Reaching for the Stars, Vol. 86

A rather uninteresting weekend around here, even with an extra day thrown in, so let’s jump straight into our latest exploration of Old School American Top 40s.

Chart Week: June 23, 1979
Song: “I Want You To Want Me” – Cheap Trick
Chart Position: #16, 9th week on the chart. Peaked at #7 for two weeks in July.

Sometimes our musical memories trick us into believing a band was more popular that it actually was.

Cheap Trick is a good example for me. I think of them being huge in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, and I’m not really sure why. My parents never owned any of their albums. I certainly didn’t. As we will soon see, they weren’t super successful on the pop chart, either.

I could chalk it up to the old “Bus Stop Theorem,” which holds that the influence of older kids on your school bus can have a disproportionate impact on your worldview. But I was pretty young when Cheap Trick had their first moment of pop chart glory, and I’m not sure if my fellow grade schoolers had that kind of sway yet. Maybe they were on TV a lot, which made me think they were huge at the time?

Something caused this impression, but I do not know what.

(Quick aside: A few years later our middle school bus driver would let us play the radio on our ride to school if we were on good behavior. She generally kept us pinned to Q–104, the most popular Top 40 station in Kansas City. Every now-and-then she would let us switch over to KY–102, the more rock-oriented station. One of those KY–102 days Cheap Trick’s “She’s Tight” came on. The older boys loved it. Betty was in her 50s, I’m guessing, and was much more into songs like “Islands In The Stream.” She didn’t always understand the lyrics to songs, but this one caught her ear.

“WHAT ARE THEY SAYING?!?!” she exclaimed.

One of the older boys was ready for this.

“She’s NICE. Like she’s a nice girl.”

Betty wasn’t so sure but reluctantly let us keep listening. We all cackled behind our seat backs. I wasn’t sure what it meant to be tight, but if the 7th and 8th graders thought it was cool/funny/risqué, that was enough for me.)

Regardless, I was amazed to review the band’s chart history and see other than two brief moments, they never got tons of radio airplay.

Casey Kasem shared a story in this countdown about their popularity. He pointed out how despite releasing albums that got great reviews, their singles consistently flopped. All seven songs they released before “I Want You To Want Me” failed to make the Top 40.[1] In fact, this was the second version of “I Want You To Want Me” released to radio stations, and the first hadn’t even cracked the Top 100.

However, Casey said, the band was immensely popular in Japan. When they toured that country in 1978, it was like the second coming of the Beatles. The band was swarmed at the airport upon their arrival. News programs dedicated long segments to the band. A music magazine devoted an entire issue to Cheap Trick. When they announced a concert at the legendary Budokan arena, so many people called to buy tickets that the phone system melted down.

Casey didn’t offer any evidence for what prompted the Japanese to love Cheap Trick so much. Some quick research suggests a few possible explanations.

First, several Japanese writers had seen Cheap Trick open for Queen in Milwaukee, enjoyed their performance, and asked the band to write about their experience for a magazine. Based on that article, the entire Japanese music press began following the band closely. Soon Cheap Trick had their first #1 song in Japan, “Clock Strikes Ten.”

Next, Cheap Trick didn’t sound like many other bands of their time. They weren’t hard rock or straight pop, nor were they early adopters of the New Wave sound. They had an edge but they sure weren’t punk. However, they incorporated elements from all of those styles, predicting where music would go in the ‘80s. While that made them outliers to what was popular on American radio, the Japanese were receptive to their unique sound.

The band was from Rockford, Illinois, and cut their teeth playing small venues in the Midwest rather than making their name in Chicago or another large scene. For a lot of American labels, music execs, and program directors, that made them tough to market.[2] The Japanese didn’t care that they weren’t from a music hotbed.

Cheap Trick recorded their April 1978 Budokan shows and released the highlights as a live album in early 1979. That finally pushed them into the mainstream in America. The live recording of “I Want You To Want Me” made it all the way to #7. It went to #1 in Japan (of course), Belgium, and the Netherlands, and hit #2 in Canada.

The group’s US pop chart success was short-lived. Their next three singles all snuck into the Top 40, but none got higher than #26. After that, 16 straight releases failed to chart.

Sixteen!

The band was on the verge of being dropped by their label in 1987 when they agreed to bring in outside songwriters to help them on their next album. That worked, as the sappy, lite-rock track “The Flame” made it to #1 for two weeks in the summer of 1988. A remake of Elvis’ “Don’t Be Cruel” peaked at #4 later that year. Two more singles cracked the Top 40 over the next 18 months before the band, again, disappeared from the charts. This time for good.

Kind of a weird career. I would imagine those guys have some stories.

“I Want You To Want Me” is a nearly perfect, great song.

There’s that terrific opening line, when lead singer Robin Zander tells the crowd, “I want you, to want…me!” followed by the shrieks of the Japanese audience as the drums kick in.[3]

Rick Nielsen’s core riff is a nice summation of what Cheap Trick was all about. There was a hint of punk, a hint of power pop, a hint of New Wave, yet it remained slippery and undefinable. He throws flourishes all over the song, not waiting for his solo to show off.

The driving beat is insistent and undeniable.

Zander’s vocals are fantastic. He is horny but never sounds desperate. Everything is offered in a cheeky tone. Nielsen intent when he wrote the song was for it to be something of a parody. While the live version shifted away from that perspective, it never takes itself too seriously.

And I love how the verses and choruses seem flipped. My favorite section is the one when Zander rips through the lines:

Didn’t I, didn’t I, didn’t I see you cryin’?
Oh, didn’t I, didn’t I, didn’t I see you cryin’?
Feelin’ all alone without a friend, you know you feel like dyin’
Oh, didn’t I, didn’t I, didn’t I see you cryin’?

They are quite different but I like to think “I Want You To Want Me” has at least a few common strands of DNA with a song that was racing up the charts as it fell, The Knack’s “My Sharona.”

“Surrender” was Cheap Trick’s best song, and should have peaked way higher than the #67 spot. This wasn’t a bad way for Cheap Trick to finally nab its first true hit, though. 8/10[4]

Any Cheap Trick discussion demands a reference to a certain 1980’s teen movie.