Hot 100

The 100 songs by 100 artists are mainly by those who—as we like to say—have called New Jersey home at one point or another in their lives. But, over the course of 2025, we’ve added songs about New Jersey, thus you might see, from time to time, “Jersey Girl,” by Tom Waits of California, that Bruce popularized, or “Woke Up This Morning” by British band Alabama 3, which just happens to be the theme song for The Sopranos (a most Jersey-centric show if there ever was one). This month we add “Palisades Park,” written by the host of The Gong Show, Chuck Barris [1929–2017], about an amusement park in Bergen County that my mom used to take me to when I was a kid. It contains one of the greatest lines in all of rock’n’roll—“you’ll never know how great a kiss can feel until you’re stopped at the top of a ferris wheel.”

Freddy Cannon took it to #3 in 1962. (It debuts on our Hot 100 at #51.) Now 88 and living in California, he’s just released a new song, “Everybody’s Rockin’ Tonight,” which is just as good and rockin’ as “Palisades Park” and “Tallahassee Lassie,” his 1959 hit that the Rolling Stones covered. Cannon appeared on American Bandstand 110 times. Thanks go out to Joey Dee—whose “Peppermint Twist” goes from #27 to #24—for calling to alert us to Freddy’s new song.