82: Donna Summer, "Love Is in Control (Finger on the Trigger)"

By Wm. on September 25, 2024

The Hot 100 charts of the early 1980s are famous/infamous for the lengthy stays many songs enjoyed at their peak position. It's pretty clear this behavior was an outgrowth of the "superstar" system introduced on 10/11/80. Previously, a star (known as a bullet in older times, I suppose) was awarded for increases in sales and airplay; the new superstar added a second tier of upward mobility to denote "Prime Movers." In general, it was hard for a song to go from superstar to no star; my sense is there was at least an informal rule that superstars first dropped to having a "regular" star, though songs could also retain a plain star for more than one week. Apparent effects of this new system began showing up in earnest in the second half of 1981 in the Top 10 (e.g., "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around"/"Urgent"/"(There's) No Gettin' Over Me" all hanging out at #3/#4/#5 for a month or more). A year later this virus had filtered down the chart, as we began seeing things like "Kids in America" at #25 for four weeks, along with five-week runs for "What's Forever For" at #19 and "You Dropped a Bomb on Me" at #31.

A second-order effect of being propped up by stars, particularly at the end of 1982, was that once a song was ready to fall, it really fell: "Kids" dropped from 25 to 85, "Forever" went from 19 to 66, and "Bomb" landed at 74 from 31. Over the last five months of the year, I count 38 songs that dropped at least 40 positions the week they fell out of the Top 40. While most of those were not dropping out from their peak position, it was definitely a period of unusually precipitous declines in fortune, surely an artifact of these chart "rules."

As an illustration, here's part of the 9/25/82 Hot 100 from Billboard:

Donna, Paul, and Kenny all went into free-fall the next week, landing at #59, #66, and #67 respectively on 10/2. And you shouldn't be too surprised to learn that Eddie, Billy, and Randy all had just one more week at their current positions before heading downward. (Additionally, Asia and Jermaine lost their stars completely on the following chart, so maybe things weren't as rigid as I thought.)

(Note: Prior to an adjustment in the ranking algorithm that took place in June 1973, many, many songs fell completely off the Hot 100 from the 20s and 30s--chart oddities are always contingent on any number of things, especially time.)

You'll see above that "Love Is in Control (Finger on the Trigger)" actually moved up one spot while losing its star, an anomalous occurrence during this period. In fact, it's the only song in a six-month period (outside of a few #1 songs) to spend a single week at its peak position--the last song before it to do that was "Love Plus One" on 8/7, and the next would be Linda Ronstadt's cover of "I Knew You When," on 2/12/83 (coincidentally, both of those songs topped out at #37 after spending two weeks at #38).

Bill Wardlow, the man responsible for the superstar system, was canned by Billboard in late April 1983. Soon thereafter, chart runs were much more free-flowing--gone were the days of multi-week runs at #8 or #17. The last Hot 100 with superstars was 6/18/83.

More or less related: over at the AT40 Fun & Games Site, the rebroadcast of 9/25/82 has inspired a thread on songs peaking inside the Top 20 that also fell out of the Top 40 from their peak. As you might suspect, it's chock-full of tunes from the last half of '82. Kudos to message board member doofus67 for assembling that list.