2006 is all but gone. I will take a look back at the soon to be expired year, not in terms of news, politics or anything like that. Instead we'll look at some of the music that I thought was pretty good for the year.
The year saw the return of one of my webpages, Mel's Weekly Top 20. It is one of many "personal music chart" sites published by people from all over the world and kept track on sites such as BeyondRadio.com and Top Hits Online. I am a member of the informal chart community.
Each week for most of the year, I published a weekly chart of my favorite current tracks. These include songs that are popular on the radio, others that are not which I found through iTunes or places such as MySpace.com. The main criteria for my chart is that I have to own a copy of each track that makes it to my chart. These are ripped from CDs I bought and owned, tracks purchased from the iTunes Music Store and some downloaded ones from places like MySpace.com and Podsafe Music.com.
More than 120 songs made it to my weekly top 20. Each week's chart was/is kept in a database file. At the end of the year I spent a whole day merging the individual data from each week and compiled them into one large list. I counted the number of songs, peak position of each song, the total number of weeks spent at the peak position and the total number of weeks spent on the chart. I plugged all of this data into my master list, sorted the songs using that criteria and came up with the list, which you can access though this link.
So what was #1? If I ran my own radio station, my #1 song of the year would definitely be by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. "Dani California," the first track off their double Stadium Arcadium album bolted to the #1 position in the early summer of 2006 and stayed there for 6 weeks. It was the song that held on to the #1 spot on the Weekly Top 20 the longest. It also stayed on the Top 20 chart for 18 weeks. Good enough numbers to make it my song of the year... #1 for 2006.
My second most popular song was a 2 year old track that got a ton of radio airplay over the past 18 months. Daniel Powter's "Bad Day" became a radio staple after the track was initially given away by Apple Computer in August of 2005. It is one of the rare Apple freebies that became a bonafide hit. I eventually bought Powter's debut album and like most if not all of the tracks on the album. "Bad Day" went to #1 and stayed there for 3 weeks; it spent 22 total weeks on Mel's Weekly Top 20.
The 3rd most popular song on my Top 100 was Jack Johnson's "Upside Down," a light acoustic song recorded for the animated movie Curious George. Johnson is a Hawaii born singer/songwriter who reached the pinnacle of his craft when the Curious George soundtrack album containing many new songs Johnson penned for the movie reached the #1 spot on the Billboard Top 200 album charts. Quite a milestone for someone from Hawaii.
The Teddybears are probably popular in Europe. I had 2 of their euro-dance numbers chart very high on my Weekly Top 20. Both made it to #1 and stayed for a few weeks each. My favorite of the 2 is "Yours to Keep" which featured a delightful vocal by Nena Cherry. The second was called "Cobrastyle" and was featured on a recent episode of the ABC TV series, Greys' Anatomy. Cool songs both. I found out about them after Apple gave away "Yours to Keep" as one of their weekly iTunes freebies.
Other tracks of note to the Top 100:
The Rosebuds are a North Carolina duo that I found by accident on MySpace.com. Their second album Birds Make Good Neighbors yielded two tracks that made it to my Top 100. I was instantly enamoured to the track "Boxcar" which seems to be their most popular song. The song climbed to #3 on the Top 20 in the spring of 2006 and spent 12 weeks on the chart. I later bought their entire album through the EMusic subscription service. Great album. The song "Outnumbered" made the top 20 in late fall, good enough to place it within the Top 100. The Roesbuds also charted for a very short time with "Shake Our Tree."
Another indie artist that I liked this year was Joe Sibol. He seems to be a master of various musical styles. Two of his most popular, freely downloadable tracks made my top 20. The first was the surf-pop song called "California Blonde." This song would have been right home on top 40 radio of the late 1960s. The second song to make it to the chart was the dance-pop number "Hot Sexy Girls," which of course would have been popular on the dance floor in the 1970s. Yet here it is the first part of the 21st century and both songs are gems in my opinion having been placed my Top 100, itching to be discovered by the masses.
Finally one of the most popular tracks of 2006 has to be Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy". The song has been hailed by critics and the populace as sales of their album went through the roof basically on the power of that song. "Crazy" has a very colorful and long history after being released by accident in late 2005. It got initial airplay on the BBC music service in England and took off from there. The song has topped the charts all over the world, even making it to #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 this past year. On my chart "Crazy" went to #1 and held the spot for 2 weeks, stayed on the chart long enough to land it in the #10 spot for the year.
I could go on and write about more of the songs. If I were a DJ and had my own radio show, I could spend the night counting down the chart and commenting on each song like how Casey Kasem used to do it on the old American Top 40 radio show of years gone by. That notwithstanding, do check out my Top 100 Chart page.
If you got this far in this commentary all I can say at this point is that you all have a safe and if possible, prosperous New Year.
