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Here on Graphs About Songs, you’ll often find me analyzing the Top 10 songs in the Billboard Hot 100. Why do I focus on the 10 songs at the pinnacle of America’s popular music chart, however? It comes down to scope.

• #1 songs are too narrow. There simply aren’t enough #1 songs to accurately spot trends. Plus, one fluke song can throw off an entire trend line.

• Looking at the Top 40 or the entire Hot 100, however, includes way too many songs that never became mass appeal hits. You’ve likely never heard the typical song that peak at #38, much less recall it years later.

Those songs that reach the Top 10 and stay there for at least a few weeks tend to be those songs that lots of people know. Personally, you might not love all of them, but at least you’re aware of them.

A good year has at least one new Top 10 hit each week

In a typical year, 58 songs (not counting Christmas classics) become Top 10 hits on the Hot 100. That’s about 1 new song reaching the Top 10 each week. That 58 songs number has been consistent since cassettes were common in 1992. (Before 1992, when Billboard tracked self-reported paper lists of song sales and radio airplay rankings, songs cycled through the Top 10 faster and, therefore, more songs reached the Top 10 each year.)

The number of Top 10 hits each year fell a bit during the iTunes from 2006-2017, likely due to radio stations holding on to older songs longer. 2015 saw a record low 44 new songs become Top 10 hits that year.

Top 10 hits have rebounded during the streaming era starting in 2018, largely thanks to multiple tracks from new albums from major artists debuting in the Top 10 simultaneously. In 2023, 77 different songs reached the Hot 100’s Top 10, the highest number of Top 10 hits since the paper reporting era ended in 1991.

Mathematically, you’d expect a third of the year’s Top 10 hits to reach the Top 10 from January through April (4 months / 12 months = 33%).

That’s pretty much what’s happened—although the number has dipped slightly to 29% of all Top 10 hits each year reaching the Top 10 by the end of April.

2026’s Terrible Start

Which brings us to 2026. In a healthy year with 58 Top 10 hits, you’d expect 19 songs to reach the Top 10 between January and April. For the chart week ending April 26, 2026, only 11 new songs reached the Top 10. That’s the lowest number of hits during the first third of the year since a dozen years ago.

As we examine those 11 songs below, you’ll notice some have had more impact than have others…

1. “Choosin’ Texas” by Ella Langley: #1 peak,. Top 10 for 21 weeks and counting Released in October 2525, this song has made Langley a Country streaming staple on par with Morgan Wallen. “Choosin’ Texas” has stayed in the Top 10 thanks to continued streaming momentum, Country radio airplay, and Pop crossover radio airplay.

2. “End of Beginning” by Djo: #6 peak, Top 10 for 3 weeks: This 2022 song returned to relevance thanks to the Stranger Things finale. Although the song was not played on the show, the fact that Djo is also Stranger Things actor Joe Keery linked his hit to the show.

3. “I Just Might” by Bruno Mars: #1 peak, Top 10 for 18 weeks and counting: Mars is on a roll, with nostalgia boosting streaming of his previous decade’s hits and the huge success of his duet with Lady Gaga. Radio almost immediately started playing “I Just Might” and it has remained strong on streaming.

4. “Aperture” by Harry Styles #1 peak, Top 10 for 2 weeks: The highly anticipated but highly weird track quickly tanked on streaming.

5. “The Great Divide” by Noah Kahan: #6 peak, Top 10 for 1 week: Noah Kahan’s loyal Gen Z fan base apparently finds this one “meh”. Streaming has been ok, but not stellar.

6. “Risk It All” by Bruno Mars: #4 peak. Top 10 for 2 weeks: With streaming Momentum weaker for this song and radio still focusing on “I Just Might,” “Risk It All” only remained in the Top 10 for a couple of weeks.

7. “Stateside” by PinkPantheress with Zara Larsson: #6 peak, Top 10 for 7 weeks While radio was playing Zara Larsson’s “Midnight Sun”, streaming users made her duet with PinkPantheress the real hit. Radio has since embraced “Stateside,” as well.

8. “American Girls” by Harry Styles: #4 peak, Top 10 for 2 weeks: Radio felt more comfortable embracing this Styles song, with it rapidly being among most played songs on Top 40 radio. Fans, however, aren’t impressed. After a strong debut, streaming for “American Girls” has tanked.

9. “So Easy (To Fall in Love)” by Olivia Dean: #5 peak, Top 10 for 9 weeks: Released in September 2025, “So Easy” has seen increased radio airplay after “Man I Need” ran its course on radio, while streaming has remained very strong.

10. “Swim” by BTS: #1, Top 10 for 4 weeks: Contrary to popular belief, the BTS Army does not love everything the group generates and cannot simply will themselves another hit. “Swim’s” week-to-week streaming has been lackluster.

11. “Be Her” by Ella Langley: #2 peak, Top 10 for 6 weeks and counting: Her latest affirms her place as a Country streaming juggernaut on par with Morgan Wallen. “Ne Her” hasn’t yet crossed over to Top 40 radio, but it’s already big on Country.

To summarize, of the 11 songs reaching the Top 10 during the first four months of 2026, only five (5) songs are sustained hits, spending 4 or more weeks in the Top 10.

Based on those 11 hits from January through April, 2026 is on track to only have 38 Top 10 hits—that would be the fewest Top 10s in the history of Billboard’s Hot 100 chart.

Fortunately, fate has already intervened.

2026’s May Revival

In May alone, 13 different songs reached the Hot 100’s Top 10. In addition to nine (9) tracks from Drake’s three-album dump, four additional individual releases have made the Hot 100’s Top 10 in May—and three of them actually could be hits:

1. “Drop Dead” by Olivia Rodrigo: #14 peak, 4 weeks in Top 10 so far: While the verdict is still out on the song’s streaming sustainability, radio immediately embraced it.

2. “I Can’t Love You Anymore” by Ella Langley and Morgan Wallen #7 peak, 2 weeks in Top 10 so far.

3. “Doors” by Noah Kahan: #9 peak, 1 week in Top 10: While fans were excited enough for new Noah Kahan to give “Doors” a week in the Top 10, streaming quickly faded.

4. “Dracula” by Tame Impala and Jennie: #10 peak, 2 weeks in Top 10 so far. The Jennie remix of Tame Impala’s October 2025 single has bolstered interest in this song on both streaming and radio.

That’s the strongest May since 2024, when legendary radio personality and music guru Gene “Bean Baxter declared:

“This is the best US Billboard Top 10 in ages and by that I mean it’s filled with actual hit songs, not just big artist debuts. Fight me.”

As you can see below, however, 2024 was also the year where those hits dried up from June through December (as i examined in Where Did 2024’s Great New Hits Go?)

Let’s assume 2026 isn’t 2024, however. If January through May’s Top 10s are predictive of the remainder of the year, 2026 is on track to have 57 top 10 hits. While not a banner year for hit songs, it’s also not an unprecedented dearth thereof.

In future posts, we’ll examine why the streaming era has made some months significantly bigger for hit music than others, as well as why only half of the Top 10 hits are real hits thanks to streaming. Subscribe to the FREE option below to get those Graphs About Songs articles in your inbox as soon as I concoct them.

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Sources for this post:

• The Billboard Hot 100: https://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100

• Wikipedia’s Billboard Hot 100 Top 10 singles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Billboard_Hot_100_top-ten_singles

Here are resources to get you ready to use The Hit Momentum Newsletter:

• Quick Use Guide: You just want to know how to read and implement the report ASAP

• Complete Guide: Here, you’ll learn in detail what the report shows you and why behind our recommendations on how to use it.

Read more

Here are resources to get you ready to use The Hit Momentum Newsletter:

• Quick Use Guide: You just want to know how to read and implement the report ASAP

• Complete Guide: Here, you’ll learn in detail what the report shows you and why behind our recommendations on how to use it.

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Last month, 97.7 WOXY officially changed its call letters to WKRP-FM. It’s the first time the WKRP call letters are on a real-life radio station in Cincinnati. WKRP-FM plays a variety of classic hits from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, which the station was already playing before buying the WKRP callsign.

We’re not here to discuss that station’s music. (Sean Ross did a great job here already.)

We’re here to analyze the tunes on the “real” WKRP in Cincinnati—the fictional radio station of the TV series on CBS from 1978 to 1982

A key feature of the show was that it featured real songs by real recording artists. The show recorded on video tape instead of film to take advantage of a music licensing loophole that allowed them to play The Beatles on a network TV show affordably.

Today, we’re going to analyze the music on WKRP in Cincinnati, not like Norris breeze did, but as my former radio research and consulting colleagues and I would do. We’ll…

• Analyze how many contemporary songs verses golden oldies WKRP played.

• Examine the various sub-genres WKRP played.

• Parse how many proven hits verses obscure titles WKRP featured.

We’ll ultimately decide exactly what format WKRP in Cincinnati aired—and if the station would realistically rise from #16 to #6 in the Cincinnati radio ratings during its run.

Thanks to several superfans of the show, we have detailed information about the 295 songs that ever appeared on WKRP in Cincinnati, including the context of how the show used each song. I’m using the outstandingly detailed listing Mike Hernandez compiled and shared as a Google Sheets document here.

Thanks to Mike’s detailed notes on how the show used each song—as well as my own recollections—I’m excluding songs not actually played in full on WKRP. That means I’m not including:

• Songs played in other scenes, such as

  • Johnny Mathis’ “Chances Are” (played at Les Nessman’s Apartment in “Les’ Groupie”

  • Sly & The Family Stone’s “The Same Thing (Makes You Laugh, Makes You Cry)” playing on WREQ during Venus’ job interview in “Venus Rising.”

  

  • Any of the Disco songs played by Johnny Fever’s alter ego Rip Tide on his TV show Gotta Dance.

• The six songs whose clips created the montage for “The Contest Nobody Could Win.” (sorry, Wayne Newton and Francis Scott Key)

  

• “Wanted” by Perry Como, playing on WKRP in 1954 during the Christmas past flashback scene in “Bah Humbug”.

• Any songs sung by characters

• Finally, I’m skipping the three Christmas songs WKRP plays, which unfortunately means Jingle Bells by Barking Dogs isn’t included.

With those deletions, we’re left with 202 songs that actually aired on WKRP in Cincinnati. Let’s analyze them.

A Top 40 Station? Nope.

The most common misstatement is that WKRP was a “Top 40” Rock ‘n’ Roll station. It was not. Despite receptionist Jennifer Marlowe answering the phones, “home of the hits, where your advertising dollar goes further,” WKRP was not a hit music station.

First, only six out of ten songs WKRP played were contemporary songs from the current or previous year. The remaining four out of ten songs were gold titles from previous years.

That alone wouldn’t disqualify WKRP—Top 40 stations have always mixed on songs that were hits from a few years ago. What does differ, however, is just how old most of those Gold titles are: WKRP played songs all the way back to the birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll in 1955.

More fundamentally, the majority of songs WKRP in Cincinnati played—both the current songs and the oldies—were never Top 40 hits. Fewer than 30% of the songs WKRP in Cincinnati played were Top 10 hits.

Drilling down to the Current songs, WKRP in Cincinnati played even fewer big hits. The show featured nine #1 current hits, including “The Long Run” by The Eagles, Kool & the Gang’s “Celebration,” and Blonde’s “Heart of Glass.” However, fewer than a quarter of the current songs on the station were Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100.

When a Top 40 station airs older songs, they’re generally songs that were once massive hits. While about 38% of WKRP’s Oldies were Top 10 hits, over half never even reached the Top 40:

When examining which types of songs WKRP in Cincinnati aired, a scant 3% were the kind of Current Pop songs that were the backbone of Top 40 radio from 1978 to 1982:

So rare was it that WKRP in Cincinnati actually played massive current hits that Andy Travis got excited when Johnny played one.

Beyond playing Chic’s “Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah),” in the pilot episode, WKRP in Cincinnati was also notoriously anti-disco, No Top 40 station could have ignored disco in the late 1970s,

There was a popular format where hating disco was de rigor: Rock radio.

An Album Rock Station? Note quite.

When WKRP in Cincinnati program director Andy Travis announced the station’s new format to morning host Johnny Caravella, he said it was “Rock ‘n’ Roll” while unveiling a poster of Kiss The first song Johnny played was Ted Nugent’s 1975 album cut “Queen of the Forest.” That song wasn’t a Top 40 hit, but was a well-known cut on Nugent’s self-titled debut album in 1975.

19% of the station’s overall airplay was Current Album Rock—exactly the songs you’d hear on the era’s FM Album Rock stations. An additional 10% were the Pop-friendly Pop Rock tracks.

Album Oriented Rock (AOR) emerged in the 1970s as a highly popular radio format particularly among male teens and young adults who had no interest in hearing their Rock mixed with The Osmonds. Majny of the genres most enduring songs famously never appeared on a 45-rpm single and therefore because of—rules—never were hits on the Hot 100 chart. To hear them, you had to buy the entire album—hence “album rock”.

WKRP in Cincinnati played a lot of Album Cuts as currents…

But what about these other genres, such as those obscure non-hits that weren’t well-known album rock hits? To understand WKRP in Cincinnati, you have to understand what was happening on FM radio ten years before the show debuted…

From Free Form Rock to Album-Oriented Rock

In the late 1960s, radio realized there was an audience segment that wanted to hear The Beatles and the Roling Stones, along with The Byrds and Bob Dylan, who didn’t want to hear Herb Alpert or Petula Clark. They also embraced the laid-back Hippie aesthetic that was in direct opposition to the hyper-kinetic Top 40 DJ style.

Tom Donehue, one of the earliest purveyors of the Free Form Progressive Rock format at KMPX and KSAN San Fancisco, envisioned the station being everything Top 40 AM radio wasn’t. As Johnny Fever himself Howard Hessman explained in The FM Radio Revolution in San Francisco,

[Tom] wanted a radio station that sounded like you were in the living room of a friend who had the most amazing stereo system imaginable and a tremendous collection of records and impeccable tastes.

The DJ might play the same song by Janis Joplin, Big Mama Thorton, and Blind Lemon Jefferson.

Here’s an example of how Free Form Rock sounded on KMPX San Francisco in 1967:

A young radio programmer Lee Abrams realized that while Rock fans rejected the Pop titles that hit music stations played, they still wanted to hear the songs they knew and loved most.

Abrahms hypothesized that the “hits” were the artists themselves and their best-selling albums: Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd. The Rolling Stones, The Eagles. Kiss, The Who, Jethro Tull, Black Sabbath and Lynard Skynyrd. The difference is that the Rock listener who loved “Black Dog” would also be down for hearing “Over The Hills and Far Away.”

He envisioned a Rock station that had the vibe of Free Form Rock, but with the researched programming and on-air discipline of Top 40 AM radio.

When he was only 19, Abrams put his ideas to the test in 1972 when 94.7 WQDR Raleigh, North Carolina became the first consulting client for his “Superstars of Rock.” They went from nowhere to #1 among 18- to 34-year-old men almost overnight.

The guy on the air still had that laid-back, stoner vibe, but he would no longer say or play what he wanted: He’d keep his banter short and relevant—artist, title, the station name, and promotional announcements. He’d also not pick the music. Abrams surveyed record store album sales and called listeners to ask which album cuts they were digging. That research determined every song that aired.

Compare how Raleigh’s WQDR sounded in 1978 (click here for recording) compared to KMPX a decade earlier…

Notice anything else missing?

Black artists.

With the exception of Jimi Hendrix, the new Album Oriented Rock (AOR) format was completely white. Artists including Sly and the Family Stone, Ritchie Havens, Steve Wonder, and numerous Blues artists, simply didn’t show enough promise in research for Superstars.

WKRP in Cincinnati was clearly not a client of Lee Abrams.

They had far more in common with those Free Form Rock stations of the late 1960s than with the research-driven focused Rock stations that were its contemporaries. Consider the relatively obscure 70s Album Rock tracks WKRP in Cincinnato played:

Then there was Johnny Fever’s true musical passion

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The Soul of Solid Gold

As Johnny Fever’s character developed, he became an ardent supporter of a specific breed of Rock’ ‘n’ Roll oldies that played an increasing role on his morning show: From the 60s, Johnny preferred R&B artists---but not the polished sound of Motown or Philly Soul. Instead, Johnny played soul artists such as Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett, artists from the rural south maintaining the raw rock energy that made Rock ‘n’ Roll popular in the 1950s. 60s Soul comprised 5% of WKRP in Cincinnati’s airplay:

That’s almost as much as the pure Rock titles from the 1960s:

Johnny Fever even went back to the 1950s, preferring the original Black artists such as Chuck Berry and Little Richard over the white grifters. 50s Rockin’ Soul comprised 5% of WKRP in Cincinnati’s overall airplay:

When the station did play white Rock ‘n’ Roll artists, Johnny stuck to the ones who understood the assignment: Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins, not Bobby Darin or Fabian:

Finaly, Johnny even mixed in enough Blues to make it 2% of the station’s playlist:

Honoring these heritage artists was unheard of at Album Oriented Rock (AOR) radio in the late 1970s—but it was very common at Free Form Rock radio of the late 1960s

Rock’s cutting edge

Defining WKRP in Cincinnati as a throwback to Rock ‘n’ Roll’s roots has one major wrinkle; They played a lot of cutting-edge Rock. At the time, they called it New Wave. Now, we call it Classic Alternative. WKRP in Cincinnati played Missing Persons’ very first single. They played Talking Heads when they weren’t well known beyond CBGBs. Famously, they may have helped Blondie’s “Heart Of Glass” reach #1.

With respect for Rock ‘n’ Roll’s heritage, a willingness to play obscure album cuts, and its embrace pf the cutting-edge artists now considered alternative classics, WKRP in Cincinnati is a throwback to the Free Form Rock stations from the previous decade, right?

Before we label it a Rock station, we have to examine Venis Flytrap’s contributions:

Jazz on a Rock ‘n’ Roll station?

A big reason we can’t simply label WKRP in Cincinnati a Rock station is the significant share of music from Black artists in rotation. Largely thanks to Venus Flytrap’s show, 13% of the station’s playlist was contemporary R&B hits. Some, such as Kool & The Gang’s “Celebration” were massive Pop hits. Others, such as Luither Vandross’ “Never Too Much,” were huge hits on Black radio but largely invisible to Top 40 listeners.

What truly defined Venus Flytrap’s evening show—beyond the gong—was his prominent exposure of contemporary Jazz.

In 1967, Down Beat Magazine quoted guitarist Gabor Szabo out of context saying, “Jazz as we’ve known it is dead.” It wasn’t, but its cultural relevance was. Rock had usurped Jazz as the music defining youth culture in 1955.

Soon thereafter, a new school of artists began fusing Rock elements into Jazz, including Miles Davis, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, and Pat Metheny. By the mid-1970s, Jazz Fusion had a huge following amongst sophisticated adults. If Steely Dan was a bit too pedestrian for your tastes, jazz fusion was for you.

By the late 1970s, another group of artists emerged who created a more melodic, less experimental version of jazz fusion accessible to Pop fans. George Benson and Chuck Mangione even had Top 40 hits. Venus played a lot of this music, which not only made his show uniquely sophisticated, it made it multicultural.

So what format is WKRP in Cincinnati?

Putting it all together, here are all the different genres of music WKRP In Cincinnati played during the show’s four years:

Clearly, it’s not a Top 40 hit music station, with only 5% of the music at the heart of Pop radio during the late 70s and early 80s:

Furthermore, the station played a lot more Oldies than Top 40 Pop.

The majority of the station’s music was from the styles of Rock music you’d hear on the era’s popular FM Album Oriented Rock stations

… but WKRP in Cincinnati played music from Black artists that—by the late 1970s—no AOR station would touch.

Real life radio consultants operate honestly and above board—and have long been too old for cocaine—but the “radio doctor” Norris Breeze accurately represents what any consultant would tell Andy Traivs about WKRP when he concluded, “You’ve got problems here. […] Your format is all over the road.”

For a show that radio veterans describe as a frighteningly accurate portrayal of the folks you’ll meet in radio, the most unrealistic aspect of WKRP in Cincinnati is the programming itself.

Competing against 700 WLW, Q102, or 102.7 WEBN in 1978, WKRP in Cincinnati would have been a woefully unsuccessful station

Which is exactly why its music is so damn interesting.

Experience WKRP in Cincinnati yourself

You can find just about every song WKRP in Cincinnati played on this Spotify playlist.

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More on this topic:

• Did WKRP In Cincinnati boost a song’s chart position just by being featured on the show? This slideshow tackles that question: WKRP In Cincinnati: Charting each song’s performance

• A Real life Rock station played New Age Jazz at night—-and got its highest ratings doing it! Here’s the story of how 94Q (WQXI-FM) Atlanta launched a new age jazz show at night that ultimately became the station’s most popular show. (94Q’s General Manager, Gerry Blum, was Hugh Wilson’s inspiration for Arthor Carlson.) From Friends of Georgia Radio: The Story of WQXI-FM/94Q’s “Jazz Flavours” With Don Benson, Fleetwood Gruver, and Russ Davis f

Data sources for this article:

• Mike Hernandez, “WKRP Song List”, Document shared on Google Drive, retrieved May 15, 2026: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/14x1AnN8KV1MH3RYlnKR6FgOFuZ_-Qm-OUvuZo8G38kE/htmlview?pli=1#gid=546540654

• Billboard Hot 100 charts: https://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100/

Here are resources to get you ready to use The Hit Momentum Newsletter:

• Quick Use Guide: You just want to know how to read and implement the report ASAP

• Complete Guide: Here, you’ll learn in detail what the report shows you and why behind our recommendations on how to use it.

Read more

Here are resources to get you ready to use The Hit Momentum Newsletter:

• Quick Use Guide: You just want to know how to read and implement the report ASAP

• Complete Guide: Here, you’ll learn in detail what the report shows you and why behind our recommendations on how to use it.

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Comparing a group with only two #1 hits to the greatest band of all time might cause some of you to get the vapors.

And yet, I’m here to argue that the Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me” launched for 80s kids what The Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Wand” did for American teens in 1964.

During the July 4^th holiday of 1982, “Don’t You Want Me” was the #1 song in the U.S.A. It kicked off a run of 23 different Top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 from synthesizer-based acts—most from the United Kingdom—during the next 18 months.

Rolling Stone magazine called this chart phenomenon “The Second British Invasion,” a term referencing the first British invasion when The Beatles legendarily opened the American charts to fellow British acts from The Rolling Stones and The Kinks to the Dave Clark Five and Herman’s Hermits.

At the time, it was even bigger than the first, with Rolling Stone noting:

[O]n July 16th, 1983, upon which date no fewer than 18 singles of British origin charted in the American Top Forty, topping the previous high of fourteen, set on June 18th, 1965. There are now more British records on the U.S. charts than at any other time in pop history.

They added…

Leading the charge has been that strange animal variously called “New Wave.”

Today, Graphs About Songs explores the explosion and disappearance of the genre that defines Eighties music, gave Generation X its own genre, and ultimately helped launch Alternative the following decade. While the press coining it “The Second British Invasion” stems superficially from the genre’s biggest acts’ U.K. citizenship, the comparison with the original British invasion runs deeper than you’d expect.

“Don’t Call It Punk”

No generation has been more flagrantly and unrestrictedly the target of marketing than Generation X. That’s true for the first music genre we alone embraced.

Sire Records’ Seymour Stein had brought punk to America with The Ramones. However, he was increasing frustrated with every act he repped that played CBGBs being called “punk.” He found the term personally derogatory, poor for marketing, and not a far description for innovative acts such as The Talking Heads, Blonde, and The Pretenders. These bands weren’t The Sex Pistols and there was no reason they shouldn’t be on the radio.

So in 1977, Stein launched the “Don’t Call It Punk” campaign to encourage use of the term “New Wave” for several of his artists. He copped the term from the French Nouvelle Vague (“New Wave”) film genre, which broke conventions of storytelling and cinematic editing. Stein felt his acts were similarly groundbreaking for music.

While Talking Heads were Stain’s idea of New Wave, the term Stein coined ultimately defined a subgenre of songs that was more Pop than Rock, more mainstream than experimental, and way more British than American.

The First New Wave Hits

Two titles became Top 10 hits before The Human League officially launched the New Wave Revolution.

1. In 1979, Robin Scott created a pseudonym for his synthesizer-based project. As “M”, he became a true U.S. one-hit wonder with the song “Pop Music.” It reached #1 on the Hot 100 in November 1979, foreshadowing the next decade’s Pop music

2. Gary Numan already had hits in the U.K. His group Tubeway Army reached #1 with “Are Friends Electric?” They weren’t acoustic. As a solo artist, he intentionally sought to make his former band’s sound more poppy and accessible, which he did with his first release “Cars,” which reached #1 in the homeland and #9 in the States in 1980.

(And for everyone astutely shouting, “where’s Devo’s 1980 inspirational manifesto ‘Whip It,’” that one peaked at #14.)

You’ll notice these songs peaked before August 1^st, 1981.

MTV fills the AM/FM radio void

The Buggles “Video Killed The Radio Star” famously launched the new cable channel playing music videos around the clock, although MTV wasn’t nearly as focused on new wave acts as we remember it. At first, they’d play anything with a video.

And there were a lot of British new have acts already making music videos.

Among younger viewers, MTV replaced radio as the place to discover new music. At that time, the glory days of the AM Top 40 stations that dominated the 60s and 70s were over, while many of the legendary FM hit music stations of the 80s hadn’t established themselves.

A prime example is New York: Muiscradio 77 WABC segued from Top 40 to an adult-oriented approach in 1980 before switching to Talk in May 1982—which radio fanatics call “The Day The Music Died.” Z100 wouldn’t launch as the new FM hit music station until August of 1983—famously taking the station “from worst to first” in 74 days.

During that gap, 14 new wave hits were Top 10 during that time—and the #1 place to discover them was MTV.

If you had a hit music station in the early 80s, they were catering to adults, not you and your fellow teens. A post-disco hangover left “hit” music stations playing Air Supply, Chriostopher Cross, and lots of Country crossover. Along with arena rock acts including REO Speedwagon and Journey.

By the time Contemporary Hit Radio (CHR) resurged on FM, it was thanks to the music MTV made popular. MTV was now calling the shots on new music. Radio was a follower.

The New Wave Explosion

On March 1, 1982, MTV launched its “I Want My MTV!” campaign. The phrase became so burned into the cultural zeitgeist I fully expect Xers at memory care facilities in the 2040s to randomly demand their MTV.

It wasn’t merely a clever slogan. It was a call to action for cable subscribers to contact their local cable TV provider and demand it add MTV to the lineup.

By that metric, it worked: MTV’s subscriber base grew from 3 million to 9 million Americans during 1982. That viewership growth caused another important change: In mid-1982, Record labels, seeing that MTV exposure boosted record sales, began producing music videos specifically to promote actively to MTV.

In the middle of “I Want My MTV” came a song with a video produced by Steve Barron, the producer Quincy Jones would soon recruit to create Michael Jackson’s video for “Beat It.” Barron would later create other genre-defining videos, including for A-Ha’s “Take On Me” and Dire Straits’ “Money For Nothing.”

As Stereogum senior editor Tom Breihan writes in his book The Number Ones:

The “Don’t You Want Me” Video had a sense of mystery, and that helped it stand out. MTV started playing the video before The Human League even had an American record deal. […] Other songs had capitalized on MTV success, [such as] Olivia Newton John’s frisky Dance Pop single “Physical.” […] But Newton-John was an established star. […] “Don’t You Want Me,” on the other hand, was pure MTV.”

After “Don’t You Want Me,” four New Wave songs topped the U.S. Hot 100 chart through 1983.

• Australia’s Men at Work scored two #1 hits with “Who Can It Be Now” and “Down Under,”

• Eurythmics had “Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This),

• The Irish band Dexys Midnight Runners topped the Hot 100 with “Come On Eileen.

Another 10 New wave hits reached the Top 5 from July 1982 through 1983, including three from Duran Duran. Some remain radio staples today, such as Spandau Ballet’s “True.” Others such as Kajagoogoo’s “Too Shy?” You just had to be there.

Even the Americans were getting in on the second British invasion: Talking Heads, the CBGBs band Seymour Stein invented “New Wave” to describe, had their first Pop hit with a song true to what the genre became with “Burning Down The House.”

The German Invasion

While the U.S. was newly obsessed with New Wave, Germans were embracing a new wave of their own: Neue Deutsche Welle (“New German Wave”) was a highly popular subgenre of songs that were often quirky, sometimes dark, and always auf Deutsch. Young Germans had predominantly embraced English-language Rock and Pop music since The Beatles. Neue Deutsche Welle was arguably the first mass-appeal youth genre of the Rock era that was both uniquely German and actually in German.

The Spider Murphy Gang’s “Skandal Im Sperrbezirk” sounds like catchy synth-Pop song, but the lyrics of “Scandal In The Red Light District” explore a Munich prostitute.

So strong was America’s New Wave obsession at its peak that we even imported German New Wave. Some of them even in German: Nena’s 1984 cold war classic “99 Luftballons” was a bigger hit than the English version. Falco’s “Rock Me Amadeus” first became a hit in German before a bastardized spoken word English version emerged.

Falco’s “Der Kommissar” became an English language hit thanks to a faithful reproduction by the U.K.’s After The Fire. Germany’s Taco made the 1920s Erving Berlin standard “Puttin’ On The Ritz” a New Wave hit.

(And for the astute asking about Peter Schilling’s “Major Tom (Coming Home),” that he recorded in both German and English… That one—like Whip It—peaked at #14).

New Wave declines—along with “Music” Television

After the 1985 New Wave crest, the wave quickly broke. The Pet Shop Boys had most of the last New Wave hits, with 1988’s remake of Willie Nelson’s “Always On My Mind” appropriately being the last.

The American Rock revenge—think Bon Jovi, Guns and Rosaes, and late 80s hair metal—quickly took over both MTV and hit music radio. (More on that below). Beyond the charts’ tops, however, The Smiths, The Cure, and New Order, helped create a growing youth subculture that ultimately made Alternative mainstream in the early 1990s.

In 1987, MTV launched the game show “Remote Control,” the first long form show on the network. Club MTV soon followed, which ditched the VJs for a more traditional approach to presenting music on TV akin to American Bandstand.

In 1992—the same year Alternative went mainstream—MTV launched The Real World. While it was revolutionary in creating the modern reality TV genre, it marked the end of MTV’s mission to be a Rock radio station on TV and instead be an adolescent entertainment network.

Five ways the British Invasion and the Second British Invasion are similar.

On February 9, 2027, you’ll likely see a blurb on socials from the news media commemorating the 63^rd anniversary of The Beatles’ appearance on The Ed Sullivan show—an event 40% of America watched live. There will be no celebrations of the first MTV airing of “Don’t You Want me.” And yet, both British Invasions are comparable in five key ways:

1) Both seemingly happened suddenly:

When the Beatles’ “I Want To Hold Your Hand” became a hit, the impact was so sudden Capitol Records wasn’t even ready to promote it. Before the Beatles, only two British artists had #1 hits in the U.S. during the Rock era.

Ultimately The Beatles unprecedentedly owned the entire Top 5 of the Hot 100 by April 1964. In their wake, the labels sent America every British band they had. The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Zombies, The Dave Clark Five, Peter and Gordon, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Manfred Mann, Chad & Jeremy, and The Searchers had major hits in 1964 alone.

This pattern eerily matches the New Wave genre. Only two New Wave songs had been Top 10 hits before 1982. Then—suddenly—New Wave dominated hit music.

2) Both burned bright and ended rapidly:

On April 23, 1966, for the first time since 1964, no British act appeared in the Hot 100’s Top 10. It was the beginning of the end for the British, invasion, largely considered dead by 1967. Likewise, The New Wave explosion waned dramatically in 1986 as music tastes changed. At its height, however, there were more British acts on the U.S. charts during the Second British Invasion than there were during the first.

3) Both were replaced by harder rocking American sounds:

Starting in 1967, American hit music tastes shifted back towards the homeland, with The Monkees, The Association, Tommy James and the Shondells and Aretha Franklin dominating the year’s biggest Pop hits. Meanwhile, Rock was becoming harder, with The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, and The Jimi Hendrix Experience becoming popular during the Summer of Love.

Likewise, the quirky mass appeal Pop sounds of New Wave gave way to American artists with harder edges, such as Bon Jovi and Guns ‘n’ Roses, British bands Def Leppard and Whitesnake copied the American style that defined the second half of the 1980s.

4) Both fundamentally changed the course of Pop music long after fading:

The Beatles ultimately spawned those 1970s Rock legends we now collectively call Classic Rock. Likewise, New Wave’s synthesizer-based experimentation and lyrical quirkiness opened a lane for artists such as The Smiths, The Cure, and The B-52s, as well as more underground artists such as The Sundays, Camper Van Beethoven, The Replacements, and They Might Be Giants. These artists helped create a growing youth subculture that ultimately made Alternative mainstream by the early 1990s.

5) Both marked when a new generation took control of picking the hits:

When The Beatles landed at JFK, the Boomers officially seized control of picking the hits from their older siblings the Silent Generation. That’s the generation too young to be World War II heroes and too old to be hippies. First, the Silents replaced Big Bands with intimate jazz combos and romantic crooners in the late 1940s, much like Gen Z has replaced EDM with Bedroom Pop in the 2020s. Next, they made Rock ‘n’ Roll America’s dominant youth music seemingly overnight when “Rock Around The Clock” hit #1 in 1955. In 1964, however, it was the Boomers’ turn to pick the hits—and they gave Elvis’ crown to the British.

For New Wave, it was Generation X taking over from the Boomers. Tired of The Eagles and the Arena Rock that dominated Album Rock radio, their new cable music video channel gave young Xers a new genre they embraced as their own.

At the peak of the New Wave evolution in 1983, a third of he Top 10 hits in a typical week were either New Wave, from Michael Jackson’s Thriller, or from Prince.

When will the next “New Wave” arrive?

Radio programming legend Guy Zapoleon has long observed a repeated pattern in Pop music: His famous music cycle theorem notes that after a “rebirth”, where Pop music is fun and broadly, music enters an “extreme” phase, in which Rock and R&B diverge into harder and less mass-appeal styles. Pop music then enters “the doldrums,” where boring, adult-oriented Pop and Country dominate until another rebirth.

(That’s happening right now, as I noted in When the Adults Pick the Hits.)

Both the 60s British Invasion and the 80s New Wave were “rebirth” periods. The emergence of Acid Rock in the late 1960s and Hair Metal in the late 1980s were “extreme” periods.

Zapoleon notes that we’re currently in the longest “doldrums” period since Top 40 radio emerged in the 1950s.

My own Generational Music Theorem observes that Pop music experiences a mass appeal renaissance around the time the oldest members of a new generation turn 21, becoming the majority of new music consumers and, thereby, picking a new style of hits that suit their generation’s tastes. Boomers did it with the Beatles. Xers did it with New Wave. We are overdue. for Generation Z to launch their own New Wave.

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Further Reading:

• The Number Ones: Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal the History of Pop Music by Tom Breihan, 2022: (Amazon link)

• Stereogum: “The Number Ones: The Human League's ‘Don't You Want Me’” by Tom Breihan: https://stereogum.com/2086575/the-number-ones-the-human-leagues-dont-you-want-me/columns/the-number-ones

• Stereogum: “The Number Ones: The Beatles' ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’” by Tom Breihan: https://stereogum.com/2000395/the-number-ones-the-beatles-i-want-to-hold-your-hand/columns/the-number-ones

Data sources for this article:

• The Billboard Hot 100: https://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100

• Wikipedia’s Billboard Hot 100 Top 10 singles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Billboard_Hot_100_top-ten_singles

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• Quick Use Guide: You just want to know how to read and implement the report ASAP

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Before diving in to today’s hits, the debut of Michael, the biopic about Michael Jackson, has brought several Jackson classics to the Spotify 200 for the first time:

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Justin Bieber Lovefest continues

Before diving into Today’s Hit Music, the Bieber lovefest launched by his Coachella performance continues for a second week. These Biebs Bring Backs are on the Spotify 200 this week:

With over 10 million plays this week, “Beauty And A Beat” is #3 most played song on Spotify in the U.S. this week.

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Sam Hunt’s “Body Like A Back Road” set many records on the Billboard Country charts, but its most significant milestone is entirely ignored: Hunt’s megahit was the first Country song to be huge on streaming. In 2017, music fans in general stopped buying their favorite songs on iTunes and began streaming them on Spotify and similar services instead, as I detailed in this article

However, most Country fans weren’t quite ready to ditch downloads, country radio, or even the CD aisle at Walmart.

“Body Like a Back Road” was the only Country song among Billboard’s chart of the most-streamed songs of 2017. Back then, Hip Hop—fueled by younger music fans early to adopt streaming—dominated streaming. Only one other Country song would be among the year’s most streamed songs for the rest of the decade.

It wasn’t until 2023 that Country titles lagged on streaming compared to the overall biggest songs of the year by less than 10 percentage points.

The following year (2024). Country fans were finally fully on board with streaming.

Unlike other contemporary genres such as Hip Hop or Pop, however, the artists Country fans stream is quite different than the artists Country fans hear on their local Country station.

Country Radio vs. Country Streaming:

This chart shows the County artists who landed on the Billboard year-end radio airplay chart during 2023-2025, showing the percentage of songs each artist had:

Forty-nine (49) different artists had at least one song among the 75 most-played songs on the radio during this three-year period, ranging from newcomers Jelly Roll and Bailey Zimmerman to longtime Country stalwarts such as Cole Swindell, Jason Aldean, and Thomas Rhett. Naturally, Morgan Wallen leads with 11% of all year-end hits from 2023 to 2025.

Things look very different when examining the Country songs fans stream most.

Just like on the radio, Morgan Wallen is the artist with the most titles among the 75 most-streamed songs of the year for the past three years. Unlike radio, where Wallen merely leads, on streaming, Wallen dominates: Almost four out of ten of the most-streamed Country songs are by Morgan Wallen.

In second place with 15% of all Country songs reaching the Billboard year-end streaming songs chart in 2023-2025 is an artist with no songs at all on the year-end radio airplay chart—Zach Bryan.

Combined, Morgan Wallen and Zach Byran account for the majority of the most-streamed Country songs each year.

Add in Luke Combs (11%) and Post Malone and Morgan Wallen’s “I Had Some Help” (among the most-streamed Country titles multiple years) and Morgan Wallen, Zach Bryan, and Luke Combs account for two-thirds of the Country songs that were among the 75 most-streamed songs of the year.

Given that Country is now on par with other genres on streaming, why have only 17 artists made Billboard’s top streaming songs of the year chart during the last three years, while 49 artists made the year-end radio airplay chart? Why are some artists big on streaming, but not on the radio, and vice versa?

There are three primary reasons.

1) Younger Country listeners are more likely to use streaming

Unlike Hip Hop and even mainstream Pop, Country appeals to the widest age range of any contemporary music genre: Your local Country station’s loyal listeners are just as likely to be 71 years old as 21 years old. Few septuagenarians are listening to today’s Hip Hop unless their grandchildren are picking the tunes.

Since the age of the genre’s fans aligns well with the age of the heaviest streaming users, Hip Hop and Pop songs that are massive on streaming accurately represent the biggest songs among Hip Hop and Pop fans. When a Pop song is huge on streaming, but MIA on your local Top 40 station, it’s because your town’s Kiss-FM is ignoring a hit. (I outlined this issue in The Hits Radio Ignored in 2025 and the Stiffs they Played Instead)

Country works differently.

The artists and songs younger listeners (18- to 34-year-olds) prefer dominate what’s most played on streaming platforms. That’s why Sam Hunt was the first artist with a major Country hit on streaming back in 2017.

Today, this phenomenon hugely benefits Morgan Wlallen.

Meanwhile, established artists such as Cole Swindell, Jason Aldean, Thomas Rhett, Blake Shelton, and Dierks Bentley still have plenty of fans who want to hear their songs on the radio but aren’t setting records on streaming. With their fans now largely adults 35 and older, there’s still plenty of appetite to hear them on the radio, but not as much demand to hear them among heavy streaming users.

2) Streaming provides a place for the misfits

Radio wasn’t sure what to do with Zach Bryan. His breakthrough hit “Something In The Orange” didn’t sound like a typical Country hit. Furthermore, Byran became a star outside of the traditional Nashville Industrial Complex, where Music Row executives work closely with America’s Country radio stations to determine which songs will become hits and which artists will become stars. (In exchange for radio’s cooperation, Country artists go out of their way to be accessible to Country radio listeners.)

Instead, Bryan signed with a non-Nashville label imprint, communicates directly with fans, eschews awards shows, and—most importantly—relies on high volume streaming instead of exposure on Country radio.

Will streaming’s direct to consumer model finally bring down the infamously closed Nashville system? Time will tell. At the very least, streaming provides a platform for Country partisans seeking alternatives to Music Row’s chosen.

3) The biggest fans use streaming like a record player

An artist’s biggest fans don’t simply listen to the one song radio is playing right now. They listen to all the songs on the latest release from their favorite artists when that new album drops. Morgan Wallen was the first major Country artist to use this fact to his advantage when releasing his 2021 album Dangerous: The Double Album with an unprecedented 30 tracks. His fans binged all of them.

Other songs benefit from long lifespans. Zach Bryan Featuring Kacey Musgraves

“I Remember Everything” from Zach Bryan Featuring Kacey Musgraves has been among the most-streamed songs of the year for the past three years. (It was the most-streamed song in the U.S. of any genre in 2024). When you love a song, you’ll play it for years.

That’s especially true for Country.

Unlike Pop or Hip Hop, where fans care about what’s “in” at the moment, Country fans connect with the song’s storyline and how it makes them feel. Country songs can stay relevant for years, not months. Nevertheless, radio is rightly concerned with playing a song too often once it’s old enough that at least some of their listeners are tired of hearing it.

Country is biggest on Amazon Music

I usually cite the Spotify 200 chart for streaming consumption here on Graphs About Songs. It’s the leading music streaming service in the U.S. and its user base is most representative of contemporary music fans across the nation.

If your day job involves picking Country hits, however, Amazon Music should be your reference of choice:

Just like Spotify, you’ll find plenty of Morgan Wallen, Luke Combs, Zach Bryan, and Ella Langley material among the most streamed songs on Amazon. However, you’ll also find Riley Green, Russell Dickerson, Cody Johnson, Eric Church, and Jelly Roll.

Why are a wider roster of Country stars popular on Amazon Music?

First, Amazon Music attracts an older user base, primarily because it’s the default music service on Alexa and is the path of least resistance for Prime members. Amazon Music has the highest percentage of subscribers aged 55 and older than any major streaming provider.

Secondly, Amazon Music has more aggressively pursued Country fans than other streaming services, including promotional partnerships with core artists. Most notably, Amazon is the only service where you can stream Garth Brooks.

(For the most complete information about any genre, it’s best to analyze aggregated data for all streaming music platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube music, and Amazon Music, as I do at my day job…)

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Data sources for this article:

• Billboard’s 2025 year-end charts: Hot 100 Songs: https://www.billboard.com/charts/year-end/2025/hot-100-songs/

• Billboard’s 2025 year-end charts: Streaming Songs (Top 75): https://www.billboard.com/charts/year-end/2025/streaming-songs/

• Billboard’s 2025 year-end charts: Radio Songs (Top 75): https://www.billboard.com/charts/year-end/2025/radio-songs/

• (Data from previous years’ Billboard Year End charts archived)

• Amazon Music Top Songs (Retrieved 4-21-2026): https://music.amazon.com/popular/songs

Here are resources to get you ready to use The Hit Momentum Newsletter:

• Quick Use Guide: You just want to know how to read and implement the report ASAP

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Read more

Here are resources to get you ready to use The Hit Momentum Newsletter:

• Quick Use Guide: You just want to know how to read and implement the report ASAP

• Complete Guide: Here, you’ll learn in detail what the report shows you and why behind our recommendations on how to use it.

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“2026’ is the new 2016.”

t’s been one of the hottest social media trends this year. All over Tik Tok, Instagram, and Facebook, people are sharing what their lives were like 10 years ago. They’re bringing back fashions, augmented with bright colorful Instagram filters popular at the time. They’re reliving viral trends of the time, such as the Mannequin Challenge.

And of course, they’re bringing back the music of 2016. Popular songs by Drake, The Chainsmokers, Fetty Wap, and The Weeknd are a major part of the Tik Tok 2016 soundtrack.

Lest you think this trend was inconsequential or short lived, consider the graph below: It examines the total number of weekly plays on Spotify in the U.S. for nine of the biggest songs of the #BringBack2016 trend, including “Closer” from The Chainsmokers & Halsey, The Weeknd and Daft Punk’s “Starboy” and Fetty Wap’s Trap Queen (from 2015):

• As soon as the trend started the first week of 2026, plays for these nine songs almost doubled.

• By the time the 2016 trend was in full swing, these songs’ weekly streaming had more than quadrupled.

• Even three months later, 2016 songs were still garnering more than double the plays they were getting in late 2015.

The Typical 20-Year Nostalgia Cycle

Nostalgia is a virus every generation eventually catches.

Boomers fully dove into remembrances of their 1960s youth in 1983 when The Big Chill hit theaters. The film about seven college friends gathering for a funeral, had a soundtrack featuring Motown classics including “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” “My Girl,” :The Tracks of My Tears”, Pop classics such as The Rascals’ “Good Lovin’” and “Joy to the World” by Three Dog Night, and the psychedelic anthem “A Whiter Shade of Pale.” From Procol Harum. By the end of the 1980s, every city in America had a Good Times and Great Oldies station with Big Chill songs in heaviest rotation.

Generation X isn’t immune to nostalgia, but we’re compelled to be ironic about it. During the mid-2000s, a new radio format erupted across Canada and then the U.S.: Jack-FM proclaimed it was “playing what we want,” but in reality, it was an 80’s focused Oldies station in disguise. It was playing what Gen X wants---music from their newly discovered youth nostalgia.

Both the Boomer Big Chill and Gen X Jack FM nostalgia occurred right around the time the heart of the respective generations reached age 35.

Millennials have now reached that magic age, too.

The 2K Throwbacks trend brings back Usher, Britney Spears, Nelly, 50 Cent, Linkin Park, Avril Lavigne, and Beyoncé for that first wave of Millennials now ready to relive their early 2000s youth.

These predictable nostalgia cycles lo back about 20 years.

In contrast, #BringBack2016 is looking back only ten years. And its people in their early and mid-twenties embracing their pasts, not folks in their 30s.

Why are these oldest members of Generation Z going retro ten years ahead of schedule?

To learn why, let’s go back 54 years to the last time America saw this trend:

“Where were You in ‘62?”

That’s the tagline of the 1973 blockbuster American Graffiti. The film rode a wave of longing for the late 1950s and early 1960s featuring the first wave of Rock ‘n’ Roll. “Rock Around The Clock” by Bill Haley and the Comets, 16 Candles” by the Crests, and The Beach Boys’ “Surfin’ Safari,” were among the Golden Oldies from the time before The Beatles soundtracking the film about teenagers enjoying one last night of cruising and drive-in freedom before adulthood’s pall inevitably hit.

The movie was an allegory for how America itself was about to change.

1962 was the last year before President Kennedy’s assassination, the Beatles usurping Elvis, Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech and the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham bringing Civil Rights to the forefront.

As the real sixties progressed:

• The sexual revolution overturned mores.

• U.S. involvement in Vietnam—and opposition to that involvement—escalated rapidly.

• Deadly riots erupted in Watts, Detroit, and Newark over the living conditions of our inner-city Black citizens.

• Dr. King was murdered.

• Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was murdered.

• Our own national guard murdered four young people at Kent State in Ohio.

Finally, right after American Graffiti became a surprise blockbuster, the 1973 oil crisis and newfound concerns about safety killed America’s muscle cars.

No 10-year-period of the 20^th century changed America’s culture more than the 1960s. However, living through rapid change—even overdue and positive changes—is exhausting.

Don McClean oblique recap of the era began with…

A long, long time ago, I can still remember how that music used to make me smile. And I knew if I had my chance, that I could make those people dance and maybe they’d be happy for a while.

The thing is, it wasn’t “a long, long time ago.” As Don McClean wrote the song, that moment before “the day the music died” was barely a decade old.

It wasn’t a short-lived fad, either.

From Happy Days on TV, Grease on Broadway, and “Crocodile Rock” on the radio, the early 1970s were rich with nostalgia for a time that seemed more familiar and forgiving.

The era also saw the launch of the first radio stations in major cities dedicated to playing old pop hits. Two of the biggest are still with us playing the classics today—albeit from the 80s and 90s, not the 50s and 60s:

In the early 70s, the adults in their mid-20s longing for their teens where the Silent Generation, the folks born just before the Boomers, the ones who came of age with Elvis Presley, not The Big Chill.

Let’s now go to what some are calling the last good year ever.

#BringBack2016

On November 2^nd 2016, just before midnight, the Chicago Cubs won their first World Series since 1908. It was a thrilling 10^th inning victory that energized our nation.

It was the last good thing to happen in America.

Six days later, defying all polling, Donald J. Trump secured an electoral college majority and became President in 2017. In the ensuing ten years, we’ve collectively experienced:

• Stark political division

• Fake news on social media

• 14 major mass shootings, including Uvalde Elementary School in Texas, the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Parkland High School in Florida, and the deadliest mass shooting in American history at a concert in Las Vegas.

• Wars and military actions in Ukraine, Gaza, Venezuela, Iran, and threats of invading Greenland. (That’s merely the ones the average American tracks.)

• A mob attacks the U.S. Capitol.

• Housing prices skyrocket, which while great news for older homeowners, has left young adults hopeless of ever owning their own home.

• The onslaught of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) and its threat to wipe out entire categories of jobs in an already shaky economy.

And of course, the pandemic. Stressful and scary for all of us—but our schoolchildren and college students lost the most from Zoom. School isn’t merely academic learning. It’s social learning. Those fun, awkward, and sometimes awful interactions help us understand how to be human.

Those students robbed of that formative experience are now the young adults fueling #BringBack2016.

This is Trauma Nostalgia.

The main difference between “Where Were You in ‘62” and #BringBack2016 is that 1963-1972 brought disrupted America’s values and social expectations, while 2017-2026 has disrupted America’s institutions and global order. As historian Neal Howe (whose work on generational cohorts I cite frequently) notes, the 1960s changed our inner world. The 2020s are changing our outer world.

The question is, will it last?

If #BringBack2016 is indeed analogous to Where Were You in ’62, brace yourself for mid-2010s remanences for the remainder of the 2020s.

What will those Gen Z kids listen to next?

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Date source for this post:

Spotify Charts (weeks of 1/3/2019 through 3/26/2026 for the USA): https://charts.spotify.com/charts/overview/us

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Some still do.

Back in the day, those discoveries rarely made it past a few friends gathered around the turntable unless the crate diver was in the mass media.

Nowadays, you can check out music you’ve never heard simply by opening the Spotify app. The real difference, however, is that you can now share the songs you find as Tik Tok memes. When those memes become viral trends, that unearthed song can reach millions.

Today on Graphs About Songs, we’re checking out those old classics that young people discovered recently. I’ve examined every song that reached the Spotify 200 chart in the U.S. from January 2025 through February 2026, tagging those songs released before this decade.

How do we know that younger adults are the ones streaming these songs? Because Spotify usage in the U.S. is biggest among younger Millennials and Generation Z: While older users are growing rapidly, the majority of Spotify users in 2026 are still under age 35:

Note that Spotify users are younger than music streaming users in the U.S. overall. Sixty (60%) of Apple Music listeners are 35 and older, compared to 44% of Spotify users. Amazon Music is even more popular with Boomers and Xers (45+).

(That’s why, at my day job helping contemporary radio stations pick the mass appeal hits, I use proprietary data combining all music streaming platforms. Here on Graphs About Songs, however, I generally cite Spotify because their data is freely available for you to access and analyze yourself.)

Note:

• I’ve removed songs that people only stream during holidays. That includes Christmas, obviously, but also includes classics fans now associate with Halloween, such as Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” or Independence Day, such as Bruce Springsteen’s “Born In The U.S.A.” If a song only appears in the Spotify 200 during a holiday week, I didn’t include it.

• I did include songs that retroactively became bigger hits in the 2020s than they were when they were new, such as “Running Up That Hill” from Kate Bush. I’ll note those songs when mentioned.

• I’ll compare these songs with the songs we examined in last year’s series, This year’s data covers January 2025 through Feburary 2026, while the data in last year’s articles covers January 2024 through February 2025

More classics, fewer currents, among the Spotify 200

The vast majority of streams among songs reaching the Spotify 200 are still for current songs from the 2020s. Since our last examination, though, the percentage of streams for pre-2020 songs has increased. Almost one in five plays is for a song from a previous decade.

Streaming of 1990s and 2000s classics increases

That growth stems from songs released between 1990 and 2010, the formative years for many Millennials. In contrast, streaming of songs from the previous decade (2010-2019) has declined in the last year.

What songs from the 1990s and 2000s are fans streaming? Not the Hip Hop and 2K throwbacks you might expect…

Alternative Classics are Huge—but not the ones you think

Almost half (47%) of all streams for pre-2020 classics are for Alternative songs, followed by Pop and Hip Hop.

However, the classics fans play from each genre aren’t from the eras you’d expect:

• The 1990s: Alternative classics dominate the 1990 from Nirvana, Radiohead, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Surprisingly, none of the foundational Hip Hop songs from this decade reached the Spotify 200.

• The 2000s, In a decade often remembered for Crunk ‘n’ B, Alternative classics dominate as well, specifically from artists that were the soundtrack of Millennials’ formative years; Coldplay, Linkin Park, Three Days Grace and Empire Of The Sun. Meanwhile, Kanye West leads for Hip Hop. The only Crunk Classic reaching the Spotify 200 is Yeah! From USHER feat. Lil Jon & Ludacris.

• The 2010s: This decade reflects Generation Z’s old favorites. For Alternative, that’s largely from Indie artists such as TV Girl and Cigarettes After Sex. For Hip Hop—for which the 2010s accounts for more streams than any previous decade—the leading artists are Generation Z stars Fetty Wap, Drake, Kendrick Lamar, Tyler, the Creator, and XXXTENTACION.

What songs have Spotify listeners revived from each decade?

1960s: One final hit for a forgotten Pop icon

Only three songs from the 1960s reached the Spotify 200 recently, including perennial favorites “Brown Eyed Girl” from Van Morrison and CCR’s “Fortunate Son”.

The other song reached the Spotify 200 for only one week in May 2025. It’s from an artist who hasn’t been on the radio in decades, even on Oldies stations that still play 60s tunes. According to calculations from radio consultant and music guru Sean Ross, this artist had more hits disappear from the radio than any other 1960s artist. Despite 15 Top 10 hits on the Hot 100 in her day, her recently unearthed classic wasn’t one of them. It was an obscure album cut before album cuts mattered.

Connie Francis’ “Pretty Little Baby” went viral last year as the soundtrack for Tik Toks about cute or nostalgic things like babies, pets, or outfits. Celebrities including Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian pushed the meme.

Connie Francis died in July 2025, just two months after “Pretty Little Baby” because a meme soundtrack. I hope she enjoyed returning to cultural relevance and having one more hit on the Hot 100.

1970s: A hitmaker urges you to touch grass

Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” remains the most-played 70s song on Spotify. It’s been on the chart every week since January 2025, peaking as high as #11. Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Have You Ever Seen The Rain,” Hall & Oates’ “Rich Girl,” and fall favorite “September” from Earth, Wind & Fire also still are regularly among Spotify’s 200 most played songs.

Fans are now going deeper into Fleetwood Mac’s catalog: Both “The Chain” and “Landslide” have regularly reaching the Spotify 200 since summer 2025, while “Silver Springs” began charting in January 2026.

Ozzy Osbourne’s death generated new streaming for three Black Sabbath songs, including “Paranoid,” which spent five weeks in the Spotify 200.

The 1979 original single version of The Cure’s “Boys Don’t Cry” is now reaching the Spotify 200 thanks to Tik Tok memes and bolstered by the re-release of the 1986 version on vinyl.

The biggest unearthing of a 70s song recently is Billy Joel’s “Vienna.” The album track from Joel’s 1977 album The Stranger is loosely based on his dad who left the family and moved to Vienna. Joel stated in 2008:

“you don’t have to squeeze your whole life into your 20s and 30s trying to make it, trying to achieve that American dream, getting in the rat race and killing yourself. You have a whole life to live. I kind of used ‘Vienna’ as a metaphor, there is a reason for being old, a purpose”

Congruent with Joel’s intentions, Tik Tokers are using “Vienna” in videos about slowing down, enjoying a nostalgic memory, and taking care of your mental health.

1980s: Nothing Strange about reviving this classic

Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’,” “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” from Tears for Fears, and Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” remain the most-streamed songs from the 80s on the U.S. Spotify 200. TOTO’s “Africa” and Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl” also remain mainstays.

Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” returned for a month following his death.

Randy Travis’ “Forever and Ever, Amen,” also began making occasional appearances among Spotify’s 200 biggest songs in 2025, now that Country fans have fully embraced streaming.

However, most of the 80s songs that recently surged in streaming can all thank Stranger Things: ‘ After becoming a bigger hit in 2022 than it originally was in 1985, Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” rejoined the Spotify 200 for seven weeks starting in late 2025 because of the show’s finale. The Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go” reached the Spotify 200 for the first time ever after the finale.

But the Stranger Things song that received the most interest was also the song that was the biggest hit in its time: Prince’s “Purple Rain.”

1990s: A posthumous legend

Alternative Classics dominate the songs fans stream most form the 1990s The most-streamed 90s song is The Goo Goo Dolls’ “Iris,” a Pop smash from an (originally) Alternative band that’s become the go-to track to evoke 90s nostalgia. “Iris” is second only to Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” as the most-streamed classic on Spotify.

The 90s song listeners unearthed this past year isn’t from one of the decade’s alternative hitmakers. Instead, it’s from an artist who only released one album before he drowned in a Tennessee river in 1997:

Fans first discovered Jeff Buckley’s interpretation of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” (Buckley’s version is based on John Cale’s reimagining of the song.) The next track on the album Grace, “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over” has become a standard for Tik Toks evoking sentimental, romantic, and heartbreak.

2000s: An early hit from a 21^st century superstar

Historically, The Killers’ Mr. Brightside was the most played classic from this decade. It’s as big among Millennials as “Don’t Stop Believin’” is among Xers. This past year crowed a new 2000s Spotify Streaming king: Arctic Monkeys’ “505” has grown even bigger than the perennial Killers’ classic, now the 2^nd most played song from the 00s on Spotify.

Rihanna’s “Breakin’ Dishes,” Nelly Furtado and Timbaland’s “Promiscuous” “Bring Me To Life from Evanescence, and the CVS staple “Unwritten” by Natasha Bedingfield remain popular.

The biggest song Spotify users have rediscovered from the decade is an Indie song that hardly anyone noticed when it was released in 2008: She & Him’s “I Thought I Saw Your Face Today” is now streaming as if it were a brand-new current hit. It reached the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time in late 2025, 17 years after its release. Of course it’s a Tik Tok thing, with users pairing the song with TV and film clips to evoke a sentimental vibe.

2010s: Generation Z’s biggest Classics aren’t on FM radio

Just as The Killers’ Mr. Brightside has become an all-time favorite among Millennials, Generation Z’s equivalent is The Neighbourhood’s “Sweater Weather” from 2013. Like “Mr. Brightside,” “Sweater Weather” was originally an Alternative hit that ultimately went mainstream. Unlike “Mr. Brightside,” you didn’t—and still won’t—hear “Sweater Weather” on mass-appeal Pop radio.

After its original run, “Sweater Weather” first became a coded social media signifier for bisexual teenagers. It has since grown larger than that audience. Every fall, Spotify streams surge when the weather gets cold enough to---uh—wear sweaters.

The other song that’s a Generation Z stalwart is 2015’s “See You Again” from Tyler, The Creator featuring Kali Uchis.

Bruno Mars’ recent hits have revived interest in seven of his biggest 2010 hits, including “Locked out of Heaven “, “That’s What I Like,“ and,“ Just the Way You Are,”

There’s also a lot of listening to the songs Gen Zers enjoyed around 2016. Some artists’ songs have surged thanks to 2016 nostalgia, such as The Weeknd, Fetty Wap, and The Chainsmokers. Other artists from the era, including Frank Ocean, Kendrick Lamar, and TV girl, have been perennial presences in the Spotify 200 for years. As you’ll see below, there’s no love for the last two years of the decade:

The 2010s song listeners have revived as a current hit is from an artist who currently has new music on Top 40 radio, where you’d typically hear her 2025 releases “Crush” or “Midnight Sun”. But the song from this artist that’s blowing up recently on Spotify is a 2015 song this artist has revived at her European concerts: Zara Larsson’s “Lush Life.”

Recently, a video of a fan on stage flawlessly performing the dance moves for “Lush Life” went viral. That moment launched the song back into the Top 10 globally and also taps into 2016 nostalgia. For the week ending March 12, 2026, fans streamed “Lush Life” 25% more often than “Midnight Sun,” her current hit your local Top 40 station is playing,

Want to stay on top of what the kids are digging these days?

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Date source for this post:

Spotify Charts (weeks of 1/3/2019 through 2/26/2026 for the USA): https://charts.spotify.com/charts/overview/us

Here are resources to get you ready to use The Hit Momentum Newsletter:

• Quick Use Guide: You just want to know how to read and implement the report ASAP

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Here are resources to get you ready to use The Hit Momentum Newsletter:

• Quick Use Guide: You just want to know how to read and implement the report ASAP

• Complete Guide: Here, you’ll learn in detail what the report shows you and why behind our recommendations on how to use it.

Read more

“From 1976 to 1984, the radio airwaves were dominated by really smooth music, also known as Yacht Rock.”

With those words, music critic “Hollywood” Steve Huey accidentally—and retroactively—created a genre.

Yacht Rock started in 2005 as a mockumentary from J.D. Ryznar, Hunter Stair, Lane Farnham, and David Lyons, with commentary from AllMusic’s Hollywood Steve. It chronicles the ludicrously (mostly) fictional backstories of Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins, Christipher Cross, Toto, and their brethren artists’ quest for smooth music.

The plotlines were perverse, but their appreciation for smooth music was genuine.

A subgenre hiding in plain sight

In the early 2000s, Ryznar regularly invited friends over to grill out and listen to old records. After a Steely Dan bender, Ryznar was obsessed with west coast influenced studio-driven soft rock popular during the Carter Administration. As Ryznar told Rolling Stone:

You know, like Michael McDonald is singing background vocals and like there’s guys on boats on the covers; it feels like you’re on a yacht listening to it. And the guys were like, oh, we know this music.

A quarter century ago, that smooth soft rock from the late 70s was woefully uncool—and they knew it. Huey explains to Rolling Stone:

I turned 30 right before we started doing the series, and I thought, […] What do 30-year-olds do? I feel like it’s time I get into Steely Dan. […] This is my new identity. I’m gonna unwind, start listening to Steely Dan, and leave parties early.

Originally, they submitted Yacht Rock to Channel 101, a non-profit short film festival where a live audience in Los Angles votes to renew or cancel your “TV” show. They did 10 episodes, a good run for the contest.

That would have been the end of it had it not been for something else that came along in 2005… YouTube.

Yacht Rock becomes a thing

As YouTube grew, new fans discovered those original 10 Yacht Rock episodes there. The fame of the genre they found hiding in plain sight entered its own orbit.

• In 2007, members of an Atlanta indie band formed the Yacht Rock Revue to perform covers of the songs on the show.

• In 2015, SiriusXM launched their Yacht Rock Radio channel.

• In 2024, Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary debuted on HBO MAX, chronicles the rise of the smooth sound.

Some artists, such as Michael McDonald, credit the Yacht Rock trend for reviving their careers. Others, such as Steely Dan’s Donald Fagan, reject it in the most Donald Fagan manner imaginable.

In 2016—a decade after the original Yacht Rock mockumentary series—its creators regrouped to host the Beyond Yacht Rock 2000 podcast, discussing both Yacht Rock and other retroactively concocted subgenres, including Regressive Rock, Divorcecore, Camero Summer, and Hobbit Metal.

The Genre Everyone Thinks They Know

While many have now heard of Yacht Rock, few truly understand it.

Yacht Rock is not merely any soft rock from the late 70s and early 80s. It’s a specific subgenre of smooth music, created by a tight-knit group of formally trained west coast studio musicians obsessed with musical perfection. It’s sophisticated, but it’s still Pop music. It’s smooth, but it grooves.

• It’s not the acoustic folk of James Taylor, Gordon Lightfoot, or Cat Stevens.

• It’s not the Quiet Storm balladry of Phillys Hyman, Teddy Pendergrass or Anita Baker.

• It’s not the British Sophisti-pop of Joe Jackson, The Style Council or Roxy Music.

• It’s not Pop-Jazz of Chuck Mangione or Herb Albert

It’s also not about boats.

Myriad “Yacht Rock” playlists include Brandy” by Looking Glass, “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” from Rupert Holmes, and Bertie Higgons’ “Key Largo,” only because they’re songs with nautical or beach themes. It’s music you would play on your yacht, not music about your yacht. (They later created Marina Rock to distinguish it.)

And it absolutely, positively is NOT Jimmy Buffet.

“Yacht” conjures highbrow sophistication, not Destin, Florida.

Having grown tired of hearing their retronym soiled by these songs, the Yacht Rock inventors created the Yachtski Scale. On their aforementioned podcast, and now on the “Yacht or Nyacht” podcast, they rate songs on a scale of 1 to 100.

Above 50 is “Yacht,” 49 and below is “Nyacht”.

Because anyone worth their Yacht has loved a good spreadsheet since VisiCalc, they’ve conveniently created one for us with every song they’ve rated at: www.yachtornyacht.com.

The quintessential Yacht Rock song is “What A Fool Believes” by The Dobbie Brothers, which all four creatures rated a perfect 100. Kenny Loggins’ “This Is It,” (98.25) Christopher Cross’ “Sailing” (94.5) and Toto’s “Africa” (93.0) are also “essential” Yacht Rock.

In contract, “Peaceful Easy Feeling” (1.25) and “Best Of My Love” (1.50) by The Eagles, America’s “Sister Golden Hair,” (5.25) and Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville (2.75) define what is “Nyacht” Rock.

The Yacht Rock creators retroactively outlined these six criteria for determining whether a song belongs in the genre they also retroactively created:

1. “Was it released from 1976 to 1984? “These years represent the period when the prime purveyors of Yacht Rock were active and popular. By this period, recording technology advancements facilitated the technical precision and sophistication that defined Yacht Rock’s quality reputation.

2. “Does it musically acknowledge the existence of Black people?” While most Yacht Rock icons are white, their music has R&B and Jazz influences. Michael McDonald’s music incorporates St. Louis soul. Country Rock such as the Eagles lacks this element. “It’s a groove, not a Hippie campfire singalong.”

3. “Is this song more complex than your typical Pop song?” Listening to The Doobie Brothers’ “What A Fool Believes” is effortless, but playing it is notoriously difficult. Real Yacht Rock exhibits musical sophistication that the typical disco hit of the era lacks.

4. Did specific L.A. studio musicians play on the song? That short list includes Jeff Porcaro, the drummer who worked with Steely Dan and dozens of Jazz and Rock legends before forming Toto along with his brother Steve and guitarist Steve Lukather, as well as “Skunk” Baxter, guitarist for Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers. Others include drummer Steve Gadd and Guitarist Jay Graydon, vocalists Bill Champlin and Patti Austin, and producers David Foster and Quincy Jones. (And if there’s a saxophonist, it damn well better be David Sanborn). If you were smooth enough for Steely Dan, you probably helped create Yacht Rock.

5. “Are the lyrics of this song a little jaded?” This upbeat music often belies stories of lovesick fools on the verge of relationship meltdown.

6. “Is It Pop Music?” The era’s Jazz fusion that would later become New Age (and devolve into Smooth Jazz) is soulful and sophisticated, but Pat Metheny, Chick Corea, and Herbie Hancock weren’t making three-minute ditties you could sing in the shower. Neither were balladeers of The Quiet Storm such as Teddy Pendergrass or Phyllis Hyman. Yacht Rock is meant to be mass appeal.

These six criteria clarify why songs like Seals and Crofts’ “Summer Breeze” and “Diamond Girl, from the early 70s, “She’s Gone” and “Sara Smile” from Philadelphia Soul inspired Hall & Oates, and Scotsman Gerry Raffarty’s “Baker Street,” are not, in fact, Yacht Rock, despite their omnipresence on Yacht Rock playlists.

Now that we’ve clarified what Yacht Rock is and is not, let’s get into what we’re here to do to music: reduce it to PowerPoint charts.

Quantifying Yacht Rock

At last count, The Yacht Rock certified Playlist J.D. Ryznar curates on Spotify has 885 songs that officially make the boat. You’ve probably never heard most of them. (But if you do know Airplay’s “Nothin’ You Can Do About It” or Maxus; “Nobody’s Business,” you have my respect.)

I’ve cross-referenced all the songs with Yacktski scores from 50 to 100 with the Billboard Hot 100 chart, as well as the Adult Contemporary and Album Airplay charts, to determine how many real Yacht Rock songs are also real hits.

#1: There are only about 77 real Yacht Rock hits

Professionally, Steve Reynolds is a talent coach for morning radio personalities. On Facebook, however, he’s known for his barbed accusations against Sirius/XM’s Yacht Rock Radio for playing songs that either aren’t Yacht Rock or aren’t familiar hits.

Many prominent radio programmers are sailing with Steve on his journey.

Here’s the challenge: There are only 77 Yacht Rock songs that were hits.

• 56 were Top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100

• 19 were Top 40 hits that peaked at #11 or below but were bigger hits on Adult Contemporary or Album Rock stations.

• 2 weren’t released as singles and, therefore, were never on the Hot 100, but were album tracks that album rock radio plays a lot.

You likely heard those songs that weren’t Top 10 hits on your mom’s Soft Rock station or your dad’s Album Rock station.

Casey Kassem officially counted down 75 Yacht Rock hits.

77 songs simply aren’t enough to sustain a radio station around the clock. It’s barely seven hours of music. Even the most annoyingly repetitive Classic Hits station has around 250-300 songs on its playlist.

That’s why attempts to make Yacht Rock a traditional radio format either add compatible Nyacht songs from the era or dive into the deep tracks nobody knows.

#2: Yacht Rock hits were huge mass-appeal hits

Just because there aren’t a lot of real Yacht Rock hits doesn’t mean those hits weren’t popular.

Many were massive.

• 10 of the songs scoring 50-100 on the Yachtski scale were #1 hits, including The Doobie Brothers’ What A Fool Believes,” Christopher Cross’ “Sailing,” and Toto’s “Africa.”

• Another 9 songs only reached #2, but spent 10 or more weeks in the Top 10 (a long run in Billboard’s pre SoundScan era), including Toto’s “Rosanna,” “Baby Come Back” from Player, and “Just the Two of Us” from Grover Washington Jr. & Bill Withers.

A lot of fans remember these songs because of the many years they were mainstays on “the station the whole office can agree on.” While Yacht Rock today is a subgenre of “Soft Rock,” most Yacht Rock classics were bona-fide Top 40 Pop hits when they were current.

• Only about 17% of the Yacht Rock hits were predominantly hits on Adult Contemporary radio when new

• Almost as many (13%) were big hits on Album Oriented Rock.

• As soulful as many Yacht Rock hits are, only 4% were predominantly R&B hits.

#3: 1980 was peak Yacht Rock

The graph below shows the percentage of Top 10 hits in a typical week each year were bona-fide Yacht.

Peak Yacht was 1980, when 15% of the biggest songs were on the boat. You couldn’t leave your house in 1980 without hearing “”Ride Like the Wind” from Christopher Cross, or his aforementioned “Sailing, Ambrosia’s “Biggest Part of Me”“ Steal Away” from Robbie Dupree (flagrantly ripping off that Doobie Bounce from “What A Fool Believes), or George Benson’s “Give Me the Night”

14 different Yacht Rock classics reached the Hot 100 in 1980, more than any other year.

In the two graphs above, you can clearly see how Smooth music sank after 1983 once MTV-era New Wave took over the charts.

#4: There are only 20 “Essential” Yacht Rock Hits

Technically, there are 23, since I included three Steely Dan album cuts that Rock stations played heavily at the time.

Ignoring “Black Cow,” “Deacon Blues,” and “Kid Charlemagne” (which I would never advise you to do in your own life), there are only 20 songs the Yacht Rock creators deem “essential,” with a 90+ Yachtski score. However, most of those 20 songs were massively popular:

• 12 were Top 10 Pop hits: Four of them were #1s, including “What a Fool Believes”, “Sailing”, “Africa” and Patti Austin and James Ingram’s “Baby, Come to Me” Other Top 10s include Toto’s “Rosanna” (#2), “Love Will Find a Way” from Pablo Cruise #6), and “I Keep Forgettin’ (Every Time You’re Near)” from Michael McDonald (4)

• 7 were Adult Contemporary hits: Kenny Loggins’ “Heart to Heart,” Christopher Cross’ “Never Be The Same”, and “Mornin’” from Al Jarreau didn’t make the Hop 100’s Top 10, but they’re among the songs that were Top 3 hits on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart. (By the way… if you spent your childhood horrified at Jarreau’s biracial slur he’s singing, “sister Oriole.” I am relieved to know he merely thinks he’s related to a bird.)

• 1 was a Rock hit: “Peg” from Steely Dan’s Aja album peaked at #11 on the Hot 100 but was huge on album-oriented Rock radio.

Meanwhile at the stern are those Yacht Rock songs that barely made it on board. There are almost as many bona-fide hits that are barely Yacht Rock, with a Yachtski Score between 50 and 60, than there are songs that are “essential Yacht Rock”

Some of those songs that even the Yacht Rock arbiters aren’t sure should be on board include:

• “Proto Yacht Rock: “How Long” by Ace (1975) and Steely Dan’s “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” (1974) predate Yacht Rock, but point towards its ascendance.

• Not from the scene: They have parts of the sound, but lack connections to the west coast musicians at its core, including Canadian Gino Vannelli’s “I Just Wanna Stop” and “”Living Inside Myself”, as well as “Reminiscing” from Australia’s Little River Band.

• Doesn’t have the sound: On the other hand, these artists are connected to the scene, but the songs barely have the sound, such as “Hold The Line” from Toto and Bill Withers’ “Lovely Day.”

#5: There’s no correlation between a song’s Yachtiness” and its Chart Performance

The chart below plots the 56 songs that were both above 50 on the Yachski Scale and Top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100.

• How far a song is from left to right reflects its Yacht score (right=Yacht)

• How far a song is from bottom to top reflects its weeks in the Top 10 (Top=Longer)

For context,

• Toto’s Rosanna is on the far upper right because its the combination of the most Yachty and the most weeks in the Top 10. (Very Yacht + Big Hit)

• Meanwhile, the Captain & Tennille’s “You’ve Never Done It Like That Before” is the lowest combination of Yachtiness and the fewest weeks in the Top 10. (Barely Yacht + Lesser Hit)

Does a song’s relative Yachtiness impact its performance as a Pop hit?

Nope.

If it did, those dots above would cluster around a line showing a corollary trend. The correlation factor between these two metrics is “0.03,” indicating a high Yacht Score neither helps nor hurts a song’s longevity on the charts.

Today’s article is brought to you by my day job, providing custom analysis of local music streaming that’s more accurate, less delayed, and way cheaper than old-school callout:

Why is Yacht Rock suddenly so popular?

Every generation reaches a point in life where it collectively gains newfound appreciation for its parents.

Two decades ago, many Boomers, who wouldn’t have been caught dead listening to their parents’ music in the sixties, suddenly discovered the Great American Songbook. (I discovered my own dad, who at last check had been into John Lee Hooker, playing Peggy Lee.)

They were the ones buying all those Rod Stewart Standards’ albums.

Generation X has reached that age.

Suddenly, those memories of hearing The Doobie Brothers, Kenny Loggins, and Christopher Cross as little kids in the back seat when Mom switched the radio to her station are a lot more precious than they seemed at the time.

Of course, when Gen Xers get nostalgic, we’re obligated to do it ironically

The Boomers originally made those smooth soft rock songs popular in the late 70s and early 80s. They’re now well into their 70s. t’s their kids, who heard this music as grade-schoolers and are now in their 50s, who are largely fueling the Yacht Rock resurgence.

Plus, one very cool pre-teen in Iowa…

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Data sources for today’s article:

• Yacht or Nyacht? https://www.yachtornyacht.com/

• The Billboard Hot 100: https://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100

• The Billboard Adult Contemporary (Easy Listening) chart: https://www.billboard.com/charts/adult-contemporary/

• The Billboard Hot Soul Singles (now the R&B/Hip Hop Songs) chart:

  https://www.billboard.com/charts/r-b-hip-hop-songs/

• Radio & Records Album Airplay chart: https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Music/Radio_and_Records.htm

• Wikipedia’s Billboard Hot 100 Top 10 singles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Billboard_Hot_100_top-ten_singles