Songs from the 1980s

Previous Comments (newest first)

4 Jan 2023

Your list and rankings are changing

I notice that the list are changing, are you changing the list with the salesand certifications after the fact...that have come later ? Because if that is taking place, then is there a screen shot of the original list. You are making certain artist more successful than they really were during that time period

*All* charts are retrospective. There is no "original list". Of course the impact that artists had is subject to change as our view of a particular period is refined. The concept of "after the fact" is just wrong.

We go out of our way to provide an accurate picture of what was successful at each period, of course we fail, but we would claim this is as good as you can get.

and, in addition, this site provides you a CSV of all the important data. a screen shot would be useless to you.

27 Apr 2020

Your Charts

I love your chart, they are a marvellous resource. I am wondering about somechanges I am seeing. Like Madonna and Prince switching places, in 80s, Collins and Springsteen, The Eurthymcis and Houston. So my question is, how did this come about, did you discover errors or chart information that you didn't have previously ?

Please also be aware, that in the US, the RIAA dropped their certification levels for singles from 1 mil to .5 mil, for a gold single, and 2 mil to 1 mil, for a platinum single; so if the certification was in 1989, most likely it had nothing to do with a increase in sales. More likely to do, with the decrease in certification levels.+

The version numbers tell you about the changes, they have three parts (like 2.8.0042). The last number indicates new data entries and corrections, the second indicates changing major parameters and the first number indicates a different set of algorithms.

20 Mar 2020

Nothing gonna stop us now

Hey! I love what you have done with all this information, that's a great resource for us music lovers. Just a quick note, for the song mentioned before, the band playing it is called Starship, even it comes from Jefferson Starship... that came from Jefferson Airplane. When Paul Kantner left the band, the remaining members had to call themselves that way to avoid legal conflicts with him. Cheers!

13 Oct 2019

Complete List of 1980s Songs

THIS is only the Top 100 of the 80's. What I want to know is:

IF I'm the Program Director (I'm not btw) for SiriusXM 80's Channel, how many days could I play 24/7 80's music without repeating a single song by the same artist? It doesn't matter whether the song was UK, USA, or foreign language as long as it was or COULD have been played on UK or US Radio. For this hypothetical, it doesn't even matter if the song was ever a hit. Whether it was played in Tucumcari, Toledo, or Topeka, LA, Las Vegas or Las Cruces.

I remember a 60s song from the Singing Nuns "Dominique" that hit the AmericanCharts DESPITE it being totally in French.

The answer is essentially infinite. If we constrain the songs to just be top 100 hits in, lets say the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand then the songs of the 80s would play for about 100 days (making a few assumptions on the way). If we were to allow album tracks (from just hit albums) then that would probably add something like a further 800 or so days. So that's something like 900 days if we restrain ourselves to just released music that made the charts.

If only about one in ten records released in those countries in the 80s were hits then that's another 8100 days (25 years or so). And then we can think about what proportion of recorded music was released on record. Finally there's the music from the other countries of the world.

Of course the amount of music from the 80s that is both worth listening to and would entertain a significant audience is somewhat less. I would suspect that something like 10% of the hit singles and 2% of the album tracks would hit the audience's interest. So that suggests that any real radio station would have about at most about 25 days of music available (still a lot).

15 Jan 2018

Thank you for the facts

Thank you for this wonderful page of research. And yes, even though there area number of crazy Michael Jackson fans who really do believe what they are saying, the facts speak loud and proud. Thank you - a great effort.

23 May 2016

'80s Summary

"Over the course of the 1980s the passion for "real music" that had driven punk was ground out of the music business by synthasisers, manufactured groups, etc."

If that sums up the decade so well, surely you can provide at least ONEexample from your list of the top 50 artists of the decade that qualifies as a "manufactured group." Right?

"Over the course of the 1980s"... means that by the end of the 1980s the manufactured groups were prominent. So you have to look at the top 50 for the 1990s for the manufactured groups to be established (Spice Girls, The Backstreet Boys etc).

Maybe you could come up with a better summary of the decade?

1 May 2015

A question about your data

I am Shute that constructing this entire website was a beyond difficult taskand I appreciate your efforts here. However after looking at a few song and album pages, a question developed. Even though Prince is listed as the most successful artist of the 1980s Madonna had higher ranks in the charts for more years, breaking #1 artist for multiple years while Prince had only modest success according to your data. Just to let you know, I am not one of those butt hurt fanboys angry that his favorite artist wasn't first place. I happen to like both artist and am only a passive listener. Anyways, could you please explain how Prince ended up achieving first and not Madonna. Thanks in advance.

Madonna's first major hit was in 1984 while Prince had hits from 1980. His 10 years of (slightly) lesser hits beats out her 6 years on the top.

But don't take our word for it, download our data and check the numbers for yourself.

6 Mar 2013

Are you a fan of Prince? Just curious

Not really. But there again that's the whole point, our opinion shouldn't matter.

3 Apr 2012

u2

Hi, I was wondering why U2 are #3 on the 80s chart. I like the band and all, but their hits only started coming around 1984-1985, halfway into the decade and before then they only had New Year's Day at #10 in 1983.

Since this chart is based on chart success, how did U2 beat out so many other artists with only about a handful of Top 10s?

Thanks

As it mentions in the text this ordering is by total success (not just songs), the album success has been given three times the weight of single success, so the top artists here are those with both albums and singles in the charts.

If you want to discover who we rate most highly based only on singles success you can download the CSV file (from the versions page). A quick session in a spreadsheet program reveals that based solely on singles success (as listed in version 2.1.12) the top 5 artists of the 1980s were: 1: Madonna; 2: Michael Jackson; 3: Prince; 4: Phil Collins; 5: U2.

Of course that is using our selected approach, you might want to try a different criteria, that is exactly why we make the CSV data available. If you find anything interesting we'd like to hear about it.

24 Jan 2012

artist of 1980

Noticed that Def Leppard, Journey, John Mellencamp not represented even with monster albums in the era. Not popular elsewhere?

Indeed. Look at the artist's pages for these three artists (they all make the top 1000 artists in both album and song charts) you will see that they didn't have stunning success in the 1980s, but their continued success into later decades means that they do end up in the overall charts.

14 Jan 2012

Amazing I always thought Tom Petty Was pretty sucessful in the 1980's. Now that I think about it though I guess he never had a huge single or album. Great list and great website!

6 Jan 2012

This page is great!

While I thoroughly understand the arguments of the Michael Jackson fans (which I am also), your ranking system also makes complete sense.

Keep up the good work.

19 Nov 2011

WOW!

this must have taken ages, thank you so much! +Great work! Have used it to do a rundown of songs that were being sung over the decades for my Grandmother's 90'th birthday (coming up in December)

I think they will love it!

Thank you.

That's exactly the type of use that the site was designed for, we hope your family enjoy the selection.

27 Jun 2011

I have just one 'long not answered question'... In how many countriesworldwide 'another day in paradise became a number ONE hit?

If you follow the link to the song's page you can see the answer to your question.

The only version that was number 1 anywhere was the one by Phil Collins, its entry starts with "US Billboard 1 - Nov 1989 (17 weeks), US Radio 1 of 1989 (peak 1 11 weeks), Japan (Tokyo) 1 - Nov 1989 (20 weeks), Sweden 1 - Nov 1989 (8 weeks), Switzerland 1 - Nov 1989 (21 weeks), Norway 1 - Nov 1989 (15 weeks), Poland 1 - Nov 1989 (23 weeks), Belgium 1 - Nov 1989 (14 weeks), Germany 1 - Jan 1990 (5 months), Canada RPM 1 for 8 weeks - Dec 1989, Europe 1 for 5 weeks - Jan 1990, Germany 1 for 10 weeks - Jan 1980, Spain 1 for 1 week - Jan 1990, Grammy in 1990, UK 2 - Nov 1989 (11 weeks)..."

Which I make 10 countries (that we have the charts for). Of course it was NOT number one in the UK (at least in the BBC chart).

3 Apr 2011

Michael Jackson

The reason I think Michaqel Jackson should be placed higher than number four for the 80s is these reasons:

- As mentioned, he won an unprecedented 8 grammy awards in one ceremony

- Despite the discredited 100 millions copies, whether it is 50 million or 100 million, it is still higher than any other album by a large margin.

- Furthermore, the album bad,is in some ways even more successful than thriller, generating 4 US number ones of one album, which was a record at the time. Furthermore, globally 9 out of the 10 original tracks were number one in one country or another.

- An arguemnt you presented was that he had no 'solo' hits in 1985. This is true. However I will argue that despite releasing less singles in the 80s than other artists, his ratio of successful singles to singles release is the highest. i.e. Prince made 6 studio albums in the 80s of which only 3 were number ones, and only one in the US/UK. Michael Jackson released 2 albums in that decade, both of which were number one and are in the list of best selling albums.

- Now i will list some artist you have labelled above Michael Jackson in the 80s and how many number one singles they achieved globally in the 80s; Prince 10 (out of 47), David Bowie 6 (out of 30), Rolling stones 3 (out of 22). Now Michael Jackson... 15 (out of 22). Feel free to challenge this information.

- I understand that Michael Jackson had a controversial private life but it often bothers me that people let this interfere with his musical success.

- If you consider many aspects of music to get your results, then I think its worth adding that Michael Jackson's Bad tour was the largest attending concert even, until that record was broken in 1993 and 1997, both by Michael Jackson again!

- Michael Jackson is also the artist to receive the most American music awards and is one of the highest awarded artists of all time and Guinness world records most successful artist of all time. Please reconsider... Thank You.

You have presented a reasoned argument with a number of interesting points. If we had a website that listed the "best" artists you're points would be valid. However on this website we use the number of entries in charts round the world as a measure of "success". We feel that this provides a measure that is more objective and less subject to individual biases (including especially our own biases).

Our goal on this page is to find ways to objectively measure how successfull each artist is. Considerations of individual award ceremonies or the success of individual albums in certain countries doesn't really cut it.

Just to clarify we don't list David Bowie or The Rolling Stones above Michael Jackson for the 1980s. In our 1980s list (based on the 1.08 data) the top four slots are 1: Prince, 2: Madonna, 3: U2, 4: Michael Jackson.

Your idea of masuring the proportion of all releases that became hits is an interesting one, we suspect that would work as an objective measure. We don't know how you'd gather a list of all songs released by every major artist in a selection of the countries of the world, but if you could do that we'd be interested to look at the results.

We have some sympathy with your claim that chart success is just one measure and, for example, live concert size might be an additional measure. However again we don't know where reliable figures can be obtained for a reasonable number of acts (we know lots of places where unreliable figures can be found for just a few acts).

So, we will continue to measure success by the number of hits in charts round the world, and by that measure Michael Jackson will continue to be below Prince for the 1980s.

19 Sep 2010

Michael Jackson and Madonna+

I apologize, I said in my prior message there was not a "Most Successful Artist Chart" here, but there is one, and I support this one as the closest you can get to the "Most Successful Chart Artist of All Time". I also forgot to mention that Billboard's chart is from 1958-Present so is not as complete as this countdown and as I said before Billboard's it's ONLY U.S.A. music statistics not the World statistics.

19 Sep 2010

Michael Jackson and Madonna

It seems to me that people checking out this website expect to see a "Most Famous or Well Known Artist Countdown" instead of a statistically correct chart success countdowns, even if in your country people know more one artist, which makes you think he/she should be more successful than other artists don't forget there are almost 200 more countries in the world that may have a different favorite artist, which that doesn't matter anyways because what counts is how high the artists charted in all those countries.

Most of the time people don't even recognize the artist when he/she has a big hit in their country because they only listen to them on the radio, they may not have TV, even if they have TV is hard to recognize an artist more if they tremendously change their appearance, for example, Madonna tends to do so a lot.

Everyone who visits this website, please realize it is not "Sales Countdowns", "Popularity Countdowns" nor "Quantity of Awards Won by Artist Countdowns", it is "Singles and Albums Charting Success Countdowns" that are presented to you here. It is not this website's fault that Michael Jackson charted more poorly than other artists like Madonna, not only in the world, but even in the U.S.A. alone Madonna is more successful than Michael Jackson when it comes to chart success, although that doesn't take away the fact that Michael Jackson is in more tabloids, newspapers and articles because of his media invaded life.

For all of those non-believers for this website's credibility please check out The United World Chart website, which is a statistically correct(without public vote) world chart countdown website since the creation of music charts, but they are still compiling all their charts to fill in the gaps, if you go to http://unitedworldchart.de/ you'll see what I'm talking about. If you do go to the United World Chart website make sure to click on the STATISTICS link, which you'll find in the left hand side under TRACKS, once you've clicked on STATISTICS make sure to click on ARTIST SECTION link so it'll list every single artist that has made it to the top ten in the United World Chart with a list of their respective songs that made it to the top ten or you can also go to this link http://www.mediatraffic.de/track-artists.htm to check that out as well.

If you are just looking for a statistically correct "Most Successful Artist of All Time Countdown", you will not find it here, but you will only find the "Most Successful Artist of Each Decade Countdown". For right now the closest thing to a "Most Successful Artist of All Time Countdown" would be The Billboard Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists, although it's ONLY U.S. statistics, NOT World statistics, but you can check it out at http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/specials/hot100/charts/top100-artists-20.shtml

Going back to the United World Chart subject, once you get to the United World Chart's STATISTICS link and click on the ARTIST SECTION link it's easy to tell that Madonna outnumbers everyone else having the most hits so far in the United World Chart, but there are still years that have not been put out of the archives so she's still not officially the best or most successful artist of all time, although there is a big possibility for her to be, since in the U.S. she's the second best act, just after the Beatles. But please remember, that does not mean she is the most talented, nor the most loved, nor the most creative, nor the most impacting artist of all time, it just emphasizes her success in the charts around the world. It is up to every single one of us to decide who is our favorite artist, and no one can take that away from us, but let's not try to implement our fanatic beliefs in this statistically correct website, this is all about numbers, not favoritism nor opinion. Also Madonna has been around for almost 30 years, whereas the Beatles were around for about a decade. Since the last single from Michael Jackson's Thriller, Michael Jackson was absent from the music scene in 1985, 1986, 1990, 1994, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2009 until his death, which contributes to the fact that he has not have as much chart success as Madonna, Prince, U2 or Mariah. Since her debut in 1982, Madonna has only been absent from the music scene in 2010 so far. Since his 1978 debut, Prince has only been absent from the music scene in 2000, 2003, 2008 and 2010 so far. Since their debut in 1980, U2 has been absent from the music scene in 1986, 1990, 1994, 1996, 1999, 2003 and 2010 so far. And last, since her debut in 1990, Mariah has only been absent from the music scene in 2007. So all of those aforementioned acts certainly have less years of absence from the music scene than the late Michael Jackson.

As a last thought, PLEASE do not "attack" these people that are doing us a favor by really representing the world wide factual music charts information. They go as far back as the 1900's, what other website or book has been able to put all this information for everyone to see free of charge. So be grateful and appreciate all the facts and success of the music history that this website has to offer.

Thanks for the support.

One minor correction, we have not one but three different "Most Successful Artist of All Time Countdowns". Each using a slightly different approach and, of course, coming to slightly different conclusions. We don't emphasise those pages (which is why you didn't see them), because the CSV data allows each reader to do their own version of this calculation.

27 Aug 2010

michael jackson

okay,i want to give a rebuttal to the mj rebuttal.first of all, over his entire career, michael jackson has sold more than prince,madonna,mariah carey,and u2.according to all records,the lowest estimate of sales of mj is 300 million,and the highest is 750 million.i think the figure of 750 million is not the correct one,because its impoosible.but taking his lowest estimated career sale of over 300 million indicates one thing only,poeple loved mj while he was there ,more than they have loved prince,madonna,u2 or mariah carey.then how come,for christs he has sold more than this list of musical legends.how come a man who has sold this many albums be degraded in this way.prince havent reached the 100 million mark in terms of album sales whie madonna,mariahand u2 have estimates ranging from 200 to 250 million albums.also he has 372 major music awards,where is prince in the picture now.i am from the indian sub continent and from a third world country.here people +make less than 50 dollars a month,but still if you have a chance,come to this region and tell them"do you know michael jackson"and they would say yes.and followed by praises and applauses.do you think princes music could get the attention of this poor people.the people in this region cant even get food for a meal,leave alone hear music.my question to you is that,can you give a reason why this millions of poor people try to buy a mj cd instead of the listed artists i have mentioned.i am a local so you cant question the verification of the question.just answer it.also,ther arent any sources in the whole world which would say mj has sold less than madona,or prince or u2 or mariah carey.insted the RIAA itself puts mj in 11th position in the list of highest selling artists in the usa with a toal sales of 69 million in his whole career.this number is more than u2,madonna,prince or mariah carey.in terms of awards mj have won 372 major awards.among them he has 23 american music awrards and 13 grammys.only u2 has got more grammys than michael jackom from that list.michael jackson has 28 top ten hits,only madonna .beatles and elvis has more.michael jackson has 13 number one hits only mariah carey has more from that list.what do you think know,where is prince and the other artists.prince is not even in the list of the singers with most top ten hits.wow i wonder how can aperson who cranked out hits everyyear throughout 1980s and the 1990s could give 28 top ten hits.madonna i believe placed with 37 top ten hits and jusstifies the statement made in the mj rebuttle,marih carey record also signifies everything said in the mj rebuttls 21 july 2010,but u2 and prince.come on mj beats them hands down.let me tell you u2 and prince is not even on thelist of artist with most hundered entries and most top forty hits,so how come if they had a hit every year in the two decades of the 80s and 90s and they still dont make the list.i am saying again madonna and mariah both have more than 25 top ten hits and more than 12 no1 singles,so taking these two in consideration its justified.also mj had 13 number ones and 28 top ten hits right,so howcome according to you he was a jerk whos album output as low and didnt give enough hits.in the early 200s mj record saales were estimated to be more than 200 to 250 million albums,he got a world music award in the year 2000 for being artist of the millineum,in addition him getting this award was facilatated by the fact that estimates aroung that time pionetd that mj sold over 250 million records.look even madonna havent reched that mark in 2010,prince is miles away,while u2 and mariah linger in the 200 million mark in 2010.even if you consider 20 years in the music business,from 1979 to 2000,mj sold 200 to 250 million albums,which is more than what maiah,or u2 or prince has ever achieved.even more mj is the most downloaded artist in the internet according to nokia novi music store.i can just go on and on and tell you i how many ways mj is atlesat better than prince mariah carey and u2.madonna is parallel to him.another thing is that,i aam good in maths and i understand how complex calculations of these record sales can show a totally diiferent picture.please RIAA,do not consider just hits,consider sales and effect and everything that makes music so wonderful.in addition,dangerous sold over 32 million,pirince has very few albums whuch sold over 20 million,and the doudle disc cd sold 20 million.prince selling 20 million +copies of his album is the most rare thing in the whole world.prince accordinr to all estimates tough i am qouting wikipedia has sold over only"88 million albums" from the 1980s +till 2010.u2 has sold over 150 million and mariah over 175 million albums.evaluate on everything and then make alist.you can use math and do anything with it to show the false,but facts are facts deal with it.leave with it.oh,however didnt michael jackson sell over hundred million albums from 1990 to 2000.since his death he has sold over 30 million and counting.please evaluate on that and think.especially the RIAA

We get it, you prefer Michael Jackson to Prince, U2 and Madonna.

This site lists success in the charts, that's all it is based on. We employ a simple calculation to combine individual chart entries that is described in detail. There are no numbers to adjust, there are no factors to estimate, everything is driven by the chart data we have. Here no one gets to vote.

Doing that calculation leads to the results shown. If you can explain how the current calculation is unfair, or you can tell us which source charts discriminate against a particular artist we will listen to what you say.

However until you do that we have to continue to conclude that Michael Jackson did not have the largest number of chart hits in the 1980s.

We are not claiming in any way that U2 is better than Michael Jackson, that has to be a personal viewpoint. We don't believe claimed sales figures, and you acknowledge that claims for Jackson's sales range from 300 to an "imposible" 750 million. We don't even believe our own rough estimates of album sales.

You ask us to "do not consider just hits", well we don't know how to measure "sales and effect and everything that makes music so wonderful".

If you think that measuring an artist's success requires a consideration of things other than entries in the music charts then set up your own site. We happen to think that our metric comes closer to reflecting real historical trends, rather than being a subjective view dictated by more recent events.

21 Jul 2010

MJ rebuttal

I'm surprised at how many people have been so defensive about Michael Jackson, saying that he should have been the number 1 artist of the 80s. However, people forget that MJ only released two, yes, only two, albums in the 80s, while the other four artists, Prince, Madonna, U2 and Queen released several throughout the decade. I think Prince even released an album during every year of the 80s. so, while those other four artists were all cranking out hits for almost every year of the 80s, Michael only really had hits in '83 and '88, due to his low album output. Of course he was going to be outnumbered in the hit song department. For those who think he should have been on the 90s list, news flash, MJ released only one hit album in the early 90s before fading off the pop music map. And I remember no one cared about the double album he released in the mid or late 90s.

17 May 2010

MJ was #1

By the End of the 1980's Michael Jackson had the two biggest tours of the decade (Victory Tour with the Jacksons, and The Bad Tour solo), the two biggest selling albums of the decade (Thriller sold 50 million by the end of the decade, Bad sold about 25 million by the end of the decade) (and it dosn't hurt to mention that Thriller ALONE was #1 in the US for 37 weeks), more #1 hits than any other artist for the decade (according to billboard he had 9 #1's that decade, 10 if you include We Are The World). Plus, even if Madonna had 3 albums in the Top 100, MJ's Thriller outsold ALL of Madonnas albums combined. It was MJ's decision to release fewer albums overall. And was the biggest selling artist of the 80's, with an unprecedented sale of over 110 million records during the 80's. And he was also named many times over as the Artist and Entertainer of the decade as well.

So yes, MJ was defiantly the top artist of the decade. No one has come close to his success. Just becuase other artists have more chart entries, doesn't mean they were more successful.

A number of your individual claims are either clearly wrong or, at best, questionable. However that doesn't matter, the clue is in your last sentence, the rankings at this site are a measure of chart success. Its not just that chart entries count, they are the only thing that counts, nothing else matters at all.

You may claim that this is not a good measure of an artist's greatness, that's certainly a viable viewpoint. However if you are measuring "chart success" (which is what we are measuring) then chart entries are the only thing that indicates who comes out top.

If you had a reliable set of sources for tour success, album sales and artist of the decade nominations you could set up a web site that lists how different artists measured up and do your own ranking, but you don't and you haven't (Michael Jackson fan sites don't count)

You claim that, for you, Michael Jackson is the greatest artist, we would have to agree that is clearly your opinion. If someone else thought that Rick Astley was the greatest artist of the 1980s we would have to agree that was their opinion. However, if you were to claim Michael Jackson had the most worldwide chart success of the 1980s we would disagree, and have numbers to back us up. It is up to the reader to decide how much chart success should be considered when comparing different acts against each other.

22 Apr 2010

Extended Tables

Hi there...

Is there any possiblity for you to extend the tables by decade?

Mainly since the 60's... As it is (100) don't you feel like some other hits are missing? I Know they aren't but i just miss them in the chart! :) Thanks for your great Work!

We could extend the number of entries in the decade charts, but that would make the pages always take longer to load and most users are, we think, only interested in the top few songs anyway.

However, you can, of course, work out the decade positions from our CSV file with any spreadsheet program. For example in Excel load the file, add a decade column by setting cell N2 as "=INT(D2/10)*10" then copy that cell for all the N column and sort by type, decade and score (high to low).

This is why we supply the CSV file, not only can you work out which song was number 200 of the sixties but you can try out all sorts of different ways to analyse the data. If you find anything interesting tell us about it.

10 Apr 2010

Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson was undeniably the biggest and most successful artist of the 80s! Why is he at #4?? His album Thriller sold 100 million copies and become the biggest selling album of all time! He also won 8 Grammy awards in a single night. Also he released Bad in '87 which was very successful. And I think he should have been mentioned in the 90s section. This is the most ridiculously stupid list I've ever seen. It was made by someone that knows nothing about this.

No, despite your outburst, by our metrics Michael Jackson was not the most successful artist of the 1980s. While he had some years of enormous success he failed to sustain it, for example he had no solo hits in 1985.

In our lists Michael Jackson is the 9th placed artist of the 1990s, we feel that qualifies as "being mentioned".

Thriller may have been the biggest selling album of all time, however quoting the widely discredited 100 million sales claim just confirms that are not being objective in your comments.

On this site actual facts are more important than mere opinion, and by that we mean anyone's opinion including our own.

The decade rankings were calculated with data from external sources that can be easily verified and the metrics used are clearly described. The calculation is automated and cannot be "adjusted" for any reason.

If you disagree with the result you either feel that the data is in some way invalid or that the metrics are unfairly emphasising particular acts. Tell us which data is wrong or which alternate metric should be used, then we'll take your comments seriously.

Saying this is the "most ridiculously stupid list I've ever seen" just makes you sound like a petulant teenager (except of course few modern teenagers are Michael Jackson fans)

24 Nov 2009

Michael Jackson

Am I seeing something wrong? I count 4 Jackson albums in your top 100. I don't see that many from any other artist, of course I just tabbed thru quickly.

You raise an interesting point. We feel that the "standard" list is too heavily dependant on the input charts that are available. There are about 4 times as many entries for the 1980s as there are for the 1960s, so more recent music is scored too highly.

So when contrasting acts and releases across the years we feel that it is better to compensate for this modern bias. The "real list" of top albums adjusts the scores to give what we feel is a better comparison across the years. In this list Michael Jackson has an entry at number 2, his next album is at number 47.

There are some good reasons for not adopting this approach for the standard lists. The way this adjustment is made works well for acts and releases that are at the top of the list. But it is not clear that it works so well for later, less widely supported, entries. In addition the simplicity of the standard score makes the standard list more transparent. Also it could be argued that the larger number of entries after 1980 reflect the fact that more people are interested in that era, hence music from then should be over emphasised.

In the standard list Michael Jackson does have four albums in the top 100, however The Beatles, Madonna and U2 all have six. If we were to believe that this list was a good measure of success then "REM" (with two entries) would have to rate better than The Rolling Stones, Elton John, Radiohead, Dire Straits and Guns & Roses (who all have just one). We suspect there are few people that would be prepared to argue for that view.

Of course you are free to disagree with our analysis, that is why we make the standard data available in CSV form. If you have a different way to summarise the data that illustrates an alternate view we would be interested to hear from you.

5 Sep 2009

Artist of 1980.

Michael Jackson should be the most successful artist of the 1980s having produced the most successful albums of all time. He also holds a record in the Guinness Book of World Records as The Most Successful of All Time.

First of all by any reasonable criteria Michael Jackson certainly didn't produce more than one album in the all time top 10, so the when you say "albums" you should rather use the word "album".

Secondly having the most successful album of an era is just one of the measures that are used here. Michael Jackson had 2 songs in the "1980s 100 songs" list, against Madonna's 5. He had 2 albums in the "1980s 100 albums" list, against Madonna's 3.

Finally even if we agreed that Michael Jackson's position in the "top artists of the 1980s" was too low we couldn't directly do anything about it within the rules of the website. The way that "success" is measured here is clearly defined and strictly follows a mechanical process, no-one gets to "adjust" the values later whatever their opinions. Even if one of the administrators wanted to boost his rating they couldn't, the best they could do would be to change the scoring mechanism. Prince, Madonna and U2 all had more number 1s in more countries than Michael Jackson in the 1980s, that is why they end up higher.