Mission Accomplished (part 1)

Greetings once again. Ever set out on a project that you had an idea of executing in your spare time, tweak some parameters of said project as necessary, and then accomplish said project? Well, that's what I have done over the course of at least the past decade. I may or may not have mentioned it on this blog before, but if I have, indulge me.

For as long as I can remember, which stretches back some 40+ years, I have had a fascination with the Top 40 charts and countdown shows; from "American Top 40" to "Countdown America" and later in my youth, the "Rick Dees Weekly Top 40."  And as such, I would listen to these countdown shows whenever I had the opportunity; up until 2004 when Ryan Seacrest took over for Casey Kasem.

In the year 2000, I came across a website that's still in use today, which keeps tabs on every song that has ever charted on the old Radio and Records magazine, now MediaBase 24/7. What I wanted to at the time was attempt to recreate every R/R top 40 chart, but doing so using just that website would be impossible as they only gave the week a song debut and it's peak position at the time. Fortunately for me, I came across a web board would allow me to fill I those holes. By the end of that year, I had a new motivation; the top song of that year, "Everything You Want" by Vertical Horizon, didn't reach number 1 on a weekly survey. I thought to myself, "that doesn't make much sense." And so, I decided to come up with a points system based off those charts.

Tomorrow, I'll go into detail as to how I came up with my points system, and what I eventually learned from it. Stay tuned.

CT