Tag: RFTS (Page 11 of 12)

Chart Week: October 13, 1984
Song: “Strut” – Sheena Easton
Chart Position: #31, 8th week on the chart. Peaked at #7 the week of November 24.

To me, at least, it seems like Sheena Easton’s career was longer than it actually was. She exploded onto the scene in 1981 with the world-wide smash “9 to 5 (Morning Train),” which went to #1 in four countries and was top 10 in four others. She followed that up later in ’81 with the theme song from For Your Eyes Only which hit #1 in three nations and was top ten in nine more. She hit the US top 10 again in 1983, singing with Kenny Rogers on “We’ve Got Tonight.” And there were a handful of minor hits that have been largely forgotten over the years.

In this initial stage of her career, she struck the image of a sweet, wholesome girl from Scotland. Whether it was a concerted effort to push her songs higher up the charts, or just maturity and confidence, in the mid–80s she made a dramatic change in her image. She showed more skin. Her videos were sexy. And she recorded one of the most notorious songs of the decade with Prince.

But “Strut” is the song I remember most fondly from that second phase of her career. It is big, bold, brassy, sassy, and a ton of fun. Where “Sugar Walls” was pornographic, “Strut” is simply about self belief. If 1981 Easton was the ingenue, bright-eyed and reserved, 1984 Easton was a grown-ass woman who was totally in charge of her life.

It’s a pretty good song, but if it came in any other year I would likely have pushed it aside in my memory banks for other songs. Coming in the greatest year in pop music history, though, means it will always have a little boost above other random 80s songs.

Ironically the week I heard this countdown I came across an old Miami Vice episode on local TV. Which got me digging through the list of MV episodes. I had forgotten that Easton had a brief guest run on the show as a pop star that Sonny Crockett was assigned to protect. As these things go, they fell in love, married, and she was eventually murdered by a rival of Crockett.

I couldn’t recall if Easton and Don Johnson had a relationship outside of the show. A quick check suggests they did not; her time on the show coincided with Johnson’s relationship with Barbra Streisand and Easton may have still been involved with Prince at the time. I did find that Easton has been married four times, never longer than 18 months. I find that random and wacky.

Chart Week: October 7, 1978
Song: “Whenever I Call You ‘Friend’” – Kenny Loggins (with Stevie Nicks)
Chart Position: #10, 11th week on the chart. Peaked at #5 for two weeks in November.

Controversy! A countdown from the 1970s?!?!?! SiriusXM rebroadcasts original ‘70s AT40 countdowns on its 70s on 7 channel. Unlike their updated version of 1980s countdowns on 80s on 8, which are aired several times from Friday until Tuesday of each week, the 1970s AT40s were normally aired just once on Saturdays, which made it tough to catch them. Recently they began playing them a second time on Sunday mornings. Which is kind of my magic time if I’m in the car. I can listen to the two countdowns airing on Sirius plus the original 1980s AT40. Let me tell you, my family loves it when they’re stuck with me and I’m bouncing between three countdowns at once!¹¹

Anyway, I caught this song a couple weeks ago. And I wondered, why is it not remembered more fondly, replayed more often, and a bigger part of our culture? It’s a freaking brilliant pop song, built on a near-disco bass line, that was perfectly crafted for singing with friends out of key and at the top of your lungs. When Kenny shouts out “Day by day, we can see…” buildings shake and begin to crumble, evil takes a pause and gets weak in the knees, and all that is good in the world pulses just a little bit stronger.

My only guess is that the song may have lent itself to interpretations that weren’t exactly family-friendly. “I know forever we’ll be doing it,” could be awkward to sing along with the kids in the family truckster. And, as I read the lyrics, it’s basically about enjoying the afterglow of good sex.

“Mom, what does it mean when love glows on you every night?”

Might the title lend itself to a naughtier interpretation? Specifically, why is the word friends in quotes? This was the late 70s; was seeing someone and calling them “friend” a signal that it was time to kick on the hot tub, lay out the bearskin rugs, and get down to make some little sweet love?

Still, why isn’t this a bachelorette party, karaoke staple? We should be sick of drunk 20-somethings belting this out with their friends at bars. Perhaps I should be thankful it never got that kind of attention, and I can still appreciate its greatness.

A couple song notes: Loggins wrote this with Melissa Manchester, but sang it with Stevie. Both Loggins and Manchester have said they’d like to record a version together, but in 40+ years have never gotten around to it. Manchester did record a version with Arnold McCuller in 1979, but never released it as a single.

Although Nicks is credited on the album as singing with Loggins, her name was left off of the single, which made this Loggins’ first true solo hit. In fact, if you throw out all the movie soundtrack songs he became most famous for in the 1980s, this was the biggest solo hit of his career.[1] He would never again crack the top 10 without benefit of a song being attached to a soundtrack.

Finally, Loggins’ Nightwatch album also featured a song he wrote with Michael McDonald, “What a Fool Believes.” I did not know that wasn’t a Doobies original.
I listened to Loggins’ version and, as you might expect, it’s not nearly as good as the Doobies’ classic.

Hmmm, the video does not want to embed, so please just follow this link.

Chart Week: September 27, 1986
Song: “Heartbeat” – Don Johnson
Chart Position: #14, 6th week on the chart. Peaked at #5 for two weeks in October.

The history of pop music is riddled with vanity projects by actors, comedians, athletes, and others in the public eye who decided to leverage their fame in other mediums in an attempt to get a hit record. The 1980s in general, and 1986 in particular, were thick with these songs. Early ’86 brought us Eddie Murphy’s album. Bruce Willis recorded his The Return of Bruno album in ’86, although it was not released until early 1987. Eddie’s music was ok; he could clearly carry a tune but, as I recall, there was nothing special about his voice or his songs. He came across as being careful, offering fairly generic music that could get airplay on both white and black stations. There was always a sense that if Eddie really wanted to throw down, he could have done something so much better than this.

Willis’ album was also rather generic. His sound was exactly what you would expect: that of a guy who, after a couple drinks grabs the mic and leads a band and gets away with it because he has the most charisma in the room and his voice isn’t great but it’s not terrible either so, hey, let the guy sing a couple songs…

Smack in the middle, in the late summer of ’86, came Don Johnson’s Heartbeat album, fronted by this title track. I’ll hear this song once or twice a year and always laugh. I laugh at 15-year-old me, because, as I was into all things Don Johnson at the time, I loved this track. I laugh at America, because we bought this shit up, pushing the record to #5 and snatching up half a million copies of the album. I laugh at the lyrics, which are pretty terrible:

I don´t care what you say
You can give it away
Your money don´t mean much to me
I´ve been out on my own
Going to go it alone now
Cause that´s the way it´s got to be

I laugh at the track’s production, which has every element of bad, mid–80s pop rock in it.

And I laugh most at Johnson’s vocal efforts, especially on the song’s verses, where it sounds like he came straight off the Miami Vice set and started reciting lyrics as he would lines on the show. And now, after doing some research, I laugh at what Johnson said about the album upon its release.

“I didn’t want it to sound like something that other people designed and I just stopped by for a few minutes to do the vocals. And I made it clear to Walter that I would walk away from it if I didn’t think it was credible. I was prepared every step of the way to throw it away and walk away."

That’s some beautiful, first-class bullshit there.

But here’s the thing…his vocals on the chorus are pretty solid. I mean, there’s not much to work with lyrically. But he throws himself into those words and shouts them out much better than you would expect him to. He’s no Springsteen, Bryan Adams, or Kenny Loggins for sure. It’s not totally terrible, though. Which, I suppose, makes the song a success.

The song’s video was perfect for the era, too. Just look at Don prowling around the stage in his silk shirt! That’s Dweezil Goddamn Zappa playing some kick-ass, cheeseball guitar! The headless bass is beautiful. And if you have an actor singing, you have to throw in some segments from a “mini-film” that don’t really make sense but make grandma and grandpa say, “Oh, yes, I remember this young man. He’s on that Miami Vice program. Isn’t he married to that actress, Melanie something-or-other?”

Oh, and holy shit!: Don Johnson was not the first to record this song. Helen Fucking Reddy first recorded it in 1983. That’s right, Don Johnson decided to cover the lady who sang “I Am Woman,” “Delta Dawn,” and “Angie Baby,” all of which went to #1 in the early 70s. I’m not sure how that all came about but it’s more than a little insane.

Chart Week: September 7, 1985
Songs: “We Don’t Need Another Hero” – Tina Turner
“Power of Love” – Huey Lewis & The News
“St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion)” – John Pass
Chart Positions: Numbers three through one.

This edition is a little meta. It’s not about the songs I’ve selected, or even the original countdown. Rather, it’s a celebration of my love of all things countdown and ‘80s music trivia related. I’ve been waiting for this one for awhile!

This week, I ask you not to jump into your time machines and set a course for 1985, but rather 2002. Turns out this countdown was the first legacy American Top 40 I ever heard.

Labor Day weekend of 2002 S and I along with three other couples headed up to Ames, IA to watch a college football game and have a little fun. Much fun was indeed had.

On our drive back to Kansas City on Sunday morning, S was suffering a little. As we approached Des Moines, she demanded that I find a place that had Diet Coke and greasy breakfast food as quick as possible. Which, in 2002, was kind of easier said than done, as we didn’t have smartphones with updated maps that could show us quickly where the nearest Shoney’s or Bob Evans was.

Anyway, we procured some caffeine, eggs, potatoes, and cheese and continued our journey. I decided to slide through the FM dial to see what interesting music I could find. Suddenly I heard Casey Kasem’s voice, in prime, mid–80s form. What was this, some bizarre portal back to the radio of my youth? Or just a station in the middle of Iowa playing 17-year-old radio shows? I got very excited.

Leading into the commercial break before the final four songs of the week, Casey offered a teaser that the top three songs all came from movie soundtracks. Here was the challenge I needed to keep me energized on the road! I quickly thought back to the summer of 1985 and what movies were out then. Back to the Future was the first to come to mind. Hmm, what else was out then that had big songs? I was pretty sure St. Elmo’s Fire had been released by then, but wasn’t 100% sure it had been out long enough for a song from its soundtrack to reach the top three.

At this point, S noticed I was being very quiet and had an intense look on my face while I drove.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

I paused a moment or two, then laughed and said, “I got it! Back to the Future, St. Elmo’s Fire, and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome!”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Didn’t you hear? The top three songs on this countdown are all from movie soundtracks! Those are the three movies and the songs are “Power of Love,” “St. Elmo’s Fire,” and “We Don’t Need Another Hero!” I was giddy, grinning and bouncing in my seat, eager for the commercial break to end so I could see if I was right or wrong.

S stared at me for several moments. We had been engaged for a little over four months. If you asked her today, and she was being honest, I bet should would admit that she was reconsidering spending the rest of her life with me at that moment.

When AT40 returned, Aretha Franklin’s “Freeway of Love” checked in at number four. Tension was high, at least with me. I think S was snoozing again in her seat. Sure enough, Tina Turner, Huey Lewis & The News, and John Parr rounded out the top of the countdown. I pumped my fist and looked at S, who rolled her eyes, adjusted in her seat, and tried to go back to sleep.

Brilliance is so often unappreciated.

Again, this was 2002. Had it been a decade later, I likely would have texted my fellow brothers and sisters in music to let them know of my discovery and memory, as I knew they would give this moment the reverence it deserved.

Over the next few years I’d hear an old AT40 here and there, usually while traveling. In the mid–00s a station here in Indy began carrying them briefly. The shows disappeared for a few years before I found them again right around the time L was born, on the station that continues to play them to this day. I’ve spent countless lazy Sunday mornings walking around the house with a tiny radio tuned to 105.7 so I can follow as Casey counts them down.

And S still rolls her eyes at me.

Also worth noting, this was a big week at the bottom of the charts. The following songs debuted on the Hot 100: “Part-Time Lover,” Stevie Wonder; “Miami Vice Theme,” Jan Hammer; and “We Built This City,” Starship. All three songs hit #1 later in the year. Two of them are really shitty. The best new song of the week, though, was Scritti Politti’s “Perfect Way.” Sadly it only peaked at #11.

Oh, and you will hear more about this week’s countdown on Friday…

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!”

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.