August 20: This Day in Music

This is an awesome Web site.

In fact, it's the awesomeist Web site I have seen today.

Too lazy to click the link? It's a database of what song was number one on any given day of any given year. Now, my birthday has some pretty choice cuts attached to it ("A licky boom boom down," anyone?). But continuing my obsession with all things August 20, I have to admit, that date is a pretty good one, musically. We are talking all-time classics here:

1929 ... "Singin' in the Rain" by Cliff Edwards
1949 ... "Some Enchanted Evening" by Perry Como
1956 ... "Hound Dog/ Don't Be Cruel" by Elvis Presley
1955 ... "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley & His Comets
1964 ... "Where Did Our Love Go" by The Supremes
1996 ... "Macarena [Bayside Boys Mix]" by Los Del Rio

Those are some of the best songs ever written, produced and performed! And how about these two, back-to-back ballads that pretty much defined any Bar Mitzvah or eight-grade mixer in the early 1990's?

1992 ... "End of the Road" by Boyz II Men
1991 ... "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You" by Bryan Adams

Just reading those titles makes me want to stand arms-length away from an twelve-year old girl with braces and just sway back and forth.

It's too hard to feature just one or two songs from the 1980's, when you are dealing with a list this comprehensive. All of the following topped the charts on August 20:

1989 ... "Right Here Waiting" by Richard Marx
1988 ... "Roll with It" by Steve Winwood
1987 ... "Who's That Girl" by Madonna
1986 ... "Papa, Don't Preach" by Madonna
1985 ... "The Power of Love" by Huey Lewis & the News
1984 ... "Ghostbusters" by Ray Parker, Jr.
1983 ... "Every Breath You Take" by The Police
1982 ... "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor
1981 ... "Endless Love" by Diana Ross & Lionel Richie
1980 ... "Magic" by Olivia Newton-John

When a song tops the charts on August 20, that song has staying power. That song is either featured in a blockbuster summer movie or is a timeless classic by a transcendent artist or that song is in the final throes of being known as the summer's hot song (see 2006's "London Bridge" by Fergie).

But sometimes, beyond the movie soundracks or classic songs by well-known artists, something else slips in. Something that is just so...appropriate...

1974 ... "(You're) Having My Baby" by Paul Anka with Odia Coates