These posts are about the songs that can accurately claim to crossed the key line of chart success, becoming Top 40 hits on Billboard, but just barely. Every song featured in this series peaked at number 40.

Thanks to K-tel comedy music collections that would probably strike me as a form of torture if I tried to sit through one of them now, I probably knew Ray Stevens before just about any other artist included in this series. His various Top 40 hits from the nineteen-sixties and nineteen-seventies took up a lot of the vinyl on those compilations that I obsessively sought out when I was kid. Amazingly, he had ten (TEN!) different songs hit the Billboard Top 40, including two that managed to top the chart, although one of those was the highly atypical “Everything is Beautiful” (the other was the highly typical “The Streak”). The last Stevens song to hit the Top 40 was officially billed to the Henhouse Five Plus Too. It is a version of the standard “In the Mood” performed by Stevens clucking like a chicken. That’s probably all that needs to be written about that. In recent years, Stevens has mostly spent his time decrying the “unfair stigma” on comedy songs and releasing new music via YouTube, most of it espousing the nonsensical far right views one might expect from a crackpot in his seventies whose first big hit was “Ahab the Arab,” which demonstrated all the open-minded cultural sensitivity the title implies.

Previously…

—“Just Like Heaven” by The Cure.
—“I’m in Love” by Evelyn King
—“Buy Me a Rose” by Kenny Rogers
—“Who’s Your Baby” by The Archies
—“Me and Bobby McGee” by Jerry Lee Lewis
—“Angel in Blue” by J. Geils Band
—“Crazy Downtown” by Allan Sherman
—“I’ve Seen All Good People” and “Rhythm of Love” by Yes
—“Naturally Stoned” by the Avant-Garde
—“Come See” by Major Lance
—“Your Old Standby” by Mary Wells
—“See the Lights” by Simple Minds
—“Watch Out For Lucy” by Eric Clapton
—“The Alvin Twist” by Alvin and the Chipmunks
—“Love Me Tender” by Percy Sledge
—“Jennifer Eccles” by the Hollies
—“Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Olympics
—“The Bounce” by the Olympics
—“Your One and Only Love” by Jackie Wilson
—“Tell Her She’s Lovely” by El Chicano
—“The Last Time I Made Love” by Joyce Kennedy and Jeffrey Osborne
—“Limbo Rock” by The Champs
—“Crazy Eyes For You” by Bobby Hamilton
—“Who Do You Think You’re Foolin'” by Donna Summer
—“Violet Hill” and “Lost+” by Coldplay
—“Freight Train” by the Chas. McDevitt Skiffle Group
—“Sweet William” by Little Millie Small
—“Live My Life” by Boy George
—“Lessons Learned” by Tracy Lawrence
—“So Close” by Diana Ross
—“Six Feet Deep” by the Geto Boys
—“You Thrill Me” by Exile
—“What Now” by Gene Chandler
—“Put It in a Magazine” by Sonny Charles
—“Got a Love for You” by Jomanda
—“Stone Cold” by Rainbow
—“People in Love” by 10cc
—“Just Seven Numbers (Can Straighten Out My Life)” by the Four Tops
—“Thinkin’ Problem” by David Ball
—“You Got Yours and I’ll Get Mine” and “Trying to Make a Fool of Me” by the Delfonics
—“The Riddle (You and I)” by Five for Fighting
—“I Can’t Wait” by Sleepy Brown
—“Nature Boy” by Bobby Darin
—“Give It to Me Baby” and “Cold Blooded” by Rick James
—“Who’s Sorry Now?” by Marie Osmond
—“A Love So Fine” by the Chiffons
—“Funky Y-2-C” by the Puppies
—“Brand New Girlfriend” by Steve Holy
—“I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)” by Bonnie Pointer
—“Mr. Loverman” by Shabba Ranks
—“I’ve Never Found a Girl” by Eddie Floyd
—“Plastic Man” and “Happy People” by the Temptations
—“Okay” by Nivea
—“Go On” by George Strait
—“Back When My Hair Was Short” by Gunhill Road
—“Birthday Party” by the Pixies Three
—“Livin’ in the Life” by the Isley Brothers
—“Kissing You” by Keith Washington
—“The End of Our Road” by Marvin Gaye
—“Ticks” and “Letter to Me” by Brad Paisley
—“Nobody But You Babe” by Clarence Reid
—“Like a Sunday in Salem” by Gene Cotton
—“I’m Going to Let My Heart Do the Walking” by the Supremes
—“Call Me Lightning” by the Who
—“Ain’t It True” by Andy Williams
—“Lazy Elsie Molly” and “Let’s Do the Freddie” by Chubby Checker
—“Second Fiddle” by Kay Starr
—“1999” by Prince
—“I’ll Try Anything” by Dusty Springfield
—“Oh Happy Day” by Glen Campbell
—“I’d Love to Change the World” by Ten Years After
—“Friends” and “Married Men” by Bette Midler
—“Spice of Life” by the Manhattan Transfer
—“You Can’t Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd” by Roger Miller
—“Don’t Pity Me” by Dion and the Belmonts
—“Ask Me No Questions” by B.B. King
—“Can’t Leave ‘Em Alone” by Ciara
—“All I Really Want to Do” by the Byrds
—“Let It Be Me” by Willie Nelson
—“Clones (We’re All)” by Alice Cooper
—“The Last Word in Lonesome is Me” by Eddy Arnold
—“Two Hearts” by Stephanie Mills and Teddy Pendergrass
—“Good Timin” by Beach Boys
—“I’m Movin’ On” and “Sticks and Stones” by Ray Charles
—“Me (Without You)” by Andy Gibb