This week, last week, 2 weeks ago and weeks on chart are the page’s own columns,
as the magazine printed them. So weeks on chart counts a record’s whole life on the
chart, weeks before this archive begins included, and a record that comes back keeps counting from
its earlier run: Moving Pictures’ “What About Me” re-enters in August 1989 at 27
weeks, its 1982 run counted in. NEW across the two history columns is a debut;
RE-ENTRY is a record returning — from 1984 to 1988 the magazine set that box across the
weeks-on-chart column too, and printed no figure there — and a dash is a week it was not
on the chart. The magazine
printed its own slips here too, and they are kept as printed: “Hooked On You” is NEW
on 6/3/1989 and 14 weeks on the chart the week after, once its 1988 run had been counted.
On 11/30/1991, the first Hot 100 the magazine compiled from SoundScan sales and Broadcast Data
Systems airplay, LAST WEEK and 2 WKS AGO are re-worked under the new method rather than taken
from the earlier pages, and the week’s note says so.
1958 to 1979 come from a chart file, not from the pages. The archive’s Hot 100
begins with the first, on 8/4/1958. Until 12/25/1961 Billboard dated its issues on Mondays, and
from 1/6/1962 on Saturdays, so those two weeks are twelve days apart. The file gives every
rank, title, artist, last week and weeks on chart; it has no labels, bullets or banners, so the
bullets and Hot Shot Debuts of those years are inferred (see below the chart), and where the file
lacks a record the week’s note says what was put back and from where.
Until 10/13/1984 the page had no 2 WKS AGO column , and a debut’s NEW ENTRY box
covered its weeks on chart. Every year is shown in the later page’s form, so for those weeks
2 WKS AGO is taken from the page itself — the LAST WEEK figure the record carried on the
previous week’s page — and a debut counts 1 week. From 10/20/1984 all four columns
are the magazine’s.
Peak , to the right of the artist, is the archive’s column rather than the
magazine’s: the highest position the record has reached on the Hot 100 up to and
including this week, set in bold in a week the record stands at it. It counts the Hot 100
weeks the archive holds, so for a record already on the chart when the archive’s Hot
100 begins, on 8/4/1958, or when it comes back after weeks the archive lacks, it is the best
position from the weeks held.
A rank ringed in red is bulleted — in the magazine’s own words, the
“products with the greatest airplay and sales gains this week”, so a ringed record
can hold or even slip a place. From 10/11/1980 until 6/18/1983 the page set two grades of
bullet, an outline “superstar” for the greatest gains and a solid star for the
others: a superstar’s ring is filled in. The banners are the magazine’s: the
No. 1 with its weeks at the top, the Power Picks for the week’s biggest sales and airplay
gainers (Hot Movers until May 1986, Greatest Gainers from 1/29/1994, with digital sales from
2005), and the Hot Shot Debut for its highest new entry; where the page joined two banners
over one record, both are shown. The page printed no banner but the No. 1’s before
12/21/1985, and in some years it printed the No. 1 banner without the weeks, as it is shown
here. The label under the artist is the one printed that week.
Titles and billings are the archive’s own. A record that also ran on the other
charts here is one record, with one title and one billing wherever it appears, and its song page
carries every run. Where this chart set it differently — “THE LIVING YEARS”,
“SMOOTH UP” for “Smooth Up In Ya”, a guest credited here and not
elsewhere — hover over the title to see the page’s own setting. A note after a title,
such as (FROM “COCKTAIL”) , is the magazine’s note on where the record
came from, and not part of its title. A single the magazine charted by both its sides
— “Human Touch/Better Days” — shows both titles, and each opens its
own record’s page: either side can chart on its own elsewhere. A medley, one recording
of two songs, is one record.
The magazine’s year-end double issue carries one chart for two weeks, and its own chart
history counts the second of them as a week of its own — a frozen repeat of the first. The
archive does too: 12/30/1989 is the 12/23 chart standing a second week, and says so when you open
it. Every name in the artist column is a link to everything that act charted, on every
chart the archive holds.