#1

Casey Kasem’s death reminds me of those days years ago when I would listen to American Top 40 to hear the countdown of the most popular songs in the country. This was on Sundays and I can remember listening in my bedroom off and on all afternoon or bringing my Walkman with me to my grandparents’ house when we were over there so I could hear what was #1.

I have a specific memory of the countdown from the summer of 1989. At the time, Madonna’s “Express Yourself” was climbing and seemed destined for #1. Before a commercial break, Kasem teased the new #1 song of the week as “a song by a woman with one name that starts with M.” Fifteen-year-old me got excited that my favorite artist might collect another #1 hit. But no, it was Martika at #1 with “Toy Soldiers” (Madonna stalled at #2). I still don’t think I’m over it.

There were a lot of shows like American Top 40 back in the ‘80s. There was a TV show on Saturdays that played the top 10 videos and would sometimes tell you what was in the top 10 in the UK and I would get a little glimpse of these British songs that would sometimes be hits later in the United States and sometimes remain obscure.

This was, of course, when you really had to hunt down your data instead of finding everything online. I sometimes bought Billboard and saw the entire Hot 100, the Top 200 albums and all kind of curious niche charts like the dance chart. But Billboard wasn’t cheap and I would have to go all the way to Waldenbooks at the Granite Run Mall to find it because the magazine wasn’t for sale at convenience stores.

Mostly I would rely on the Inquirer, which on Sundays would publish a list of the top 10. I cut out the lists and saved them in these plastic sleeves. I had very little social life. On the weeks when the paper didn’t run a list, I would get the rundown from America’s Top 40 and make my own list. I wonder if I still have all those top 10 lists buried somewhere in the house.

There were books of condensed chart information, too, and I had all of them. Now I have these three huge hardback books, with every Billboard Hot 100 chart from the ‘80s, ‘90s and ‘00s respectively so I can look up the peak position of every song since Jan. 5, 1980.

Somewhere along the way, I started losing interest in getting the chart info week to week. I didn’t check Billboard every week unless there was a song I was particularly interested in. I looked for the bigger picture, which is why I still treasure those hardback chart books. I could easily go to Wikipedia to find the peak position of “The Safety Dance” but it’s more fun to see the full chart and what was going on around the song in the fall of 1983.

I’m out of touch in that I have nearly memorized what songs were #1 on which dates but more and more, I couldn’t tell you how the song goes. I’d say I’m just getting old but this detachment started when I was in my 20s so I can’t explain it.

With all the attention I paid to chart positions, you’d think I’d be better at math. My hobby did provide one useless addition to my talents. Give me a date in the ‘80s and I can tell you what day of the week it fell on. That’s because Billboard charts are always dated on Saturdays so I just pick the closest chart date to the date you give me and count up or down from that Saturday until I reach your date.

I memorized these dates by osmosis without meaning to. That’s how I remembered above that the first Saturday of the ‘80s was Jan. 5. I can really only do this with the ‘80s and part of the ‘90s. You can’t ask me what day of the week Aug. 17, 1445 was. I’m not a savant.

So add that to my lengthy list of marketable skills.