If you ain’t first, you’re last. That’s the mantra that Ricky Bobby’s father, Reese Bobby, tells him as a young boy in the hit 2006 film Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. That all-or-nothing philosophy is what drives young Ricky Bobby to push himself as far as he can go and become the driver who won’t accept second place. Later in the film, when Ricky is trying (and failing) to reconcile with his livewire father and tell him that everything he has done and all the success he’s achieved has been for his father and because of his father’s words, Reese Bobby tells his son that the phrase he taught him makes no sense and that he was probably high when he said it to Ricky all those years ago. It completely shatters Ricky’s worldview.

That mantra feels like the driving force behind a lot of the biggest chart-toppers of the 1980s. In most stories about songs that hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart, you get the sense that artists knew pop music was one big competition and strived to be the best. Nothing else mattered. The pop titans of the era–Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince, Whitney Houston, George Michael–all competed against each other at different points to create the best, most wildly popular work and out-do their competitors. In hindsight, it all looks and feels like a pop music nuclear arms race. There’s that famously wild statement Michael Jackson reportedly said that sums up how seriously this kind of thing was taken: “You don’t understand — if I’m not there to receive these ideas, God might give them to Prince.”

Following Tom Breihan’s excellent column The Number Ones on Stereogum has taught me a lot, but the most important lesson has been that your perspective of music history and the way music evolves and changes through a decade is vastly skewed from what most people think of a given decade when you only look at the champions that took the gold. My favorite factoid about the list of number ones from the seventies is that Fleetwood Mac shows up for one week in 1977 (“Dreams”) and then never appear again. If you only look at number ones from the nineties, you would think Mariah Carey was the only person people listened to, because she had fourteen songs hit the top of the charts across the decade. Carly Rae Jepsen has had an entire career you will never know anything about if you only care about champions and chart darlings. In short, you cannot truly get a full picture of the long arm of music history by only looking at winners.

But what does that history look like if we only focused on the runner-ups? The first losers? The people who were good enough to achieve big chart success but had to settle for the silver? What about them? Those are the ones I find myself being curious about. The ones who almost had it all. It’s an interest of mine that extends beyond music. 

You see it in the world of professional sports a lot. I am not a big Edmonton Oilers fan, but I am absolutely fascinated by Oilers Captain and center Connor McDavid. I am enthralled by how he is undeniably one of the best players in the league, but also a player who has never won the Stanley Cup. At the time of this writing, there is a possibility that he never will.

When the 2025 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs happened, I was not invested in the question of whether the Florida Panthers would win the Cup twice in a row or not. That’s kinda boring. The story I was invested in was whether Connor McDavid and the Oilers were going to win after the Panthers beat them the previous year. It didn’t happen. When the 2026 Winter Olympics allowed NHL players to compete, I got curious about whether Connor McDavid and Team Canada would beat Team USA. McDavid can’t seem to win the Cup, but he can win a gold medal, right? …Right? 

Nope! I watched McDavid and Team Canada get so close and then lose in overtime. It was devastating to see. The camera somehow caught McDavid looking devastated (it always does). In hindsight, I wish Team Canada would have won so I could have seen McDavid finally get his day in the sun (and be spared having to see Team USA be misogynistic jackasses after the US Women’s hockey team went on a once-in-a-lifetime run.) At the time of this writing, McDavid and the Oilers just lost Round One of the NHL Playoffs to the Anaheim Ducks, so that’s another year where McDavid goes without winning a Cup. He’s got two seasons left in Edmonton and I will be very eager to see if McDavid can somehow break through and win the damn thing, whether that be with the Oilers or not. McDavid will go down as a fantastic player no matter what, but if he never wins a cup, that will probably haunt him.

In the world of football, Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen has everything that three-time Super Bowl winner Patrick Mahomes has. He could probably win a Super Bowl and a lot of people want to see him do it! But, so far, he hasn’t been able to do it with Buffalo. It would suck if he never does. Like McDavid, he’s a guy who will go down as a really great quarterback, but could also be a quarterback who never wins a ring. Charles Barkley was an incredible talent on the basketball court and almost won a championship with the Phoenix Suns, but you’d never truly know that if all you’ve ever seen is him getting (lovingly) goofed on by four-time NBA Champion Shaquille O’Neal over never having won a championship. Sir Charles has endured that for fifteen years on Inside the NBA. McDavid, Allen, and the Chuckster are all fascinating guys to me because they’ve gotten so close but have never won. They’re great, but not great enough if you’re the type who only looks at championship wins.

I’m fascinated by the songs that reached number two on the Hot 100 but could never make it to the top spot for the same reason I’m fascinated by those athletes. Who beat them? What prevented them from getting to the top? What are their stories? Those are the questions this project is looking to answer. Much like Todd in the Shadows with his Trainwreckords series, I am fascinated by failure. But this kind of failure is unique: good enough to achieve high chart success, but not good enough to become a champion.

You Got the Silver is a project in the vein of Stereogum’s The Number Ones. It intends to look at the history of every single one of the ninety-four songs that peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart during the 1980s and review each one. There’s a reason I’m choosing to focus on the eighties only. The easiest explanation is that it gives this project a specific and manageable scope. Another reason is that pop music has never looked like more of a competition than it does now, but the eighties is the closest equivalent to pop artist fanbases and chart watching being no different than fans of sports teams and stats. There is part of a great tweet from @lilgrapefruits that puts it perfectly: “If your favorite part of being a fan of an artist is arguing about charts and who holds more records it’s because your heart longs for ESPN.” That’s what being a pop chart nerd is like in 2026 and I imagine chart nerds of the eighties treated this game the same way. No other time in pop music history has felt more like a giant contest than the eighties. The biggest names in pop music during that decade lived and breathed Ricky Bobby’s famous mantra: If you’re not first, you’re last.

So, in the constant fight for first place, I’m interested in the ones who had to stand in the shadows of those giants. Did the people get it wrong when they decided which songs to take to the number one spot? Are there diamonds in the rough that are now a little forgotten because they never fully climbed the summit? What do the eighties look like when the major pop titans of the era only make appearances with songs that didn’t have the gas to make it over the finish line and reach the top?

I can answer that last question first and very easily: It will look kinda weird. Over the course of this project, Michael Jackson, undisputedly the most successful musician of the decade and certified Guy Who Scored More Number Ones Than Anyone (nine of them), will only show up twice, and only as a guest on one of those songs. Hair metal will only make appearances towards the end of the project in brief little blips, outside of its mid-eighties peak. Rap will only appear one time (it’s not Run-DMC). You will see a good number of artists and songs you recognize and love, but I’m willing to bet a good number of these are songs you have probably never heard of in your entire life, even if you were alive when they reached their chart peak. Those unknown ones are going to be the most fun and interesting parts of this project for me, personally. Hopefully they are fun for you as well.

From the beginning of 1980 to the end of 1989, we will have a ride that includes ninety-four stops and a lot of history to cover. Just like how every number one hit has a story, every song that got the silver has a story that doesn’t frequently get told because it wasn’t a full-on winner. Above all else, this project is a love letter to those runner-ups that missed their chance at top of the chart glory.

They may have settled for silver, but here, they’re the real champions, for better or worse. 

Let’s get started.