Reaching For The Stars, Vol. 120

Chart Week: November 2, 1985
Song: “Lovin’ Every Minute Of It” – Loverboy
Chart Position: #9, 11th week on the chart. This was the its peak.

First off, shout out to my brother-in-music E$ for messaging me when he heard this song on an old AT40 while driving through Iowa recently. Astute listeners may recall that I heard my first throw-back countdown show on a drive through Iowa many years ago.

Loverboy was one of my favorite bands in the early 1980s. Mostly because they were another entry point to rock music opened by my uncle. In fact, that combination of band and relative was part of one of the greatest weekends of my childhood.

In March, 1982, I spent two days hanging with my uncle and his roommate at Oliver Hall on the KU campus for the dorm’s Little Brother/Little Sister weekend.[1]

I don’t remember too many details of that visit. There was an epic pickup basketball game where the college guys took it easy on me and made me look really good in front of their girlfriends. I was shocked none of the 19–20 year old ladies watching asked for my number. I had my first slices of Pyramid Pizza. I toured campus and bought a t-shirt and stickers at the KU Bookstore. Good, eleven-year-old kid stuff.

And we listened to a lot of Loverboy. My uncle had the both of the group’s albums, Loverboy and Get Lucky, and they were in the highest of rotation that weekend. Vinyl on his dorm-room stereo, tape in his Monte Carlo as we cruised around town. I was quickly enthralled by their blend of rock guitars and pop synthesizers. My favorite tune of that weekend wasn’t one of their big hits, but rather “The Kid Is Hot Tonight,” which had not cracked the Top 40 in the US. “Where will he be tomorrow?” is a question we should always ask of the newest, hottest fads. By the time I went back home on Sunday, I was exhausted, knew I wanted to go to KU, and a confirmed Loverboy fan.

Loverboy had a handful of solid songs and one semi-classic that’s played around 5:00 every Friday all over the world. But this big ol’ stomper of a record was their most successful single.[2] However, in music biz cliché, it nearly did not happen.

The band was wrapping work on their fifth studio album in early 1985. Columbia Records listened to the results and told them they needed one more track, something that would be a sure radio hit.[3]

The guys were burned out after months of studio work and not in the frame of mind to write another tune. They reached out to fellow Canadian Mutt Lange, who was fresh off turning Def Leppard into one of the biggest acts in the world. Lange said he had an idea that might fit their needs. But he was working in London, Loverboy was in Canada, and they could not arrange time together in a studio. A phone call was arranged, on which Lange played the song that became “Lovin’ Every Minute Of It” a couple times.

When they hung up, the band raced to their instruments and tried to recreate what they had heard. This may not seem like a big deal today, but in the Eighties long distance calls were often scratchy and hard to hear. Throw in a trans-Atlantic connection and it’s amazing the band retained any of Lange’s concepts. Lead singer Mike Reno has said while Lange gets the credit for providing the inspiration, the final product was as much their creation as his.

What set Loverboy apart during their run was their blend of straight-up rock with a hint of New Wave. For some reason they weren’t derided by the Young Dumbass demographic for this combination. The older dudes on my school bus generally liked Loverboy where they would dismiss other, similar acts. I always wondered if they escaped mockery because they were Canadian.

On “Lovin’ Every Minute Of It” they dialed the New Wave way back. You still hear keyboards, but the guitar is much more forward, which turned it into a swaggering brute of a track. It perfectly captured the hedonistic environment rock bands lived in just before the explosion of AIDS and the realization that maybe doing a lot of drugs wasn’t the path to a long career. It was all about having a good time, in tone and words.

Ahhh those lyrics… In a decade in which singing about sex became much less subtle, not many songs were as overt as “Lovin’ Every Minute Of It.” The naked lust in the words is almost cartoonish, like a 13-year-old wrote them, not a bunch of rockers nearing 30 who, you would assume, had been through a relationship or two. They are so over-the-top that they hit as hilarious rather than off-putting.

Put it all together and this was a record made to be played in strip clubs.

“Lovin’ Every Minute Of It” can come across as silly, excessive, and even boorish. However, it is just a big, horny Golden Retriever of a song. It is stupid and crashes into things making messes all over the place. It will probably fuck anything that moves. But in the end, it’s just a lot of harmless fun. Too much fun to judge harshly. If I owned a Monte Carlo, I would absolutely pop this cassette tape in and turn it way up.[4] Whoa, oh, whoa, whoa it’s an 8/10.