the normalize the album data because I feel fairly confident that there is a direct significant correlation between song success and album sucess. I just think that sucess of an album (suspicious opinion ahead) due to one song (example, Pornograffitti by the band Extreme by people looking for the song, "More Than Words" might be artificially boosting some artists on your scale where it might not be truly replective or their sucess.

Undoubtedly, certain artist's, like Madonna, I would see no reason for album data to skew results like an outlier. Maybe weight the time of sucess of sucessful songs on the album as pre-scale to the album weight.

As with all data outliers will skew results in some area, but you can't just ignore artist's in you case.

I truly hope you don't take my suggestions in a nefative light. Your team undertook a huge project and have you results well laid out and explained in detail.

Again, all my appreciation for all you hard work. Thank you for yourinvestment of time to make short cutter like myself to have a great place to trust the facts of what I read.

Thank you for the suggestion. It is a topic that we have dicussed between us a few times, unfortunately the conclusion we have come to is that putting extra weight on long runs near the top won't work for this data. The reason is that many of the source charts don't have enough detail available. This is especially true for the earlier charts and those from the less well represented countries. If we were to restrict ourselves to only cover the period after, say 1980, or to only deal with the USA & UK then we have a more detailed look at runs.

Our companion site (http://chart2000.com/) shows what can be done if all the weekly position data is available. In that case we add up the success calculated daily to estimate the overall success of songs, albums and artists. That site only deals with music since 1 Jan 2000, because we have fairly complete data after that date.

The issue of "other factors" having significant impacts on song and album sales has always been with us, from Bing Crosby's 1930s radio shows to the boost in sales for "Purple Rain" in May that followed Prince's death. We naively believe (and indeed hope) that these things tend to even each other out.

14 Jun 2016

find a song

In 1950 or l951 I remember hearing this song. It had a lovely melod and a very nice lyric. No one I know or ask has ever heard it or heard of it. Can you help me out? I don't know the title (gessing it might be Out of Sight, Out of Mind). I remember these lines:

Out of sight, out of mind And I've just about run out of time. Oh, what a fix I'm in Since you're out of love with me....

It seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth.....any ideas? Thanks so much! Mrs. Patsy Eller

The only song (of that era) with that title we have is Five Keys "Out of Sight, Out of Mind" (1956)

16 May 2016

The Current

Here's a list worth considering. KCMP-FM otherwise known as The Current 89.3in Minneapolis just put out a list of their 893 Essential Albums according to their listeners.

That looks interesting and seems to have a wide enough range for us to use, except we can't see the full list anywhere.

9 Sep 2015

1930's Depression Era Song

I am looking for the name of a 1930's depression era popular song and thelyrics of the song is: "Give me a date and a Ford V8 with a rumble seat built for two and let me wahoo, wahoo, wahoo."

29 May 2015

Weeks on the Charts

I am looking for a list of songs that spent the most weeks on the charts,whether they reached number one or not. Does anybody know where I can find this i am specifically interested in 60' and 70's music... Thanks+

That is a really good question and a very hard one to answer. We've added a new FAQ that shows our thinking, look at "Which songs spent longest in the charts?" that will give a few lists of songs that you may find interesting (we did).

Thanks for asking that one

24 Mar 2015

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thank so much for your web site it assists a great deal.

24 Mar 2015

I favour the viewpoint.

%image_title% is actually the number one.

21 Mar 2015

Garcinia Cambogia

I have been browsing online more than three hours nowadays, but I by no means found any interesting article like yours. It's lovely value sufficient for me. In my view, if all site owners and bloggers made good content as you did, the internet will probably be much more helpful than ever before.

8 Mar 2015

Regional Rankings

I understand that there is a page that lists the most successful songs for North America and Europe, but is there enough information to divide even further? For example, a page listing the top 10 most popular songs from Germany for every year 1950-2009. Though an average 16 year old is listening to the autotuned music of today, I have discovered a fondness for French music from the 1960s and 1970s, particularly Françoise Hardy and Marjorie Noel. With that being said, I've found it difficult to take a bigger look into this category of music. That is why I was wondering if it is at all possible to split up these charts nationally. Thank you.

We don't have enough data for such a fine division to be reliable. However we do link to the charts that we use, follow the links on the "Source Charts" page and you will find where we obtained our data.

In particular the French charts link through to pages like http://top.france.free.fr/html/annuel/1969.htm which should help your search.

27 Feb 2015

Aryan+

Hi. I'd really like to find a list of the best selling music artists of all time. Can you help me?+

18 Jan 2015

songs' chart peak dates

i just recently stumbled upon this jaw-dropping treasure trove for music chart freaks like myself...i've yet to check up & down all the data here so i wonder if a song's chart peak date is also listed here, e.g. donna summer's hot 100 no. 6 "i feel love" with a chart peak date of november 12, 1977...+

The fully correct answer is that it depends on the input chart, but for most charts the answer is no, it only lists the entry time. The monthly "Number One" pages of course do have that for you.

Of course we do also list all the source data locations, so, for example, you could find that information for the Billboard charts by looking at the original spreadsheet

11 Nov 2014

Record World

Are the 1970s Record World pop chart surveys available on line or via hard copy books. Please send me some information. +Thank you for your time and consideration. Rocky

We have documented all we know about that chart on the "Song Charts" page, including a link to our original source (now no longer active). In this case the WayBack machine is your friend, try looking at (for example):

https://web.archive.org/web/20091023223533/http://geocities.com/muggy59/

1 Nov 2014

I think I know some of the lyrics...

Hello. For the past 20 yrs, I've been looking for the song. I don't know the title, but only some of the lyrics. Here goes....the girls got bass....she got me spinning around, girls got bass, she got bass, she got me spinning, moving, spinning, moving... Then there is a saxophone solo at the end. The song is r&b with a tinge of hip hop, from maybe 1987-1992.+

12 Oct 2014

Just out of curiosity...

If you were to combine George Michael's solo career along with his hits with Wham, do you know what song artist number he'd be? Same with Phil Collins and his hits with Genesis.

No, that sounds like a hard process. Would you count Paul McCartney's hits in The Beatles, what about Wings (and Denny Lane, and The Moody Blues).

19 Sep 2014

wasnt it you that said our love is youve gott\ me running for cover just know i love you like before i

22 Aug 2014

Song Request

+ +Song request: + Artis Zendaya +Songs Title Replay Heaven Lost Angel and Punch It down are Punch It Down

12 Aug 2014

tell me, please, how many copies it sold shirley bassey album: The Capricorn Thank you

We don't know (and suspect no one really does)

7 Aug 2014

Looking for song from the 40s

+Answer to : I don't know the song except some of the lyrics are I'm gonna sit down &write myself a letter. Please help me find the title & artist.

In 2012, Paul McCartney recorded an album of standards called Kisses On TheBottom, a phrase from Fats Waller's 1935 hit single "I'm Going Sit Right Down And Write Myself A Letter". Waller's song was recorded on 8 May 1935 and went up to Num 3 in the charts.

Thanks for the suggestion

31 Jul 2014

looking for song from the 40s I think

I don't know the song except some of the lyrics are I'm gonna sit down &writemyself a letter. Please help me find the title &artist.+

Try looking harder (at the index or search bar for example)

15 May 2014

looking for a song

I'm looking for a song, but I have no details about the singer or the title, even the lyrics. the only thing I remember (from my childchood time in the 80's) is the female choir (but not gospel)singing the chorus and some parts of stanzas with a male lead singer. The girls in the choir have a very high, soprano voice. The music is rather electronic, with a characteristic regular rythm. I also remember the video - recorded in a studio, the background and the surrounding are grey (looks like 'foggy'), there is strong light from above, and I guess the video was black and white at that time. It shows the choir and the singer (or singers?). The song used to be played in the radio around Christmas time (I don't know if it matters...).. And it's beautiful... I'll be grateful if someone could help me. +

13 Apr 2014

I have a question+

Who was the top 2 most successful musician between the years 1946 and 1955. Thanks

The CSV file gives you the information you need to answer that question.

Based purely on songs the top 5 artists of the period you ask about are (in order): Nat King Cole, Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Frankie Laine and Eddie Fisher (on the 2.3.19 data)

However if you take albums into account, and assuming albums are twice songs, the top two are Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole

So the answer depends on how you want to combine the scores, our best guess would be Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole but with the details in the CSV file you might come to a different conclusion.

13 Mar 2014

fel

encontre esta web por accidente y esta genial,la musica es lo mejor, felicitaciones por esta historica recopilacion.

Gracias, lo sentimos que el sitio esta solo en Ingles

1 Mar 2014

song sung by Lou Gramm

I am trying to find a song,sung by Lou Gramm. The song starts with 'still no news from you'

Lou Gramm had 5 minor hits "Just Between You & Me", "Midnight Blue", "True Blue Love", "Ready Or Not" and "Chains of Love" all between 1987 and 1990

27 Feb 2014

Ideas for chart inclusions

I have some chart suggestions here in case you're interested.

1.Absolute Radio - www.absoluteradio.com, Top 100 Albums of All Time 2.Pop Vortex - www.popvortex.com, The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time 3.Best Ever Albums - www.besteveralbums.com, Top 1000 Albums of All Time 4.Vinyl Surrender - www.vinylsurrender.com, Top 500 Albums of All Time & Top 1000 Songs of All Time

Generally we don't include such charts unless it is clear that they have been assembled on a fair way (i.e. we don't like to include a chart that is the personal selection of a few DJs or critics).

Having said that we'll look again at these and see if they meet our criteria

25 Feb 2014

It's a shame you don't have a donate button! I'd certainly donate to this brilliant blog! I suppose for now i'll settle for bookmarking and adding your RSS feed to my Google account. I look forward to brand new updates and will share this blog with my Facebook group. Chat soon!

We do have a donate button, but we ask that you send donations to "Scope" or your nearest cerebral palsy charity, they need the money more than we do.

23 Feb 2014

great site - question on top 3000

Love the site so thanks for what must have been a tremendous amount of work. I notice, however, the order of the top 3000 isn't the same as you would expect from the top 100 of each year, nor are the numbers the same as the CSV file numbers. I assume that must be because they're based on a different set of parameters. I'm guessing you've included some date in the top 3000 that may not be a part of the yearly list or the CSV file. Would that be true?

Thanks, bob

It would.

The version numbers indicate the algorithm and data set. In the case of the top 3000 the version is 2.1.41, this indicates the second "released" version (i.e. it adjusts based on years to 'level out' the scores), this was the first varient on that and the 41st set of data that those parameters were applied to.

The current version is 2.3.09 (at the time of writing) which indicates that the gross algorithm is the sane (i.e. the second version) but that the parameters have been tuned twice (giving the 3rd varient) and that this is the 9th set of data with those values.

The data value changes when new data is added or when old data is fixed. For example if we find that the 4th & 7th song are actually the same (for example one had the artist as "XXX" and the other as "XXX & YYY" and we feel that both are really the same version) then consolidating these together may mean that the result is now the 2nd song of the year. So the first number shows that the algorithm is the same, the second shows the parameters are different and the final one shows that the source data has been refined. That is why the results are different.

12 Feb 2014

Italian Music

Is this the same basic answer for the French music? If not, can you help me to find it?

Your question is unclear. The listing order is based on all countries (including France and Italy).

The location of French and Italian charts can be found by looking at the "Song Charts" page.

10 Feb 2014

Bing Crosby

It is now clear that Bing Crosby was the man.

Well he was well before my time, it appears from my research that Bing has more number One/top thirty hit's that anyone else.

In fact no one even comes close, in addition to no one being Number One for two decades in a row.

Mr. B. Cosby accomplished the above during the Great Depression and World War Two, which is quite remarkable.

I might add that Bing was a hugely popular radio/movie star +being Number Box office from '45-'49 as well as receiving academy awards. While, I love Elvis, the Beatles, & Michael Jackson the facts speak for themselves that B. Crosby is the MAN.

That is certainly a valid position to hold.

Our estimate is that any one of Bing Crosby, The Beatles, Elvis, Paul Whiteman, Frank Sinatra or Glenn Miller could feasibly be claimed to be the most successful musical acts of the 20th century, depending on how you combine the evidence. For most approaches the top act works out as Bing Crosby, The Beatles or Elvis, but the others turn up for some metrics.

Our calculation is that if Madonna continues to be successful for another decade or so she would join that elite list.

It depends on how you estimate success, but our numbers indicate that Bing Crosby is certainly one of the top 3.

7 Jan 2014

French Music

Is there a way i could know what just the greatest French songs are? When I say French songs, I mean songs in French that are sung by French artists.

To know what were the biggest songs in France you should go to the French chart sources (described in the "Song Charts" page). However, we've never had much luck getting French charts.

To track what the biggest hits with French titles (that have been hits in other places as well) I think you have to download the CSV file and find all the songs with French titles.

This is not an easy question, for example which of these qualify? "La Marseillaise", "Voulez-Vous", "Les Liaisons Dangereuses", "Un Amor", "Viens M'embrasser", "Lady Marmalade (Voulez-Vous Coucher Aver Moi Ce Soir?)", "Paris"

7 Jan 2014

Spammy Messages

Howdy, I read your blog occasionally and I own a similar one and i was just wondering if you get a lot of spam comments? If so how do you prevent it, any plugin or anything you can advise? I get so much lately it's driving me crazy so any helpis very much appreciated.

More than 99% of all the messages we get are spam. Luckily spammers are stupid and a simple filter throws away most of it.

4 Jan 2014

Exactly where could I find this particular Weblog platform FOR www.tsort.info? wish you all the best in 2014!

The pages on this site are generated by a VERY specialised piece of software

29 Nov 2013

Top 200 or 300 for each decade?

Would it be possible to list the top 200 or 300 songs for each decade? I have been making a YouTube series and used your website as a source (with acknowledgment of course.) It would really help to make a downloadable file (like you did for the top 2000 artists.)

Thanks, have a good day

Actually you can do that yourself using a spreadsheet. If you grab the CSV file from the "Versions" page, then add an extra column to give you the decade ("=int(year/10)") then sort by the extra column and the score (deceasing), scroll to where the decade begins and the top 300 songs will be the biggest hits of that decade.

For most decades that will work for 300 songs, for 600 songs it would be dubious.

25 Nov 2013

Sheena Easton

Hi TSort,

I downloaded your spreadsheet. I noticed that you have as one of your songs/rows: "Sheena Easton", "Totally wired", "1980", "Peel list 2 of 1980". This must be The Fall's song? (I'd love if Sheena had covered it though!)

Piaras

You are exactly right. That year The Fall's "Totally wired" was number 2 and "Morning Train" by Sheena Easton was number 3, the lines must have got muddled

Thanks for the correction

4 Nov 2013

Update

Will we be seeing another update soon?

The data here is being updated all the time. There has not been a major update in the last 3 months because we all have been busy with other stuff.

We are hoping there will be a wider update in December

27 Oct 2013

Top 1000 Artists

Who are artists 1001-1010?

Good question.

That's a surprisingly hard question to answer. The software that does the calculation takes a number of steps to ensure a lack of bias for the top positions and these complicate the lower ones.

By the time we get down to artists below 900 the positions are more dependant on the details of the data available and the intricacies of the score calculation. So the artists in positions 980-1020 vary from one version of the data to the next, so we would not place any trust in the results.

On data set 2.2.32 here are the positions from 990 onwards:

Carl Perkins, Don Bestor & his Orchestra, McFly, Michel Polnareff, Bix Beiderbecke, Jerry Butler, Kitty Kallen, Marilyn Manson, Carmen Costa, Boston, Len Spencer & Ada Jones, Jack Scott, Bonnie Pink, Dorival Caymmi, Little River Band, Jason Mraz, Soft Cell, Paul Weston, Gary Numan, Brad Paisley

What we've done is to use the current data (2.2.32) to calculate the top 2000 song and album artists. These can now be downloaded from the file

http://tsort.info/artists-2-2-32.csv

That file will give you their song position, album position and overall position (assuming albums score 3 times what songs do.

17 Oct 2013

Sharing this site with others+

You need a sharing button 4 twitter & FaceBook etc... Great site!!!!!!+

26 Sep 2013

Little River Band

Thank you for the site. I have looked for this kind of sites for a long time... This site is fantastic.

I looked through tsort-chart-2-2-0029.csv and I found out some data are missing in some famous artists.

For example, for Little River Band, only three songs are listed. Very famous songs are missing (The Night Owls, Lonesome loser, Cool Change, We Two...) I think Little River Band can enter "Song Artist 1000" whenever all the missing songs are added.

Thanks

We have 22 Little River Band songs listed in the complete dataset, they still don't make the top 1000 (they are only just outside the top 1000).

Artists that are outside the top 1000 do not have all their songs listed, just the ones that were big enough to make the top 100 of any year.

The reasons for this are explained in the FAQ page "Why can't I find the entry for artist XXX or song XXX?"

24 Sep 2013

color scheme+

you should really change the backround clor to plain in my opinion

13 Sep 2013

Steve's Book

What is Steve's book about?

Look at http://dm4ep.com/

8 Sep 2013

toms outlet online

Do you mind if I quote a couple of your articles as long as I provide credit and sources back to your blog? My blog site is in the very same area of interest as yours and my visitors would definitely benefit from a lot of the information you present here. Please let me know if this alright with you. Cheers!

At the foot of every page it says "This data may be freely copied provided that the source is acknowledged", this applies to the text as well

Go ahead

31 Aug 2013

cheap ralph lauren

I was formerly recommended this website via a cousin. I'm no longer sure no matter if this put in is written with him as not everybody else notice such positive approximately a trouble. You may be incredible! Thanks for your time!

9 Aug 2013

Music by Genre

Do you guys sort music by genre? If not, do you know of any accurate sites that do?

We don't attempt to categorise popular music. We suspect that any such efforts are doomed to failure because there is a lack of agreement about the genres that exist.

The issue has to do with defining the boundaries, we might all agree that a certain song is "Country" but there are always questionable cases.

We don't know of any good sites that apply "genres", but there is some interesting work about automated music classification that might get there

7 Aug 2013

Name

Do you guys like "TsorT" or "Tsort" more? I was telling my friends about this site, and I'm so much of a grammar freak I want to make sure I'm typing your name correctly.

To be honest we hadn't thought about it.

The name comes from two different sources, the UNIX command (which would be "tsort") and the country in Terry Pratchett's fiction (which would be "Tsort"). We sometimes use the "TsorT" form to emphasise the pleasing symmetry of the letter forms (illustrated by the logo).

If we had to pick one for normal writing it would be "Tsort" (but "tsort.info" for the DNS obviously)

Interesting question

11 Jul 2013

Year Ahead

Hi, why do you list some songs a year after they were released? An example would be Bohemian Rhapsody which came out in '75 but you list in on the top songs of '76. Why do you do this?

Our aim is to list the year a song was a hit (not the year it was released). This is explained in the FAQ "Why is the year for XXX listed as 19XX?".

8 Jul 2013

 Which English version of a French song holds the record for the most weeks within the top 40 in the UK?

Your definition is not clear, it could be "Je T'Aime (Moi Non Plus)", or "My Way", or something else

27 Jun 2013

RIAA says Elvis sold the most

While I enjoy diversity and the talent the many artists have displayed over the years, I wanted to know which artist sold the most records. It wasn't as close as I thought.

According to the R.I.A.A., the governing body that certifies Gold, Platinum, and Multi-Platinum Record Sales, (Recording Industry Association of America) the Leading all time Artist in Record Sales is ELVIS PRESLEY. Elvis is the leading sales artist for both Solo Artist or Group. Elvis has sold over 2.5 Billion Records Worldwide. ( A Billion is 1 Thousand Million). Elvis has been on the charts more times than any other artist or group. Elvis has the most hits in the Top 100, the Top 40, The Top 10, and has had 32 Number 1 Records. Elvis is the only artist inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, The Country Music Hall of Fame, The Gospel Music Hall of Fame, and The Rythm and Blues Hall of Fame.

John Lennon said: "Before Elvis there was nothing". Bruce Springsteen said: "There are pretenders and contenders... but their is only one King". Elton John said: "There is no one greater as an artist on this earth, Elvis was my inspiration... he is the Man. Period."

Paul McCartney said: "I thought the Beatles had gold records, until I had a private tour of Graceland... the hall of Gold says it all... Elvis has the most Gold, Platinum, and Multi-Platinum sales of all of us.... amazing man... simply amazing".

According to the R.I.A.A., with help from EMI, the Beatles place number 2 on the list of All Time Record Sellers with nearly 1.6 Billion Records sold worldwide. Hey Jude was their Biggest selling record followed by Yesterday.

Michael Jackson made the top 20, placing number 16 on the list of all time Record Sales. His Album Thriller is the Biggest Selling Album of all time with over 50 Million Copies Sold. Michael's personal sales as a Solo Artist, along with the Jackson 5, has sold a total of 185 Million Records worldwide. (His Album BAD sold 22 Million copies).

These certifications, current as of March 1, 2009. Every 3 months the R.I.A.A., with the help of BMI, and ASCAP... update record sales awards.

So, there ya go folks. Those are the true facts. And, I might add, Elvis, the Beatles, and Michael Jackson continue to sell records daily.

So, their record sales will continue to increase. But remember, in Elvis and the Beatles day, you had to sell 1 million copies for a single, and 500 thousand for an album to be certified gold. Now days, you only have to sell 500 thousand singles and 250,000 albums to be certified gold. That's what makes the sales records of Elvis and the Beatles even more impressive.

The Fans and Other Entertainers called Elvis, "The King of Rock and Roll". The term "King of Pop" was self imposed by Michael Jackson. It stuck from there, but Michael called himself that... that's what he wanted to be called.

The Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C., named Elvis Presley, "The Greatest Entertainer of the 20th Century".

Source(s): The Recording Industry Association of America, ASCAP, BMI, Billboard Magazine, RCA Records/BMG Records.

3 Jun 2013

selling info

is it possible for the site to list some major certification organizations'(RIAA IFPI) selling data for the artists (pardon the grammar)

Charts from the RIAA and IFPI are already included, see the source charts page

11 May 2013

Who wants to live forever

Who wants to live forever

27 Feb 2013

THE ULTIMATE RETROSPECT

I went thru just about everything in this site- every album of every year,every artist, single etc. and Id say the #1 conclusion Ive come to is that music started out bland but tasteful in the early part of the 20th century until rockNroll came along in the mid 50s; it kept getting better and peaked in the mid 60s, particularly 1966. After that it declined and has gotten worse and worse every decade. There were many great artists in the 40s, 50s, early/mid 60s, and the few in the 70s werent didn't have a place in the mainstream or commercial viability. +Im particularly pertaining to artists in these lists that were significant for whichever year, decade etc. And based off everything I've seen and been told its seems to me that the Beatles were the most over-rated, hyped up media affair. Im not undermining the good music they made but it boggles my mind how they were at the top of everything when they were in no way as great as they were perceived historically. The success of the beatles is a combination of the brilliant production of george martin, the consistent quality marketing of the media and the conformity of the masses. ALL these lists really go to show that the majority of the music that changed the world from the late 60s to the current is TERRIBLE. The music industry declined so much in the late 60s, continued to do so in the 70s and hasnt imroved one iota since. And this is coming from a young person under 30 who has spent their entire life absorbing every possible aspect of music history from the artists, to the songs, to the sales, to the significance and legacies. I apologize for being so blunt (or negative to the ignorant); please feel free to email me if need be.

9 Feb 2013

2012?

Hi,

When will the last year's charts be ready??

Steve (who does most of the work at this site) has been working abroad for the last two months, and also is in the process of completing a book (which should be out in the next two weeks)

Once the book is done we'll be able to get more of his time

14 Dec 2012

wheels was done by the xl's. I believe the group was out of st.louis in tqthe 60's. + Wheels was on the white whale label.

The group also had a minor hit with "After The Laughter Came The The Tears" by Patti and The XL's on Dot Records.

Thanks for the info. We have no hits that match either of them

26 Sep 2012

music in the 20th century

for an essay at the end of this term we have to answer this question 'what was the most remarkable decade in the 20th century?' we need to give reasons for our oppinion, music might be a good thing to write about, help

You might like to look at the FAQ question "Can the charts here tell us anything about long term trends", as well as some of the anlalysis on the "Sales over time" section of the "albums sales" page.

Also the CSV file (available from the "Versions" page) could provide some evidence to support whatever argument you might want to put forward. Personally I wouldn't like to have to single out any one decade as being "the most remarkable", I can think of good arguments to pick any of them.

23 Aug 2012

Wheels

I'm also looking for the artist who made Wheels. The lyrics from the post on July 8 are accurate as well as I can recall. Thanks in advance for any info.

8 Jul 2012

Wheels?

I am seeking some information about a song I think was titled "Wheels". The lyrics are (I think) "Wheels you're the ruin of me, you drove me to the end of the line. Wheels, I lost the girl that loved me, you took me for a ride the very last time". Help please.

8 Jul 2012

Wonderful research

I am a musician and a music teacher, and I only just discovered this site because I was annoyed about someone trying to tell me recently that the Beatles music was crap. My argument was that on the basis of musical analysis alone, that statement was foolish. +If you take into account their success and popularity, it is ridiculous - your data proves it.

I couldn't help wishing that Sinatra topped the list over Elvis for artists in the 1950s though...

:D

THANKS!!!

6 May 2012

charts

hi, i noticed that it had been a long time since there had been any variations. hope that the site is still active.

Thanks again

We're still here

15 Apr 2012

to make this wonderful site even more useful...

Hi -- Yours it without a doubt the most useful single resource for music I have ever seen, outside of Youtube, but I very nearly did not find it. I'd been looking for some time for a website that pooled and synthesised chart information, and despite diligent searching only wound up stumbling on your project through the links from another site. What I was looking for was a way to acquaint myself with the chronological chart history of recorded music globally, but wanted it all in one place so I wouldn't have to resort to 100 different charts, if the information could even be had. What you've done here is just amazing.

At any rate, what I wanted to suggest was that you could make this incredible resource even more valuable -- and avoid all the pestering from people wondering where their favourite missing hit fits into all of this -- by providing a catchment supplemental page for each year that holds the remainder of the songs that didn't make your Top 100: it wouldn't even be necessary to rank them for this to be immeasurably valuable.

My main interest is in cultural variations, juxtaposed against the big picture. As such, I'm probably in the minority here, but I'd also love to see a sort option that would allow you to select a country or region and see a list of songs that only charted in their part of the world in a given year.

Anyway, annoying suggestions aside, just an incredible website. You've done something culturally important here.

Thanks for the kind words.

Obviously we list the top 100 each year because they tend to be the songs that users are most interested in. However there are many other advantages in adopting the structure we do.

For example by not listing all the entries in, for example, the Billboard charts we ensure that our quoting of their data is what is called in US law an "original work of authorship". We quote less than 50% of their entries, so anyone interested in discovering all the US chart entries has to do so on their site. We obviously only cater for those that want to combine information from many different county's charts.

In addition by focusing on the top entries we end up with only the higher quality data.

When we check the entries obtained from the external sources we find that they are on average about 97% accurate (that is not obviously with inconsistent names). When we merge in another chart there are processes that check the new entries against the existing data, these can spot many of these types of mismatches, provided the new songs already exist in another chart.

The majority of song entries (about 68.1% of them) only exist in a single chart, in other words for two thirds of the chart entries there is no confirmation of spelling or song name.

On average we have more than 1,200 song entries for each year, by showing only the top 100 songs we are selecting the 8% that have the most validated entries (because their names are confirmed in so many other charts). If we were to list all the entries then two thirds of the entries would be uncheckable.

So for both those reasons we would need a lot more convincing before we extended the pages.

You also suggested that we could analyse charts by region. We looked at this when we added the "Europe v North America" pages. There is obviously a trade-off between smoothing charts out so you get an accurate impression across the whole world and focusing on individual territories and getting a chaotic picture that is dominated by the "lumpy" nature of individual charts.

We did a bit of statistical modelling trying various combinations and came to the conclusion that we could track success for a given year in Europe and North America, so that's why we created those pages. We also track success in the 9 regions (shown in the profile pictures) provided we combine entries across the whole range of years.

Both these cases have their limits, the Europe v North America pages only show the top 20 songs, the profile pictures have obvious issues for success before 1950. Our experience has been that these "focused analysis" exercises tend to obscure actual trends behind a flurry of accidental results (that's why we ended up doing statistical modelling, to prove that this was inherent in the data rather than a consequence of the particular processing we were doing).

Of course we also resisted listing number ones by date for a long time because of exactly the same types of concern about accuracy, and glossing over the reasons why no-one really knows what was actually number one on the 6 Feb 1952. However that now seems to be one of the most popular areas on the whole site, most users it seems would rather have certainty than accuracy.

Have you downloaded the CSV file from the versions page? Using that data you could do a crude version of what you are suggesting.

3 Mar 2012

Fantastic site!

Wow - what an achievement! This is my first time on this site and I don't know where to start. My particular interest are the Billboard US charts and although I have bought various books on US charts - Joel Whitburn in particular, I have never seen this data electronically.

My particular question is can I download the Billboard data spreadsheet from this site or do I need to request it from Bullfrog?

Keep up the good work. It's an awesome task which is never ending.

All the best DJ Dan

The Bullfrog data is available from their site (on the "Download" section). So the answer to you question is no, we won't supply their data, but you also don't need to "request" it from them, it is easy to download.

16 Feb 2012

New Songs, Etc.

This is an amazing site; thank you for your work! It kind of goes hand in hand with acclaimedmusic.net, this being the one to see what was popular at the time, etc..

Would you label yourself as the most concise chart site/archive on the net? Also wondering if you continue to add charts for the more recent years as you go along/they be come available (and around when do you think viewers could expect an accurate representation of the last few years, etc.).

Thank you Giovanni

As far as we know we are the most comprehensive chart site on the web (since we have 183 source charts containing 389,210 entries as of version 2.1.004). We don't think "concise" is quite the right word, the site has more than 5,000 pages some of which list 1,000 items, in fact we've had some users complain that there is too much information here.

You are right in suggesting that the most recent years are not yet accurate. The way we gather data is more focused on getting history right rather than reporting current events. Our experience has been that 3-5 years has to go past before our pages reflect a reasonable view, so we'd trust our listing for 2007 at the moment, be prepared to defend the 2009 listing but have no faith in the 2010 one.

18 Jan 2012

Youtube Videos of Tsort

Hello. I'm not sure if I already sent a message over here, but I never got a reply, so I'll try again.

I have used the music information available in this website and made Top 20 Countdown youtube videos showing 30 second clips of those videos. So far i've done videos from every year since 1980 until 2009. You can see a playlist with all the videos here:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL03D41B7DB0109D19

Additionally, I made a longer video showing the 1st track of every year that you showcase, in this case, from 1900 until 2009:

http://youtu.be/9ICgfX1xuWY

I can't wait for you to upload more charts so I can get started for the years of 2010 and 2011. Also, when I get more time I expect to cover at least until 1950 (So I still need to do the 70s, 60s and 50s, quite some work!)

I was wondering if you've had the time to see any of these videos, and what is your opinion about them. So far, the total number of views for all tsort-related videos is of 20348 views, but I expect to double that amount in the next 6 months.

Cheers, and keep up the good work!

Hayen MIll

28 Dec 2011

v2

There are a lot of major changes in the latest version of ths list. Some songs/artists have disappeared completely. Some obvious problems also. For example Boby Fuller four I Fought the Law disappeared while the lesser known Tennessee Waltz is still there (had a lower score in previous versions)

The Bobby Fuller Four song "I Fought the Law" was a hit in 1966, while they released the "Tennessee Waltz" in 1959. The Bobby Fuller Four version of the second song still has a much lower score than the first, however it is listed in the CSV file because it is in the top 1000 song titles. We don't see that as a "problem", it is exactly the anticipated behaviour and what someone investigating the song "Tennessee Waltz" would want.

There were a lot of changes, that was the whole point of the new algorithm. It addressed what we felt were some significant distortions, such as the emphasis on European charts from the 1980s & 1990s. We knew the results would be different, that was why the data version number went to 2.0 (from 1.10).

The results do still have some issues, and if anyone can suggest ways to make the results more consistent we would be very happy to hear them, but we feel that the 2.0 data is a significant improvement on the older set.

28 Dec 2011

"My House" by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young

I really like what you've done here. Great jog. However, I can't seem to find this song on your site, or in the csv data file I got from you. Am I missing something? This songs was a chart hit.

We think the song you are after is "Our House" (not "My House"): Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - "Our House" - 1970: Holland 10 - Sep 1970 (6 weeks), France 10 - Nov 1970 (1 week), Canada 19 - Oct 1970 (5 weeks), Record World 20 - 1970, US Billboard 30 - Sep 1970 (9 weeks), Australia Goset 44 - Dec 1970 (3 weeks), POP 50 of 1970, RYM 135 of 1970, WXPN 774

However neither Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (as the artist), nor "Our House" (as the title) reached high enough to have their own page.

28 Dec 2011

"Our House" from Crosby, Still, Nash and Young

I really like your charts. I use them all the time. I found a song you're missing. "Our House" reached #30 on the Billboard charts. Yet, it's no where to be found in your charts.

The group "Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young" were album artist number 248 (in data version 2.0.012), so they have a page listing their albums. However since they were song artist number 1,365 and we only have pages for the top 1,000 artists, there is no page for them.

The song title "Our House" also didn't make the top 1,000 titles.

28 Nov 2011

Thank you

My wife and I entertain at nursing homes. Having some artist/song information makes the program more interesting. This site as well as secondhandsongs.com are so helpful. Thank you and happy holidays - Tom Bruno

12 Nov 2011

reshuffle

i really like this site. may i ask how come recently a reshuffle in the top lists occured

The way we calculate the scores was changed quite radically last month. That is why the data version number went from 1.10 to 2.0

The reason for the change was that some users pointed out some anomolies in the way songs from the 1990s were ordered. Particularly music that that had success in the USA but didn't do well in Europe. We modified the scoring system to overcome some issues with having too many charts from smaller countries.

The first attempt introduced some other unwanted features so the algorithm has been further tuned. We hope that the overall result is a better.

If you see any results that look "odd" tell us about them.

25 Oct 2011

chart data

Pitchfork - www.pitchforkmedia.com & Digital Dream Door - www.digitaldreamdoor.com for album and song lists & Fast n' Bulbous - www.fastnbulbous.com for album lists

Thanks for the suggestions. We already have some charts from digitaldreamdoor and we'll look at the others.

PS - We've looked at www.pitchforkmedia.com, it has a number of lists, like "Top 200 Songs of the 1960s", but they all seem to be selected by a group of critics, and selected recently.

The site www.fastnbulbous.com seems to be a personal rating site.

Both these sites seem to be subjective and both look too focused on particular acts to be usable.

Thanks for the suggestions but we don't feel that those two sites are objective enough to be usable as sources

24 Oct 2011

Chart data suggestions+

Village Voice Pazz & Jop Critics Polls - 1971, 1974-2007 at www.robertchristgau.com

The Details - best albums from 1957, 1963 to present at www.thedetails.co.uk

We'll have a look at them, thanks for the suggestion

PS: We've examined both these sites and decided not to add them.

The "Village Voice" critics seem to be typical of attempts to identify "the best" music, rather than "successful" music. Now we have no issue with that approach but this site attempts to focus on music that was, and continues to be successful, rather than telling users which music they "should" be listening to.

We have added this chart as a contributor to the details, so users can see what this critic's view of each album was, however we've ensured that this does not affect the overall score.

The other site you mention has to be rejected for two reasons, firstly because it is a single critics list (the 1965 list, for example, has two Dylan albums in the top two slots). But more importantly we already have far too much chart data from the UK, for some reason the people of Britain are more prolific than any others in sharing their musical knowledge (of course we are UK based, so part of the same phenomenon). The volume of evidence we have for the UK for this period is already more than sufficient, until we have more data from Asia, Africa, Central & South America, and even from the USA, we don't want to add any more from the UK.

26 Sep 2011

Celine Dion

Don't you think that Mrs Celine Dion is a bit OVERrated in your site?? Cause from where i see she is above Michael Jackson, Phil Collins and Queen even in some Entries...

In the best list, that is the "All Time Music Act" list we have: Celine Dion 49th, Michael Jackson 19th, Phil Collins 44th, Queen 17th. In the Song Artists lists we have Celine Dion 47th, Michael Jackson 5th, Phil Collins 28th, Queen 13th. In the Album Artists lists we have Celine Dion 14th, Michael Jackson 10th, Phil Collins 29th, Queen 12th.

So in the main lists she's below all the acts you mention except that she is noted as having more overall album success than Phil Collins.

The only main listing where she's above those acts is in the "Success in the 1990s" chart. Which, given the number and success of her albums and songs in that period, looks like a valid measure to us.

On the "Number 1s" page her song "My Heart Will Go On" is listed as being number 1 in more charts than any other song. But that just reflects the fact that we have more charts for 1998 than we do for say 1982 or 1976.

So no, we don't think that her position is inflated.

26 Sep 2011

Chart data

Here are some suggestions for new chart data: 1.KEXP's Top 903 Albums - www.kexp.org/top2008 2.WFUV 90 Essential Songs - www.wfuv.org under Music: Bests and Essentials Lists 3.WFUV 90 Essential Albums - www.wfuv.org under Music: Bests and Essentials Lists

We feel that all three of those charts are somewhat questionable, being all time charts based on "listner votes". However our instinct is to include charts unless there is a good reason for not doing so.

We've added the charts, but made it so they don't contribute to the overall score (the positions are noted on the entries of course).

Thanks for the suggestion

25 Sep 2011

Billboard info for songs listed from 1901 - 1929

Hi, again, this is my fifth time sending message to this site...What a spectacular site. Love it!! First, the comprehensive info, then, the nitty-gritty details on every songs. Thirdly (and most importantly) the forever responsive reply. Irregardless its a meaningful questions, corrections or downright simple questions.

Some sites don't reply at all..its annoying.

Anyway, my questions is during the period from 1901 to 1929, has billboard exist yet? Do they have charts and radios doing the counting of the song rotation? I thought billboard only start in the late 50's, wasn't it? I'm a music aficionado, songs and info from the 30's is hard to find, and yet you have the effort to go beyond the 20's.. May i know where in other sites i can search for 20's music info (other than wiki)?

Arnaz

We're glad to see that you enjoy the site. Your comments encourage us to keep putting in the effort.

To answer your question:

Billboard magazine started publishing in 1894. They published their first music "hit parade" in 1936 and their first "Hot 100" in 1958. We understand that from 1936 to 1958 the charts were irregular and didn't have a consistent form. In addition the focus was on "sheet music" sales so while the chart will say, for example, that the song "Sentimental Journey" was a hit in 1945 it won't tell you if the version by the Merry Macs, Hal McIntyre or Les Brown & Doris Day was the most popular.

A US music historian called Joel Whitburn has used the information from the irregular charts, the Billboard magazine contents and other sources to retrospectively calculate the charts from 1890 to 1958. This is published as a spreadsheet by a guy calling himself "Bullfrog" (the source is listed in the chart entry).

That is the listing we base our information on.

11 Aug 2011

Many, many thanks!

I just time travelled! I made an MP3 album of one song only from each year of the 20th century, from 1901's "In the Shade of the Palm" by Harry MacDonough to 2000's "Californication" by Red Hot Chili Peppers, 100 songs total, and I couldn't have done this without this website's help!

The goal of this playlist wasn't to capture THE number one hits of every year as some songs were pretty far down on the list, but they had to be songs I personally liked (and I loved every ONE of them), and they had to define the time period they were in, of course. The goal of this project was to experience the evolution of music through the twentieth century, from the ragtime days, to the flapper days, to the blues days, the big band days, rock n' roll, ballads, classic rock, disco, new wave, rap, alternative, and heavy metal. I have had the last two days of work off and feel like I just got back from a long time traveling trip doing this! I have fallen in love with genres of songs I have never liked before.

So what is my favorite song from the 20th century? I'd have to say "Blue Skies" by George Olsen & His Orchestra (1927), and that's coming from someone born in 1984!

Your website and list of songs have helped me immensely. Again, many thanks!

Fantastic, that's exactly the type of project this site was designed to support. We especially like the idea that you selected your "best" song from every year, rather than just going for the highest scoring one. That forces you to sample a few and reject some of the inevitable dross that was highly placed.

It would be interesting to see your playlist

21 May 2011

Year of this song by The Merry Macs

Help me, please, I want to know when "I get the blues when it rains" was realased by The Merry Macs.

Thank you for your atention.

That song was not a hit, so we have no entry for it. Of course the "Merry Macs" did not do well enough to get into the top 1000 artists, so we don't have a seperate page for them.

However they had hits from 1939-1945, almost all listed in the Billboard chart from Bullfrog. We would suggest that you want to follow the link on our "Source Charts" page and download Bullfrog's excellent spreadsheet.

22 Apr 2011

This is without a doubt one of the most interesting sites I've ever found.

Any plans of, maybe, tagging artists or songs with info on genre, recording medium, etc, to allow for more insightful analysis? It would be interesting to compare the most successful songs within a specific genre or medium. Might the song and artist pages be linked with info on other sites, such as Wikipedia, Youtube, or specialized sites like redhotjazz.com?

That certainly sounds like an interesting idea. For our own music collections we use this data in combination with sources of lyrics and cover art to add extra value. We also use the charts to generate playlists (for example containing all our songs that were top 10 hits in Europe in the 1980s).

We would be interested in discussing ways to expand the data we hold, or for others to exploit the data we publish with anyone who wants to get in touch.

21 Feb 2011

List for 2010

Hello, very impressive work, I found many classic songs here, Thanks! When can we see single list for year 2010? Thank you.

Thanks for the encouragement.

There is always a delay between the end of a year and when we can start collecting the data for it. To be honest we wouldn't have complete faith in our own listings for any period less than 5 years old, the data is too recent for our data analysis approach.

However we'll be adding a 2010 listing in the next few months.

29 Dec 2010

Wikipedia

Hello, great site, currently used some of the chart info for wikipedia however some other contributors believe this site is not a valid source of chart positions. Any way I can prove this site is valid, what sources does this site use? Thanks.

All the charts used on the site are listed on the "Song Charts" page (or "Album Charts" page), most of them linked to original sources.

We have seen some places where people claim that the data quoted here is invalid. Usually such comments have come from sources that don't provide any better data and often claim that "my private data shows the tsort site is wrong" and then when asked refuse to share that data or say where it came from.

If anyone makes a constructive suggestion we will normally consider it. We can do little about the people on the internet that feel it is easier to criticise our site anonymously than to offer suggestions to us for how to improve it.

There are also fans of particular artists who believe it is valid to assert "your site says my artist had fewer hits than a rival, therefore it is wrong", there is little we can do (or wish to do) to break their self delusion.

We've not seen anyone on Wikipedia claim that our data is wrong and should not be used. If you know of a page where that is being claimed we'd like to know about it so we can contribute to the discussion. There are many Wikipedia pages that do use this data, anyone saying you shouldn't is, we suspect, in the minority.

Our position is that a link on each artist's Wikipedia discography page to the matching page here would be helpful to most Wikipedia users. Of course Wikipedia's "Conflict of Interests" rules mean that we wouldn't add such links ourselves.

Of course the suitability of this data for use on Wikipedia varies, for example the description of the "Global" chart explains why that data shouldn't be quoted there. The charts from Poland, France and Brazil should probably not be used, but the US, UK and Australian charts are definitely the best available.

20 Dec 2010

Thanks, but Woody Herman got shorted.

I just discovered your site and am sure I will benefit from it often in the future. However, I notice that for Woody Herman, you list only "Blues in the Night." Woody had a number of other chart hits, including especially "Woodchoppers Ball" and "Laura." "Laura" sold a million for sure and I think "Woodchoppers Ball" did also.

Regards, William L Rupp, Fallbrook, California

Woody Herman has his own page (you can get to it by clicking on his name, via the "Song Artists" list, the alphabetical list of artists or the site index). It lists more than 70 of his hits (including all three you mention).

We notice that we have have entries for both "At the Woodchopper's Ball" and "Woodchopper's ball" which we'll obviously fix in the future.

17 Nov 2010

Amazing

I've been an oldies collector for years, but I've never found such a comprehensive site like yours.

I'm an application developer myself, one of the oldest who are still active, so I can write C# and Xaml better than English. Therefore, I can't find the right superlatives that you deserve, sorry.

One last question: How do you, as all the other code gurus, find the time to do what you do? I've so many unfinished projects on my disk, several uncompleted sites on the Internet, and plans for the next 25 years.

Thank you for your kind words.

We also have a lot of unfinished projects and indeed this data collection is being improved all the time. The most important factor is project time, the main code behind the project was created in 2006-7, based on an original piece of software Steve created in 2002. The most recent extension was written last weekend. The site you see is the result of input from a group of people over the period of a number of years.

We are lucky that we can clearly seperate the code, which Steve does, from the data fixing, which is done by everybody.

13 Oct 2010

Where can I download the CSV-File

Wow, what an amazing Website. Congratulations. The best I've ever seen !

Just one question: where do I find the CSV-File you mention ?

There is a link to the CSV file on the "Versions" page. If you follow the link at the foot of every page (the words "version number") you will find the page.

11 Oct 2010

Your web site.

Just a note to thank you for all the hard work that has gone into constructing this site. I am a music collector in the UK who loves chart information.

Your efforts are truly appreciated

Kind regards - Gerald Thorburn

Thank you

6 Sep 2010

About the site

I have to congratulate to you all for this great work. Very impressed

8 Aug 2010

These entries look duplicates (v1.9.0047. Haven't checked if it was corrected in v67)

{List of more than 30 Corrections with artist name, title and year}

Wow, what an excelent list of potential corrections, a couple of the items had already been corrected. With one exception the remaining ones have now also been done.

The only one we didn't do was The Isley Brothers, you suggest that the 1964 song "Who's That Lady?" is the same as the 1973 song "That Lady". As you can see from the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That_Lady,_Pt._1_%26_2 the story is a bit more complex. The underlying song is the same but the group deliberately gave it a different title when they re-recorded it in the 1970s. Its a tricky question but we have decided to keep the titles distinct.

The rest of your suggested changes are clearly correct. Finding these types of mismatches between charts is one of the most difficult tasks we have to perform, so your list is very welcome.

Thanks for the input

20 Jul 2010

What an impressive site. Thank you for a fascinating source of music history.

1 Jan 2010

who sang this song?

Hi I'm looking for this song I heard it around 1993 and it goes like this, you said you had to leave yeah cause things won't work out so what does that have to with me if i was to much then daddy you should have a child it life responiabity to me you desert us , why daddy did you leave me oh we cried every other day tell me why daddy did you leave me but daddy it over now we'll see brighter day

No idea, never heard of it

28 Oct 2009

search engines

When you are looking for a song, or an artist to listen to their songs, why not have a clip or the whole song.

We don't host any actual music here at all, obviously hosting complete songs would be illegal and we don't need that hassle. We don't host clips because we don't have the time to collect them, we don't have the bandwidth to deliver them and we don't think it would add much to the site.

If anyone would like to collect, manage and host a set of music clips we would be interested to discuss how we could collaborate.

4 Jul 2009

Server Error

I keep trying to send you a message but the web site complains about a "server error"

Yes, one of us made a mistake while blocking spam messages from Russia 10 days ago. It has now been fixed.

And yes it was me

Steve

2 Jun 2009

Andrews Sisters

Corrected? I still see them both (now #35 and #36).

What we meant was that the data was corrected in the source data set, it obviously takes some time to "publish" from the source to the web pages. The processing alone takes about 16 hours.

In addition for the last couple of days the result has failed some of our quality tests, so we have had to correct some elements and resubmit the job (which adds another day).

The data should now show the correct values.

2 Jun 2009

Andrews Sisters

Corrected? I still see them both (now #35 and #36).

What we meant was that the data was corrected in the source data set, it obviously takes some time to "publish" from the source to the web pages. The processing alone takes about 16 hours.

In addition for the last couple of days the result has failed some of our quality tests, so we have had to correct some elements and resubmit the job (which adds another day).

The data should now show the correct values.

26 May 2009

Thanks for clarifying that, although I'm not quite convinced when I look at the already existing Bing Crosby collaborations for example. Anyway it's okay for me with the newly added comments on the Ella Fitzgerald page.

I got another one: #34 ("Hold Tight, Hold Tight", 1939) and #35 ("Hold Tight, Hold Tight (Want Some Sea Food, Mama?)", 1938) on the Andrews Sisters' page and is the same song and the same record, released at the end of 1938 and charted in the beginning of 1939, see the record label on http://rateyourmusic.com/release/single/andrews_sisters/hold_tight__hold_tight__want_some_sea_food__mama_____billy_boy/ (which also shows that it was a collaboration of the Andrews Sisters with Jimmy Dorsey and His Orchestra).

Corrected, thanks again for the info

23 May 2009

Sugestion

Hi! Great great job! Thanks!!!

It would be very nice if you could do it with separate continents. It would be very interesting to see how the order of the songs would vary on different sides of the planet! Different Cultures = Different Music "taste".

Just an idea...

p.s. - pardon my english! :) (by the way, i'm from Portugal)

Interesting idea.

For that to work we would have to have more than one input chart in each region, with enough entries to "smooth out" the peculiarities of any one chart. The bad news is that we don't meet those criteria for most of the World, or for any data from before 1950.

However we have had a go at adding such pages, if you look at any of the year pages for 1950 to 2005 you should find a link that will show you the results.

Thanks for the idea

PS. Your English is much better than our Portuguese

19 May 2009

A-Tisket A-Tasket Again

Thanks for fixing the "A-Tisket A-Tasket" entry. I'd say however that the correct artist specification for this record would be "Chick Webb & Ella Fitzgerald" (with a link to Ella, the same way as you did with some other collaborations, e), not just Ella Fitzgerald.

Regards Cornelius

You make a valid point, there certainly is a good case for listing it under "Chick Webb & Ella Fitzgerald". However, many sources list the song under just "Ella Fitzgerald" (possibly because she co-wrote it), there is no separate page for Chick Webb on the site and the "Chick Webb Orchestra" was renamed in 1939 as "Ella Fitzgerald and her Famous Orchestra" (after Chick Webb died) so we decided to assign this song to "Ella Fitzgerald".

The goal of this site is to consolidate the range of input charts, this often means that we have to "standardise" names. For example some artists have different names in different countries (like "Yazoo" or "The Detroit Spinners"), some artists change names from one year to the next (like "Prince"), or for a particular song (for "(Meet) the Flintstones" "The B52s" became "The BC52s"). Mapping the actual names on the record labels or printed charts to a "most common form" makes it easier for users to find connections between charts, if they then use that information to track to the original chart data they will find the original information and can decide if our consolidations are valid for their purposes.

A note has been added to Ella Fitzgerald's page to explain the situation, this also means that anyone looking up Chick Webb in the index will be directed to the right place as well.

Thanks for the input

8 May 2009

A Tisket A Tasket

Thanks for this great site that I must have overlooked for a considerable time. There are some mistakes of course, e.g. Ella Fitzgerald's "A-Tisket A-Tasket" (#8 in the 1938 chart) is the same record as Chick Webb's (#26 in the year chart) because she was the band's singer at the time and Joel Whitburn is always listing the bandleader and the featured singer. Here you can see the label of the original 78 rpm record with both names on it: http://rateyourmusic.com/release/single/chick_webb__and_his_orchestra_/a_tisket_a_tasket___liza__all_the_cloudsll_roll_away_/

Best wishes from Germany Cornelius

Thanks for the correction, the data has been fixed. That type of issue is the most difficult one to spot.

16 Apr 2009

Other

Cool site

Thank You

16 Aug 2008

A couple missing

Hi. Great site. Just started looking at the csv file. I noticed "Oh Lonesome Me" by Don Gibson is missing. It reached 7 on the US BB charts, and may have charted on others. Also two songs by Adam Wade from 1961: "The Writing on the Wall" (US BB 5) and "Take Good Care of Her" (US BB 7).

Roger

According to my list Don Gibson's "Oh Lonesome Me" entered the Billboard chart in Mar 1958 peaked at number 8, and was there for 21 weeks.

Adam Wade had 11 hits from Nov 1960 ("Gloria's Theme") to Jan 1965 ("Crying in the Chapel").

But neither artist did well enough internationally to be in the world's top 1000 artists. This site only lists the most highly placed acts (all the hits of the top 1000 artists, the top 1000 song titles and the top 100 songs of each year)

If you look under the title "I Can't Stop Loving You" you will see that Don Gibson's version was number two in Norway in 1960. Adam Wade is listed as having the least successful version of a song titled "Crying in the Chapel".