The Top 20 Songs By The Jam

One of the things I like about iTunes is that it's easy to sort songs (rather than albums) by popularity.  This is especially helpful for bands that released a lot of songs as singles between albums or who released a lot of EPs.  The Jam is one of those bands with a complicated discography and it's further complicated by the fact that I first really got to know The Jam through their double-LP best-of-collection Snap, which was later truncated to fit on CD as Compact Snap.

Here are the top songs by The Jam based on current iTunes rankings along with the rank of their singles on rate your music (rym), rank of songs on Vinyl Surrender (vs), and my own personal nothing but good things (nbgt) ranking.

#1 Town Called Malice (rym #2, vs #1, nbgt #6)
#2 That's Entertainment (rym #1, vs #2, nbgt #1)
#3 In The City (rym #6, vs #11, nbgt #2)
#4 Beat Surrender (rym #18, vs #10, nbgt #3)
#5 Start! (rym #8, vs #9, nbgt #10)
#6 The Modern World (rym #14, vs #18, nbgt #4)
#7 The Bitterest Pill (rym NA, vs NA, nbgt NA)
#8 Down in the Tube Station at Midnight (rym #3, vs #5, nbgt #5)
#9 English Rose (rym NA, vs NA, nbgt NA)
#10 Eton Rifles (rym #7, vs #7, nbgt #15)
#11 Ghosts (rym NA, vs #4, nbgt NA)
#12 Thick as Thieves(rym NA, vs NA, nbgt NA)
#13 Going Underground (rym #4, vs #3, nbgt #9)
#14 The Butterfly Collector (rym, b-side of #5, vs NA, nbgt #19)
#15 Pretty Green (rym NA, vs #13, nbgt NA)
#16 David Watts (rym #11, vs NA, nbgt #16)
#17 Absolute Beginners (rym #13, vs #20, nbgt #14)
#18 Mr. Clean (rym #15, vs NA, nbgt #18)
#19 Liza Radley (rym NA, vs NA, nbgt NA)
#20 Away from the Numbers (rym NA, vs NA, nbgt NA)

Notable songs outside of the iTunes top 20

Strange Town (rym #5, vs NA, nbgt #7)
To Be Someone (rym NA, vs #8, nbgt NA)
Smithers-Jones (rym b-side of #9, vs NA, nbgt #8)
Funeral Pyre (rym #10, vs NA, nbgt NA)
News of the World (rym NA, vs NA, nbgt #11)
All Around the World (rym #17, vs NA, nbgt #12)
Dreams of Children (rym b-side of #4, vs NA, nbgt #13)
I Need You (rym #12, vs NA, nbgt NA)
Man in the Corner Shop (rym NA, vs #14, nbgt NA)
Saturday's Kids (rym #16, vs NA, nbgt NA)
A Bomb in Wardour St (rym b-side of #11, vs #6, nbgt #17)
Just Who Is the 5 O'clock Hero (rym #19, vs NA, nbgt NA)
Tales of the Riverbank [fanclub version] (rym #20, vs NA, nbgt #20)

On the whole the iTunes rankings are pretty well in line with all the other rankings.  Bitterest Pill ranks high on iTunes without making it on any of the other top 20s, and both Down in the Tube Station and Midnight and Going Underground are less popular on iTunes versus every other list, but not by all that much really.

English Rose makes the iTunes top 10 and none of the other lists.  That's one of the songs that was on Snap and not on Compact Snap.  I wonder how many people are filling in that digital gap on iTunes.  Strange Town makes the top 10 of every other list, but misses the iTunes top 20 entirely.  Strange.