I have always been a list maker. From June of 1968 to the end of 1972 I made a weekly list of my current favorite songs, I started with the Top 5, moved to the Top 12 then settled in on the Top 15. Along with that there were special lists or charts, if you would. My favorite 50 Beatle songs, my favorite instrumentals and at the end of each year there was my Top 101 for that year, now to keep it to just 101 songs was simply impossible so I found a way to expand that list. Each 10th song had a double entry, i.e. 20A and 20B, I did the same with 25 and 75 plus any record I liked both the A and B side were combined as one entry. At the end of my charting in 1972, my final music list at the time was My Top 111 from 1968 to 1972 and that’s what I’d like to share in this post. Back then there was no digital format to do this, each list or chart was typed out on a typewriter. Fortunately those lists have survived all these years and are lovingly stored in a couple of binders.

As I look back over this list, there is a lot of great music that I still love today. There might be 3 songs I’d move down out of the top ten but not that far down the list, my collection of music from those 5 years has grown enormously over the years so I’d have to not just re-arrange the songs already on the list but expand it greatly as well.

I’m sure there is someone else out there who has a list like this one in their archives, and I would love to see it. Someone I worked with years ago told me I was a (hopeless) romantic, this list probably is the only proof you’d need to convict me (why does that line make me think of Paul Simon”s “Still Crazy After All These Years”).

Here, in all it’s typed-by-hand glory, is that Top 111 covering 1968 through 1972: