Tag: RFTS (Page 4 of 12)

Chart Week: November 23, 1985
Song: “Separate Lives” – Phil Collins and Marilyn Martin
Chart Position: #3, 8th week on the chart. Peaked at #1 the week of November 30.

(Note: To tide you over during our Thanksgiving vacation, I’ve scheduled a couple posts to drop while we are away. I’m hoping all goes well and they appear on time and have the appropriate media files attached. If something goes wrong, please forgive me. I will correct upon our return.)

As happens on occasion, this post is more about a story tangentially tied to the song than the song itself.

On this week’s countdown, Casey shared an anecdote about Phil Collins and his once-in-a-lifetime chance to play with a Beatle when he was a teenager.

In 1970, as George Harrison was recording his debut solo album, *All Things Must Pass*, nineteen-year-old Collins signed on as a session musician.

When he arrived at the studio, Collins was given some conga drums and asked to play on a track. He was not given any direction, just told to join in with the guitar part. Jacked up by the chance to perform with one of his heroes, Collins played the hell out of those congas. One problem: although he was a drummer, he had no idea how to correctly play the congas. Add his enthusiasm to his lack of technique, and soon his hands were bleeding.

Eventually the session came to an end, Collins was handed a check, and he left.

A few months later when the album hit record stores, Collins rushed out to buy it. He skimmed through the liner notes, but did not see his name listed as a musician. When he listened to the track he had played on, he realized that the album version was nothing like the song he had played on.

Fortunately, he had never cashed the check. For years he used that as proof that he had, indeed, played with George Harrison (and Ringo Starr, who was also at the session, and Phil Spector, who was producing it).

That’s the story Casey told. It is pretty good.

But it didn’t end there.

Years later Collins ran into Harrison at an event. He asked George if he remembered that session and why a different version of the song made the album. Harrison said he did not recall those details and that it was probably Phil Spector who made the decision about what version made the album. He added that he still had all the master tapes from those sessions and would be happy to send them to Phil so he could review them.

A few weeks later the tapes arrived at Collins’ home. When he listened, he heard absolutely horrible conga drums ruining the track. To make matters worse, when the song ended, he heard Harrison telling Phil Spector to “get rid of the lad on the congas, he’s crap.”

Collins was devastated. Was he really that bad? Yet he still called up Harrison to thank him for sending over the tapes. While on the phone he asked George if he had listened to them. George replied no, he had not. Phil told him about Harrison’s comments on the tape. George paused and said, “Shit, man, I’m sorry, what else can I say?”

They talked for a few more minutes before George began laughing uncontrollably. Collins was taken aback. “What are you laughing about?”

That’s when Harrison came clean.

“After you asked me about that session, I brought in some new players to re-record that track, and asked the conga drummer to play the worst part he could ever imagine!”

That is a first-class, A-level, Mt. Rushmore prank! Jim Halpert would be proud.

As for this song? Blech. It was on the soundtrack for the movie White Nights, and intended to be the big, soaring single from that album. Which it kind of was. It went to #1 for crying out loud! Yet, it was not the biggest song from the movie. Lionel Richie’s “Say You, Say Me,” which was in the film but not on the soundtrack due to licensing issues, was an even bigger hit. It topped the charts for a month to “Separate Lives” one week. And while both songs were nominated at the Academy Awards for best song from a motion picture, it was Richie who took home the Oscar.

I’ve come to appreciate Collins’ work more in recent years, but songs like this I would be fine never hearing again. It sounds more like someone trying to sound like Collins than an actual Collins song. Which makes a little sense, as he didn’t write it. Marilyn Martin is wonderful, and you hear why a lot of people thought she was going to be a star. But her performance doesn’t save the tune. I’m glad this one has pretty much disappeared. 2/10

Chart Week: September 18, 1982
Song: “Somebody’s Baby” – Jackson Browne
Chart Position: #18, 8th week on the chart. Peaked at #7 for three weeks in October.

I loved this song when I was 11. It wasn’t because I was a big Jackson Browne fan, or because it was a fantastic song. No, it was solely because it was the lead single off the soundtrack for Fast Times at Ridgemont High, arguably the greatest movie ever made about being in high school.

There was a long stretch of time when I could probably have quoted 90% of Fast Time’s dialogue back to you. But that wasn’t until 1987 or so.

Why did it take that long? Because I was not allowed to see R-rated movies in 1982.

Still, I got sucked into the cultural vortex Fast Times created when I started six grade in September 1982. Enough of my friends had seen it – or more likely had older siblings that had seen it – that you couldn’t not hear quotes from the film throughout the school day. Like most kids I was a social opportunist, and if quoting a movie I hadn’t actually seen could get me some cred in hallways and locker room of Pittman Hills Middle School, I was all in. I had no idea who Jeff Spicoli was, but I going to say “Hey Bud, let’s party,” anytime I had the chance.

My mom could stop me from seeing the movie, but she couldn’t keep me from hearing its music. Thus I fell in love with the biggest hit of Jackson Browne’s career. I didn’t consider it odd for a 34-year-old, widowed, soon-to-be divorced, father who was several years removed from his most recent, biggest hit to be singing about the lives of high schoolers. All I knew was that his song was from a movie that the cool kids were talking about, which meant the song must be cool.

I still think it’s a pretty good track. It tells a pretty standard story of wanting to be with someone, but thinking that they are unattainable. There are probably a million songs that tell the same story. So just because it’s an old dude singing doesn’t mean it isn’t also applicable to teens.

As I aged, Browne’s presence on the soundtrack made less sense to me. This was a movie about kids in Southern California. Shouldn’t Spicoli and his buddies have been listening to surf punk?[1] Half the girls at Ridgemont High dressed like Pat Benatar, but there are none of her songs in the movie or on the album. While the Go Go’s “We Got the Beat” plays over the opening montage,[2] there are no other examples of SoCal New Wave nor any of the hair metal that was developing in LA.

Instead we got Jackson Browne and a bunch of other odd choices.

The double-album soundtrack also features songs by four former Eagles,[3] Stevie Nicks, Donna Summer, Jimmy Buffet, Graham Nash, and Poco. Not exactly artists who were on the cutting edge or whose prime audience was teenagers. It smacks of a collection put together by label executives nervous about filling it with unproven artists, and instead chose to go with established names who would give it more mainstream appeal.

They had to sell albums, I get it. But those choices keep the Fast Times soundtrack from being a cultural signpost for Gen X the way the movie was.

I will never be able to listen to this song without thinking of the fall of 1982, starting middle school, and Fast Times. Sometimes nostalgia can elevate an otherwise unremarkable song into one that is timeless. 7/10

Chart Week: August 30, 1986
Song: “Heaven In Your Eyes” – Loverboy
Chart Position: #33, 5th week on the chart. Peaked at #12 for two weeks in October.

A quick entry this time, based on a cultural nugget that shows how much the world has changed since 1986.

Casey shared that Loverboy keyboard player Doug Johnson refused to appear in the video for “Heaven In Your Eyes.” Why? Because the song was on the soundtrack for Top Gun, and Johnson was a pacifist. He felt that the movie glamorized war and military service.

Think about that for a minute.

A musician taking a stand against the troops. Can you imagine if that happened today?!?!

Even the most anti-war artists during the Iraq War were careful to say that they were “against the war but for the troops.” Or used some other similar language to make it clear their issues were with policymakers and not those who volunteered to serve.

That stance still caused problems in the 2000s, since a vocal minority of this country believes that if you question the political motives behind military action, you are somehow also “against the troops.”

Hell, the (Dixie) Chicks were basically run out of the country music world because Natalie Maines said she was ashamed to be from the same state as President Bush a year into the Iraq War.

But I don’t remember any real blowback about Johnson’s stance in 1986. Maybe it was because he was Canadian and Loverboy was on the backside of their career.[1] Maybe it was because people who would normally get fired up by similar statements were distracted by the bright, shiny thing that was Top Gun. Or maybe it was just because in 1986 people weren’t so reflexive about defending the idea that only one view of the world can be patriotic.

Last week I heard a countdown from 1987 in which Casey opened the show by thanking a guest host who had sat in for him a week earlier while he attended an anti-nuclear weapons march in New York. I can’t imagine Ryan Seacrest or any of the people who host the various countdowns on SiriusXM making a similar statement today. I don’t think it was an accident that Casey chose to share Doug Johnson’s story.

I guess things were indeed just different in 1986.

As for the song, it sucks. Loverboy carved out an awesome and unique niche in the corporate rock world of the early ‘80s. This song has none of the stuff that made them cool. A cheesy electric piano intro starts things off poorly. Mike Reno sounds bored delivering his vocals. In general, the song comes across as a cheap knockoff of his sappy duet with Ann Wilson, “Almost Paradise,” which had been on the Footloose soundtrack a year earlier.

The Top Gun soundtrack had two songs that will be played forever, a super-cool instrumental theme, and then a bunch of forgettable tracks. This, though, was the turd in the punchbowl. Maybe Johnson was more ashamed of the song than trying to make a political point when he chose to skip the video shoot. 2/10

Chart Week: July 22, 1978
Song: “Baker Street” – Gerry Rafferty
Chart Position: #2, 14th week on the chart. Peaked at #2 for six weeks.

I’ve been wanting to write about this song for ages, and everything finally lined up thanks to an AT40 I caught last week.

“Baker Street” is one of the greatest songs of its time. Or any time for that matter. It is an unforgettable, undeniable, unassailable piece of rock ’n’ roll art. I defy you to listen without cranking it up as loud as is acceptable for your location to revel in its glory.

Sadly, though, it was subject of one of the great screw-jobs in chart history. One that had a direct impact on what Casey Kasem said on two different American Top 40 broadcasts.

Scotsman Gerry Rafferty had six US Top 40 hits in his career; two with the band Stealers Wheel and four as a solo artist. “Baker Street” was, by far, the biggest of those hits. For five weeks in the summer of 1978 it sat at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100, stuck behind what would become the #1 song of the entire year, Andy Gibb’s “Shadow Dancing.” However, in late July it looked like Rafferty would sneak past Gibb into the top spot.

In AT40 replays from the 1970s, Casey often gave clues about what the next number one song would be. I always assumed this was because in the ‘70s, AT40 lagged the actual data by a week or two, and he had an idea of what songs would shuffle into what spots in the coming weeks.

The week of July 22, 1978, Casey shared one of these hints in an interesting way. Before playing “Baker Street,” he read a question from a listener asking what country had the most artists with number one hits per capita. He answered Scotland, with four: The Bay City Rollers, The Average White Band, Donovan, and Lulu against a population of about five million. But, Casey suggested, maybe there was about to be a fifth.

When it came time to record the next week’s countdown, Casey indeed worked off a chart that listed “Baker Street” as the number one song in America. He laid down vocals confirming that fact. However, before the show could be mastered and distributed, the chart was adjusted keeping the top two songs as they had been for the previous five weeks. Casey re-recorded the final segment of his show to reflect this correction. A week later “Shadow Dancing” finally fell to number five…but “Baker Street” also fell four notches to number six.

What on earth happened? How can the Billboard numbers change after they’ve already been locked in for the American Top 40 deadline?

The urban legend, and one that seems to have a lot of legs, suggests that Andy Gibb’s management team was responsible. They met with representatives from Billboard to plan for the singer’s appearance on a Billboard-sponsored show. When Gibb’s agents learned that “Shadow Dancing” was about to fall out of the top spot, they strongly inferred that their client would not be making an appearance on the program if his song was no longer number one. Since Gibb was one of the hottest stars in the world at the moment, this sent Billboard scrambling to adjust the count and ensure Gibb’s performance.

Or so people say.

Whether true or not it is a fun theory to speculate about.

So, sure, Andy Gibb kept Gerry Rafferty from earning a number one hit on the Billboard chart. And that sucks. But I guarantee “Baker Street” gets played way more often now than “Shadow Dancing” does, and probably has every year since 1978.[1] So suck that, Andy Gibb (RIP).

By the way, since that question was asked of Casey, four more Scottish acts have topped the Hot 100: Rod Stewart, Sheena Easton, Lewis Capaldi, and Calvin Harris. I would imagine that means Scotland still has the most number one artists per capita of any country. Even with Gerry Rafferty getting screwed.[2]

There is also a controversy about who wrote the incendiary sax line that anchors the song. You can read all about that here. What blew my mind when I read this piece was that Hugh Burns, who plays the roaring guitar solo on “Baker Street,” also played on George Michael’s “Careless Whisper,” another song that is built upon a monster sax riff. Crazy coincidence!

Oh, and if you don’t think this song is a 10, you can fuck right off.

(Worth noting that Tom Breihan wrote about “Baker Street” and the various stories behind it as a bonus track for The Number Ones during last year’s Stereogum fundraiser. You can read it here. He only gave it a nine. 🤷‍♂️)

Chart Week: June 20, 1981
Song: “Angel of the Morning” – Juice Newton
Chart Position: #38, 18th week on the chart. Peaked at #4 for four weeks in May.

Juice Newton was a classic Right Artist at the Right Time success. Although she came up in the world of folk music, by the early 1980s she had slid into a country-rock hybrid that was well suited to the moment. As we’ve discussed before, there was that little window in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s when many country artists were able to have mainstream, pop success. Think Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton, The Oak Ridge Boys, and so on.

I don’t really hear much country in this song, or most of Newton’s other early ‘80s hits. Here there is the slightest whine in the guitars, and just a hint of Smoky Mountain twang in her voice. In other songs (“Queen of Hearts,” for example) there is a loping bass line that recalls the earliest days of rock music, when country and pop shared a lot of DNA. To my ears, though, her songs come across as very mainstream, adult pop. If the record companies and radio stations hadn’t labeled her as a country artist, I never would have taken her for one.

Perhaps that explains her success. Her straight-forward sound brought in the pop audience, being cast as a country artist roped in those listeners. Combine them and an artist who had not produced a charting pop single before 1981 suddenly spun off four-straight Top 10’s, three more Top 40 singles, and three Adult Contemporary chart number ones (including this song).

In time Newton did drift towards more recognizably country music, and eventually landed seven country Top 10s and three number ones.

But in 1981, she was one of the hottest artists on the pop chart thanks to songs like this.

This may surprise you, but I think this song is fantastic. I hear common ground with late 1960s artists like the Righteous Brothers. Although her voice isn’t as soulful as Bill Medley’s, there’s a similar vibe in there. There’s a grandness to the music that sounds like those big, blue-eyed soul hits of a decade earlier.

That soulfulness gives the song an emotional honesty and vulnerability I’ve always liked a lot. You really feel Newton’s resignation that she has gotten herself into a relationship that has no good outcomes.

Newton’s delivery is nicely reserved right up until she finally cuts loose and wails “Bay-ay-ay-by…” and then takes the final chorus a level higher than the first two. Stretching out that final “Dar-ar-ling” for a full 10 seconds (before the producers double-track it and stretch it out another 20 seconds) is a perfect, dramatic closure.

I also love those melodramatic fills where the drums crash and the guitars chime, which build tension that doesn’t break until Newton’s climactic lines.

In some ways, this song reminds me of The Long Blondes’ terrific 2007 song “You Could Have Both.”[1] In each song a female singer is acknowledging that she is the other woman, but accepting that role and the heartbreak that comes with it. Newton isn’t begging her lover to stay, but rather a confirmation that their union meant something before they part.

I’m not a huge fan of any kind of country music, even that watered-down country pop that made the Top 40 in the early ‘80s. This song is the one exception. 8/10

By the way, I always love countdowns that fall on important dates. This one landed on my tenth birthday. It is probably for another post to talk about how several teammates from my YMCA baseball team and I huddled in our laundry room as tornado sirens blared…

Chart Week: May 24, 1980
Song: “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2” – Pink Floyd
Chart Position: #17, 19th week on the chart. Peaked at #1 for four weeks in March/April.

Each week Casey would read letters from his listeners, generally either Long Distance Dedications or general music questions that his crack staff of researchers would answer. Occasionally he would get a letter regarding a song that was in the countdown.

In late May, 1980, Casey read a letter from a guidance counselor at a New York high school. In her letter, she quoted a few lines from Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2,” complaining that the song’s critique of the educational system was “a slap in the face to teachers everywhere.” She said that the song undermined the efforts of teachers by turning kids against them. “We need students on our side if we want to help them be successful. Kids should be happy to know that there are a lot of teachers out there who want to help them succeed.”

She continued by posing two questions. She wondered if Pink Floyd had bad experiences during their/his time in school. And she asked if they/he had visited a school recently. (I couldn’t tell if she thought Pink was a person or understood it to be a band.)

She closed by saying, “I hope you can find the answers to my questions.”

She poses some legitimate concerns here. But, to me, this is a hilarious example of an out-of-touch adult who gives pop culture far too much credit for determining how kids think and behave. I doubt that children around the world suddenly became dissatisfied with their educational experiences after hearing “ABITWP2” on the radio. Most kids dislike school plenty on their own.

I remember gleefully singing “We don’t need no education,” on the last day of third grade in Jackson, Missouri. I didn’t really know what it meant or where it came from. I just heard older kids singing it and decided to chant along with them. I was more excited about the coming days to explore my neighborhood, ride my bike, go to the pool, and not do anything school-related for three months than airing complaints about the quality of education I was receiving.

However, if you know anything about The Wall, you can’t help but laugh at this woman’s comments. OF COURSE Roger Waters had a bad educational experience! That, along with his father dying in World War II, were the two traumatic building blocks from his childhood that had massive impacts on the adult he became and the music he created.

The Wall’s narrative arc has its roots in Waters’ horrific years in the dour post-war British educational system. He wrote about how English teachers tried to drive the independence out of students and turn them into mindless, interchangeable drones who would fill their pre-determined roles in society upon graduation. Famously, this is depicted in the 1982 film version of The Wall by children marching along a corridor, falling into a vat, and spilling out of a meat grinder like fresh hamburger.

Had this guidance counselor shown some empathy and done a little research rather than just getting upset about a song on the radio, she might have learned the details of Waters’ childhood, about the society he grew up in, and realize the good work she was defending was exactly the kind of teaching he craved.

This is one of those songs that has carved out such a niche in pop culture that it can be difficult to rate. I would imagine every spring another group of students discovers it for the first time and begins singing it as they celebrate the end of their school year.

It is also difficult to separate this song from those around it on the album, and then from the visuals added in the movie. I, for example, never think of the single edit. Rather, I think of how the album/movie were structured, with the shriek of a bird of prey bridging the transition from “The Happiest Days of Their Lives” into “ABITWP2.” The radio version seems to lack important context without that lead-in. I remember a lot of classic rock stations in the ‘90s playing the entire, three-song sequence of “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1,” “The Happiest Days of Their Lives,” and “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2.” That always feels right to me. (The video below is the single edit. You can watch the scene from the movie here.)

The song has a strident, near-disco beat that immediately grabs your attention. David Gilmour’s central guitar riff is also heavily indebted to disco, sounding not too far removed from something you might hear on a Bee Gees, Saturday Night Fever track. The lyrics and their delivery are ominous and suggest a darkness deeper than just complaining about school. Students from the Islington Green School provide an unforgettable delivery of the second chorus. And then Gilmour comes in with a bluesy solo before Waters shouts the famous “How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?” line.

It is iconic, unforgettable, and the most culturally relevant Pink Floyd ever was or ever would be.

And yet it isn’t a 10.

There’s the matter of it being an element – a very important element, granted – of a larger piece of art.

The song is also…a lot. It is oppressive, as if that pressure Waters received from his teachers is settling onto your shoulders and physically pushing you down. The stomping beat feels like an approaching thunderstorm. There is never a moment of release for all that tension.

Bigger, though, is the song’s structure. It is two choruses, a guitar solo, and a spoken-word outro. It is awkward and a little unsettling. It’s fun to chant along to with the other shitheads at your bus stop, but it doesn’t scream pop hit to me, or sound like a song you would choose to play on repeat. It’s kind of amazing that this made it to number one given all the weirdness about it.

There is a 10 on The Wall, but it isn’t “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)”. 7/10

(I tend to avoid writing about songs that hit number one. But the guidance counselor letter was too good to not share. I did not go back and read Tom Breihan’s Number Ones write up of this song until I had completed this piece. He gave it a 6/10.)

Oh, the 10 on The Wall?

(Or here for the movie version.)

Chart Week: May 5, 1979
Song: “Music Box Dancer” – Frank Mills
Chart Position: #3, 15th week on the chart. This was the song’s peak.

Songs like “Music Box Dancer,” complete outliers to everything else on the pop chart at the time, fascinate me. It makes no sense that this track spent over four months in the Hot 100 and climbed as high as number three. Even for the 1970’s, a decade loaded with bizarre records that landed in the top ten, it seems strange.

What else was on American Top 40 that week? The Disco era wasn’t officially over, but it was drawing its last breaths. Still there were at least twelve songs in this week’s countdown that could be categorized as Disco. The late 70’s were when what we eventually called Classic Rock reached its peak. There are at least six Classic Rock tracks amongst this week’s Top 40. The AM Radio Gold sound was fading like a bad radio signal, yet three artists that owed their success to that genre were in the countdown. There were two Beatles (Paul McCartney’s Wings and George Harrison) and two of the biggest artists of the New Wave era (Blondie and The Police).[1]

And then there was this, an instrumental track written to mimic the sound of a music box. It didn’t have a connection to a movie or TV show. Mills wasn’t famous for other things, bringing a built-in audience to his music. He wasn’t coming off a previous big hit. He wasn’t riding the wave of a departing fad or leading the charge of a new one. The track wasn’t part of a promotional campaign. This was about as random of a one-hit wonder as you can get.

And that’s what fascinates me. Somehow, in the midst of everything else that was being played on radio in 1979, this single triggered something in people that prompted them to call radio stations to request it and to walk into record stores to buy copies to play at home.

All that success is even crazier when you learn that “Music Box Dancer” was never supposed to be a single.

Mills first recorded the song for a 1974 album. When Polydor Records released a new single from a later Mills album in1978, they slapped “MBD” on as a B-side. A DJ at Ottawa’s CFRA radio didn’t view the A-side as a potential hit, and flipped the record, thinking Polydor had made a labelling mistake and “MBD” was the intended single. He was wrong about the labelling, but he still liked the track. He added it to the CFRA’s playlist, and by late June, 1978 it was their number one song.

That success soon spread across Canada, which led to a US release. The American record sold one million copies. A LOT OF FREAKING PEOPLE LIKED THIS SONG.

I remember “Music Box Dancer” well. It might be the first song I ever heard on the radio that I knew sucked. I don’t know whether that was my own opinion, formed from hearing it splitting up songs I liked on the radio, or one I came to after hearing older kids suggest it was trash in school bus conversations. Still, I knew it was awful.

Four decades later it remains tough for me to evaluate because it still does not sound like a pop song. While Mills never had another hit single in the US, he had placed an album in the top 10 of the Easy Listening album chart before “MBD”’s run. This song should have stayed in that realm and never wandered into the Hot 100.

I don’t know whether his piano playing is inspired or insipid. I hate the cheesy-ass strings that accompany him. The beat has always seemed like something a person who knows nothing about modern pop music would come up with in at attempt to modernize a sleepy Easy Listening song for younger crowds. Credit to Mills for taking advantage of a moment when pop music was in flux. But the song still sucks. 2/10

Chart Week: April 26, 1980
Song: “Cars” – Gary Numan
Chart Position: #22, 11th week on the chart. Peaked at #9 for three weeks in June.

It has always bothered me that Gary Numan never seemed impressed with the biggest song of his career, 1980’s “Cars.” I’ve read several stories in which he speaks of it dismissively. On the song’s Wikipedia page, he is quoted as calling it “a pretty average song.”

Pretty average song?!?!

Numan is one of the giants of electronic music, an artist who helped to create and popularize a sound that, when applied to pop music, dominated the early MTV era. He is still active and has always been focused on pushing the art form forward.

So, I guess based on that, maybe it makes sense that his only song that was ever a true pop hit might grate on him.

Although that is odd, because his stated goal when he began writing “Cars” was to craft a song that had could be a hit.

He set out to write a hit and did exactly that. Yet he gives it no love.

Artists are strange.

The song has its roots in a road rage incident. Numan once had an altercation with motorists in another car. When they jumped out and attempted to attack him, he locked his doors, pulled onto the sidewalk, and fled the scene. Afterward he realized that our mentalities shift when we get inside a car. The protection of the enclosed space and the power of the vehicle emboldens us to do things we would not otherwise attempt.

I could have, and maybe should have, written more about that, and how Numan’s music – which was often cold, brittle, and impersonal – was a metaphor for the adverse effects of technology on our lives. Spiritually, his music was a blueprint for Radiohead’s OK Computer, among other music that would drop decades later.

But I can’t get past the fact that he doesn’t think the track is any big deal. It was mind-blowing to eight-year-old me, sounding like it was from distant planet that was far more advanced than ours. While I think he meant the song’s layers of synthesizers and staccato drums to sound bleak and industrial, they combine to fill the room in a way that gives the song a sense of warmth. Even after listening to it for about 42 years now, it still sounds groundbreaking and unique.

A much younger me wasn’t the only person who loved it. “Cars” is a Mt. Rushmore song of electronic music, a foundational track of New Wave, and a cross-genre classic that remains vital today. 10/10

Chart Week: April 19, 1986
Song: “A Little Bit of Love (Is All It Takes)” – New Edition
Chart Position: #38, 8th week on the chart. Peaked at #38 for two weeks.

Every teen pop group faces a dilemma as they get older: how do they maintain their audience as they, their fans, and their music matures?

New Edition was bumping into that issue when they recorded their third album, All For Love. The Boston group was the archetype for how an ‘80s Boy Band should operate, and much of the group was fine with sticking with that formula. But Bobby Brown chaffed at the idea of continuing on that path. He wanted to explore more adult themes. He believed he should be the featured singer on more tracks. And he thought the band should shed their clean-cut image. That tension boiled over in late 1985, as the band toured All For Love, when Brown was fired after continually disrupting their performances.

That split was painful but worked out fine for all. Brown became one of the biggest stars in pop music on his second solo album, 1988’s Don’t Be Cruel. And New Edition made one of the greatest R&B albums of all-time after adding Johnny Gill.[1]

I was thinking less about the band’s arc and more about how my peer group was changing in 1986 when I heard this song last weekend.

The changes among my friends had become apparent a few months earlier, in the first week of ninth grade. Our English class got an assignment to write and present an essay about something that we loved. I will never forget when the biggest guy in our grade, who always wore black and was super into heavy metal, stood up and shared his passionate work about the history of English New Wavers Duran Duran. Or rather I remember all the guys in class staring at each other with jaws agape, the 1985 version of “WTF???”

Turns out homie got a girlfriend over the summer. She was into Duran Duran. So, to paraphrase Jules Winfield, turns out he was into Duran Duran, too. Like crazy into them. This was a dude who, three months earlier, was the go-to if you had questions about any heavy metal artist, no matter how obscure. Yet here he was carrying on about a bunch of Brits who wore makeup and linen suits and played updated disco music.[2]

In the spring of 1986 I ran into this phenomenon again, although in a less striking way.

A different classmate started talking up the latest New Edition album. This seemed strange to me, as anytime I would go to his house, we always got into his older brother’s album collection, playing AC/DC, Queen, Triumph, Rush, Kiss, and other loud rock bands. I couldn’t remember any R&B or soul ever being played in his house, or of him expressing interest in such acts. Something had changed.

Turns out, again, it was a girl. He was hanging out with some cutie who liked New Edition. He knew I listened to more “Black” music than anyone else in our friend group, so started telling me how good the album was. He especially loved “School,” NE’s goofy, rapped, stay-in-school anthem. I guarantee his older brother thought any kind of rap was the lowest form of music and probably would have kicked his ass if he knew his little brother was listening to it. This kid was blowing my mind!

Right around this time “A Little Bit of Love (Is All It Takes)” was getting a fair amount of airplay. I know I had it on my running mix tape at some point that spring.[3] When my mom’s April Columbia House catalog came, I was thrilled to see All For Love listed. I had her order the cassette, and soon it was my daily, after-school soundtrack.

Anyway, things were changing, as they do with teenagers. New Edition and Bobby Brown were on their way to adult stardom. A couple of my friends had their first girlfriends. And I had a building block for my late ‘80s/early ‘90s Modern Black Music obsession. Plus fuel for a blog post 36 years later.

While much of All For Love is the standard, cotton candy pop that made NE famous, you can hear the stirrings of where they were headed in this song. It is slightly more mature in that it’s universal rather than clearly about some crush in your homeroom class. The harmonies on the chorus are really good. While Ralph Tresvant’s voice never got super deep, it does has more depth to it here than on songs like “Candy Girl” and “Cool It Now.” The production, though, is still pretty cheesy, certainly no where near the immaculate sound Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis crafted for Heart Break. While it doesn’t reach the highs the classics from Heart Break did, “A Little Bit of Love (Is All It Takes)” does seem like the link between the first phase and second phases of New Edition’s career. 7/10