Starting in 1956, at least, by my crude and incomplete crosscheck with the annals of Wikipedia. The impetus for such a soundcloud collage comes via ubu.com, who spoke with the archivist responsible, one Hugo Keesing. (It’s an interesting time for chart reflection, as this week Billboard had its 1000th #1 hit, an honor going to one Lady Gaga for her cover of Madonna’s “Express Yourself.”) Part One here is 45+ minutes; Part Two picks up in 1983 and ends with Whitney Houston’s take on “I Will Always Love You” in some 28 mins and change. A single-streamed time-lapsed overview of the shifting style preferences of mainstream pop audiences over time, perhaps; the ability to say with verity you’ve heard every #1 single until 1992 in exchange for an hour-and-a-half of your time, certainly. Click play:
(via BuzzFeed)
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This has just reminded me how goo the 80′s was!
so goo
Wow it just reminded me of what a complete waste of time the 80′s were!
Heartwarming, pure and simple.
I wish someone would make a video version of this that shows the name of the song and the date as each clip plays.
Someone did! 1958-2007 http://www.youtube.com/user/MGoddard84
It’s actually really easy to follow along via Wikipedia’s list of yearly Billboard #1s. At least, I followed their lists throughout the 60s and didn’t spot any inconsistencies. Like, this is 1965′s, all these songs are in this mix and in the same order: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hot_100_number-one_singles_of_1965_(U.S.)
I need this for 90-97 and my life would be complete.
Right here
http://soundcloud.com/anthonydc/5-seconds-of-every-1-billboard
Thank you for posting this, it was really awesome and made my day today. I always forget how great “You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling” is. Also, I’d never heard “Telstar” by The Tornados before – what a weird song! I don’t think anything that weird could be #1 these days.
This is so intense.
Awesome to listen to (though it takes a while), I guess there’s a point where everybody will suddenly think “I remember when that was released…”
Not gonna pretend to be hip and think 80s and 90s music is good: I switched this off when it got to about 1982.
Will good for you! It’s so obvious how far superior the 60′s and 70′s were to the 80′s and 90′s when you here this file it is not even worth comparing the two for one nano-second!
This is amazing.
Oh good, I’m not the only one who hears Express Yourself in Born This Way.
This whole thing is just absolutely fantastic. I don’t even know where I was first exposed to most of these songs, but I was shocked at how many of them I had heard. Single most illustrative song on the list: “Pop Musik” by M. Low point of the compilation: “Disco Duck”