Chart Week: August 18, 1984
Song: “We’re Not Gonna Take It” – Twisted Sister
Chart Position: #39, 4th week on the chart. Peaked at #21 for two weeks in September.
In between contractor visits last week, which have caused a move of my computer gear onto the dining room table temporarily, I was trying to hack together a post about a chart from 1981. But I couldn’t quite find the right song or angle. Luckily this weekend’s SiriusXM countdown was from 1984, which is a sure way to beating my AT40 writer’s block!
This song…man, what a song! From that glorious summer of ’84 was this big, bad beast of a tune, driven by that classic opening drum line. Its chart run juiced no doubt by one of the greatest videos of all time. Remember when videos were fun like this? One that after watching for the first time, you couldn’t wait to tell all your friends about it, and then to see it again? It might not have been high art, but to 13-year-old me, it rivaled any painting by one of the masters.
One of my favorite memories of this song is one of my mom’s friends trying to remember the name of the band. She didn’t know the song, the video, but had heard the name somewhere. She spat it out at one gathering or another, “Then there’s that horrid band, Dirty Mother, or whatever they are called.”
I rolled in fits of laughter after that one. I corrected her, but I’m not sure I improved her image of me in the process.
Also worth noting how fickle the video age was. This song fought its way to #21 in late September, then fell exactly that many spots and clean out of the countdown in one week. But to a generation of once-dumbass boys, it is legendary.
“WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE?”
“I wanna rock!”