a curious omission

Posted on September 28th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, 70s Survival.

This morning I was browsing Helen Reddy's songs on my mp3 player, and suddenly realized that "I Am Woman" was missing. I knew I hadn't deleted it. I looked through the original files on my computer for the 1970s Survival Project -- supposedly the Billboard top 100 for every year in the 1970s. It wasn't there either.

"I Am Woman" was a number-one single. There is no way it wasn't one of the top 100 singles of 1972 by any reasonable calculation. (For example, Charley Pride's "Kiss an Angel Good Morning", which is on the 1972 list, peaked at number 21.) So I figured, crap, the whole 1970s Survival Project is hosed. If a big hit like that was missing, there must be others; there must be rights problems or something, and the compilers just quietly removed songs and renumbered the list.

But after cursory checking, I wasn't able to find any other obvious omissions. Earth Wind & Fire's version of "Got to Get You into My Life", for example, isn't among the mp3s in my 1970s set; it peaked at number 9, and maybe should be among the top 100 of 1978, but I don't have Billboard's lists, so can't be sure.

"I Am Woman", though, obviously should be there. So what I'm wondering is, did Billboard just screw up at the time they made their year-end list? Does anyone reading this have the Billboard year-end charts?

(For the record, I like "I Am Woman" and it would have survived a few plays and possibly made my top 300, definitely not my top 100.)

6 comments.

Christian

Comment on September 28th, 2007.

From what I could glean from the publicly-available chart stuff at billboard.com, "I Am Woman" is on the 1973 Year-End chart. It hit #1 in December on '72, so it probably spent more time on the chart during '73 than it did in '72.

Scraps

Comment on September 28th, 2007.

The 1973 Year-End chart would be nice, too, yeah. I'd be surprised if it was on the 1973 chart rather than the 1972, though, because it had much more of its chart action before it hit number one than after. (This is true of the large majority of a large majority of pre-soundscan chart number ones: slow climb, fast fall.

Ken Highcountry

Comment on September 28th, 2007.

I Am Woman was #15 on the 1972 chart. Helen Reddy had two songs on the 1973 chart, but neither was I Am Woman.
#14 was her version of Delta Dawn, and #81 was Peaceful.

Scraps

Comment on September 28th, 2007.

Augh. I was afraid of this.

Richard

Comment on September 28th, 2007.

Somehow I hadn't realized that this set was a commercially available compilation.

Does it have like super-super famous classic rock songs that were also big charting singles? Such as, maybe anything from the Rolling Stones or Elton John? The former seem less likely to allow a song to be licensed for such a set, for example. You never see Zeppelin on any of these kinds of comps (not that they would be relevant to this particular set, but you see what I mean).

Scraps

Comment on September 29th, 2007.

1. I don't actually know that these sets are commercially available: I was given these discs.

2. They have every major Elton John and Rolling Stones single; so far, "I Am Woman" is the only huge hit single I have determined missing.

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