'Unchained Melody' hits No. 1

You. Be. Righteous!

Oh, it was close, so doggone close — like, right to the-last-hour-of-the-last-day close.

But the Righteous Brothers’ enduring hit “Unchained Melody” has been voted the top song of the rock era in your first Press Pop Music Poll.

Tune lovers from all over North Idaho made it clear that, even after all these years, they’re still crazy about Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield — the Righteous Brothers — by installing “Unchained Melody” atop a group of incredible, iconic songs.

Moreover, voters also placed “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” at No. 12 and the pair’s third big hit, “Soul and Inspiration,” in the No. 22 spot.

Considering the competition, those were three whopping statements about the Righteous Brothers’ half-century of popularity.

That No. 1 position, though, came down to what horse-racing aficionados would call a photo finish.

Voting concluded at 5 p.m. Wednesday, and yet at noon that same day, there was plenty of doubt whether Unchained Melody would hold off the eventual No. 2, “The Sounds of Silence” by Simon and Garfunkel.

In fact, there was plenty of drama at both ends of the top 10.

WHILE the first two spots stayed up for grabs until the very end, positions three through eight were pretty much locked up early — but five songs wound up in a crazy scramble for the final two positions in the poll.

In the end, “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston and “Time in a Bottle” by Jim Croce hung on to be included in our historic first chart.

Nevertheless, with an hour remaining ahead of the deadline, three other songs had a serious chance to crack the poll — “Let It Be” from the Beatles, “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” along with “Me and Bobby McGee” by Janis Joplin.

In the 10-day voting period, we received a whopping 522 official ballots naming more than 1,700 songs.

It took a vote of the judges to decide whether or not to count the ballot submitted by former Press executive Frank Granier, who included the University of Notre Dame Fight Song as his No. 2 selection — noting it was done just as a protest against Seahawks coach (and former Southern Cal boss) Pete Carroll.

The ballot was made official, but Frank will receive a one-year suspension from voting.

Since we fully expect our debut poll will someday wind up in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it should be noted the final ballot — from Ray Tekverk and Jan Fay — arrived at 4:52 p.m. on deadline day.

Their collaborative effort did contain one song that made the “Terrific Ten” (“Stairway to Heaven”) but more important than that, their two first choices (“Somebody to Love” by the Jefferson Airplane and Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”) are huge favorites of mine.

Not only that, but Ray and Jan were the only voters to include one of my all-time, listen-all-night songs, “Down at the Twist and Shout” by Mary Chapin Carpenter.

IF WE can get someone to put up a few prizes, Ray and Jan will receive something for rewarding me after a frantic week and a half of counting songs and awarding points.

Another prize could be headed to Diane Blanchard, who included the country classic “Crazy” by Patsy Cline on her ballot.

When that email arrived, I immediately sent Diane a response and asked if she knew — without using Google or any other outside help: Who wrote “Crazy?”

It’s almost a trick question, since Cline died in a plane crash at age 30 in 1963 and the song was written two years before that — but Ms. Blanchard quickly fired back the correct answer: Willie Nelson.

It’s hard to picture a 28-year-old Willie Nelson, but there you go.

One theme that appeared again and again in our poll perhaps kept some household names from cracking the top 10.

A lot of voters apparently didn’t like the idea of including more than one song by a single artist on a ballot — so the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, the Beach Boys, the Eagles and others all received tons of votes, but they were spread out over their many hits.

The Beach Boys and Eagles each just missed having two songs on the chart.

At least the Eagles got one (“Hotel California”), but “Take It Easy” and “Desperado” had high enough tallies that you wondered if some voters split their tickets.

THE POOR Beach Boys got shut out completely, with “California Girls” and “Good Vibrations” each drawing so many votes — but rarely on the same ballot — that both songs wound up in the top 20.

As for the Beatles, well…

Would you believe 14 of their singles got votes, but “Let It Be” (agonizingly close at No. 11) was as high as any Fab Four tune could reach?

Oh, and three Beatles got plenty of votes as solo artists — John Lennon (No. 20 with “Imagine”), George Harrison (No. 23, “My Sweet Lord”) and Paul McCartney (No. 29, “Yesterday”).

Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan received votes for six songs, but the highest in the poll was “Like a Rolling Stone” at No. 14.

And by the way, almost every type of song and every genre from our 60-year period was represented, from Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” at No. 31 to Nelson’s “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” (No. 33).

Finally, the two most frequent comments added along with various ballots were these:

“This was really fun,” and…

“Couldn’t you make it the top 100 or something? It was too tough just picking 10 songs.”

Somehow, those two contradictory themes please us immensely.

We just hope nobody wound up unemployed for working 20 hours a day on a ballot.

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Steve Cameron is a special assignment reporter for The Press. Reach Steve at [email protected].