Amusing story in today's trades.... America's hit, "Horse With No Name" has logged its BILLIONTH stream. A two-chord wonder.

Appropro of nothing, I will just mention that I was Program Director of a Top 40 station when that came out.

Rarely maybe once a year, a song would hit the turntable and the lines would immediately light up. Most songs you had “Hitbound” for a week and then once enough of the audience heard it you would get some reaction. (Or not, some were stiffs even when you thought they would hit.)

Anyway, “Horse With No Name” was one of those, it literally exploded out of the gate. In fact, Warner Brothers had just released their first album which did not include the song. They quickly pulled all those back and re-released the LP with that single on it, and it was to the moon. I never got it, never heard it, and if you’d played it for me at the weekly meeting I would have given it a thumbs down.

Another one that did the “phone line explosion” was McCartney’s Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey from “Band on the Run”. We got a bajillion requests for “Haaaands across the water, haaaands across the sea”. One last one I remember was “Close to You”, the breakout single by the Carpenters. I “heard” the latter two, I never got “Horse with No Name”.