Song title 919 - Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

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This page lists the chart runs for songs called "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" in order of success. This list combines cover versions and distinct songs that happen to share the same title.

# Artist Song Title Year Chart Entries
1 Bing Crosby Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? 1932 US Billboard 1 - 1932 (8 weeks), Grammy Hall of Fame in 2005 (1932), Library of Congress artifact added 2013 (1932), POP 4 of 1932, US invalid BB 7 of 1932, nuTsie 33 of 1930s, Europe 44 of the 1930s (1932), Visconti song of 1932
2 Rudy Vallee & his Connecticut Yankees Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? 1932 US Billboard 1 - 1932 (8 weeks), Library of Congress artifact added 2013 (1932), POP 4 of 1932, Music Imprint 15 of 1930s, Brazil 60 of 1933, Australian Nostalgia 60 of 1930-1939, RIAA 196, RYM 6 of 1932
3 Leo Reisman Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? 1932 Song of 1932

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15 Dec 2015

What Happened? Brother Can You Spare A Dime

I noticed that your Top 1000 Song Title List & Song Artist List have changeddramatically over the last few weeks e.g. this song was #326 in November and is now completely out of the Top 1000! There are dozens more examples like this. Was curious what new data or new formulas you are now using?

You will also have noticed that the major version number changed (2.5 to 2.6). The basic data has not changed (much), its the algorithm we use that is new.

The first thing to say is that the "Overall Top 1000 Songs" list depends strongly on how much you emphasise one year over another. If we counted up all the entries in charts then all the top songs would come from 1995-2005 (where we have most chart data). So we've applied some clever maths to overcome that bias.

The yearly charts are much more accurate because they compare songs from the same era and therefore from consistent sets of charts. We'd be relatively confident that Bing Crosby's "Brother, can you spare a dime?" was the second most successful song of 1932. Whether it was the 326th,, 1012th or 1696th song or of all time is much harder to judge.

The various things we do to overcome these issues are described in the FAQ "How is the site is generated?". The latest version change came because we found the "year adjustment factors" were slipping out of sync with the source data available (as we added more charts). So we have instituted a new scheme where we can validate the results (by looking at the songs that end up in positions 1000-2000) and use those results to tweak the year factors. This has the advantage that the factors better match the data but the disadvantage that we have to keep changing them.

In order that our more observant readers (such as yourself) can keep track and ensure we don't add an new unconscious biases we have made the year factors we use and the scores of the top 3000 songs (and top 2000 albums) available as CSV files. The final section on the FAQ explains the details. Have a play, see if you can find anything interesting (tell us if you do).


22 Feb 2012

?

This is the worst song ever