Pop

Why It’s Great: A sly, slow-burning slice of dance-pop seduction, “Padam Padam” found Aussie legend Kylie Minogue delivering an onomatopoeic chorus that became TikTok shorthand for damn near anything (sort of like a Zoomer version of “yadda yadda yadda”) in the summer of 2023.  

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: While TikTok certainly can make hits, streams on the platform don’t factor into Hot 100 rankings – so even though “Padam Padam” was the inescapable meme when it came to LGBTQ social media in 2023, it didn’t translate in high-enough volume on DSPs for it to make the tally.  

Why It’s Great: The Who’s oft-referenced mod anthem was also an early textbook for later power-pop purveyors — though few of them would’ve started a song with a lyric about trusting their girlfriend to dance with their male friends.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Some British bands invaded U.S. shores slower than others, and The Who didn’t really become Hot 100 fixtures until their Happy Jack and The Who Sell Out albums in 1967.

Why It’s Great: Few ’90s country singles have endured as well as Martina McBride’s rousing revenge story song, about her mother’s declaration of independence from an abusive relationship.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Get ready for a recurring theme on this list: Country songs crossing over to the Hot 100 in the mid-’90s was a relative rarity, with usually just a handful of songs a year making the jump.

Why It’s Great: The aptly named instrumental is indeed built around perhaps the most inefctious whistle hook you’ve ever heard, an undeniable pop moment for the Chicago house legend.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: While “The Whistle Song” topped Billboard‘s Dance/Club Play chart, top 40 radio wasn’t really checking for instrumentals in the early ’90s, no matter how catchy.

Why It’s Great: A post-disco hi-NRG classic, singer/actress Miquel Brown’s delightfully cheeky “So Many Men, So Little Time” remains an enduring club (or at least retro club night) staple.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Aside from getting caught between dance eras in pop music, the campy voraciousness of “So Many Men” might’ve proved a little too much for top 40 programmers of the time; even “It’s Raining Men” only made it to No. 46 on the Hot 100.

Why It’s Great: For any other artist, “Till I Collapse” would be a career-defining pump-up anthem; for Eminem it’s a strong-enough No. 2 to still have over a billion plays on Spotify.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: “Collapse” was not one of the four singles released off The Eminem Show in the U.S., building its popularity over two decades of commercial, trailer and jock-jam usage.

Why It’s Great: The rare ’80s floor-filler with real blood pumping through its veins — not to mention a hypnotic enough bassline to get sampled for decades to come, including on Ini Kamoze’s Hot 100-topping “Here Comes the Hotstepper.”

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: As slow and steady as “Heartbeat” is, it never had much of a chance on early-’80s pop radio — particularly with even the single edit running over five minutes.

Why It’s Great: The new wave-era, blue-eyed soul single was packed with enough hooks and lyrical detail to become a critical favorite, and was accompanied by an arresting enough video to also become an early MTV staple.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Squeeze’s subtle, witty and often extremely British brand of pop-rock struggled on the Hot 100 — even “Tempted,” a song everyone at least knows the chorus to, only hit No. 49 — and at a surprising six minutes in full, “Black Coffee” was never likely to be a major breakthrough there.

Why It’s Great: One of the signature singles from Bonnie Raitt’s Nick of Time, “Thing Called Love” showed all the tenderness and swagger that would combine to make the veteran singer-guitarist an unlikely ’90s pop star.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: While it helped Raitt make mainstream inroads — particularly on VH1, with its Dennis Quaid-co-starring video — “Thing” was still early in her comeback, and perhaps a little too rootsy to make major impact in the year of Paula Abdul and the Fine Young Cannibals.

Why It’s Great: The riff that launched a thousand beer commercials, and the growling, cocky-as-hell vocal that made a white blues rocker an improbable star of the synth-pop era.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Though huge on MTV, “Bad to the Bone” was maybe a little too b-b-b-b-bad for a top 40 era that already had its hands full trying to figure out what to do with all those makeup-wearing Brits suddenly crashing U.S. shores.

Why It’s Great: An all-time mother-daughter song from a duo that would know, with a refrain as perfectly sweet and punny as the best country ballads always are: “Mama he’s crazy/ Crazy over me.”

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: The mid-’80s pop world was not much kinder to country than the mid-’90s, especially if your name was neither Kenny nor Dolly.

Why It’s Great: The perfect bumper music for nationally televised Lakers games, “I Love L.A.” has long been a West Coast classic, particularly for audiences unfamiliar enough with Randy Newman’s earlier work to totally miss the song’s sardonic undercurrent.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Though the “We love it!” shout-along part is all most people remember from it, “I Love L.A.” is actually a very knotty pop song — changing styles, tempos and melodies multiple times — making it a pretty tough sell on radio.

Why It’s Great: An early freestyle standard-setter about dancing, partying and scoping out guys, “When I Hear Music” (along with its follow-up, “Lookout Weekend”) ensures that Debbie Deb will forever be one of the queens of Friday night in New York City.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Though “When I Hear Music” has a great chorus, it shows up kinda sporadically, with long instrumental breaks in between — more geared for sliding in and out of DJ sets than in between Lionel Richie and Wham! on top 40 playlists.

Why It’s Great: The Henry Mancini/Johnny Mercer ballad is one of the greatest film songs of all time (the AFI ranked it No. 4 on their 100 Years…100 Songs list in 2004), and Andy Williams sang the definitive version — velvety, but dynamic.  

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: In his autobiography, Williams said his former label, Cadence Records, had discouraged him from recording the song in 1961 on the grounds that young listeners wouldn’t understand the line “my huckleberry friend”; instead, Mancini and R&B singer Jerry Butler had major hits with the song. Moon River & Other Great Movie Themes, released the next year on Columbia, came without any accompanying singles, which forced fans to buy the album — an effective strategy, as the album remained on the Billboard 200 for more than three years. 

Why It’s Great: Luther Vandross delivered one of the all-time great Bacharach/David renderings with his signature performance of this ballad, with an arrangement and delivery that keeps scaling new heights and plumbing new depths throughout its seven minutes.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Likely due to that seven-minute runtime, Vandross’ “House” was not a single — though it would find its way to chart success two decades later via a Kanye West flip on Twista’s Hot 100-topping “Slow Jamz.”

Why It’s Great: A sub-two minute drill anthem that went viral in part for coining new slang (fellas — you do not want to be classified as a munch), but really, “Munch (Feelin’ U)” introduced Ice Spice’s tossed-off charisma and producer RIOTUSA’s undeniable bounce.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Before “Munch” could really cross over, Ice Spice had already moved on to an even bigger solo breakthrough hit (“In Ha Mood”) before fully exploding with top 10 collaborations like “Boy’s a Liar Pt. 2,” “Princess Diana” and “Barbie World.”

Why It’s Great: Whodini’s best-remembered hit was the most party-starting song about nocturnal skirt-chasing that could’ve also soundtracked one of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Maybe a little too dark in its funk for the 1984 mainstream — and besides, even Run-D.M.C. weren’t crossing over from rap to pop until ’86.

Why It’s Great: Few late-’80s hits were as relentless in their barrage of hooks as “Teardrops,” one of the original crying-on-the-dancefloor classics.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: “Teardrops” was an enormous pop smash overseas, but in America, but the upbeat R&B swing of it — almost like an ’80s version of northern soul — didn’t quite translate.

Why It’s Great: It’s The Rolling Stones at their peak – snarling, sassy and sexy.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Though it has regularly appeared on Stones best-of compilations since, “Thumb” wasn’t released as a single from the band’s 1966 album, Aftermath — whose singles were “Paint It Black” and (on the U.K. edition) “Mother’s Little Helper.” Releasing two singles from an album was about the norm back then; seven months after Aftermath was released, the band was onto its next album, Between the Buttons. 

Why It’s Great: A slinky synth-funk groove and playfully provocative lyrics, the kind that Prince and his protégés were regularly turning into the best party of the early ’80s.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Though it was a chart-topper on Billboard‘s Dance/Club Songs — until the Purple One’s own “1999” gave it the boot — “Nasty Girl” might’ve been just a little too nasty for pop radio at the time, which Prince himself didn’t even become a fixture on until 1983.

Why It’s Great: Few floor-filling hits of the ’90s have either the emotional heft or symphonic sweep of “Unfinished Sympathy,” bringing you simultaneously as high and low as any single of the era.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: It was a No. 13 hit in the U.K., Massive Attack’s home country, but over here we were more invested in the less-weighty dancefloor rushes of Black Box and C&C Music Factory.

Why It’s Great: The late-career success for ’60s and ’70s soul hitmaker Clarence Carter became a word-of-mouth crowd-pleaser for its gleefully sex-positive message and singalong lyrics — some as absurd and simple as “Clarence Carter, Clarence Carter, ooh s–t, Clarence Carter.”

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Pop songs this filthy rarely do, especially from a former hitmaker whose last Hot 100 hit was over a decade in the rearview.

Why It’s Great: The title track to Change’s debut album is an absolutely incandescent dance-pop gem, not only providing the backbone for Janet Jackson’s Hot 100-topping “All for You” two decades later, but introducing a young lead vocalist named Luther Vandross to the world.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: “The Glow of Love” was the third single pulled from its parent album — lead single “A Lover’s Holiday” reached No. 40 — and with disco fading in commercial prominence by late 1980, it might’ve been too late to make a pop impact.

Why It’s Great: Chilled out, sunny yet vaguely sad, the Ric Ocasek-produced, Rivers Cuomo-penned slice of SoCal surf-pop bobs along like a perfect wave, buoyed by the band’s harmonized “hip, hip” refrain.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Appreciated more after-the-fact than in its time as an exemplar of Cuomo’s pop songwriting (and licensed like crazy over the years), “Island” was a bit sleepy for turn-of-the-century pop radio.

Why It’s Great: In the 2010s, reggae and dancehall’s presence in the U.S. mainstream tended to prioritze saccharine watered-down recreations of the style under names like “tropical pop” or “airport reggae,” as per Rihanna. And then there was “Toast,” a bouncy, celebratory ode to life’s greatest blessings that updated the hallmarks of dancehall music for a new generation. 

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: In 2019, rap was king. With an uncompromising sound and a lack of crossover remixes to aid its entry into U.S. musical landscape, “Toast” instead found a home amongst Stateside dancehall devotees, eventually securing a historic best reggae album Grammy win for its parent EP, Rapture. 

Why It’s Great: The definitive showcase for vocalist Curt Smith’s haunting tenor epitomizes the band’s ability to pair profound, deeply emotional reflections (in this case, a young man’s blend of melancholy and bemused curiosity observing human existence) with sticky melodies and synth beats (see: co-frontman Roland Orzabal having a one-man dance party in the background of the music video).

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: The third single from the band’s 1983 debut The Hurting was a big hit in the U.K. (reaching No. 3), but it took a bit longer for the U.S. to catch on — “Shout,” released about a year later, turned out to be the band’s international breakthrough.

Why It’s Great: Few gangsta rap songs have ever been so serene as the Geto Boys’ ode to living the life of a G — which even includes famed Rap-a-Lot Records impresario J. Prince rapping its hilarious climactic verse as President of the United States.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Though one of the group’s best-remembered songs today, “Damn” was no more than a promotional single from the group’s Uncut Dope hits compilation upon its 1992 release — only earning a much wider profile with its use in the 1999 Mike Judge comedy Office Space.

Why It’s Great: With a disco-indebted production sampling Barry White and cheeky lyrics borrowing bars from Slick Rick and A Tribe Called Quest, this party of a song was just as fun as Robbie Williams’ public persona, allowing the British pop superstar to leave his earnest ballads behind and hit the dance floor.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: American audiences will remember this song from its audacious music video, which features Williams trying to get a gorgeous DJ to notice him by stripping down to nothing, then tearing off his skin and blood-soaked muscles to get her attention instead– but MTV airplay doesn’t count toward the Hot 100 and this was pre-YouTube, so while it was No. 1 in his native U.K., it had to settle for a No. 24 peak on Dance Clubs Songs here.

Why It’s Great: One of two Tapestry classics about offering unconditional support to a loved one “Where You Lead” became both a 1971 top 40 hit for Barbra Streisand and the enduring theme to ’00s WB mother-daughter dramedy Gilmore Girls.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Tapestry simply had too many bangers for them all to be released as singles, and it’s near-impossible to argue with those that were (“It’s Too Late,” “I Feel the Earth Move,” “So Far Away”).

Why It’s Great: If Smokey Robinson didn’t already give them a name for the “Quiet Storm” radio format, “Between the Sheets” probably would’ve worked just as well — with an R&B slow jam even more sublimely squalling, and just as enduring.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: It didn’t miss by much, but the Isleys were just relegated to the R&B charts for most of the ’80s, as the soul that crossed over in the ’80s was usually either peppier or more sentimental than the Isleys’ baby-making music.

Why It’s Great: One of the funniest and most rocking songs of The Boss’ Born in the U.S.A. era, “Pink Cadillac” was like Springsteen’s take on Bob Dylan’s “Leopard-Skin Pillbox Hat,” with more hooks and hip-swiveling.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Though it became a fan and ultimately a radio favorite, “Pink Cadillac” was only ever released as a B-side to Bruce’s pop smash “Dancing in the Dark” — at least until Natalie Cole took it to the top five in 1988.

Why It’s Great: Though the majority of Sade’s most celebrated songs were slow and low, “Hang on to Your Love” proved the band could crank it into second gear, with just as transfixing results.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Might’ve been too much of a switch-up from the loungier joys of top 10 hit “Smooth Operator” to impact the same way.

Why It’s Great: An infectiously groovy bit of future-fearing Stevie Wonder pastiche from a British funk band — with one of the all-time great music videos, featuring singer Jay Kay getting down with his bad self on a magically-moving dancefloor while wearing a somewhat ridiculous, now-iconic furry hat.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: The visual was a video of the year-winner at the VMAs, and the song took home the Grammy for best pop vocal performance by a duo or group, but U.S. radio classifications didn’t easily accommodate a jazz-funk single in 1996 — sending it to middling performance on the Alternative Airplay, Dance Club Songs, Adult Contemporary and Mainstream Top 40 charts only.

Why It’s Great: “911 Is a Joke” was one of Public Enemy’s most pointed attacks on America’s institutional failures — and with usual hypeman Flava Flav taking the lead, it was also one of its funniest and catchiest.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Topical rap had never had yet to find much success crossing over in the early ’90s, and Public Enemy wouldn’t even reach the Hot 100 until “Can’t Truss It” from the group’s fourth album, Apocalypse 91… The Enemy Strikes Black

Why It’s Great: The early-’00s love song proved that an indie rocker and an electronic producer could find soaring middle ground in remote laptop pop.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: It took years of gradual word-of-mouth for “Such Great Heights” to ultimately reach an entire generation like it did, and never quite broke through to the mainstream during that time.

Why It’s Great: Grace Jones’ shimmering and highly euphemistic post-disco clarion call made for arguably her most irresistible pop single.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: As iconic as she is, Jones’ Hot 100 history is not extensive — her appearance on Beyoncé’s “Move” last year got her highest placement on the chart to date, still only at No. 55 — and “Pull Up to the Bumper,” like many of her signature singles, was mostly held to cult classic status.

Why It’s Great: Sometimes, it’s as simple as a dance-pop song titled “D.A.N.C.E.” in which giddy children shout the refrain, “Do the dance!” — that was the recipe for French electronic duo Justice to score a global breakthrough, which included an unlikely VMA nod for Video of the Year.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: The nu-disco track featured Michael Jackson lyrics, a Britney Spears interpolation and vocals from the Foundation for Young Musicians choir, all of which made it too offbeat for radio even as “D.A.N.C.E.” hit the clubs and critics’ lists.

Why It’s Great: Even without a proper chorus, “Every Picture Tells a Story” builds electric pop-rock momentum throughout its six-minute runtime, more than earning its title-repeating climax.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Despite being the opener and title track to his most popular album — and now a staple on classic rock radio — “Picture” was never released as an official single in this country.

Why It’s Great: With a brittle, spiky guitar riff and playful vocal performance from Simon Le Bon (check out the way he launches the “shooting staaaaaaar” lyric into orbit), “Girls on Film” is a stone-cold new wave classic that was overshadowed by an explicit music video boasting everything from ice cubes on women’s nipples to mudwrestling models.  

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: An edited version of the video played heavily on early MTV — two years after the single dropped. By that point, the heartthrobs had moved on from the self-titled parent album and were promoting singles from smash follow-up Rio. (It did nab them one of the first Grammys for best music film, though.) 

Why It’s Great: A fairly standard piano ballad turns genuinely moving thanks to the melancholy in Chris Martin’s falsetto, as he tries to square scientific data with his own emotions; eventually, he runs out of room to hypothesize, and lets out an “ooo-OOOOH!” that has filled many a stadium.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Coldplay weren’t yet reliable pop hitmakers at the time “The Scientist” arrived on 2002 sophomore LP A Rush of Blood to the Head, but that album’s “Clocks” became the band’s commercial breakthrough, and subsequent releases scored multiple Hot 100 hits.

Why It’s Great: With strobelit synths, yearning vocals and a slamming beat, the genre-splicing barnstormer made stars out of Seo Taiji and Boys, and kicked off a new era in Korean pop history.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Though its significance is globally recognized today, “I Know” had sadly little chance of impacting the U.S. mainstream in 1992 — K-pop would not officially breach the Hot 100 for another 17 years.

Why It’s Great: The 1975’s most-streamed song is also maybe their most universal, a simple and devastating post-breakup song with a five-star chorus about being OK with a relationship ending but not yet with being moved on from.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Despite their popularity (and occasional infamy), The 1975 have never had a ton of “hits” in the conventional sense, and the slow-burning “Somebody Else” was always unlikely to be an exception there.

Why It’s Great: True to its title, “Digital Love” is a sweet romantic fantasy sung by an apparent robot over a George Duke sample and Supertramp keys — with the cybervocals somehow just making the whole thing more irrepressibly human.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Though Daft Punk’s Discovery highlights have become such a part of pop culture that the album feels like a greatest hits compilation now, it was sufficiently ahead of its time that just one song from it charted: the unassailable “One More Time,” and even that one only hit No. 61.

Why It’s Great: Blondie’s cover of cult power-pop band The Nerves kicked off their classic Parallel Lines with an unstoppable blast of new wave lust and longing.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Pop radio was more into the disco side of Blondie’s most-beloved album, as “Heart of Glass” was the single that topped the Hot 100 and took the CBGBs denizens above ground for good.

Why It’s Great: Arriving in the middle of a legendary mixtape run that devoured 2015, “March Madness” was the crown jewel of what was arguably Future’s most prolific era: a chugging ode to fast cars, drugs, and diamonds balanced allusions to civil rights struggles over a pristine Tarentino-helmed beat. 

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Despite its parent mixtape 56 Nights arriving during the song’s title month, “March Madness” didn’t see official commercial release until August 2015, which stunted its chart potential.

Why It’s Great: Borrowing a rubbery funk bassline from post-punk groovers Liquid Liquid, “White Lines” turned an anti-drug PSA into one of the most club-killing rap singles of the mid-’80s.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Rap songs, anti-drug songs and songs interpolating New York no wave alums: three types of songs not terribly likely to have a major chart impact in 1983.

Why It’s Great: With its infectious midtempo shuffle and the irresistible vocals of Selena Quintanilla, the pop-cumbia breakout hit “Como La Flor” confirmed that a major star had arrived in ’90s Tejano music.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Selena would eventually cross over to the Hot 100, but she’d have to start singing (mostly) in English to do so; the Spanish-language “Como La Flor” had little chance back in ’92.

Why It’s Great: One of the greatest singers of all time, accompanied by Count Basie and his Orchestra, singing a song worthy of his talents — with an arrangement by a 31-year-old up-and-comer named Quincy Jones. What’s not to like?  

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: “Fly Me to the Moon” was the key song from It Might as Well Be Swing (see what they did there?), but it wasn’t released as a single, as back in the day, artists often kept their singles and albums totally separate.

Why It’s Great: The livewire 4 single mashes about 18 different types of global party music into one inscrutable dance-pop banger that truly only Beyoncé could stay in complete control over.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Despite being deemed essential enough for Bey’s first Super Bowl halftime performance, “End of Time” came a little too late as a single in the 4 promo cycle, and was only officially released overseas.

Why It’s Great: The strummed acoustic guitar line intro alternating with snares beg for a sing-and-clap-along, as do Gordon Gano’s quivering verses and full-throated punk snarl on the “Let me go ooooon!“s of the chorus; no surprise that it’s both an alt-rock classic and a karaoke favorite.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: The Femmes weren’t quite ready for primetime (“Blister” is on their debut album, recorded when Gano was still in high school) and neither was their label: though it’d eventually be acquired by Warner, then-indie Slash Records at the time specialized in local punk acts, and the album itself just barely eked its way onto the Billboard 200.

Why It’s Great: The Lou Reed-sampling single helped establish the playful, inventive style of one of the greatest rap groups of the ’90s — and also gave the genre one of its all-time call-and-response hooks.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Compared to a lot of Golden Age hip-hop, “Can I Kick It?” was hooky as hell — but not so much compared to MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice, the two crossover rappers ruling the roost in late 1990.

Why It’s Great: “Love and Happiness” is as soulful as it comes, the legendary Al Green caressed by warm horns and organs as he seemingly free-associates about the power of love over a patient groove.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Green’s I’m Still in Love With You album generated three singles in the U.S., but “Love and Happiness” wasn’t one of them — it was only released overseas, though it still ended up attracting airplay (and dozens of covers) over here.

Why It’s Great: Twinkling piano and a shimmering celeste create a warm bed for Kate Bush – in a crystal-clear voice that’s childlike but hardly innocent — to revel in Emily Bronte’s tale of an unrequired love that reaches out from beyond the grave. A haunting tale of obsession that’s easy to get infatuated with.  

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Despite being a U.K. No. 1 and smash around Europe, “Wuthering Heights” only impacted the Bubbling Under chart in the U.S — not surprising, really, when you consider the art rock auteur’s nearly non-existent commercial prospects on American soil until a certain Stranger Things synch.

Why It’s Great: N.W.A’s most joyous single — not exactly among stiff competition — expressed the group’s pro-wordplay, anti-drug (??) stance with dextrous bars and an absolutely unstoppable Charles Wright & The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band sample.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Even at its most crossover-friendly, N.W.A’s reality-kicking was still probably a little too raw for the American mainstream of the late ’80s.

Why It’s Great: It’s the beating heart of Simon’s Graceland, with Simon’s deceptively sweet, lilting vocal cloaking a more abstract lyrical commentary on wealth and youth’s folly as he yields much of the spotlight to the rich harmonies of Ladysmith Black Mambazo and the horn-driven instrumentals of his South African band.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Graceland’s first three singles (“You Can Call Me Al,” “Graceland” and “The Boy in the Bubble”) all hit the chart, but with diminishing returns; “Diamonds,” the fourth, perhaps didn’t stand a chance — especially given it was almost an album afterthought, only recorded a week after Simon and LBM performed it on Saturday Night Live.

Why It’s Great: “All My Ex’s” is one of country’s greatest list songs and greatest singalongs, so intoxicating in its born-to-roam swaggering that even Drake had to namecheck it once.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Again, top 40 was simply not kind to country in the mid-’80s — even to the King himself, whose first Hot 100 hit would not come until 1993, a decade-plus into his reign.

Why It’s Great: Costello’s great ballad has the swing and soul of classic ’50s R&B and a plaintive, eminently singable chorus (featuring the line that titled its parent album: “My aim is true”) — as well as a classic narrative of romantic disappointment, all delivered with the singer’s signature sardonic wit.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: My Aim is True fared well enough on the Billboard 200 (No. 32),  but that didn’t get “Alison” too far: it only got a bit of mainstream rock radio airplay — maybe not the ideal place for a retro-leaning ballad in 1977.

Why It’s Great: Billy Idol’s remixed version of his punk band Generation X’s 1980 single had just the attitude, energy and ceaseless pop hookery — as well as the image, natch — to take over MTV in its early years.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Still maybe a little too punk for pop audiences, who wouldn’t fully embrace Idol until he got a little dreamier and more synthed-up on 1984’s Rebel Yell.

Why It’s Great: “Paid in Full” is quite easily one of the most impactful singles in hip-hop history, with nearly every Rakim bar later quoted or sampled by somebody, and Eric B’s “Ashley’s Roachclip” drum loop even becoming an unavoidable pop music backbone for the next half–decade.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: You barely even notice because every second of it is so classic and catchy, but “Paid in Full” is really just one verse with no hook — not exactly a formula for ’80s chart success.

Why It’s Great: A signature song for Dino, “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head” is Martin’s beeee-yoo-ti-ful ode to the brain-scrambling powers of unexpected romance, and the joys of diving right in headfirst.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: The turn of the ’60s was something of a fallow commercial period for the Rat Packer, and “Kick” wouldn’t really be felt by the mainstream until Martin performed it in the hit movie Ocean’s 11 a year later.

Why It’s Great: ABBA’s predilection for delectable ear candy merged here with a hankering for some man candy. 

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: This gem was the one new track on Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 in 1979. It was released as a single, but it was crowded by the songs released as singles from the group’s previous studio album, Voulez-Vous, and may have seemed a little too risqué in 1979 anyway.

Why It’s Great: It’s post-disco pop’s greatest love letter to the man playing the music, a heartwarming, ass-shaking testimony to his superheroic problem-fixing powers.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: It was a little restrained for early-’80s dance music, which had been losing ground in the pop realm for the decade’s first few years to begin with.

Why It’s Great: As many Prince songs as “Erotic City” could’ve credibly titled, it was most meant for this one: a frisky, funky and funny transmission that radiates horniness — but in a way that feels inclusive to prospective new members of its community.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: It was only ever a B-side in the U.S., to the far more wedding-friendly Hot 100-topper “Let’s Go Crazy” — though many of the country’s more adventurous ’80s radio stations still couldn’t resist giving “Erotic City” some spins.

Why It’s Great: With references to tacos, nachos, and Narcos sprinkled throughout a vulnerable rumination on self-esteem and self-worth, how couldn’t “Drew Barrymore” end up a dope pop song? 

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Hard to imagine now, but the SZA of 2017 was far from the commercial force that is the SZA of 2023 — and between less commercial pull and a sound that strayed from the trap, post-EDM and Latin pop that dominated 2017, “Drew Barrymore” was destined for success that sidestepped the Hot 100. 

Why It’s Great: As cinematic as Lana Del Rey ever got (saying something), “Born to Die” feels like the opening credits theme to her storied career, while also setting the early-’10s sonic standard for pop that would later be considered “Spotify-core.”

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: The discourse around Lana Del Rey very nearly swallowed her career whole before she even got to release her debut album — which of course ended up slowly growing into one of the biggest pop blockbusters of the ’10s, but which only scored a major crossover hit with Cedric Gervais’ later remix of its “Summertime Sadness.”

Why It’s Great: Combining West Coast bounce with a touch of Atlanta crunk courtesy of producer Lil’ Jon, “Blow the Whistle” captures all of the gloriously sweaty sensuality that permeates every classic house party – and the song remains eternal thanks to nifty lifts from rappers ranging from Drake (“For Free”) to Saweetie (“Tap In”).

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Although “Blow the Whistle” did enter several Billboard charts – including a No. 1 peak on the Bubbling Under Hot 100 – the song simply didn’t cross over quite enough to become the veteran rapper’s second Hot 100 hit of the 2000s as a lead artist.

Why It’s Great: This Chips Moman/Dan Penn ballad from Franklin’s 1967 album I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You melds elements of soul and gospel in the signature way that made Franklin the eternal Queen of Soul.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: While great, it probably wasn’t accessible enough to pop listeners to become a crossover smash. The song was also the B-side of Franklin’s “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You),” which became her first top 10 hit on the Hot 100 and her first No. 1 on what is now called Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. (“Do Right” charted separately on the R&B chart, at No. 37, but not on the Hot 100.) 

Why It’s Great: “Move Your Feet” was rotational motion from Denmark: every time you think the dizzying disco joy might come to a halt, pop duo Junior Senior command you d-d-don’t, don’t stop the beat, and you’re back up, circling around and shuffling once more.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Might’ve taken a little too long for the song to get here from overseas, and euphoric disco-pop wasn’t really hitting here in the era of Lil Jon and Sean Paul anyway.

Why It’s Great: No song is better at capturing both the annual delight of summer and the melancholy of its inevitable end, essentially making it the “Last Dance” of Labor Day Weekend.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Despite its perennial relevance — and its unforgettable usage over the end credits to the ’60s-set 1973 film classic American Graffiti — “All Summer Long” was never released as a single in the U.S.

Why It’s Great: Nina Simone’s resounding rendition of the Anthony Newley- and Leslie Bricusse co-penned showtune (originally from The Roar of the Greasepaint, The Smell of the Crowd) — such a feel-good number they had to put it right there in the title — was soaring enough to turn the song into a late-20th-century pop standard.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Simone rarely crossed over in her career, and her “Feeling Good” was not officially released as a single until it got used in a British Volkswagen commercial decades later anyway.

Why It’s Great: With its sweet-but-not-quite sentimental lyrics and graceful melody, “New York State of Mind” quickly became timeless enough for traditional pop icons like Mel Tormé and Tony Bennett to try their hand at it — and for it to became an enduring Big Apple anthem.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Never a single, if you can believe it.

Why It’s Great: No one on the corner had swagger like M.I.A. at the turn of the ’10s, and the undeniable “Bad Girls” was the last great moment from her time in the mainstream — big enough that its (impossibly dope) visual even scored a video of the year VMA nod.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: As much clout and cool as M.I.A. had at the time, it wasn’t quite enough to get her on pop radio in the turbo-pop time of Katy Perry and Kesha.

Why It’s Great: “I Wanna Be Sedated” set the blueprint for decades of pop-punk to follow, with chronically restless lyrics, minimal chord changes, a one-note guitar solo and vocals that demanded to be shouted along to the whole way through.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Slightly miraculous that the Ramones graced the Hot 100 at all during the ’70s — both “Sheena Is a Punk Rocker” and “Rockaway Beach” scraped the lower half — but “Sedated” might’ve been just a bit too brain-fried for even the more open-minded pop stations of the time.

Why It’s Great: Even through multiple shifts in tone, tempo and melody, “I Got a Boy” remains irresistible pop through and through, with its jaw-dropping shapeshifting and hyperactivity just adding to the infectiousness.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: The larger pop world was starting to open a little to K-pop by 2013, but it wasn’t really until BTS kicked the doors down later in the decade that it had a major and consistent presence on the Hot 100.

Why It’s Great: With its eerie synths and heart-piercing vocals, “Goodbye Horses” made an indelible impression on anybody whoever heard it — particularly director Jonathan Demme, who featured it in two of his movies (including as a disturbing singalong in 1991’s Silence of the Lambs), and alt acts Crosses, Kele Okereke and MGMT, who have all covered it.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Despite the sync placements, the unpigeonholeable Q Lazzarus (born Diane Lucky) never had proper label support, and mostly lived off the pop grid until her death in 2022.

Why It’s Great: This midtempo ballad and R&B radio favorite was a heart-melting showcase for Philip Bailey’s gorgeous falsetto. 

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: “Reasons” wasn’t released as one of the two singles from That’s the Way of the World — both of which, “Shining Star” and the album’s title track, were also first-tier classics. Columbia could have put out a third single from the album, but the group had another album (1976’s Gratitude) ready to go, with its own hit single, “Sing a Song.”  

Why It’s Great: A sweeping love story with a perfect chorus and a third-verse twist that brings it all back home, Trisha Yearwood’s debut single and breakout hit remains one of the most buoyant and beloved country songs of the ’90s.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Despite coming from the period where the genre was starting to make its claim as one of America’s most commercially powerful — with Yearwood and her future husband playing no small part in that — early-’90s pop radio wasn’t ready to embrace country again yet.

Why It’s Great: A pulsing highlight from 808s & Heartbreak, “Paranoid” synthesized that album’s post-breakup mania with the neon shimmer of the singles from prior set Graduation for one of Ye’s most unshakeable pop songs.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Coming after the 1-2 emotional punch of “Love Lockdown” and “Heartless,” and the NBA playoffs-soundtracking “Amazing,” pop radio and audiences might’ve just been too exhausted to go back to the Heartbreak well for a fourth single.

Why It’s Great: An ode to the multifaceted nature of the concept of love and the action of loving, “Could You Be Loved” bottles up one of the most enigmatic and inexplicable phenomena in the world into one of the grooviest melodies in the reggae-pop canon.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Though he’s rightly come to be recognized as a global musical icon, Bob Marley never became a U.S. pop star before his 1981 death — only hitting the Hot 100 once, with 1976’s “Roots, Rock, Reggae” — as reggae was just not a major part of the top 40 landscape during the late ’70s and early ’80s.

Why It’s Great: From its echoing sax riff to its breathless “Take me! To the! Feel-ing!” chorus, “Run Away With Me” became a synth-pop rallying cry for critics and Jepfriends alike upon opening 2015’s acclaimed Emotion album, a clear demonstration of Carly Rae’s melodic brilliance beyond “Call Me Maybe.”

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: “Run Away With Me” marked the exact moment that Jepsen pivoted from attempts at re-creating the mainstream boom of “Call Me Maybe” (Emotion lead single “I Really Like You” had Justin Bieber AND Tom Hanks in its music video, and still only peaked at No. 39 in 2015), and embracing her status as a cult pop hero; she hasn’t hit the Hot 100 since, but still plays to major crowds.

Why It’s Great: As the lead single from OutKast’s game-changing Stankonia album “B.O.B.” stir-fried about a dozen different different genres, styles and eras in one single so explosive and futuristic that it barely even feels classifiable as “pop” — though it also remembers to, y’know, still be fun and catchy.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Though it’s one of the most acclaimed songs of the 21st century — and a song that everyone seems to know and love — can’t say it’s terribly surprising that radio didn’t have a clue what to do with a song that didn’t remotely resemble anything else on the airwaves in 2000.

Why It’s Great: The genius of this George Harrison composition is its simplicity, with the lilting acoustic guitar line and hopeful lyrics about better days ahead doing the heavy lifting. On Abbey Road, an album filled with timeless classics, “Sun” remains a beacon of light.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: The only single formally released from Abbey Road was the double A-side of “Come Together”/“Something” — a Hot 100 No. 1 in 1969 — so “Sun” never got its shine on the chart.

Why It’s Great: Goth post-punks The Cure’s first great pop moment sounds like frontman Robert Smith’s love letter to Smokey Robinson, the greatest non-Motown song ever written about hiding the tears in your eyes out of misguided devotion to masculine ideals.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: It took The Cure a while to break the U.S. mainstream, just brushing the chart’s lowest stretches with “In Between Days” in 1986 before finally hitting the top 40 with “Just Like Heaven” in early ’88.

Why It’s Great: A 16-year-old stressing out over aging has never sounded so poignant: the centerpiece of Lorde’s debut album Pure Heroine, “Ribs” turns youthful worries over the passage of time into dizzying electro-pop movement, with repeated phrases (“I want ’em back, I want ’em back/ The minds we had, the minds we had”) deployed as pleas for the world to slow down.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: With the out-of-nowhere No. 1 smash “Royals” and its top 10 follow-up “Team,” “Ribs” never had room to shine as a single from Pure Heroine — understandable, really, considering that those other songs have radio-friendly verse-chorus structures, while “Ribs” hopscotches through refrains.

Why It’s Great: As virulently misogynistic and downright vile as “Ain’t No Fun” can be, the power of the Doggfather and peak G-funk still compels the entire party — no matter gender or general moral code — to sing along, especially whenever the forever-incomparable Nate Dogg croons, “It ain’t no fun/ If the homies can’t have none.”

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Doggystyle had three huge MTV videos and two top 10 Hot 100 hits, but “Ain’t No Fun” wasn’t one of either — perhaps in a cursory nod to good taste and social decorum, “Ain’t No Fun” was kept as an album cut.

Why It’s Great: Though they’d get darker and darker over the course of the ’80s, Depeche Mode showed up in 1981 as the New Romantic equivalent of the 1910 Fruitgum Company, putting every bit of the “pop” in synth-pop — “synth” too, for that matter — with this Dubble Bubble-worthy classic.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: “Just Can’t Get Enough” might’ve been a year — or even just a couple months — too early to really catch the wave of early MTV, which would soon make Depeche Mode and their ostentatiously dressed (and coiffed) U.K. peers a regular presence on the Hot 100.

Why It’s Great: Jeff Buckley’s indelible rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” isn’t so much a pop song as it is a hymn for the end of the 20th century, subsequently passed down from one generation of singer-songwriters to the next like received wisdom.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: A haunting, ethereal and million-other-crit-buzz-adjective-worthy rendition of an already highly inscrutable ballad? It’s a testament to Buckley’s magnetic performance and Andy Wallace’s gorgeous production that more than 1,000 people ever even heard this song — let alone that it soon became a pop standard.

Why It’s Great: A guaranteed dancefloor filler and wedding staple, Frankie Beverly and Maze’s breezy but bittersweet signature hit has endured well enough that Beyoncé included a cover as a bonus track on her epochal 2019 Homecoming: The Live Album.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Despite its generational esteem as an enduring live act and R&B radio fixture, Maze’s crossover chart success was never particularly robust — 1979’s No. 67-peaking “Feel That You’re Feelin’” marked its greatest Hot 100 showing — and as with Bey’s version, the commercial performance of the original “Before” was hamstrung slightly by it existing as a studio bonus track on a mostly live set (1981’s Live in New Orleans).

Why It’s Great: This all-time collaboration – which is a cover of The Zutons’ 2006 U.K. hit – finds Ronson bringing Winehouse’s soul and jazz vocal influences to the forefront with a snappy, free-wheeling arrangement that traces the tumultuous arc of the song’s titular character.  

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Winehouse’s untimely passing tends to oversell how dominant her commercial peak was: She scored just a single top 10 hit (“Rehab,” No. 7) from two overall Hot 100 entries in her lifetime, so it’s not surprising that she wasn’t able to carry this Ronson-led single there. Nonetheless, the track did hit No. 2 in both artists’ home country of the U.K. 
 

Why It’s Great: Essentially the U.K.’s version of “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay” — minus all the existential anxiety and dread — with The Kinks’ Ray Davies imagining a couple enjoying an idyllic moment by the river, away from the bustle of the city, as for a brief second (or in the case of the song, a full 3:13), everything is as it should be.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: The Kinks had their share of stateside hits, but “Waterloo Sunset” was perhaps a touch too low-key in its majesty and British in its loving detail to electrify U.S. pop fans as “You Really Got Me” had a few years earlier.

Why It’s Great: This relentlessly energetic track and live favorite was one of two songs Jackson wrote by himself for his 1979 album Off the Wall. The other was “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough,” which was the album’s lead single. 

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: It was never released as an A-side, just as the B side of “Rock With You,” the Rod Temperton-helmed single that topped the Hot 100 for four weeks in early 1980. Epic probably could have held it back to be the fifth U.S. single from Off the Wall — the first four all went top 10 — but pre-Thriller, labels didn’t pull so many singles from an album.

Why It’s Great: Over a thumping, irresistible house instrumental courtesy Belgian duo Lazy Jay, Azealia Banks propelled herself from MySpace to global It-girl with a deliciously dirty, braggadocious rap that ping pongs between righteous fury and eye-rolling exasperation in three-and-a-half breathless minutes.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Even during the early 2010s EDM boom, hip-house hits (think LMFAO and Far East Movement) didn’t lean this hard into breakneck rave tempos; plus, the song’s beloved black-and-white DIY video hit YouTube in late 2011, which didn’t factor into Hot 100 rankings yet.  

Why It’s Great: A transcendent wartime love song (though not always as soppy as that would imply), crescendoing in intensity and impact throughout its six minutes, “Heroes” soared higher and higher in the decades following its release, eventually becoming a signature song for the legendary David Bowie.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: “Heroes” was released at the height of Bowie’s late-’70s Berlin period, when he was making forward-thinking art-pop with brilliant collaborators like Brian Eno and Tony Visconti — resulting in an artistic high for his career, but a commercial lull, as albums like Low and Heroes largely sailed over the heads of top 40 listeners at the time.

Why It’s Great: The emotional high point of Stevie Wonder’s beyond-classic Songs in the Key of Life was, appropriately enough, about the beginning of life itself: The heartburstingly joyous FM radio regular “Isn’t She Lovely” was written for the birth of Wonder’s daughter Burnetta Jones, ostensibly when she was still “less than one minute old.”

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: The full album version of “Lovely” ran over six minutes — including an extended outro featuring Wonder bathing and talking to his newborn — and the artist refused to consent to a radio edit for single release, so the song was never released as a stateside single. (A 3:26-long edit was eventually made for U.K. release.)

Why It’s Great: The most explicitly modern pop single released by indie classicists The Smiths, “How Soon Is Now?” paired an astonishing tremelo’d guitar hook and slamming dance beat with one of Morrissey’s all-time most universal and affecting lyrics — appropriately enough, about going to the club and ending up absolutely miserable.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Too long, too abstract, too British, too Moz: Take your pick, but the stateside pop impact for “How Soon Is Now” would have to wait until later decades, when it was sampled by Soho for their top 15 hit “Hippychick” and covered by acts like Love Spit Love and t.A.T.u. — the former version used as the credits theme for long-running WB supernatural drama Charmed.

Why It’s Great: That resounding opening guitar riff and Petty’s “Chk-chk….” whispered response; those plainspokenly poetic lyrics (“The cars roll by on the 441, like waves crashin’ on the beach”); that instant classic chorus with even better backup vocals (“Make it last all night!”) — it’s the sound of mythic American youth, romance, desperation and disappointment all at once.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: It’s one of Petty’s most popular, enduring songs (and the last he played live), but “American Girl” came out just before a re-release of debut single “Breakdown” first really exposed his band to the mainstream — and the closest it ever came to the Hot 100 was No. 9 on the Bubbling Under chart, following a re-release to promote the Heartbreakers’ Greatest Hits set in 1994.

Why It’s Great: There might not be a song from the last 40 years more synonymous with country music than “Friends in Low Places,” so relatable and undeniable in its outsider-singalong rush that even people who swear they never listen to the genre have to join in by the time the third chorus rolls along.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: We’ll say it one more time: Country and top 40 were just not getting along in 1990, and with Garth Brooks prioritizing his already-stratospheric album sales over singles and pop promotion anyway, he didn’t even crack the Hot 100 until “It’s Your Song” in 1998.

Why It’s Great: Whether experienced during its 2010 release as part of Robyn’s Body Talk series, as a viral hit in the years since, through a cover version (such as Calum Scott’s billion-streamed, Phillies-powering stripped-down take) or simply through a stray speaker on a solitary night, “Dancing on My Own” persists as a spark of sad-pop genius, its straightforward yearning amidst a fantasia of synthesizers marking the culmination of Robyn’s stellar recording career.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: After scoring a pair of top 10 Hot 100 hits as a teenager with “Do You Know (What It Takes)” and “Show Me Love” in the late ‘90s, Robyn remade herself as an indie pop heroine — and while that’s led to critical acclaim and arena-headliner status, she has yet to return to the Hot 100, even with a pop song that ultimately became as universally beloved as “Dancing on My Own.”

Why It’s Great: Madonna’s musical contribution to her Desperately Seeking Susan starring vehicle remains one of her (or anyone’s) best-loved songs for its indefatigable energy, deep-burrowing hooks and most importantly, its belief in the power of pop music — such a revelation, then, now and always.

Why It Never Hit the Hot 100: Released in summer 1985, “Groove” came out while the then-Material Girl was still at the height of her total and absolute pop culture dominance following the late-’84 release of Like a Virgin — so much so that her Warner label decided to relegate the soundtrack song to the B-side of that album’s third single, “Angel.” (In the U.K., it was released as an A-side, becoming her first No. 1.)