YMMV / American Top 40

• Covered Up: Casey would usually point out when a song was a cover of an earlier song and would sometimes even play a snippet of the original. One notable example, from Casey's final broadcast (January 4, 2004), saw Sheryl Crow's cover of "The First Cut Is the Deepest" chart at #31 that week. The song had been recorded four times prior, with the latter three — by Cat Stevens, Keith Hampshire, and Rod Stewart — being cut up and spliced together with Crow's version to create a "montage" that aired in the #31 spot.
• Glurge: A lot of the letters for the Long Distance Dedication related stories that fell in this category. There was also a pool of sentimental songs that got used over and over. In The '80s, you could count on hearing Barry Manilow at least once a month during the LDD. Other recurring faves were "Through the Years", "The Greatest Love of All" and "Wind Beneath My Wings".
• Hilarious in Hindsight: One dedication segment from 1980 was from a girl to her older brother Daniel, who lost his legs and eyesight fighting in Vietnam and was also Covered in Scars. After an emotional reunion with his sister, Daniel went away for advanced therapy. The song that the sister requested was Elton John's "Daniel". It's likely that none of the parties involved were aware that the song had another verse that was dropped for time before it was recorded, that paints a different picture of the song's Daniel - he is, in fact, the narrator's older brother who lost his sight fighting in Vietnam and returns home to both positive and negative attention, and eventually departs for a place where no one knows he's a hero. In other words, a bizarre case of Life Imitates Art.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:
  • On August 19, 1978 the top 14 songs stayed in the same position as the week before.
  • April 17, 1993: no songs debuted or dropped out, meaning it was the same 40 songs as the week before, but in a slightly different order. This happened again on October 26, 2013.
• Serial Numbers Filed Off: On at least two occasions local affiliates had one of their own DJs host a live in-house ersatz version of AT40 in place of the genuine article. One was because the station didn't receive their copy of the show in time. The other was because WGCL in Cleveland, Ohio refused to play the scheduled "Top 40 Hits of The Disco Era" special in 1979. The DJ for that one was a young Townsend Coleman.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: Through the years, a few of the commercial bumpers, most notably, a 1977 cue styled after the Starlight Vocal Band's "Afternoon Delight."
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Shadoe Stevens taking over for Casey Kasem was enough to evoke this reaction in a lot of listeners. Even those who gave Shadoe a chance were eventually turned off by the attempts to make the show more slick and energetic (they even edited out his natural speaking pauses!), and dropping the Hot 100 in favor of other Billboard charts (Hot 100 Airplay and later Top 40 Mainstream). Predictably, many AT40 listeners tuned out in favor of Casey's Top 40 when that show premiered in January of 1989.
  • Many Casey Kasem/Shadoe Stevens-era fans don't care too much for the current version with Ryan Seacrest.
• Tough Act to Follow: Both Shadoe Stevens and Ryan Seacrest have gotten this in comparison to Casey Kasem.

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