These posts are about the songs that just barely failed to cross the key line of chart success, entering the Billboard Top 40. Every song featured in this series peaked at number 41.

In 1956, the French singer Lucien Lupi released a single entitled “Prière Sans Espoir.” One year later, U.S. songwriter Carl Sigman, whose specialty was adapting songs originally performed in languages other than English, delivered a set of new lyrics and dubbed the revised number “Till.” Percy Faith recorded it and had a minor hit, peaking at #63 on the Billboard chart. From there, the song went into the music industry rotation, resulting in visits to the Top 40 for Roger Williams, the Angels, and the Vogues.

Welsh singer Tom Jones was enjoying one of his most successful stretches on the U.S. charts when he took a crack at the song in 1971. Beginning with the 1969 single “Love Me Tonight,” Jones had a series of Top 40 hits, including “She’s a Lady,” which reached the runner-up position on the Billboard Hot 100. With a little more oomph, it would have become his first — and only — track to reach the top spot in the U.S. “She’s a Lady” was released at the beginning of 1971, as the lead single from the album of the same name. He squeezed a couple more singles from the album with diminishing returns, though they both spent time in the Top 40.

A non-album single, “Till” was his last offering of 1971. It stalled out at #41, forecasting the chart struggles to come. Jones kept recording, but he reached the U.S. Top 40 on only one more occasion: “Say You’ll Stay Until Tomorrow,” released in 1977 as Jones, weirdly, pivoted to country music. It might seem a shaky strategy for prolonging a career in the States, but it worked. Jones had nine different tracks make it into the Top 40 of the Billboard country music singles chart during the nineteen-eighties.

Other entries in this series can be found by clicking on the “Top 40 Smash Near Misses” tag.