10 Seconds from Every Top-100 Song Ever + A Free Cut-up Software!

1959 | 1960 | 1961 | 1962 | 1963 | 1964 | 1965 | 1966 | 1967 | 1968 | 1969 | 1970 | 1971 | 1972 | 1973 | 1974 | 1975 | 1976 | 1977 | 1978 | 1979 | 1980 | 1981 | 1982 | 1983 | 1984 | 1985 | 1986 | 1987 | 1988 | 1989 | 1990 | 1991 | 1992 | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011

In 1959, Billboard began releasing their annual charts of the top 100 songs of each year.  Here are mp3s with 10 seconds of every single top 100 song ever.  Follow the lists along with the music on this site.  There are some errors here, so bear with me and do point out major imperfections in the comments.  If you've been following my column in the past, all of these mp3s are improved versions, with crossfades in between tracks and smarter choices of clips.

I produced these supercuts with a software that Frederic Cornu and I developed together.  Fred is a genius and I'm eternally grateful to him.  This software is VERY SIMPLE to use and 100% FREE.  It simply takes a music playlist of your choice (from iTunes or a similar program), finds the loudest point of each song and stitches all the songs together.  These supercuts are useful to condense information and I think they're totally beautiful too.

In a few minutes, you can easily make supercuts of your music collection, even if you are a luddite.  Download the file below, unzip the folder and click "Run Supercut-O-Matic"...there'll be a button to press in the program to give you further instructions.

UPDATE!  You can get improved versions of the Supercut-O-Matic at this link.  The new version gives you more options, such as changing the size of each clip, the crossfade, and more!

Download Supercut-O-Matic for Mac (2mb zip file)

Download Supercut-O-Matic for Windows (3mb zip file)

Source code for Linux

Once you've made your files, send them to me (contact info is provided in the program's helpme file) and I will release YOUR MUSIC on a CD!  Do you have a completist collection of yodeling music, blues singers, minimal-synth, presidential speeches or tuba solos?  Use Supercut-O-Matic and SEND ME THE RESULTS!  Please do contact me with any feedback.

"Supercuts Supercut", a CD with the best submissions I get, is available to anybody who pledges $75 or more to my radio show in the current WFMU fundraising marathon!  Use the widget below to pledge to the greatest radio station on the planet and help us broadcast for another year.  Also, if you pledge $30 or more to my show, I will remix a top 100 song of your choice LIVE on the air.

Comments

[Tom D.]

Very cool! A brilliant project. Love the crossfading. Can't wait to start reelin' in the years -- ten seconds at a time!

[anonymous]

no linux version..
:(

[Nat]

Hey Anonymous. Yeah...I should do that! If you're able to run things from the command line, the source code is included in both of those downloads. You run run_cs.sh and it will try to find the necessary libraries on your computer and then run the program (running without arguments will show you how how the arguments work)...if you don't have the libraries, you just need to download SoX. I'll check with Fred to see whether we can make a Linux version. But yeah! All the tools are there.

[Andrew]

Cool! But your "1967" mp3 link actually links to the 1968 clip.

[Nat]

So it did, Andrew. Thanks for pointing that out. Fixed.

[nerak]

Nifty! But the 1998 file is playing songs from 1996.

[joeyb]

I just listened to the 1967 one, and it seems to be just the hits that made the top 10 that year--definitely not everything that made the top 100, which would have gone on much, much longer.

[joeyb]

Ah, I see, I misread it--I thought it was every song that made the Top 100 during the year, but it's the top 100 songs of the year.

[Nat]

Nerak, fixed that! 1998 is an exceptionally great year too, would've been a shame if that were messed up.

[nostak]

oh cool! have you seen this project by shitmat where he is making songs using every uk number one single. http://www.shitmat.co.uk/category/mashhits/

[EH]

I dare anybody to listen to any year they were in college.

[Nat]

Hey Nostak, I was unaware. Thank you for sharing! I'll definitely be playing some of that on my radio show.

[Xaos Fiftytwo]

Nice little program - here is a Makefile to compile/install from linux source

CXX=/usr/bin/g++
CC=/usr/bin/gcc
CFLAGS=-Wall -I. -I/usr/include
CCFLAGS=$(CFLAGS)
LDFLAGS=-l sox
PREFIX=/usr
DESTDIR=
NAME=chartsweeper
OBJECTS=chartsweeper.o

all: chartsweeper

chartsweeper: $(OBJECTS)
$(CXX) $(LDFLAGS) $(OBJECTS) -o $(NAME)
.c.o:
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) $(DEFINES) -c $< -o $@

install: chartsweeper
install -D -m 755 chartsweeper $(DESTDIR)$(PREFIX)/bin/chartsweeper
clean:
@rm -f chartsweeper *.o

[Sachmet]

'77 seems to have a few extra songs at the end... including Brick House, Heaven on the 7th Floor, Dreams, Life In The Fast Lane, and so on... They're '77 songs, but I wonder where they came from, since they're not in the top 100.

[Sachmet]

'95 is also out of order... Run-Around (#14) is #2, for example.

[Patrick]

A couple songs were missing from the 1960 mix.

The version of "Bristol Stomp" on the 1961 mix is a re-recording.

[Radioman]

Fantastic! Fantastic! Fantastic!

[Matt]

Cool project here... Takes me back. I listened to the 1999 one for about 10 minutes and knew every single song word for word; some of it I didn't realize was so old. Funny how into music we are when we'r ein high school.

[Nat]

Thanks, Xaos! That's amazing. I'll add it. My readers are the best.

[Rapid Roy]

Better be paying your ASCAP & BMI fees, and can you sell CD's with recordings of these cuts legally ? I don't think so.

[Christoph Knüsel]

Great work! Thank you ;)

[Walter]

A few corrections on the '76 file. "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" by Elton John & Kiki Dee is missing at #2. "Fooled Around And Fell In Love" by Elvin Bishop, and "Convoy" by C.W. McCall are missing at #s 56 and 57. "Island Girl" by Elton John is missing at 65. Between #s 81 and 82 you played "Rock And Roll Music" by the Beach Boys - it's actually #62. And finally, you skipped "The Boys Are Back In Town" by Thin Lizzy at #87.

[Scott Aramaki]

The 1997 chart is the "American Top 40" chart instead of the Billboard chart, hence the absence of the Princess Diana "Candle In the Wind". Still a fine, fine year and an awesome site!

[Catlin]

Awesome tool. Though I have a question about the source code for Linux installation. I keep getting a missing separator error for line 14. Just wondering if it was due to my inexperience or an actual typo? Cheers

[Nat]

Catlin, thanks for reporting this! I don't have Linux, so I can't test it myself. I do know that folks have been successful with Linux. However, one user submitted a few bug fixes that I've yet to be able to update - these shouldn't be fatal for you, however. One thing that's been tripping people up sometimes too is that with some versions the program fails if your file path or file names have spaces in them. ie, sometimes "my folder/my file.mp3" causes programs, but "myfolder/myfile.mp3" works. Try that? Hope you can get it running! Let me know if you have more problems.

Thanks to Scott and Sachmet and others who are pointing out flaws in my top-100 cuts! I'll fix these mistakes when I get the time, although it may be a while.