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10 unusual facts about top 40


Barbra Amesbury

Barbra Amesbury (born 1948 in Kirkland Lake, Ontario) is a Canadian philanthropist, singer-songwriter, composer and filmmaker, who had several Top 40 hits in Canada in the 1970s as Bill Amesbury before coming out as a transsexual and pursuing sex reassignment surgery.

Champeta

Torres joined the first singers of the genre to form the group Anne Swing which achieved international fame at the end of the 1980s, appearing in the United States “Top 40”.

CHKT

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, CKEY was the leading Top 40 music competitor to 1050 CHUM; one of its DJs was later CFNY staple David Marsden, known as Dave Mickie at CKEY (and later at CHUM as well).

Dana Dawson

In 1996, she released the single "How I Wanna Be Loved" but it missed the Top 40 in the UK Singles Chart.

David Brudnoy

From 1981 to 1986, he appeared on former Top 40 station WRKO, which was now news and talk, before moving to local stalwart WBZ.

KLIF Triangle Point Studios

KLIF-AM was operating on the 1190 AM frequency and was an independent station with a Top 40 format.

Little Walter DeVenne

He now lives in New Hampshire and is the host of the syndicated retro oldies program Little Walter's Time Machine focusing on the pop, doo-wop, blues, R&B and early rock n' roll hits of the 1950s and early to mid-1960s presented in the high energy style of the Top 40 AM radio stations of that era.

Mia Aegerter

Her single, "U don't know how to love me," achieved high radio-ratings and got into the Top 20 of the Swiss single charts and the Top 40 of the German single charts.

Raymond D. Little

He was ranked in the U.S. Top 10 eleven times between 1900 and 1912, his highest ranking coming in 1907 when he was ranked No. 4.

Top 40

By the late 1980s and the early 1990s, the 45 rpm record would decrease in popularity and other means would be used to evaluate the popularity of new songs, such as cassette-single, CD single, and digital MP3/AAC sales (plus radio airplay).


1969 in radio

WSAU-FM in Wausau, Wisconsin changes to Top 40 as WIFC, and continues with those calls and format nearly 40 years later.

CFHK-FM

By August 2012, CIQM-FM flipped to top 40, leaving CFHK as the only hot AC station again in London.

Chris Montez

The More I See You album yielded two additional Top 40 singles for Montez: The title cut, plus "There Will Never Be Another You".

CPM 22

Such popularity led to complaints from old-time fans that the band had "sold out", forgetting its roots by creating songs to be played on top 40 radios and populist Sunday TV shows like Domingão do Faustão and Domingo Legal.

Curiosity Killed the Cat

The band's first album, Keep Your Distance, entered the UK Albums Chart at number one in May 1987, and stayed in the Top Ten for 13 weeks, although the release of that album's "Free" as a single only reached number 56 in the UK Singles Chart.

D-Side

They have had three Top 10 singles in the UK, and have supported Blue, Westlife and numerous other bands on tour during 2003 and 2004, as well as being involved in Charity events such as Soccer Magic, Soccer 6, Children in Need and ChildLine.

D. Ramirez

He has achieved five Top 20 hits, and appeared on BBC Television's music programme, Top of the Pops, his highest standing in the mainstream music scene was his remix of Bodyrox's "Yeah Yeah", which earned him an Ivor Novello Award nomination.

Dave Dudley

Other recordings included Dudley's duet with Tom T. Hall, "Day Drinking," and his own Top 10 hit, "Fireball Rolled A Seven," supposedly based on the career and death of Edward Glenn "Fireball" Roberts.

David Geddes

David Cole Idema (born July 1, 1950), best known by the stage name David Geddes, is a soft rock singer who had a U.S. Top 5 hit with "Run Joey Run" in 1975, which peaked at #4 in October 1975.

Dee C. Lee

Lee's follow-up singles, a cover of Judie Tzuke's "Come Hell Or Waters High" and "Hold On" failed to make the UK Top 40.

DXing

By the 1950s, and continuing through the mid-1970s, many of the most powerful North American "clear channel" stations such as KDKA, WLW, CKLW, CHUM, WABC, WJR, WLS, WKBW, KFI, KAAY, KSL and a host of border blasters from Mexico pumped out Top 40 music played by popular disc jockeys.

Fern Kinney

Among the songs she sang on were King Floyd's "Groove Me", and her former "Poppie" bandmate Dorothy Moore's 1976 Top 10 single, "Misty Blue".

Fivepenny Piece

During the band's 1970s heyday they released over a dozen albums for EMI and then Philips, and reached the Top 10 in the UK Albums Chart with their LP King Cotton.

Found Out About You

It reached number 25 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it the second single from the album (after "Hey Jealousy") to crack the Top 40, and it is the only Gin Blossoms song that reached number one on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart.

Freeez

Freeez is perhaps remembered best for its UK Top 10 song "Southern Freeez", from the album of the same name,which included guest vocals by Ingrid Mansfield Allman.

Gogi Grant

In 1955 she signed with a small record company, Era Records, and had her first top ten hit with "Suddenly There's a Valley." The next year, she had an even bigger hit, reaching Billboard 's No. 1 position, with "The Wayward Wind" and holding there for a then record eight weeks.

Hans Wärmling

His most notable achievement was as co-writer of the 1982 UK Top 40 release "Strange Little Girl".

I Really Love You

The record, issued on Cub Records, a subsidiary of MGM Records, reached number 29 on the Billboard Top 40 chart.

Jenny Burton

She was lead singer of the dance music band C-Bank's 1983 Top 5 Hot Dance Music/Club Play single "One More Shot", notable for record producer John Robie's use of a "non-linear" approach to its production.

Johnny and the Hurricanes

Johnny and the Hurricanes followed with "Red River Rock", an instrumental version of "Red River Valley", on Warwick Records, that became a Top Ten hit on both sides of the Atlantic (No. 5 in the U.S., No. 3 in the UK), and sold over a million copies.

Johnny Kemp

True success came the following year, however, with the release of his Secrets of Flying album, which contained a pair of Top 5 hits on the US Billboard R&B chart: "Dancin' with Myself" and "Just Got Paid," the latter hitting #1.

KWID

In early 2000, KFMS flipped to top 40/CHR 101.9 KISS FM, KFMS broadcast Rick Dees' morning radio program in the morning and Buck Head Show for evenings.

Let Me Love You Tonight

Taken as the first single from their 1980 album, Firin' Up, "Let Me Love You Tonight" became the band's first (and, to date, only) song to enter the top ten on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, where it peaked at number ten during the summer of 1980, and remained in the Top 40 for eleven weeks.

Margie Rayburn

Rayburn was born in Madera, California and sang as a member of The Sunnysiders, who had a Top 40 hit in the United States in 1955 with the song "Hey! Mr. Banjo".

Nassau Broadcasting Partners

WHYA 101.1 Hyannis - Adult Hits (Now owned by Codcomm Inc. as top 40 station)

Sonny Thompson

There, he had further R&B Top 10 successes with the singer Lula Reed, the biggest hit being "I'll Drown in My Tears" (Thompson married Reed sometime in the early 1950s).

Sound-alike

On February 3, 2012, a sound-alike version of the will.i.am track "T.H.E. (The Hardest Ever)" which was available for download before the release of the original entered the UK Singles Chart at number 40, the first to do so, and other sound-alike covers of "Whistle" by Flo Rida and "Payphone" by Maroon 5 have also entered the top 40.

Storer Communications

Although the company had success in the Top 40 rock and roll format with WJBK in Detroit and WIBG "Wibbage" in Philadelphia, most of its radio stations, including WJW and WSPD, featured more conservative music formats, typically middle-of-the-road (MOR) or beautiful music.

The Mac Band

The group's first album, The Mac Band featuring the McCampbell Brothers included production by Babyface and members of Atlantic Starr, and one of the tracks from the album, "Roses Are Red" reached #1 on the U.S. R&B chart and reached the Top 10 in the UK Singles Chart.

The Mindbenders

A second song by Bayer and Wine, "Ashes to Ashes," took the Mindbenders to No. 14 in the UK Singles Chart in the autumn of 1966, after an earlier effort in 1966, "Can't Live With You (Can't Live Without You)" had struggled to break the UK Top 30.

Tippa Irie

He achieved his first national exposure on night time BBC Radio 1 in the mid-1980s, with the singles "It's Good To Have The Feeling You're The Best" and "Complain Neighbour" (on Greensleeves Records), before achieving a UK Top 40 hit in 1986 with "Hello Darling".

Toni Fisher

In 1962 she had another Top 40 hit single with "West of the Wall" (#37), a song about the sadness of lovers separated by the 1961 erection of the Berlin Wall.

WAJI

WAJI was known as WPTH throughout the 1960s and 1970s as a sister station to WPTA television, and in the mid to late 1970s branded themselves as "Rock 95", using TM Productions' "Stereo Rock" Top 40 reel to reel automation package.

WCFX

In 1980 the silent 95.3 FM was purchased by legendary Detroit broadcaster Paul Christy and returned to the air with Top 40 programming in November of that year as WCFX, originally known as "Foxy 95."

WCOA-FM

On November 5, 2009 at Noon, the station flipped to Top 40 as "i100, Today's Hit Music", mirroring similar (and Cumulus owned) contemporary hit radio stations KLIF-FM in Dallas, Texas and WNFN in Nashville, Tennessee.

We Want Your Soul

"We Want Your Soul" is a 2003 breakbeat song by British DJ and producer Adam Freeland; the song made the Top 40 charts in several countries, and resulted in an award-winning music video.

WHBQ-FM

In 1997 the station took its first jab at the Top 40 radio market with another call sign change to WKSL, and the moniker "KISS FM".

Whispering Your Name

The single became Moyet's eighth single to enter the Top 40 of the UK Singles Chart, but also her last to date, peaking at #18 with a total stay of seven weeks.

WHJB

The station began as WHJB-FM in 1968, sister station to then WHJB-AM (now WKHB), then became WOKU-FM, cycling through various formats (Adult Contemporary, Disco, Country and Heavy Metal) before becoming Top 40 WSSZ-FM "Hot Hits Z-107" in the late 1980s.

Wishin' and Hopin'

"Wishin' and Hopin'" is a song, written by Hal David and Burt Bacharach, which was a Top 10 hit for Dusty Springfield in 1964.

WRJZ

Adele Arakawa, the first female DJ in Knoxville, worked at WRJZ broadcasting Top 40 music for 5 years in the late 1970s.

WZFT

At 10 AM on November 4, 2009, after playing "No Way Back" by The Foo Fighters (which was also the first song played on "Channel"), the station briefly stunted again, this time with R&B music as "Charm 104.3", before officially flipping to Top 40 at 12 PM as "Z104.3".