Using Chart Alt-Metrics to Find the Transcendent Four Seasons/Frankie Valli Singles

By Bill Carroll

Previous postings in this blog have described the metrics used in these studies.  In short, this work is based on point values that preferentially reward high chart rank and an area under the curve analysis is done to determine the score of each record.  Then, to normalize for differences in the chart methodologies over time, each record’s score is divided by the scores of records entering the charts within six months before or after entry of the subject record.  In this way, an “average” record score is always 1 and the subject record score is a multiple of the average.

For these studies, scores are accumulated from all three of the major magazines in the 1955-1991 era: Billboard, Cash Box and Music Vendor/Record World.  Normalized scores from the three magazines are averaged to calculate a final score; if a record does not chart in one of the magazines, that score is zero.

Somewhat arbitrarily, for this study and those going forward, I set a score of 8.5 times the average contemporaneous record score, as a definition of transcendent in its time.  This captures about 1% of the records in the era.  Records that exceed 7.5 times the average are in the top 10%.

For the statistics geeks, average and median scores are not the same in this distribution, indicating skewness.  The average score, 1, is exceeded by about 25% of the records in the database.  The median score, marking 50% of the records, is closer to 0.4.  While the median may differ from the average on an absolute basis, the two parameters vary in a similar way over the period studied.  Using the median instead of the average for normalization would increase the absolute score but generally not the relative order of scores.

I’ve chosen average for these comparisons because it’s computationally easier and because records scoring below median are records that got little national attention.  A typical lifecycle for a median-scoring record might be 8 or 9 weeks on the chart, peaking in the 40s.  On the other hand, an average-scoring record might peak around 20 after 14 or 15 weeks on the chart.  Median performance does not rule out high achievement locally, especially in the 1950s and 1960s.

The first surprise for me is that Big Girls Don’t Cry charted higher than Sherry.  Both #1s for about equal periods in all magazines; BGDC with slightly greater longevity, and both transcendent in their time.  From there the normal process of decay takes place: while the Beatles avoided an overall falloff in chart performance over time, most acts do their strongest work first.

The Four Seasons/Frankie Valli timeline is clearly a two-humped camel, with a gap in the psychedelic and early singer/songwriter and funk years.  Dance music revitalized both entities, and of course Grease was the last hurrah.

As with the Beatles, some of the “best” tracks were not the ones that scored highest.  Can’t Take My Eyes Off You is a classic by any measure, and scored well but just out of the top 10%.  My personal favorite—Opus 17—barely made a separate mention.

A total canon average of 1.73 for 66 entries places the Four Seasons and Frankie Valli well ahead of the pack—something you knew already.  That’s not to say there aren’t some of their records that fell flat—about 40% of their charted below the median score.  But the good ones are really good and the numbers prove that out.