Introduction

As I grew older, the lists I would create would become opinion based and as the world of pop culture expanded I would find lists reflecting its growth.  Often, if something was labeled as the “best” of something by a certain publication or television network, than that it was it became; even though it could not be proven by fact and just opinion, or more specifically, the viewpoint of whatever individual or group were tasked with that responsibility for that organization.

Lists have become a staple of pop culture, and a great example of this is Rolling Stone Magazine, which is the most recognized music publication in the world. When they declared in December of 2004 that Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone” the greatest rock & roll song of all time, it made headlines.[1] VH1’s most enjoyable shows were their list generated shows. AFI (the American Film Institute) makes millions offering their opinion on not just their favorite films, but also the moments within them.

And you know what? Lists work every time.

Pop culture is more fun to debate than politics, and though the former is far less important in the grand scheme of things the fact remains that in the last sixty years whomever is the top of the musical food chain would be more recognizable and more talked about in homes across America than whoever was the President of the United States. Insert sports in place of pop culture and that would definitely be true in bars.

Ranking the top forty-four past Presidents of the United States in terms of how they dealt with foreign policy might make for a very interesting history book, it never ignites as much passion as who was the most influential movie director in the 1970’s and I am sure you can go in multiple bars across the country to test that theory for yourself.[2]

Going back to lists, it was the love of creating lists, and for that matter going into bars that led to the creation of a website I began in mid-2009 called Notinhalloffame.com. The year before in what was then one of my favorite watering holes I had a Jack Daniels[3] and Diet Coke in my hand and the conversation shifted from the woes of the Toronto Maple Leafs to the announcement of the 2008 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction class, which was to be headlined by Madonna.

Now allow me to paint a picture of this fine drinking establishment. It was frequented by an older “jean jacket” set which comprised of people that would dance to Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll”, and have the ability to mouth the lyrics. As you may have determined, the lightning rod that year was Madonna’s induction, and the beer fueled bellowing of “She’s not rock & roll!” only got louder as I chimed in letting them know that Deep Purple, Alice Cooper, Kiss, Rush, Genesis and Yes were not inducted.[4]

Now as I watched this unfold I kept to myself the opinion that Madonna absolutely belonged, especially based on who was already in, and that the definition of “rock & roll” is ambiguous at best. You have to understand that this bar, while although was not necessarily in my demographic in terms of a wide scope of musical appreciation, did make the best grilled calamari in a fifty kilometer radius and would always put one of the televisions on the NBA instead of the NHL, which was huge as I am one of the rare Canadians who watches a lot more basketball than hockey. Trust me, finding a sports bar north of the U.S./Canada border that will do that isn’t easy so when you find one you tend to overlook a lot of the drunken uncles in jeans that were older than the servers.

This is also a good time to establish that, yes I am a Canadian, and while I am speaking on a topic that predominantly focuses on American pop culture I will on occasion be discussing this while wearing “red and white” colored glasses with a lens that is in its early 40’s. I can’t help it as where we come from, who we grew up with, and what was regionally relevant at the time will naturally reflect cultural perception, so if I make the occasional reference that seems a little “north of the border” you now know where it is coming from…now back to that small sports bar west of Toronto.[5]

Watching this all unfold, I had a bit of an epiphany, actually two, as the first one was that I needed a refill on my Jack. The second was that I was going to create my own list of those who were not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and attempt to rank them in order of their worthiness.

Initially, I enlisted a few other people to help me and we came up with about 100 acts that seemed like they belonged in the Rock Hall, but as I tend to do with lists, I allowed it to take on a life of its own. There were already blogs out there that talked about who they felt should be inducted, and some would rank them, but I didn’t see any that went to 100. Since nobody went to 100, why not go a few steps further and rank 500, allow people to vote on those acts and revise it annually based on votes and comments accrued, removing inducted acts and inserting new artists who became Hall of Fame eligible.[6]

This would become the genesis of Notinhalloffame.com, which would later expand to annually rank those not in the Baseball, Basketball, Pro Football, NASCAR, Hockey and WWE Halls of Fame.[7] After watching others (and essentially myself) debate those Halls of Fame in various platforms, I decided to create my own Halls of Fame, based on the pop culture that I found myself to have become a disciple of.

In 2013 and 2014 respectively, the Fictitious Athlete Hall of Fame and the Fictitious Rock and Roll Hall of Fame were launched, which as the name suggests, allows online voters to decide who are the greatest fictional characters in the world of sports and music, and though that became a large focus I never forgot about the Rock Hall and music history in general as there was an “itch” (i.e.: a list) generated from the original site origins that had yet to be scratched.

But let’s go back to other prominent pop culture lists first, shall we?

So when Rolling Stone said that Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” was the greatest rock & roll Song of all time, does that mean that it is?

No, what it means is that a very successful musical publication that has a large amount of influence in that realm believes that to be true. That doesn’t even mean that everyone who works there thinks that, just people who can afford the nicest suits there do.

Now, while I do like that song, and have that and the rest of the album on my I-Phone, by no means have I ever said or thought that “Like a Rolling Stone” was the greatest rock song ever.[8] Actually, that answer varies depending on what day you catch me, what my mood is, and what I have been listening to in the last twenty-four hours.[9]

Regardless of what you think is the greatest Rock and Roll song of all-time is, pouring through that list, or any other opinion based pop culture list naturally makes even the most casual music fan go into debate mode. It’s Pavlovian really.

Songs, which are generally four minutes in length, can cause automatic disagreement. Think about it, every time you are in the car with someone else on a road trip, especially if it is with someone from a different generation, if you have the music on, you will inherently refer to one song as “crap” while your vehicular companion will say the same about a tune that you think is genius.

Personally, I go through that scenario every day, as my wife despises songs that I find brilliant are ones that she finds dull. Conversely, I find that she seems to only like songs that are happy and cheery and have a catchy beat. In her mind she’s right, and in my mind I am, but at no point in the decades more we will be married that we will ever agree on music, and thus an audio chasm as large as the Grand Canyon will have to remain in our household.[10]

Saying all of that, that “itch” I was talking about earlier was a look at the Billboard #1 songs weekly in the United States of America.

As a kid, I would listen to weekly countdowns on the radio, waiting to see if my favorite songs would climb the chart or if songs I found for lack a better word, sucked, were doing well. The understanding as a kid wasn’t too far from what it really was; if a song was on the top of the chart it was listened to often and sold well to the public, though that didn’t necessarily mean it was good; only that enough people thought it was good enough to spend money on.

As I got older, I paid less attention to the Billboard countdown and was exploring genres of music that had little to no representation on those charts. However, a lot of those memories of those Billboard lists came flooding back a few years ago as I conducted the initial research on the Notinhalloffame.com Rock & Roll rankings, specifically on a list I saw of songs that became number one throughout the years on the American Hot 100.

Two very distinct things became clear:

1: Many of the songs that went number one had little cultural impact and are forgotten today.

2: Many songs that are considered iconic or legendary based on critical opinion did not hit number one or even come close to the top ten.

How the hell does that happen?

It is actually very common as when you look at the two other huge veins in pop culture, films and television, there are not nearly as many films or television programs that went to number one that have the feel of being a throwaway as we have in the music industry.

This isn’t exactly a scientific statement and though I acknowledge that I have not researched every number one rated weekly television show or box offices gates from the films (though maybe that will be my next giant project), I can’t imagine that there are nearly as many number ones (or at the very least percentage wise) in those fields that have virtually no pop cultural significance that number one songs do.

Not only that, the discrepancy of songs, or even musical acts that never hit the top spot that are considered culturally significant are a much higher percentage than those of television and film. Almost all of the top actors that you can think of off the top off your head, or at least the most iconic ones had at least one number one box office grossing film in some week.[11] Even if it is not the case, by the time we are done here the gap between songs that at one point in time appeared to be relevant as to those that remained so, will seem extensive.

Let me give you a brief snapshot of what I learned:

In the 1950’s, the powerhouse foursome of Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Chuck Berry had the following songs that went number one on the main chart in that decade: Zero.

Now if you are musically aware of rock & roll history, you know that this is quite the foursome of musical legends. Let’s say you don’t and have to do a quick Wikipedia or YouTube search on the legendary songs of “Maybelline”, “Tutti Frutti”, “Great Balls of Fire” and “Blue Suede Shoes”? I can guarantee that a very quick Internet search will jog something in your subconscious memory banks of those songs or those artists and even if it doesn’t their legend will shine through.

The foursome’s goose egg is a staggering fact isn’t it? We know that Elvis Presley (there will be a lot more about him later) was the man in the 1950’s, but Chuck Berry and Little Richard are two of the most important acts in not just the 1950’s, but of the entire Rock and Roll genre. Any rock historian will tell you that.

Let me throw you another truth about number one songs in the 1950’s; in that same time frame Alvin and the Chipmunks went #1 twice.

I’m going to let that sink in for a minute.

The only parallel I can come up with that matches this is when Three Six Mafia won the 2006 Academy Award for the Best Original Song, “It’s Hard Out There For A Pimp” from the film, Hustle and Flow.

John Stewart, that year’s host quipped after “For those of you keeping score at home, Martin Scorsese, zero; Three 6 Mafia, one.”[12]

Yep. Animated chipmunks, two, Little Richard, zero.

This phenomenon didn’t just occur in the 1950’s, as every decade since had songs ascend to the top spot that upon reflection appear to have limited cultural impact, and conversely many songs and artists that barely scraped the top forty did. Decades from now this will likely be a pattern that upon reflection won’t be any different from the way we are looking back at it now.

Thankfully, I will be dead and won’t have to listen to the crap of three generations from now.

With that intro established, lets decide specifically what types of number ones we are looking at, where they came from and when they occurred.

Specifically, the “what” are the number ones on the Billboard number “Hot 100”, which is designed to cover all musical genres and it is the only time when a song goes “number one” on that chart you don’t hear any descriptive before it. There are multiple charts that exist covering the musical spectrum, and we will reference those often, but for our purposes, I will remain on this specific chart, and as you can tell, that is going to take long enough!

Now we get to the “where”, and although Billboard and other musical publications have charts in countries all over the world, we will be electing to go with the United States version. This is not to take away anything from the very influential U.K. chart or my home nation of Canada, but the fact is that the most influential pop culture, especially for this topic, comes from the United States, and most non American musical acts want to make it in the States.

I don’t think I am going out on a limb by saying that the most influential and most watched television programs, films and music (and when I say music, I am referring to the rock and roll genre) in the last seventy years from this planet came from the United States. Let me be very clear that I am not saying that great pop culture only comes from the U.S. as that is far from the case but while the American empire may no longer lead the way in the global economy, the soundtrack to the world has a lot of red, white and blue in it.

Coincidentally, it is also the United States that has put out the worst that modern pop culture has to offer, and believe me, a lot of that will be discussed here too.

That takes care of the where. As for the when, we are going to begin with a specific date, though music charts existed well before the one we have selected:

November 12, 1955.

There are two reasons that this date was chosen:

The first was that this was the date that Billboard created a chart that combined the results of three existing charts:

Best Sellers in Stores. This ranked the best selling singles in retail stores, based on reports from merchants across the country. It dates back to 1936.

Most Played by Jockeys. It is hard to imagine now, but for years Disc Jockeys had a major impact on what was listened to by the vast majority. They were the ones who decided what music was played on the radio, which in 1955 was how most music was exposed to the general population. Specifically, the jockeys reported this chart from reports from major American Radio Stations. That is a lot of say on deciding the music of the day, specifically from a small group, especially when many in the mid-1950’s refused to play the crazy new musical genre called rock & roll.

Most Played in Jukeboxes. This is one is even more antiquated than the Played by Jockeys list, but was crucial at the time. It was the youth of America that used the jukeboxes and that was the real measuring stick of what the kids were really listening to, namely the growth of rock music.

This combination, with heavier weight placed on the Best Sellers in the Stores, was called the Top 100, which would become the Hot 100 three years later; which is the chart that is still in existence today. That’s the first reason I went with this date. The second reason is far more trivial, but I am going to run with it, because…well, I can:

November 12, 1955 was the night that Marty McFly’s parents kissed for the first time at the “Enchantment Under the Sea Dance” and McFly introduced Chuck Berry’s cousin, Marvin, to the new sound he was looking for.[13] Okay, that didn’t have that much to do with it, but for a pop culture slut like myself, it cemented my secondary conclusion.

I say secondary, because when I first conceived this project, I was looking to begin earlier in 1955, specifically July 9, when “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley and the Comets went number one, marking the first time that a rock song went to the top of the charts. Many have pointed at that song as the moment as the birth of rock & roll (it wasn’t), but it was the moment when rock music officially stamped its place of the American consciousness. It wasn’t going away, despite the hopes of many that it would.

The modern music that we know today was taking root all over in 1955. This was the year that Chuck Berry recorded “Maybelline”, that Little Richard recorded “Tutti Frutti”, that Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” was released, the year that Colonel Tom Parker signed Elvis Presley to a contract and when legendary disc jockey, Alan Freed, promoted the first Rock and Roll concert in New York City.

Should I talk a little bit more about Freed? Maybe a little bit okay?

Freed’s respect of rock & roll, or black music, as many at the time called it, had an influence in this decade that cannot easily be quantified, and much of the charts that will be discussed over the first five-year period has his fingerprints all over it.

He moved to Cleveland to work for a television station and worked his way to WJW radio where he would have the 11:15 PM to 2:00 AM slot, which he dubbed the “Moondog Rock & Roll House Party”, and his constant crowing of the term “rock & roll” on his show, is believed to be where the term originated.

Playing mostly R&B songs and creating a distinctive personality that resonated with the youth, Freed promoted on March 21, 1952, (which was three years before the New York City show, the first “rock & roll” concert), a rock & roll show in the Cleveland Arena and actually had thousands outside hoping to get in. It would take the Cleveland Police to disperse the crowd and curtail the fighting that erupted in the arena; all of this occurring after the first song took place.

On the surface, all of this looks like a failed concert and a total lack of planning by Freed, but this created the early narrative of this new style of music; it was the devil’s music and the corruptor of the young, which did exactly what you would think it would do; attract more youth!  

This was the highway that got us to the start of the rock era, and as we progress chronologically the advent of television and the incorporation of the rock music into movies would feed each other to the point where they would be forever intertwined.

Now it’s time to take the DeLorean all the way to the 2000’s and while you are at it, humor the confessions of a pop culture junkie if you can.

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[1] They would revamp the list in 2010, though the top twenty-five songs would remain unchanged.

[2] You could insert band, actor, song, film or television series and substitute any decade from the 1960’s on and it would still be true. And for the record, the answer is Francis Ford Coppola.

[3] Jack and I go way back, and I thank him for being there every step of the way.

[4] Since that time, Rush, Alice Cooper, Kiss and Genesis were inducted.

[5] I do promise not to insert “Eh” into the conversation as we go.

[6] There is intention to expand the list to 1,000.

[7] Don’t laugh at the WWE Hall part. They generate a sizable portion of people who visit the site. Never underestimate the passion of wrestling fans.

[8] I remember specifically watching Dylan sing that song at David Letterman’s tenth anniversary special where he was even more incomprehensible than usual. It was hard for me to always think of that song as brilliant after watching that.

[9] As I am writing, it is currently “I’d Love to Change the World” by Ten Years After, though I doubt that is how I feel by the time I get to writing page ten, or any other two digit milestone in this process.

[10] There is a scene in “This is 40” where Paul Rudd’s character is playing a song from Alice in Chains and explaining its virtue, and his wife (Leslie Mann) and his daughter countered that the song was depressing. This is the same musical debate that I gave up on having years ago with my wife.

[11] At least I think so. OK, you got me, because I am not going to make that mathematical deduction at this time, but I wager I am not far off. Even if I am, I will go with the risk of making that statement and let someone with equally ample time on their hands prove me wrong.

[12] Scorsese had been nominated for Best Director five times prior without a win. He would win his first Oscar the year after for the Departed. Current score: Martin Scorsese, one; Three Six Mafia, one.

[13] Yes, it’s going to be that kind of anthology…and for the record, I am not a virgin and I do not live in my parent’s basement.