Ranking right up there on any list of Strange Chart Occurrences has to be the odd case of the Chicago Bears` ”Super Bowl Shuffle,” which last winter became the first single to ”go gold”–that is, sell more than a million copies–without making it into Billboard`s Top 40.
”You know, that was a shame,” said chart manager Michael Ellis, who believes the ”Shuffle`s” popularity was not really reflected in the magazine`s rankings, which are based on a combination of sales and radio airplay.
”The main reason it didn`t do better than it did–it got tremendous sales points–is because it never had more than 10 or 15 radio stations reporting it (on an official playlist),” he said, even though it was receiving substantial play as a novelty cut.
”So, as a result, a record that probably should have been Top 10 never got past No. 41,” Ellis said. ”But I didn`t know what to do to make it show up more. We couldn`t violate our own methodology and just say that this record should be higher.”
