Do you know what the biggest Adult Contemporary hit of all time was? No, you probably don't: It's Phil Collins' "You'll Be in My Heart," from his soundtrack for the Disney animated movie Tarzan. It's not the kind of song you would think of as the biggest AC hit ever for a couple of reasons: For one, it's not very good, and for another, it went only to Number Twenty-Seven on the pop charts in the summer of '99. But it was at Number One on the Adult Contemporary chart for a whopping 19 weeks, or almost four months.
That's a very poor performance on the Hot 100 for a song that did so well on the AC charts. Seven other songs spent 13 or more weeks at the top of the AC chart, and they all reached at least Number Five on the pop chart. Four of them went to Number One.
What's the biggest AC hit that never hit the real Top Forty? I'm not 100 percent sure, but I think it might be a song called "You Gotta Love Someone," by Elton John, which was at the top of the AC charts for five weeks in 1990, but never sniffed the real charts. I'm pretty sure I've never heard it.
4 comments:
As long as you bring up Elton John, let me ask you: name all of the Elton John songs that you consider great -- that came out AFTER 1976. I can name ONE: This Train Don't Stop There Anymore, from 2001. Other than that one, every single Elton John song which I consider great -- and there are indeed quite a few -- came out before or during 1976. Am I missing some?
I was going to say "Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word," but I see that came out at the end of 1976. I don't suppose you'd count "That's What Friends Are For."
I like "Little Jeannie," "I Don't Want to Go on With You Like That," and "Empty Garden."
I would not have been able to retain my sanity while hearing the "Lion King" soundtrack a hundred times over the past couple of years, if those songs hadn't been pretty good.
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