In my Earth Day post, I presented videos of songs from the Billboard year-end Top 10 charts (1951-2015) that include the word Earth in their lyrics. In this post, I widen the net to look at all the names of the planets in our solar system that appear in songs of the Top 30 collection.

In all, there are 97 mentions of planets in 44 songs from the collection. The distribution by planet is as follows:

Fig. 1: Planets mentioned in songs from Billboard's year-end Top 30 charts (1951-2015) (Lamont Antieau, wordwatching.org)

As illustrated, of the four planets that are mentioned in the collection by name, Earth is used most frequently by far, being used 73 times in 36 songs, from 1951's "If" to 2014's "Dark Horse." Its greatest number of uses in a single song is 16 in this hit by Belinda Carlisle from 1987:

Music video by Belinda Carlisle performing Heaven Is A Place On Earth.

Following in the number two slot is Mars, which appears in the following songs (in chronological order):

I Need All You People To Do Me A Favor !!! Sing A Long To This Great Bubblerock Promo I Did. It's The Fifth Dimensions' - Aquarius - Let The Sunshine In !!! Let's Bring In Gods' Love For The Coming Golden Age !!! Everybody Sing !!! You Got To Feel It !!!

Official video of Blondie performing Rapture from the album Autoamerican. Buy It Here: http://smarturl.it/dtugaq Debuting in 1981, the music video was the first rap video ever broadcast on MTV.

She was A Jezebel, this Brixton queen Livin' the life like a back street dream Tellin' mi lies when the truth was clear I think she knew what I wanted to hear Spinnin' mi 'round like a wheel on fire Walkin' on tightrope, my love's high wire Fatal attraction is

Official video of Lenny Kravitz performing Fly Away from the album 5. Buy It Here: http://smarturl.it/5nacob Lenny Kravtiz won a Grammy Award in 1999 for Best Male Rock Performance for "Fly Away."

By number of songs, Jupiter is the next-ranking planet, featuring in two songs -- the aforementioned "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine in" and this hit by Train (2001):

Train's official music video for 'Drops of Jupiter'. Click to listen to Train on Spotify: http://smarturl.it/TrainSpot?IQid=TrainDoJ As featured on Train: The Collection.

Lastly, Venus appears ten times in one song in this 1959 hit from Frankie Avalon:

Uploaded by Inmortales de la musica on 2016-02-08.

And now I submit a few of my favorite tunes featuring planet names that did not end up in the year-end charts, partially in an effort to make you forget one or two that did appear in the charts and were posted above:

Music video by David Bowie performing Life On Mars?. Taken from the album 'Heroes' Buy the David Bowie back catalogue on iTunes here: http://smarturl.it/bowieitunes Listen to this track on Spotify: http://smarturl.it/64tldi Buy the album on Amazon: http://smarturl.it/b3aa0u

Live in Australia, 1975

Uploaded by Panelope Panoply on 2012-04-17.

Got any favorite tunes that refer to our planets that are not mentioned here? Please drop me a line in the comments section below.

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