Music Blog : All Time Masters

I'm going to be a new blog series on music charts. Here's what I did : I took the Billboard Top 100 for each year from 1946 (the first year I think it was recorded) to 2000 (I need to catch up to current times) and assigned a point value to each chart position. #1 is worth 100 points, #100 is worth 1 point. I ran the entire database (4660 songs) through a pivot table and consolidated by Artist Name and chart points. I combed the list for Artist misspellings or variant names, but I may have made a mistake or two as 4,660 songs is a lot of data points.

This week we focus on the best of the best, the top point getters of all time.

1. 2,463 pts - Elvis Presley
2. 1,942 pts - Perry Como
3. 1,649 pts - Madonna
4. 1,597 pts - Elton John
5. 1,588 pts - Mariah Carey
6. 1,571 pts - Janet Jackson
7. 1,509 pts - The Beatles
8. 1,285 pts - Whitney Houston
9. 1,160 pts - Stevie Wonder
10. 1,132 pts - Michael Jackson

This list says a couple of things to me - Elvis wasn't just popular - He WAS and IS THE KING. Perry Como blows me away because I couldn't even tell you a single song of his. More on him in a later blog. Madonna and Elton John are testaments to the fact that if you surround yourself with enough good people and stay in the game long enough, you can make a lasting impact on music. Mariah Carey - pass - I don't even want to go there. Janet Jackson has changed her style enough over the years to stay relevant enough to earn that position. The Beatles - I was actually surprised that they were that low, but when you think about, they didn't hit the US until 1963 and they were done entirely by 1970. Whitney Houston - What do you know? Crack IS whack. ugh. Stevie - how about a hand for Stevie? A blind kid makes enough of an impression in popular music to land in the top ten of all time - that's cool. Michael - King of Pop? Dude - yer not even a Prince (who is #18, btw, but let's not forget that Prince more or less chose to walk away from popular music in the late 1980's).

Up next - One Hit Wonders!