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45rpms, charts, side A and B

Quentin

Retired Editor
Posts: 3427

Quentin @ 2006-11-07 15:26:09 UTC

Sometimes I read that a particular song released on a single, let's call it "Song 1", was a number one hit, while its B side, let's call it "Song 2", reached number 18... How can this be possible, if the two songs were on the same medium?


Here, for instance:

Surfin' Safari (r. 4th June 1962, charted 11th August 1962 - #14) b/w 409 (charted 13th October 1962 - #76)

Surfer Girl (r. 22nd July 1963, charted 3rd August 1963 - #7) b/w Little Deuce Coupe (charted 17th August 1963 - #15)


Do you know what's the story behind it?

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abbamatic

Retired Editor
Posts: 1015

abbamatic @ 2006-11-08 07:58:33 UTC

pretty easy explanation, actually...the american singles charts are not purely based upon 'sales', but on a secret points formula that is a mixture of sales and radio play.


so, basically what happened was that radio started to play both songs on a single - and they reported them both to billboard separately. you can imagine that back in the '60s, when singles by artists like elvis, beach boys or the beatles hit the streets between album releases - there was a hunger for each side from the radio as being 'new' material.


they've changed the chart methodology many times over the years - and at some point, all 'sales' points were assigned to the song that was getting the higher amount of radio play.


in some cases, the original 'a' side was ultimately ignored by radio in favor of the 'b' side (gloria gaynor's 'i will survive' for example, was originally the 'b' side to the song 'substitute', for example)