I decided to google-research a bit the most popular songs of the day/month. Here are the rules I used:
- I used google.com and was geographically located in the Republic of Gerogia.
- For the days, I performed the search on 13 November, 2012 and I used the following string: «[day-of-the-week] lyrics».1
- For the months I used: «mp3 [day-of-the-month]» on 20 November, 2012.2
- I picked the top-most result that was an actual song (i.e. the link preview clearly contained information about one specific song).
And voila – here are the results:
Day songs (2012)
Monday: The Mamas And The Papas – Monday, Monday (1966)
Where exactly is notorious Manic Monday?
Tuesday: Rolling Stones – Ruby Tuesday (1967)
Wednesday: Simon And Garfunkel – Wednesday Morning (1964)
Thursday: The Weeknd – Thursday (2011)
Friday: Rebecca Black – Friday (2011)
I am entirely unimpressed that Katy Perry failed to make an appearance with her popular hit Last Friday Night. What else did you expect? It’s The Internet! She had, after all, the most formidable opponent of them all…
Saturday: Fall Out Boy – Saturday (2003)
I admit I somehow expected Saturday–Night–something to make the list
Sunday: Maroon 5 – Sunday Morning (2002)
How about Sunday Bloody Sunday (1983)? Hallo, the day is mentioned in the title even twice!
Now, which of these do you instantly recognize? And which one would you after hearing a short sample?
Day songs (2023)
In any way, I was curious enough to update this blog post on December 28, 20233 from Ukraine, and this time switched the strings, so for day songs it would be: «mp3 [day-of-the-week]»:
Monday: Imagine Dragons – Monday* (2021)
Tuesday: Burak Yeter, Danelle Sandoval – Tuesday* (2016)
Wednesday: Lady Gaga – Bloody Mary* (2011)
Apparently, the result has got something to do with 2022 Netflix horror series Wednesday, hence the asterisk.
Thursday: Jess Glynne – Thursday* (2018)
To be fully transparent, the song Google Search offered first was the one by Jess Glynne. However, the first actual result was Thursday by The Weeknd (2011), hence the first partial return from 2012.
Friday: Riton & Nightcrawlers – Friday (Dopamine Re-Edit) feat. Mufasa & Hypeman* (2021)
Not even Rebecca made it back?
Saturday: Indeep Bakshi & Badshah – Saturday Saturday* (2012)
Popularized later by 2014 Bollywood movie Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania. The first actual result (and the first English entrant) was Basshunter – Saturday (2010). And still no Saturday-Night-whatever, despite a fresh competitor…
Sunday: Dilpreet Dhillon & Gurlez Akhtar – Sunday* (2023)
The case of Sunday just became even weirder. The first Google Search result after the song for Sunday was song aggregator hitster.fm offering these hits in following order:
1. Moby – Sunday (2003)
2. Sia – Sunday (2004)
3. Iggy Pop – Sunday* (2016), featured later in the results on wynk.in website as well.
So I take Moby’s work for the first English entrant. Interestingly enough, the first Google Search result with one song only was Deepak Dhillon & Hitesh Panghaniya – Sunday* (2015). Wait… another Indian with the same surname and song title Sunday? Further down the list I found the first English single-song website result Uthando ft. Lassandra – Sunday* (2021) with barely 1K views on Youtube, yet no trace whatsoever of Sunday Bloody Sunday by U2 (1983), despite whopping 59M views!
Sixties are apparently not in fashion anymore! Honestly, I did not expect to have a completely revamped slate some ten years later, with curious non-English entrants, even!
Month songs (2012)
And now… time for months!
January: Ravens & Chimes – January (2007)
So obscure it does not even have a Youtube clip!
February: Josh Groban – February Song (2006)
March: John Williams – Imperial March (1980)
Could’ve been expected; the first Google Search result with the actual meaning of the month is Kyson – July December March (2012) at no. 12! Still, Frank Klepacki with his Hell March (1996) made it to the second page of the results, too!
April: Slank – April (1998)
Surprisingly, not April by Deep Purple (1969), even though Slank boasts less than 1% of Deep Purple’s April views on Youtube!
May: The first result was some Vietnamese gibberish, the second was Enya’s May It Be (2001). The first month-related was Lagwagon – May 16 (1998) at no. 32 in the list.
June: No Malice Ft Eric David – June (2012)
July: Kyson – July December March (2012).
Again. This time at no. 9. I am quite interested what is going to crop up for December! Oddly enough, it seems like song-writers are unconcerned about odd months (January, March, May, and July so far). This is quite puzzling especially in the case of May as it is, at least in some cultures, the month of love.
August: Chris August – Starry Night (2010)
Now that’s what I call thinking searching outside the box!
September: Earth, Wind & Fire – September (1978)
October: Broken Bells – October (2010)
November: Tomas Barfod – November Skies (2012)
Guns’n’Roses’ November Rain (1991) placed at no. 3 only, despite dwarfing Thomas Barfod with Youtube views, standing at over 2B (!) at the end of 2023, which is some 4,000-times more than November Skies.
December: Olivia – December (2011)
I am honestly surprised three songs each from 2011 and 2012 made both the lists from 2012! That means the search results appear to be skewed in favor of recent arrivals on music scene.
Month songs (2023)
And now, how about updated results? December 28, 2023 from Ukraine, and, just like with the day search, I switched the string, so it read: «[day-of-the-month] lyrics»:
January: Pilot – January (1975)
Seem like seventies are now back in fashion!
February: A Boogie Wit da Hoodie – February* (2022)
March: Seventeen – March* (2022)
This Korean song absolutely demolished the search results, including hits for translated English lyrics, romanization, et cetera… For the first English result I had to browse past various marches:
– March for Ukrainian Nationalists (makes sense, with the search being performed from Ukraine)
– Russian patriotic Farewell of Slavianka (not even containing the word march in its name!)
– Filipino Mariano Marcos State University March
– Irish Notre Dame Victory March (even though Notre Dame is an American University with French name)
– Ethel Smyth’s March of the Women
– Google even offered me the list of songs from 2013 movie March!
– However, no Imperial March this time. Even the Empire fell! Star Wars’ mighty hit’s popularity clearly took a… hit.
until I reached first few English popular songs with March in the title:
– Prospekt’s March / Poppyfields by Coldplay (2008)
– Forward March by Derrick Morgan (1963)
…and even kids’ stuff!
– Frank Leto’s March for Peace
– Japanese Nousagi March
That still, however, doesn’t make the cut, if we intend to restrict ourselves to the literal meaning of months, so it seems like songwriters continue to ignore odd months. Or not?
So after helping Google a bit by tweaking the string to «March month lyrics» I finally stumbled upon Karen Hellyer – Month of March (1993). Still, where is 2012’s July December March? In the toilet bowl of Internet history with 149 (!) Youtube views. Even I amassed more without intending to by some of my shaky travel videos.
April: Fiersa Besari – April* (2014)
This one is definitely curious, as until now the first result in Google would be a song lyrics, followed by Google Search result for the same song. In the case of April, however, Fiersa Besari’s song would appear on top as lyrics, but the search results were populated by Виктор Цой – Апрель (1989) followed by English Deep Purple – April (1969). Finally, might I add!
May: MACAN – Май* (2023)
Since I am performing this search in Ukraine, it might geographically skew the results unfairly in favor of russophile world. The first English entrant was Humbird – May* (2021). No puns this time around.
June: Florence & The Machine – June* (2018)
July: Noah Cyrus – July* (2019)
August: Taylor Swift – August* (2020)
September: Earth, Wind & Fire – September (1978)
The first (and only) returnee, yay! Add September on the odd list of months songwriters are generally unconcerned about. Although, doubtless, it helps being quite a hit to re-claim the September crown.
October: Alessia Cara – October* (2019)
This was, again, the lyrics result. The top search results was 2023 song FRIENDLY THUG 52 NGG – October* followed in succession by Hector Vae – October* (2016)
November: Tyler, The Creator – November* (2017)
November Rain was beaten to the punch by the likes of first youtube result Mahalia – November* (2023) or 1997’s Gone ‘Til November by Wycleff Jean. Curiously enough, lyrics.com’s search of «November» string yielded absolutely no results featuring Guns’n’Roses hit whatsoever and even adding the word «Guns» or «Rain» barely elevated the song to no. 8 or no. 6 place in the results, respectively. Really?
December: Neck Deep – December* (2015), closely followed by Collective Soul – December (1995)
The most recent songs (from 2022 and 2023 respectively) showed slightly less prominently, with 2 entries for 2022 and 1 to 3 entries (depending on criteria) for 2023.
- I did not use a «[day-of-the-week] song» string on purpose, as it was too generic and generated a whole slew of possible entrants. ↩︎
- I used a different string and different search date just to spice things up for a change. ↩︎
- I marked results that couldn’t practically have appeared in the original search by an asterisk (*) ↩︎
IT Experiments 