Had to look it up on Amazon. The "Physical" LP has "Make A Move On Me", but not "Heart Attack". It went double platinum and peaked at #6. "Foreigner 4", by comparison, was 6 times platinum and stayed at #1 for 3 weeks and stayed in the Top 10 for a few months.
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Today's Classic Hits target demo was listening to Current Hits at what age?
- Thread starter PirateJohnny
- Start date
Had to look it up on Amazon. The "Physical" LP has "Make A Move On Me", but not "Heart Attack". It went double platinum and peaked at #6. "Foreigner 4", by comparison, was 6 times platinum and stayed at #1 for 3 weeks and stayed in the Top 10 for a few months.
I think "Ob-La-Di" was intended as the flip. "Julia" was on the "Love Songs" album and the single and LP came out about the same time. Capitol really went a bridge too far trying to break singles off the Beatles compilations. They were very lucky with "Got To Get You Into My Life".
I don't know. "Landslide" would have been the fourth single off the LP where none of the others did better than #11. "The Chain" and "Gold Dust Woman" would have been the fifth and sixth singles off "Rumors"...and the trajectory was:
Go Your Own Way: #10
Dreams: #1
Don't Stop: #3
You Make Loving Fun: #9
They were probably smart to stop there and sell albums to the people who wanted the other songs, rather than singles.
That mindset certainly changed in the '80s, beginning with Michael Jackson's THRILLER album. After he got seven singles from it into the top 10, the floodgates were opened. By the end of the decade, Michael Jackson (2x), Bruce Springsteen, Cyndi Lauper, Huey Lewis & the News, INXS, Whitney Houston, George Michael, Def Leppard, and probably some that I have forgotten, managed to have albums with multiple singles from them.
I have that single, and it said on the label that both were from the album THE BEATLES, commonly known as the "white album." I did not see "Julia" listed among the love songs tracks, although it would have fit nicely into that compilation.
In west Tennessee, where I grew up, "Ob-La-Di" was the one that got played, however briefly. I still hear it played on occasion. The Wannabeatles, a local Beatles cover band, includes it in their set. And it made it onto the blue compilation album, despite not being a single (yet).
In the UK, "Back in the USSR" was the single from the ROCK & ROLL MUSIC album, with "Twist and Shout" as the b-side. It made the top 20 there, I think. But this was right after "Yesterday" had been a single in the UK for the first time ever (at least by the Beatles, anyway) and had made top 10.
"Sgt. Pepper's"/"A Little Help From My Friends," with "Day in the Life" on the B-side, became a UK single after the Sgt. Pepper movie came out. Might have been a single here stateside, too. I have the UK import singles in my collection.
That seems to me like a "low" peak position for an album that went double platinum. I am guessing that it was probably moving about 100,000 units a week at the height of its popularity. (I believe that I read somewhere that Michael Jackson was moving 100,000 THRILLERs every two or three days at the height of its popularity, and did so for over a year!) I fully believe that Olivia Newton-John could have a double platinum album, but it still amazes me that it "only" reached #6. She must have had a lot of competition out there at that time.
As Michael has pointed out, chart positions have as much to do with the product out at the time as with the "value" of the album in question.
Further, there are some albums that will have high "flashpoint" sales and others that sustain good sales over a much longer time. Pop idols with a big fan base would sell loads of product the same day and week it dropped. Other artist's albums would sell well but with no huge first week / month pop... often continuing to sell as additional singles were pulled and promoted.
By that point, though, the goal wasn't to move singles, but to use radio (still bound to the concept of singles) to sell albums.
I checked...Livvy didn't go double platinum for three years. Loyal and new fans just kept buying it bit by bit.
But while she sold two million copies in three years, she hasn't sold an additional million in the past 29.
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Thomps2525
Guest
Olivia's most recent album is This Christmas, which was released in November 2012 and includes John Travolta, Tony Bennett, Barbra Streisand, Kenny G, Cliff Richard, Chick Corea, James Taylor and the Count Basie Orchestra. I think Olivia herself is actually also on the album somewhere.
I used to have a funny line---and if it isn't still funny, forgive me: My favorite trios are Peter Paul & Mary...and Olivia Newt & John.
I used to have a funny line---and if it isn't still funny, forgive me: My favorite trios are Peter Paul & Mary...and Olivia Newt & John.
>>I used to have a funny line---and if it isn't still funny, forgive me: My favorite trios are Peter Paul & Mary...and Olivia Newt & John>>
We'll forgive you this time, but never do that again. ))
We'll forgive you this time, but never do that again. ))
My mother used to think that ONJ was three people. After all, she had that bass-voiced guy singing backup on her early hits, "Let Me Be There" and "If You Love Me."
As for Foreigner, being "denied" a #1 hit with "Waiting" gave them something to talk about. And it probably set the stage for them to have the #1 hit with "I Want to Know What Love Is" three years later. And now, area high school choirs will be singing "I Want to Know What Love Is" behind them when they appear here in Nashville tomorrow night. Interesting, since they weren't even born yet when that one came out!
And people often forget that Foreigner had a previous close call with hitting #1. "Double Vision" was #2 in fall 1978.
My parents had the radio on from the time I was born. So I grew up listening to Nat Cole, Sinatra and Bossa Nova.
I heard Top 40 when playing with friends (usually an older brother or sister's radio), and it was fine.
I was 11 the first time I tuned in to Top 40 deliberately, and I was hooked. Part of that could be that I tuned in just one minute before KHJ's world exclusive first play of the Beatles "A Day In The Life".
But again, the key word in "Peak Musical Awareness" is "peak"...the point at which you are most aware and involved.
On average, for most people, that's 16-22. For me, it was more like 11-33. Your mileage may vary.
I heard Top 40 when playing with friends (usually an older brother or sister's radio), and it was fine.
I was 11 the first time I tuned in to Top 40 deliberately, and I was hooked. Part of that could be that I tuned in just one minute before KHJ's world exclusive first play of the Beatles "A Day In The Life".
But again, the key word in "Peak Musical Awareness" is "peak"...the point at which you are most aware and involved.
On average, for most people, that's 16-22. For me, it was more like 11-33. Your mileage may vary.
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Thomps2525
Guest
Radio columnist Rich Appel ( www.facebook.com/richappel7 ) recently wrote an essay on why the 1960s was the best decade for popular music. Among the reasons: Beatles, Beach Boys, Motown, 45-rpm singles, the top-40 format which included all styles of music, "message" songs, countdown shows, printed music surveys, the large number of record labels and the large number of independently owned radio stations. I agree with him...but he also points out that you can "ask anyone about the best era for contemporary music and the answer he or she is most likely to give will be that era when he or she was a teenager or in college. That makes sense, as we're more likely to associate any music that came later with life not being so easy." Unfortunately, as Michael has often pointed out, the teenagers of the 1960s are now too old to be a desirable audience for radio stations and their advertisers. Radio now wants the people who were teenagers in the 1980s-90s, so we get Madonna and George Michael and Bryan Adams instead of the Monkees and the Beatles and the Four Seasons.
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Technically, it is the advertisers who want that demo but isn't it sad that the quality of music has to suffer to support a demographic? The same thing is now being said by people of the Country genre.
Music rescued radio from TV and now music is killing radio.
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Thomps2525
Guest
In the 1960s, it was easy to distinguish Buck Owens from Conway Twitty, Johnny Cash from George Jones, Sonny James from Bill Anderson, and Tammy Wynette from Loretta Lynn. Since the 1990s, it's become increasingly difficult to recognize a country singer by his voice. Most of the male singers sound alike and most of the female singers sound alike. To make things worse, musical styles have become homogenized to the point where the instrumentation sounds the same on almost every song. If pop radio has turned its back on Bobby Vinton and Brenda Lee and the Beatles, country radio has turned its back on all the "heritage" artists and any song with a fiddle or steel guitar.
Exactimundo! People used to complain about homogenized music like Muzak and now they seem to embrace it.
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