[Alas Babylon!]

I made a number of playlists on Youtube from the Billboard Top 100 for each year of the early 70s.

I used the highest audio quality I could find but deliberately avoided live performances, because face it, often those songs do not sound the same as the way we first heard them on the radio. People will make playlists of oldies but use a live performance by the same artist, but decades AFTER the song was recorded.

Elton John, for example, does not sound at all today like he did in the 70s.

Maybe too much “hard” living. And seriously, I love his music, and really don’t care what he does in the privacy of his own bedroom.

[Alberta's Child]

Good point about the age of the performers. Even in their primes, most of these artists sound much worse live than they do in the studio. The studio tracks are simply engineered and produced so well that a live performance can never match it.

Among classic rock bands, I had found that the Allman Brothers, U2 and Rush were probably the ones whose live performances sounded most like their studio tracks. The Allman Brothers' "At Fillmore East" was arguably the best live rock album ever recorded.

[SamAdams76]

I'll have to let my wife know I'm not the only one in the world obsessed with the Billboard Top 100 charts!

I own the full series of the Joel Whitburn books below (not cheap) and for many years subscribed to Billboard magazine, where I would pore over the charts constantly and follow my favorite songs up and down the charts.

I'm currently on a project (hobby) where I am exploring every song that hit the Billboard Top 100 chart exactly 50 years ago and building playlists around them. So now I'm in May 1971 where songs like "I'll Meet You Halfway" by Partridge Family and "Hot Love" by T Rex were just hitting the charts.

Even though I have many of these songs in my collection already, I'm still discovering nuggets that I missed the first time around. "Nathan Jones" by The Supremes and "Sea Cruise" by Johnny Rivers were just added to my playlists. I don't remember hearing them back in the day but I know a good song when I hear it.