Reaching for the Stars, Vol. 7
Chart Week: April 21, 1984 Song: “Time After Time” – Cyndi Lauper Chart Position: #36, 2nd week on the chart. Peaked at #1 for two weeks in June. I recently read an article suggesting, based on an analysis of information from Spotify, that for the majority of us, the music we listen to between ages 11–16 form the basis for…
Reaching for the Stars, Vol. 6
Chart Week: March 26, 1983 Song: “Little Red Corvette” – Prince Chart Position: #27, 5th week on the chart. Peaked at #6 for two weeks in May. A few weeks back I heard Prince’s first Top 40 hit, “I Wanna Be Your Lover” and wondered when the first time I ever heard a Prince song was. “Lover” reached #11 in…
Reaching for the Stars, Vol. 5
Chart Week: March 8, 1986 Song: “Kyrie” – Mr. Mister Chart Position: #1, 12th week on the chart, second week at #1. One of my favorite things to do when I hear old music is consider artists who had really brief, but really amazing runs. “Did so-and-so have the best year ever?” I’ll ask myself when I hear a song…
Reaching for the Stars, Vol. 4
Chart Week: March 5, 1983 Song: “Allentown” – Billy Joel Chart Position: #17, 15th week on the chart. Peaked at #17 for six straight weeks from February through March. This week’s edition is the first that draws from SiriusXM’s VJ Big 40 show on its Eighties on 8 channel. For those not familiar, Eighties on 8 features three of the…
Reaching For The Stars, Vol. 3
Chart Week: February 18, 1984 Song: “I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues” – Elton John Chart Position: #18, 17th week on the chart. Peaked at #4 the week of January 28, 1984. A countdown from 1984, my favorite musical year! So many fantastic songs to pick from. “Thriller” had just hit the top 10 in its second…
Reaching For the Stars, Vol. 2
Chart Week: Feb. 7, 1981 Songs/Chart Positions: “Killin’ Time” – Fred Knoblock and Susan Anton, #28 “Smoky Mountain Rain” – Ronnie Millsap, #27 “I Made It Through the Rain” – Barry Manilow, #26 My normal Sunday routine is to get up sometime between 8:00 and 8:30, watch the local news long enough to check the weather, and then move into…
Reaching For the Stars, Vol. 1
I’ve been kicking around an idea for awhile about using the 1980s American Top 40s[1] I listen to most weekends as a jumping off point for writing about old songs. Every weekend, whether I listen to an entire countdown or just catch a few minutes here and there, I’m bombarded with memories from 30+ years ago when all those songs…
RIP Casey Kasem
We knew this was coming, based on recent, terrible, news reports. But it still hurts. Casey Kasem, 1932-2014. It is not hyperbole to say no pop culture figure influenced my life more than Casey. I began listening to “American Top 40” way back in its earliest days. My parents listened to “AT40”. Their friends listened to “AT40”. My uncles listened…
My Musical Youth
On occasion a memory from the past will trigger something in my brain and I’ll fall into a deeper hole of nostalgia. That’s been the case recently concerning summer music from the 1980s. The trigger, this time, was two separate American Top 40s I listened to on recent Sundays.1 One was from 1984, and was loaded with Prince, Bruce, Tina,…
Casey Hangs Up His Mic
Even a long-time Casey Kasem fan like me was surprised by this news. Not the fact that he was retiring his countdown show(s), but that he was still even doing a countdown. Casey Kasem ending his run on radio this weekend – “Hosting various versions of my countdown program has kept me extremely busy, and I loved every minute of…