I've been playing Wordle now for over 900 days. Early on in my obsession, I researched which 80s Top 40 hit titles could also serve as Wordle solutions. As of today, twenty of the twenty-seven I identified have been the word-of-the-day (hang in there, STRUT, SHOUT, and PRESS). I've been meaning for some time to do an analogous review for the 70s; opportunity presented itself this past week, and the day has been seized.
My conditions: 1) proper names and plurals ending in S are right out, which knocks out VENUS, CUPID, SHILO, LEVON, LAYLA, CLAIR, ANGIE, JESSE, MANDY, ARIEL, JOSIE, GAMES, SIGNS, RINGS, and SHIPS; 2) parenthetics matter, so FANNY (which isn't necessarily a name) and DANCE aren't included for being tender and bringing the disco heat, respectively; 3) no portmanteaus or dropped G's, which wipes out DUSIC and MOVIN'.
That only leaves only fifteen unique words from sixteen songs, one of which was still charting into 1980 (and yes, I know FANCY and ROCKY are names of characters in these songs, but...):
1970: FANCY, MAYBE
1971: none
1972: DIARY, HAPPY, ALIVE, ANGEL (Rod)
1973: MONEY, ANGEL (Aretha)
1974: none
1975: READY, MAGIC, MISTY, ROCKY
1976: none
1977: SLIDE
1978: SHAME
1979: CHASE, STILL
Key: bold means it's already been a solution, italics means it was also an 80s song title.
Will the five remaining words show up in green boxes someday? Time will tell.
I also tried to pay attention to song titles consisting of two or three five letter words, of which there were surprisingly many. Won't list them all here--I count twenty-seven--but they include PEACE TRAIN, FUNKY STUFF, SWEET THING, DISCO QUEEN, BRICK HOUSE, YOUNG BLOOD (twice), BLACK MAGIC WOMAN, and three extra special titles: HONEY HONEY, TRAIN TRAIN, and (best of all) SHAME SHAME SHAME.
What's more, three of the acts that performed the songs making the final cut also qualify as Wordle-eligible: BREAD, PILOT, and SLAVE (and the first two of those have already been solutions).
All meaningless, I know, but clearly fun enough for me.
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Forty-nine years ago, the Scottish band Pilot was enjoying their first week in the U.S. Top 10 with their one and only Top 40 hit, at #9 and heading toward #5. Two other minor chart appearances would follow here (though "January" went to #1 in the U.K. and Australia), and then... crickets. It would be years before I realized that Pilot's bassist/vocalist David Paton sang on the Alan Parson Project's 1985 single "Let's Talk About Me." And because I never watch television any more, I had to be told that one of my very favorite tunes from 1975 was being used in ads for Ozempic.
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