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:

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

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):

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

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:

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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