Tag: RFTS (Page 11 of 12)

Chart Week: August 5, 1989
Song: “18 and Life” – Skid Row
Chart Position: #32, 5th week on the chart. Peaked at #4 the week of September 23.

These late 80s countdowns are not my favorites. By 1987 my tastes were drifting away from mainstream, Top 40-style music. Emphasis on the word drifting, because I still liked plenty of music that Casey counted down every week, just a lot less than I had a few years earlier.

I came across this countdown several times last weekend on SiriusXM, each time during the 30s. Aug. 5, 1989 was about two weeks before I went off to college, where I eventually made my official divorce from Top 40 radio. But as I looked back on this week’s chart I had two thoughts:
1 – There was a lot of shitty ass music on the charts that week
2 – Sadly, I think I still liked a lot of it

That got me to thinking about 1989 in general, and the last five months in particular. I went off to college with a case full of cassettes that spanned all kinds of genres. There was some New Jack Swing era R&B. Plenty of rap. Mainstream pop. Hard rock. Classic rock. Even some hair metal in there. I know I spent a lot of time that fall listening to Public Enemy, Prince, Billy Joel, Cinderella, Warrant, New Edition, Keith Sweat, Guy, Madonna, Boston, Van Halen, NWA, Aerosmith, and Soul II Soul. It was a wacky, wild time, man.

Of the hair metal I listened to then, this is a song that still holds up pretty well. Which shouldn’t be a surprise because Skid Row had a seriousness and depth to their lyrics that put them on a different level than other bands of the summer of ’89 like Warrant and Winger, to name two. Plus Sebastian Bach was a cool bad ass. Years later a couple buddies and I saw a guy who vaguely looked like him on our plane. We spent the entire flight mock shrieking, “We are the youth gone wild!” to each other.

Good as this song is, I was shocked that it peaked at #4. Really?!?! That’s kind of incredible. It made me feel a little better about blasting it with the windows down as I drove to the recycling center Sunday morning.

https://youtu.be/8O317T6Zlno

Chart Week: July 10, 1982
Song: “Play the Game Tonight” – Kansas
Chart Position: #17, 10th week on the chart. Peaked at #17 for three weeks.

I would guess I heard this song approximately once in a quarter century before I heard it at, of all places, a high school football game a few years back. In the hour of pre-game, pump-up music that was heavy with AC/DC, Guns ‘n Roses, and Metallica, the dad who was playing the tunes threw this in. It was very random, but, when you consider the title, also a pretty inspired choice.

I guarantee I didn’t hear it again until I became a SiriusXM subscriber and now I’ll hear it a few times a year on the Classic Rewind channel, or in a VJ Big 40 Countdown.

I heard it on our local AT40 replay two weeks ago while eating a bagel. It got me inspired to do some Sunday morning Wikipedia-ing. I read about the change in band’s lineup, when original vocalist Steve Walsh left and was replaced by John Elefante in the early 80s. Elefante, who sang “Play the Game Tonight,” was the choice after a rather broad search for a replacement for Walsh. There are several relatively obscure singers who were also in the running along with one who was on the verge of major fame. Sammy freaking Hagar auditioned to be the lead singer of Kansas! That kind of blew my mind, because it doesn’t make much sense.

Kansas always made somewhat pretentious, album-oriented, progressive rock. They are perhaps the archetype for a cheesy, late 70s American rock band. There was never any affectation to anything Sammy did. He was just a good time, straight outta the bar, rock ‘n roller. There were no attempts at deeper religious allegory in his lyrics as in some of Kansas’ songs. It seems like an odd combination and makes sense that it didn’t work out. I wonder if it was the band reaching out to him, an artist who had not yet carved out broad solo success, or the ambitious Hagar wanting to latch on to a band that had a couple massive hits a few years earlier and were trying to claw their way back into relevance.

The bigger question to me, though, is had Sammy joined Kansas, what happens when David Lee Roth leaves Van Halen? If he had hauled Kansas back onto the charts, but with a far more ornate sound that VH’s, would he still have been a candidate to replace DLR? I think probably not. So who does Eddie go after then?

I’m going to spend approximately 35 seconds thinking about this. My first thought was someone from Night Ranger, who blew up in 1984 and played a similar good-time r-n-r to Sammy’s solo work. But Jack Blades played bass and Kelly Keagy played drums, so the Night Ranger’s two lead vocalists would not slot into VH at that time. (As far as we know Eddie wasn’t ready to throw Michael Anthony off the bus yet in 1984.)

Tommy Shaw was responsible for many of Styx’s most rocking hits, where Dennis DeYoung penned their softer, more Top 40 tunes. DeYoung had gone off on his own by 1984. Styx was in limbo. Shaw both sang and played guitar. Now I’m not sure if Shaw was dynamic enough to front VH. DLR was an impossible guy to replace, but at least Sammy brought his own brand of laid-back charisma that helped him slot in fairly easily. I honestly don’t know if Shaw had full-time lead man chops.

Fortunately Sammy Hagar did not take Steve Walsh’s slot in Kansas, he put out some solid solo songs for a few years, and then we got a couple pretty good albums out of Van Hagar. As for Kansas, they had one more top 40 hit in 1986 and then faded away. I think some version of the band still tours, so good for them. “Carry On Wayward Son” is an all-time classic good enough to get you on the casino and state fair circuit.

This song, though, is pure 1982 classic rock shlock.

Chart Week: June 9, 1984
Song: “Eyes Without a Face” – Billy Idol
Chart Position: #18, 6th week on the chart. Peaked at #4 for two weeks in July.

As I said, I’ve been sitting on a couple of these posts. And since Spotify and WordPress appear to be fighting again, I’ll knock this one out in place of a Friday playlist.

This entry is also less about the specific song than something broader. I noticed sometime last summer that I hear Billy Idol songs pretty regularly. I would guess that I hear a Billy Idol song on SiriusXM 5–6 times a week when I’m in the car a lot. When we were still lake goers, the radio station we listened to down there would throw at least a couple of his songs into their eclectic playlist each weekend. I swear I hear “Eyes Without a Face” twice a week, every week.

Which, I don’t know, seems like a lot. Billy was a big artist there for a few years in the mid–80s. But he has a relatively small list of hit songs and I guess I’m a little surprised that they have endured as well as they seem to have done.

To a certain portion of the modern radio audience, though, I wonder if he is the ultimate representation of the 80s. He had a punk rock look, although his biggest hits were far removed from his punk roots. He had an iconic MTV commercial. His VH1 Behind the Music episode was legendary. And his songs were pretty good, too.

This one was his biggest hit until the unfortunate “Mony Mony” remake came along three years later.[1] It’s a real good representation of rock music in 1984. It begins as a slower, ballady track and explodes in the middle with Steve Stevens fantastic guitar solo before calming down again. I have no idea how I didn’t know recently that the female voice in the chorus of the song was singing a French translation of the title, “Les yeux sans visage.” It’s almost embarrassing to me, an 80s music connoisseur and lover of all things 1984, that I never knew that. I think my friends should taunt me with that each time they see me.

Another Billy Idol memory. At our high school dances my buddy who DJed them all would always play “Dancing With Myself.” I don’t know if we requested it, or just loved it because it was so different than the other, standard high school dance fare he played, but that was always the highlight of those dances. Another friend of mine, Steve, and I decided that we would slam dance, as it was called back then, to the track. We did a pretty tame, suburban version of slam dancing and loved every second of it. It kind of became out thing; people looked forward to seeing us awkwardly jump into each other for three minutes.

At a dance our senior year “Dancing With Myself” came on and Steve and I found each other from across the dance floor. After connecting on a couple, um, slams I guess?, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I was spun around to see the school principal looking at me. He said, sternly, “We don’t have slam dancing at Raytown,” and walked away.

As you would expect this became a highlight that is talked about to this day by everyone who attended that fateful night. We would repeat it to each other in class the next week and just roll. We also appreciated that we, two guys never got in trouble, had been labeled as potential social misfits and instigators of anarchy at our sleepy school.

I’m a bit behind on these. Mostly because of not having solid internet access (fuckers). But I have three of these posts mentally queued up from the past month that I’m going to try to crank out over the next week.

Chart Week: July 5, 1980
Song: “Stomp!” – The Brothers Johnson
Chart Position: #28, 17th week on the chart. Peaked at #7 the week of May 24.

I’m pretty sure I’ve written about this song, so this entry is less about the track than its time.

But, a quick refresher on the song first.

I believe when I’ve shared this song in the past, I’ve labeled it one of the great gifts from my parents to me. I was blessed with young parents who listened to (mostly) cool music. The radio/stereo was always on, and they played pop, rock, soul, disco, and even a little country. I firmly believe exposing me to such a wide range of music made me more open to all kinds of cultural aspects beyond music. “Stomp!” Is one of those songs that I feel like I knew a little better than most of my friends because my parents owned it on vinyl in the summer of 1980. I’m guessing very few of my friends’ parents owned any Brothers Johnson albums back in the day. I have several friends who have learned to love this song over the years – it is a serious jam – and I’m never shy about dropping the “I knew about it way before you” card on this one.

As I said, though, this post is about the time this countdown is from. I forget exactly when we moved to Kansas City, but it was sometime in July of 1980. I know we were in Kansas City in late June/early July – I watched the Wimbledon final at my aunt and uncle’s house – but I think that was a trip so my parents could find a place to rent. I’m pretty sure we returned to southeast Missouri for a couple weeks and didn’t make our official move until the end of the month.

Last Saturday we were out running errands and heard parts of this countdown twice. At one point I told the girls that these songs were the ones that were playing right around the time we moved to Kansas City. I thought they might find that interesting given we had just moved. But there was only a muted response from one of the girls while the other two didn’t respond at all. I was going to tell them about sitting around watching the crew load up our moving van and talking about baseball, how much I loved George Brett, and the guys asking me if I was going to go to a Royals game as soon as we got to Kansas City. And how these songs were probably playing in the background of those conversations. Their brains don’t work like mine, though, so I was left to think about all of that on my own.

As I drove, I thought more about that move, or at least as much as I can remember of it. I thought of the kid across the street of our new place coming over and digging through my boxes to see what kind of toys I had. That kid continued to piss me off for the next five years. I remember thinking how awesome it was going to be to ride my new 10-speed down the big hill that was just up the block. I thought of seeing my new room for the first time; it had this awesome box window that I could crawl up into and sit in that I immediatley loved. And I remembered sitting in that box window about two months later, listening to the Royals claw closer to a division title, when my parents called me into the kitchen to tell me that they were getting divorced.

Back then I didn’t have a satellite radio that caught a signal beamed up into space and back to me. I didn’t have an internet connection that allowed me to listen to nearly any song every recorded on demand. I didn’t have a hard drive full of thousands of songs ripped from CDs I’ve purchased over a 25-year span. I just had a little transistor radio with a single, mono speaker. Man did I love that radio. I carried it everywhere with me, scanning the bands to learn the KC radio landscape, listening to the Royals, hiding in the basement with it next to me during my first Kansas City tornado warning. That radio sewed the seeds of a lifetime love of music, and the trivia that comes along with it, that has continued through nearly 40 years of technological changes.

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 the music we listen to as adults.[1] I suppose this helps explain why I so love the music of 1984; that was the year I turned 13. Then again, that was a truly magical year for music so I don’t know if it matters whether I was 12/13 or some other age. It likely would have stuck with me regardless.

And I don’t know that it necessarily set the musical standard that I’ve stuck with my entire life. I certainly still listen to a lot of music both from and influenced by that period. And I come to a full stop when I hear a countdown from 1984. But I’ve also been listening to, primarily, alternative and indie rock for well over 20 years now. And I’ve always taken pride in keeping up with the latest trends in those genres rather than just listening to old tunes over and over. Witness my year-end music lists I spend hours putting together each December.

Still it was comforting to know that there may be some deep, biological explanation for why the music from 1984 still has such a strong effect on me.

Last week I listened to a good chunk of this countdown. Unlike the 1984 countdown I heard in February, we are now starting to get into the heart of the music that defined that epic year. It featured four songs from the Footloose soundtrack. Lionel Richie, Madonna, and Van Halen were all on the chart. And there were two Cyndi Lauper songs.

“Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” is one of the iconic songs of that era. Helped immensely by its goofy video and Lauper’s unique look, it is one of those songs that seems undeniably connected to a specific moment in time yet will be played and loved forever. Lauper was this wacky, likable, non-threatening feminist who was intent on carving out a new place for women in music and society. Based on this song, she didn’t seem all that different from Weird Al Yankovic, an artist who would provide more comic relief than artistic quality.

Then she dropped “Time After Time” as her follow-up single and began staking a claim as one of the biggest, most important artists of the year. I think she also blew everyone’s minds a little. “Wait, is that really Cyndi Lauper singing this serious, somber song?”

Folks woke up quickly. With good reason, as it is an incredible song. As I recall, I tried to resist it. It was written for people at least 10 years older than me. When I was just trying to hold girls hands and maybe get a kiss, I couldn’t understand the emotional weight behind a track like this. Yet it still resonated with me, even if I couldn’t quite grasp what Lauper was singing about.

That emotional content is something I learned to appreciate as I aged. Plus, getting older means you can admit to liking slower, deeper songs that are made more for quiet moments alone than for dancing around with friends.

I swear I hear this track at least once a week on SiriusXM. Which makes me happy. I think people unfairly recall Lauper’s look, her unforgettable New York accent, and the video for “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and dismiss the rest of her career. They’ve turned her into a de facto one-hit-wonder even though she was far from that. She had four Top 5 hits in 1984 alone, then added another #1, a #3, and a #6 before the end of the 80s. It’s good that some other people out there remember “Time After Time” which is, by far, her best song.

Don’t believe me? The writers behind Parks & Recreation were down.

Reading up on the song’s background, I found something I knew and something I did not.

I knew that Lauper wrote the song with Rob Hyman, just before his band, The Hooters, became famous.

What I did not know was that her label was pushing for “Time After Time” to be the lead single for her album She’s So Unusual. Lauper objected, saying leading with a ballad would close people’s minds about her music and derail her career. She and her manager fought for “Girls” to be the first single. Who knows if things would have been any different had her first two singles been swapped in order. But she deserves credit for fighting for control of her career. Her choice worked out pretty well.

Somewhat ironically the same day I heard this on our local AT 40 replay, the Sirius replay was from 1987. My brother in music, John N, sent me a message saying he had just heard Lauper’s remake of Marvin Gaye’s classic “What’s Going On” in that countdown. He wondered why she thought the world needed that song in 1987. My response was: hubris. After her 1984, when if not for Prince and Bruce she would have had the biggest chart year of any artist, Lauper and the people around her probably thought she could do anything. Apparently a lot of the public agreed; her remake peaked at a respectable #12. She would only have one more Top 40 hit after that, though.

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 1979, and the radio stations my parents listened to at the time were likely to have had it in their rotations. So odds are I heard it back when it was first released. Later in the early 80s, Prince had several songs that charted on the R&B lists, and my mom spent a good chunk of her radio time listening to our local R&B station. There’s a good chance I heard songs like “Controversy” and “Uptown,” too.

While I have some very vague, and most likely imagined, memories of “I Wanna Be Your Lover,” as I thought it through I decided “Little Red Corvette” was the first Prince song I ever heard. The Music Gods were listening because this countdown played later that week. What became Prince’s biggest pre-Purple Rain song jumped ten spots back in that week of 1983.

I like imagining the first time people heard artists that took music and shifted it in dramatically new directions. Teenage girls who were enamored with the Beatles putting Revolver on for the first time. Disaffected youth in London’s tower block apartments putting on The Clash for the first time in 1977. Suburban white kids listening to It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back in 1988.[1] I imagine their little minds being blown by music they probably couldn’t totally comprehend or appreciate. I know some of them are turned off by these new sounds, but others take to them immediately and have their worlds opened up because of it.

I and a lot of my friends had that experience with Prince in 1983. We were all bumping up against puberty, bodies changing, hormones raging, minds going down sometimes disturbing paths. And then this song and the album 1999 showed up to work us into a frenzy. There was something in that slow, synth fade up that begins “Corvette” that triggered all our hormonal antennae and had us sitting up, blocking out distractions, and paying very close attention to what followed.

“Little Red Corvette” is probably the first song that I immediately knew was about sex. Not sweet and tender kisses. Not holding hands. Not even making sweet love. Nope, this weird cat Prince was singing about something I had no comprehension of: hot, sweaty, crazy-ass S-E-X. But I knew I wanted to know about it. Maybe with that cute girl who had a locker next to mine, or the girl who sat across from me in art class and always laughed at my dumb jokes. I remember thinking there was some secret message deep in Prince’s music that would unlock all the secrets to this amazing new world that involved getting naked with girls.

Eventually I bought the 1999 album and my mind was further blown. Whatever subtleties Prince used on “Corvette” and “1999” were totally shed on songs like “Let’s Pretend We’re Married” and “Lady Cab Driver.” I could get away with playing side one of the extended cassette when my mom was around. But side two? Hell no. But I made sure to listen to it often, and carefully, when she wasn’t around.

These awakenings are inevitable, regardless of era we grow up in or the music we listen to. There’s a direct connection between the flood of hormones and the music of our youth that combine to make us look at the world a little, no, a lot differently than we had before.

There’s a whole generation of us who have Prince to thank for helping us to make that leap.

This song also has one of the sneakily greatest lyrics of the 80s in it. However, most folks missed it until years later as the line was cut from the radio version. Today you’ll almost always hear the album version played, but in 1983 saving those nearly two minutes was more important and it rarely got radio time. Of course, America probably wasn’t ready for what Prince shared at the end of the album version:

Girl, you got an ass like I never seen, ow!
And the ride
I say the ride is so smooth, you must be a limousine
Ow!

I remember rolling on the floor the first time I heard those words. When I got older I realized as much as young Prince tried to camouflage his horniness in metaphor and misdirection, he couldn’t complete hold it back. These lines are like the hyper kid who has behaved all the way through a church service and then loses it just before its end.

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 by an artist who was massive for a few months and then disappeared.

One of the best artists to do this with is Mr. Mister. They were a mostly unknown band with one single that had peaked at 57 on the Hot 100 before the fall of 1985 rolled around. Then, over a nine-month stretch, they were as big as any band in the world. After that, they pretty much disappeared.

The run began with “Broken Wings.” Released in September of 1985, it topped the charts for two weeks that November. Next up was “Kyrie,” which also spent two weeks at #1. From October ’85 through April of ’86, Mr. Mister was inescapable on pop radio. The strength of those two singles pushed the band’s second album, Welcome to the Real World, to #1 on the album chart as well. Eventually it sold over a million copies in the US. A third single, the perfectly fine “Is It Love,” peaked at #8 on the Billboard charts in July of 1986.

The band did have another Top 40 hit, 1987’s “Something Real,” which stalled out at #29. But I almost guarantee none of you remember that. I don’t remember it, and I pride myself on remembering obscure songs by bands that had one or two huge hits.

That was a pretty solid run. And I bet Richard Page and the rest of the band had a thoroughly incredible 1986, as they toured the world opening for Tina Turner, got fat checks for their songs topping the charts, and did an endless series of interviews with TV and print journalists who wanted to know their story. I bet the women around them were a lot hotter, the cocaine a little purer, and the pre-show catering a little bit nicer when they were on top of the world.

Other artists had better and bigger music years in the 1980s. Michael Jackson in 1983. Prince and Bruce in 1984. Madonna in 1985. But those were all massive stars that remained massive stars. Mr. Mister’s 1985–86 could be one of the best stand-alone years of the decade.

We like to make fun of artists like Mr. Mister, who made music that seemed perfectly suited for a specific moment but were unable to adjust as time passed. But how many artists would give anything to have one top ten hit, let alone three, including two #1’s, from a single album? Yep, the Mr. Mister guys are laughing last.

Quick trivia from this countdown: Casey shared that lead single Richard Page was offered the frontman spots in both Toto and Chicago after each of those bands lost their lead singers in the mid–80s. But he chose to stick with the band he had started years earlier. Smart move. I’m sure he’d rather look back on his success with Mr. Mister than have spent years singing other people’s songs with Toto or Chicago.

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 original MTV VJs – Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman, and Alan Hunter – pumping out classic tunes all day.[1] Each weekend they take an old Billboard Top 40 list and do their own recreation of a countdown of that week’s hits. The show runs several times over the weekend, beginning Friday night and finishing with a Monday morning airing.

Last week’s show was from 1983. And I believe it proves the existence of the Music Gods.

There’s no doubt there are Woof Gods, beings poised to punish players and fans for hubris in sports. They are why no real fan thinks about the Final Four when your team hasn’t even made it out of the first weekend of the tournament yet. The Woof Gods are always listening and know if you’re imagining hanging a banner when there’s still a nasty 8-seed to get past.[2]

As for the Music Gods, their existence and purpose is more complex. Are these beings that play the right song at the exact right moment on a date? Do they allow you to, somehow, know what song is coming next on the radio before it plays? Or are they more like the Woof Gods in making sure any song you hate will be played far too often on a radio you have no control over?[3]

Whatever their cause, I think the Music Gods have messed with me twice in the past year. Sometime late last winter, when another VJ Big 40 was also from 1983, I flipped by the show just in time to hear “Allentown” at least four different times. It happened on Saturday, twice on Sunday, and again on Monday.

Last weekend it happened again. I heard “Allentown” once while dropping M off at volleyball practice Saturday afternoon. In the evening I heard it again while taking C to the store to get some school supplies. Sunday I ran out to get some stuff for breakfast. The moment the electronic system lit up, I heard the sharp factory whistle that opens the song. It’s as though the Music Gods had their collective finger poised over the play button until I triggered the ignition. And Monday morning, after leaving an appointment, I heard the final five or so seconds of the song as soon as I got in the car.

Pretty weird, huh?

I swore I wrote about Billy Joel way back in the early days of the blog, about how I attempted to use his music to woo a foxy girl from Omaha that lived in my dorm my freshman year.[4] I searched the archives and could not find the post, which means it must have been lost in one of my 800 redesigns of the site over the years. Or maybe I just imagined writing about it.

Anyways…part of that post was about how I grew up listening to a lot of Billy Joel. That was mostly because my mom loved him. She had all of his albums and played them often. One of my earliest music memories was her asking me to play “Piano Man” over and over again one day. As I got older, Joel was a good meeting point of our respective musical tastes. She was listening to more adult contemporary, I was mostly listening to Top 40 pop, and he was one of a handful of artists where those genres met. I continued to like Joel into college, until I went hard core New Jack Swing and Hip Hop, and later alternative rock. Billy’s music was not cool anymore, so I packed his tapes away at home and never listened to them again. Unlike some other artists of that era, I’ve never rediscovered my childhood love for his music. For awhile I hated it. Now I can tolerate some of his songs, but it doesn’t move me the way, say, Hall & Oates does.

But, hey, respect to Billy for one of the greatest careers in American pop music.

This song is one of the ones I can handle. Since it has been forced upon me these two weekends over the past year, I’ve come to admire its lyrics, its sound, and its intent. Although Joel’s music would never be called Heartland Rock, this song can certainly claim a thematic connection with that genre. “Allentown” fits right in with Bruce’s songs about the factory workers of New Jersey, and Mellencamp’s stories about Midwestern farmers who faced uncertain futures in the 1980s.

I generally think of Joel’s music being, ultimately, hopeful. “Allentown” ends suggesting that better days will come. But it also contains likely the bleakest lyrics of his career.

Out in Bethlehem they’re killing time
Filling out forms
Standing in line

Well we’re waiting here in Allentown
For the Pennsylvania we never found
For the promises our teachers gave
If we worked hard
If we behaved

Every child has a pretty good shot
To get at least as far as their old man got
But something happened on the way to that place
They threw an American flag in our face

Joel’s lyrics were also generally timeless, meaning they were not anchored into a specific era. But in “Allentown” you hear all the anger, frustration, and confusion of the time in which the song was written. A time when large parts of the country were undergoing dramatic changes from economic systems that had been in place since World War II.

Perhaps that’s the message the Music Gods were pushing on me. I’ve often made fun of Billy Joel over the years. By forcing me to listen to “Allentown” four times a weekend, twice in a year, and getting the song stuck in my head, I suppose they wanted to remind me that Joel was worthy of some respect.

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 week in the top 40, the fastest rising song since 1972. Several other monster hits from 1983 were still scattered throughout the chart. “Jump”, the first huge song of ’84, was at #2. Some soon-to-be 84 classics were making their way up the chart: “Footloose”, “New Moon on Monday”, and “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.”.

But this Elton John track was the one that struck me. That might seem odd given the songs listed above. But with the significance of this week, it’s probably not a surprise that this was the one that got me thinking last Sunday.

Often when you’re a kid, you don’t realize what your parents are going through. I knew times were tough for my mom in the early 80s. I didn’t really appreciate how tough they were, though, because I was a dumb kid.

After working at a mall jewelry store for seven months, she finally landed a job with a decent company in the spring of 1981. Because of debt that was already hanging over her head, additional money issues incurred through her divorce, and my dad being unable to pay child support because he was unemployed, that job wasn’t enough. We always had food, even if sometimes it was purchased at the cheapest grocery stores she could find. We lived in a decent neighborhood, although in a duplex. I was able to play three sports a year. I always had clothes, even if they were knockoffs of the cool brands. Still I knew providing all of this was a struggle for her.

Late in 1981 she added a second job, working five hours a night, five nights a week, for a telemarketing company. At some point she started selling Mary Kay cosmetics, too. She spent about a year trying to move makeup on the weekends to bring in some more cash before she realized the revenues didn’t match what it was costing her. The lady had to sleep at some point, right?

Through that nighttime job she made friends with a small group of coworkers. Eventually we were often spending weekend nights with this group of three or four people. They were all single, all struggling in one way or another. And they were all the kind of super cool adults who weren’t bothered by me being around. They included me in their conversations, solicited my opinions, asked about my interests.

I remember one particular night late in 1983 when the group was hanging out at our house. We were playing board games, talking, eating, and music was on in the background. This song came on and one of the guys said, “Oh! This is a great song!” as he walked over to turn the volume up a couple notches. There were nods from around the table.

Every time I’ve heard the song since then – over 34 freaking years ago! – I’ve thought of that comment in that moment. Every time.

I wish I could remember the conversation that came after, because I know this group of 30-somethings talked about the meaning of the lyrics. I probably can’t recall that conversation because it was all waaaaay beyond comprehension at 12. I’m sure I just sat there, pretending to focus on the game while secretly attempting to file away their comments for when they would have value for me.

For years that was a warm memory; a memory of a night where I was hanging out with my mom and her friends, when there was fun and laughter and companionship punctuated by a good song that brought everyone together.

My feelings about that moment changed when I got older. I realized that wasn’t a happy moment. My mom and her friends were all living less than their best lives. They were working second jobs. None of them were in relationships. They had come together to stave off frustration and loneliness. That was good, yes. But they all yearned for something more fulfilling. This song spoke to their disappointment.

After that revelation, I began thinking less about the warmth of that night and more about the pain in my mom’s life during that period. A time of darkness that would get much worse over the next year as she battled serious health issues throughout 1984.

But I also think about my mom’s resilience and strength. How she didn’t drop out of college because she got pregnant at 19. How she worked her ass off, at the expense of her physical and emotional health, to give me a decent childhood. And of 100 other things she did over the course of her life.

In that moment in late 1983, she had a long list of grievances with life. But, as she did so often, she chose to forge friendships, to seek and offer support, to set a good example for me, and to look ahead and believe that the blues would pass and better times would come.

I take a certain pride in knowing tons of meaningless facts about old music. So I was super upset on Sunday when I learned that Stevie Wonder played the harmonica on this song.

Now it is entirely possible I knew this back in the day and just forgot it. But it seems like that is something I would not have forgotten; come on, Stevie Fucking Wonder playing on an Elton John song? I was utterly shocked when I heard Casey Kasem talk about Stevie’s contribution here. What’s the point of taking up space in my head with all this garbage if I didn’t know/couldn’t recall something as big as that?

Seriously, it almost ruined my entire day.

1984 was a big year for Stevie Wonder harmonica cameos. Late in the year he joined Chaka Khan on her cover of Prince’s “I Feel For You.” Throw in the regrettable, but massive, “I Just Called To Say I Love You” and 1984 was the last monster year of Stevie’s career.

There were a lot of Elton and Stevie albums in my mom’s record collection. I hope she knew of Stevie’s presence on this song and it pleased her.

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 the kitchen to have breakfast. While eating I flip on the radio to check the week’s American Top 40. I always have a little contest with myself to see how quickly I can determine what year the show is from based on the song that is playing. From there I decide if that week’s countdown is worth listening to. My sweet spot is normally 1982 through mid–1986. Earlier or later than that and I often lose interest fairly quickly.

Last week’s countdown was from 1981, and full of mediocre songs, so I only listened long enough to eat.

Why write about this week, then? Because three songs that were just off the chart hinted at a new era that was fast approaching.

But, first, the three songs I listened to.

The only way Fred Knoblock was cracking the Top 40 was by singing about having a fling with Anton, a former Miss America finalist who was considered one of the most beautiful women in the world in 1981.[1] It’s a cheesy, saccharine, weightless song perfect for the era when every family had a fondue pot tucked into their pantries and “Afternoon Delight” was still part of the cultural memories of most Americans.[2] Although actors hitting the charts with bad songs has happened in all musical eras, the touch of country in this song makes it easy to peg as something from the transitional phase that was the late ‘70s through the rise of the New Wave era.

“Smoky Mountain Rain” is a good damn song. There, I said it. But, again, its AM radio blend of country and adult contemporary identifies its time of origin quickly. Despite its date of release, this is not 80s music.

I know I have some friends who are down with Barry Manilow. That’s cool. My mom listened to a lot of Barry in the late 70s, so his tunes are certainly a part of my musical education. But if you forced me to listen to Barry, this is not a song I would pick.

I may not like these songs, but they cut to the heart of why I enjoy listening to these old countdowns. I can listen to any 80s song any time I want to thanks to the magic of streaming music services. In that on-demand world, I can jump across years and tie together just my favorite songs. When I listen to old AT 40s, I’m forced to hear the songs in their original contexts, surrounded by other records of different genres. I love hearing a song that became a timeless classic just as it was creeping into the Top 40. I also love hearing Casey Kasem talk about artists who dominated the charts for a few years but are completely forgotten today. We had no idea that “Don’t You Want Me” would still get played dozens of times a week today, or that The Knack would never be heard from again.

Each week, as I listen to the old countdowns, I use the Weekly Top 40 website for more context. One of the great things about the site is it lists not only each week’s Top 40, but also songs that fell out of the countdown, songs that debuted in the Hot 100, and that week’s Power Plays; songs that, based on airplay and sales, were likely to move into the Top 40 soon.

The week of February 7, 1981 fascinates me. As I scrolled through that week’s chart, it did not feel very 80s to me. The three songs I heard Sunday seemed largely representative of that entire chart: mostly adult contemporary, mostly older artists, with a strong influence of the 1970s throughout. It seemed better suited to a small, transistor AM radio than an FM stereo receiver that was part of a big sound system.

But then you look at that week’s Power Plays and see something different. Number 43, “Kiss On My List” by Hall & Oates; #42, “Rapture” by Blondie; and #41, “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” by Pat Benatar. Now these are 80s songs! Only “Rapture” has any New Wave ties, although it is far more famous for being the first significant charting song that incorporated rap. “Kiss On My List” is pure 80s pop. And Benatar was combining stadium rock and melodic pop into one of the iconic sounds of the new decade.

Finding these transition points in old charts makes listening to a bunch of crappy songs worth it. Music didn’t suddenly become all New Wave synth pop in March of 1982, or all hair metal ballads in the summer of ’89. The shifts come slowly, over several months, with one song breaking the trail for a few more, until finally dozens have moved pop music in a different direction.

1982 feels like the first year that “80s music” dominated the charts. The first hints of that shift were making themselves visible in the winter of 1981.