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Top 10 songs of the past 50 years? Oh, 'Billboard'!

By Sean Daly, Times Pop Music Critic
Posted: Sep 17, 2008 01:44 PM

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Billboard says these are the 10 greatest songs of all time. Can you put them in order? We bet not. Prepare to be outraged. (Check your answers against the list at the bottom.)

Rank them from 1 to 10

The Macarena (Bayside Boys Mix), Los Del Rio

Hey Jude, the Beatles

Physical, Olivia Newton-John

Smooth, Santana with Rob Thomas

You Light Up My Life, Debby Boone

The Twist, Chubby Checker

Un-Break My Heart, Toni Braxton

Mack the Knife, Bobby Darin

How Do I Live, LeAnn Rimes

We Belong Together, Mariah Carey

- - -

Through a highly scientific method of data analysis and playing with my daughter's stuffed animals, I have deduced that a small fleet of cute furry bears were the real rulers of the Jurassic geologic period. T. Rex was No. 2 on the power list, followed by Snow White at 3 and a headless Strawberry Shortcake at 4. Yes, yes, it's a highly controversial list, but I stand behind my findings.

Oy. In yet another example of our list-crazy times — lists often built with more imagination and subjectivity than cold, hard facts — Billboard magazine has just released the most popular "Billboard Hot 100" singles of the past 50 years. (The Hot 100, created solely for individual hits — not artists or albums — started in 1958.) The mighty top 10 includes such we-should-be-ashamed winners as the Macarena by Los Del Rio and Debby Boone's You Light Up My Life.

And the No. 1 hot single? Not Yesterday by the Beatles. Not All Shook Up by Elvis, either.

If you correctly guessed Chubby Checker's 1960 dance-craze classic The Twist, then YOU'RE ABSOLUTELY LYING. Culturally significant? Absolutely. A good way to grind your date? And how! The hottest of the Hot 100? I dunno, boys and girls.

The Billboard Hot 100 is based on airplay and sales information, a combination of what singles are hot on radio and in record stores. The problem, however, is that decades-old data was not only gathered in far different ways, but also "weighted" differently. After all, we really don't pay much attention to "jukebox" spins anymore, do we?

Plus since 1991, Billboard has been relying on various Nielsen devices (SoundScan, etc.) to more accurately pinpoint numbers and dollar signs.

So Billboard had to "weigh" eras against each other, using imagination and creative number-crunching. Oh, and one more thing: Over the years, Billboard has altered the ratio of importance between airplay and singles sold; for instance, with the advent of iTunes, we are now a singles market again, but we weren't in the '90s. And so on.

So . . . after all this abacus-twiddling, The Twist came out on top. You gotta give them credit. No one saw THAT coming. The song only spent a few weeks at No. 1. But it stuck around for 39 total weeks in the Hot 100, a mark surpassed only by UB40's Red Red Wine cover, which lasted 40 weeks in 1988.

Billboard is qualifying its list with dizzying verve. Geoff Mayfield, director of charts at the magazine, told the Associated Press: "We went through each era, and we looked through the rate of turnover. The rate of turnover was very high in the late '50s and early '60s, and we had to put a weight on that to make the chart runs of that era equal to the chart runs that can be accomplished since 1991."

Huh? What? Oh forget about it. All together now: "Come on and twist, yeah, baby, twist . . ."

- - -

The rankings

It's time to compare lists. Here's Billboard's:

10. Un-Break My Heart, Toni Braxton

9. We Belong Together, Mariah Carey

8. Hey Jude, the Beatles

7. You Light Up My Life, Debby Boone

6. Physical, Olivia-Newton John

5. The Macarena (Bayside Boys Mix), Los Del Rio

4. How Do I Live, LeAnn Rimes

3. Mack the Knife, Bobby Darin

2. Smooth, Santana feat. Rob Thomas

1. The Twist, Chubby Checker