[quote name=\'clemon79\' date=\'Jul 2 2005, 10:16 PM\'][quote name=\'SRIV94\' date=\'Jul 2 2005, 07:55 PM\']If you go by peak year on the charts (which is my preferred method of cataloguing music),
[/quote]
Which is totally ridiculous, because you set yourself up for a situation where you have different "birth years" for singles off of the same album, particularly with some of those mega-albums of the 1980's that spawned many many singles. (Huey Lewis & The News' "Sports", The Cars' "Heartbeat City" and Def Leppard's "Hysteria" come to mind.)
[snapback]90700[/snapback]
[/quote]
Well, not TOTALLY ridiculous (opinions being opinions and all).
Not being an albums person, I tend to associate songs with the time they were being played to death on the radio, not to mention the possibility that edited or remixed versions of a song might have been the single version released well after the album's been out for awhile. "Walking On A Thin Line" comes to mind--it was the fifth single released off of "Sports", so the edited single version hit radio, retail and the charts just about as the one-year anniversary of the album version was first being played on victrolas.
So I don't associate "WOATL" with the fall of 1983, rather the fall of 1984.
OTOH, I don't completely rely on charts for cataloguing my library. For example, Capitol released "Sgt. Pepper" backed with "With A Little Help From My Friends" as a single in 1978 (in spite of the movie ;-) ), and it happened to chart (I think it peaked at 71 that fall), but I still associate the two tunes with the LP's original release in 1967. So while I do prefer to use charts as my guide, I'm not inflexible.
Your argument has a lot of merit (and mine prolly doesn't in your view, but it's MY preference dagnammit ;-) ).
Doug -- and the countdown to 1300 continues