The Top Songs Of The Day of 2015: #40-31
Countdown time. Let's start with disclaimers.
All right. We're squared away there. Let's go.
40. The Fabulous Poodles - "Vampire Rock"
Oct. 29
From Halloween Week. I hadn't heard the Fabulous Poodles in probably 35 years before then. Nice band.
39. Four Hall & Oates covers
Aug. 14
Included covers from The Bird & The Bee, Hanoi Rocks, Mondo Grosso and the above reading of "Rich Girl" from Nina Simone.
38. Seu Jorge - "Oh! You Pretty Things"
Apr. 22
From Speaking In Tongues week, featuring foreign-language covers of English-language hits.
37. The Louvin Brothers - "Satan Is Real"
Oct. 18
The song from the first episode of A Dream Date With Satan, a one-act play that I basically cobbled together from random detritus.
36. Björn Skifs - "The Arbiter"
Sep. 26
A standalone SOTD that took on the unspoken sexiness of chess officiating.
35. The Skull Snaps - "I'm Your Pimp"
Jan. 20
A track from Northern Soul Week that must have sounded semi-shocking in its day.
34. Neil Young & Crazy Horse - "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere"
Oct. 11
King Dinosaur's request from You Pick The Artist Week IV.
33. Natalie Prass - "It Is You"
Aug. 23
My favorite new song of 2015.
32. Dick Campbell - "The People Planners" + "Approximately Four Minutes of Feeling Sorry for DC"
Aug. 1
Another standalone, from one of the most obvious mid-60's Dylan copies. I like the songs, however.
31. Chris Hodge - "Contact Love"
Jan. 30
From Apple Scruffs, which featured artists from the Apple record label who did not require security escorts.
Tomorrow: #30-21.
- Forty songs this year instead of the traditional thirty.
- This marked the first calendar year in SOTD history that I actually kept running stats all year long.
- In past years I just ranked everything by total page-view count at a certain deadline in mid-December. So it was accurate, but obviously gave SOTD's from the earlier half of the year more weight than songs from the latter half that hadn't been up as long. Last year I tried some sort of mathematical calculation to correct this, but I still wasn't satisfied with the results.
- So this year I tried a completely new formula. Surmising that most of a song's page counts come the weeks immediately following its publication, I felt it justifiable to only measure a song's page-views over the first 28 days (4 weeks) of its appearance. The idea was then that I'd apply another calculation to simulate its activity throughout the rest of the year, but after several trials and formulae, that didn't seem to make any more sense than just reporting hard hit count over four weeks.
- This strategy produced an unfortunate result that the SOTD that was #1 in total page-views during 2015 does not, in fact, appear on the year-end Top 40 chart. It was the Van Morrison three-fer that appeared on January 2. The huge majority of its page views came well after the 28-day cutoff. I'm willing to live with that reality.
- I'm willing to live with a lot of things.
- This chart does not include any of the Mixtapes of the Day that occasionally stood in place of Songs. It also doesn't include anything later than Dec. 2. That's essentially garbage time, to use a football term.
- The countdown will go through Dec. 31 when we announce the #1 Song Of The Day of the year.
- By the way, the #1 Song Of The Day of 2015 is kind of a shocker. I was shocked, anyway. In a good way.
All right. We're squared away there. Let's go.
40. The Fabulous Poodles - "Vampire Rock"
Oct. 29
From Halloween Week. I hadn't heard the Fabulous Poodles in probably 35 years before then. Nice band.
39. Four Hall & Oates covers
Aug. 14
Included covers from The Bird & The Bee, Hanoi Rocks, Mondo Grosso and the above reading of "Rich Girl" from Nina Simone.
38. Seu Jorge - "Oh! You Pretty Things"
Apr. 22
From Speaking In Tongues week, featuring foreign-language covers of English-language hits.
37. The Louvin Brothers - "Satan Is Real"
Oct. 18
The song from the first episode of A Dream Date With Satan, a one-act play that I basically cobbled together from random detritus.
36. Björn Skifs - "The Arbiter"
Sep. 26
A standalone SOTD that took on the unspoken sexiness of chess officiating.
35. The Skull Snaps - "I'm Your Pimp"
Jan. 20
A track from Northern Soul Week that must have sounded semi-shocking in its day.
34. Neil Young & Crazy Horse - "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere"
Oct. 11
King Dinosaur's request from You Pick The Artist Week IV.
33. Natalie Prass - "It Is You"
Aug. 23
My favorite new song of 2015.
32. Dick Campbell - "The People Planners" + "Approximately Four Minutes of Feeling Sorry for DC"
Aug. 1
Another standalone, from one of the most obvious mid-60's Dylan copies. I like the songs, however.
31. Chris Hodge - "Contact Love"
Jan. 30
From Apple Scruffs, which featured artists from the Apple record label who did not require security escorts.
Tomorrow: #30-21.