It amuses me to think that during the '80s and early '90s, I took radio station countdowns so seriously that I would send self-addressed stamped envelopes to various radio stations; they, in turn, would send me a copy of their year-end countdowns or top-however-many-songs-of-all-time survey results. I'd pore over these for predictable and not-so-predictable results. (A not-so-predictable example: "Lollipop" by The Chordettes finished ahead of "Eleanor Rigby" in one station's 1989 top-400-oldies-of-all-time survey. Granted, a lot of Beatles songs make the countdown, quite rightly, so votes were split among a lot of their songs.)
I always had to remind myself that the rankings didn't really matter. They were just results from those who responded to a survey. Also, don't most of our minds freeze, to some degree, when we're asked to name our favorite songs of all time? Not all of us are as arbitrary in our choices as Rob Gordon in "High Fidelity." The songs that come to mind first aren't always our true favorites; they're often just ones most frequently played on the radio or streaming services. Also, there's no accounting for taste. For whatever reasons, "Lollipop" speaks to some listeners.
Unless you're the one counting the votes, you also have no idea how accurate a survey really is. Accurate or not, however, there's something about seeing an official list of ranked songs to make you take some of them more seriously--or wonder what on Earth your fellow music listeners were thinking when they were surveyed.
