Tag: RFTS (Page 9 of 12)

Chart Week: April 10, 1982
Songs: “We Got the Beat” – The Go-Go’s; “I Love Rock ’n Roll” – Joan Jett and the Blackhearts
Chart Positions: #2, 11th week on the chart. Would spend three weeks at #2.
/#1, 10th week on the chart, fourth week at #1. Would spend seven weeks at #1.

A two-fer, as a tidbit I heard on this countdown connected with some trivia I had heard awhile back and was hoping to eventually write about.

1982 was a huge time for women in rock. Perhaps no moment was bigger than this point in April with Joan Jett was in the top spot with the Go-Go’s right behind her.

“I Love Rock ’n Roll” was the first song ever by a female-led band to reach #1 on the Billboard Top 40. Which seems crazy, right? It took us until 1982 for this to happen?!?! Well, some of that is just because of the silly ways we categorize music. Women had been hitting #1 for decades, but always while listed as solo artists, halves of duos, members of groups that didn’t play their own music, or as the lead singer of a band that was ostensibly “led” by a man. Joan Jett was the first woman ever who was not just the front-woman for a band, but was also the organizer, primary writer, and business leader of the band. The Blackhearts were her band, not some producer’s or record company exec’s assembled to back her up.

What a song to stake this claim. “I Love Rock ’n Roll” is big, bold, and unforgettable. Those opening drum beats, those massive guitars, and Jett’s growl all kick your ass from the start. She was presenting herself as the baddest woman in the world on this song. I think it worked. For seven weeks she held the #1 spot with what became one of the biggest songs of the decade.¹ She’s still a badass today.

Behind Jett at #2 were the Go-Go’s, with their first big hit. They were blocked from reaching #1 by “I Love Rock ’n Roll” for three weeks before “We Got the Beat” began sliding back down the charts. While their single is also an undeniable classic of the ‘80s, the bigger news was their album, Beauty and the Beat. It was the first-ever album from an all-female group to crack the Billboard Hot 100 album chart. Which, again, seems insane. But as unique as Joan Jett was, the Go-Go’s were even more unique for the moment. A band made up entirely of women? Who made new-wave/rock music? And wrote and played it all themselves? That just wasn’t happening on a large scale yet.

Both of these tidbits seem strange nearly 40 years later, when whole swaths of the music industry are dominated by women who are doing their own thing and totally in control of their careers. It was a brave, new world in 1982 as times were just beginning to change.

This was kind of a wacky week that demonstrated the state of pop music in 1982. There were two theme songs on the charts: “Magnum P.I.” was at #36 and “Chariots of Fire” was at #3. There were two medleys on the charts: “Pop Goes the Movies (Part 1)” at #35 with “The Beatles Movie Medley” a slot ahead at #34. And there were two novelty songs: Bob and Doug McKenzie’s “Take Off” at 19 and Buckner and Garcia’s “Pac-Man Fever” at 11.

https://youtu.be/gBRwZbAKMpU

https://youtu.be/f55KlPe81Yw

1. It is officially listed as Billboard’s #13 song of the 1980s.

Chart Week: August 21, 1982
Song: “Love Is In Control (Finger on the Trigger)” – Donna Summer
Chart Position: #12, 9th week on the chart. Peaked at #10 the week of September 25.

My goodness this was a great week! As I was listening to parts of this countdown, song-after-song jumped out at me. I would settle on a song to write about and, five minutes later, here came another one that sparked more memories and made me want to write about it.

I settled on this song partially because I bet very few of you remember it. It came as The Queen of Disco’s career was winding down and most of her hits were minor, although she still had two top 10’s in her future.¹ I remember it when I hear it, but it would take me awhile to come up with it off the top of my head.

What made me write about it, though, was the Casey Kasem trivia about the song’s co-writer, Rod Temperton. Temperton had an amazing song-writing career. He has at least partial credit for 11 Top 10 hits, including two #1’s. He wrote numerous other hits. Most of his hits were for black artists, which, as Casey told his listeners in 1982, was rather strange. Because Temperton didn’t know a black person until he was well into his teens.

Tempterton grew up in the very small, very white town of Cleethorpes on the north east of England. There just weren’t any black folks there. Temperton didn’t meet a black person until he moved to London and began performing music with black artists.

Eventually he auditioned for, and earned a place in, the multiracial band Heatwave, writing their biggest hits: “Boogie Nights,” “The Groove Line,” and the timeless R&B classic “Always & Forever.” He caught Quincy Jones’ attention and was brought in to help write Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall album. Temperton penned both “Rock With You,” which hit #1, and “Off the Wall,” which peaked at #10.

Temperton also wrote a song we’ve talked about before, The Brothers Johnson’s #7 hit “Stomp.” Also in his credits are George Benson’s #4 “Give Me the Night,” and Patti Austin and James Ingram’s #1 smash “Baby, Come to Me.”

He wrote “Thriller,” “Yah Mo B There,” and “Sweet Freedom.” He even earned a credit on LL Cool J’s #3 “Hey Lover,” thanks to its sample from “Thriller.”

Write any two of those songs and that’s a hell of a career. But Temperton wrote them all, along with countless other minor hits and album tracks. Dude was a hall of fame 1980s soul writer.

Not bad for a limey from a sleepy, coastal town where there was no influence from black culture.

My first choice was a song that became one of my all time favorites once I rediscovered it nearly 20 years later, the brilliant Marshall Crenshaw’s “Someday, Someway.” Here’s a bonus video for you.

Oh, and here’s a short list of other songs I considered writing about. I talk about 1984 a lot, but the late summer of 1982 could keep me busy for awhile.

“Somebody’s Baby,” Jackson Browne, #34
“Hot in the City,” – Billy Idol, #31
“Only Time Will Tell,” Asia, #29
“Don’t You Want Me,” The Human League, #26
“Kids in America,” – Kim Wilde, #25
“And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going,” Jennifer Holliday, #24
“Tainted Love,” Soft Cell, #23
“Jack & Diane,” – John Cougar, #16
“Only the Lonely,” The Motels, #13
“Vacation,” The Go-Go’s, #8

1. “She Works Hard for the Money,” #3 in 1983; “This Time I Know It’s For Real,” #7 in 1988.

Chart Week: August 31, 1985
Song: “Invincible (Theme from The Legend of Billy Jean)” – Pat Benatar
Chart Position: #12, 15th week on the chart. Peaked at #10 the week of September 14.

I’m cheating a little for this entry. Although I’m sure if I listened to the iHeart Radio classic AT40 station long enough I’d hear a countdown from around this period, I decided to pick a week on my own.

With M off to high school tomorrow, I was thinking back to my last day before I started high school. I remember going to Oceans of Fun, the water park in Kansas City. But I have no idea who I went with, which is a little strange. My best guess is a good friend that went to the other high school in our area. But I have no concrete memory of that afternoon other than being at the park.

I also remember sitting around that night, burning off some nervous energy for the big day by playing the game Risk with my parents. Yeah, I played Risk as a 14-year-old. Yeah, I got along with my parents well enough to play board games with them. Sue me.¹ And I’m roughly 95% sure that while we played games, the evening replay of American Top 40 was on in the background. Or maybe the Rick Dee’s Weekly Top 40, which was broadcast at night and I enjoyed listening to to compare/contrast with Casey’s countdown.

Regardless…I was listening to a pop radio countdown from the heart of my favorite years. So many good songs on this week’s list, but I just happened to hear this song as I was driving to pick M up from her morning orientation session, and it seemed like a sign.

You can’t really go wrong with a Pat Benatar song. Her big hits were all really, really good. For as big a part of the culture of that time she was – admittedly that is as much because of Fast Times at Ridgemont High as her music – it surprised me to see Pat only had four top ten hits. But she did have 11 other top 40 songs, which is a pretty great career.

I think this and “We Belong” are my two personal Benatar favorites.

As parents we know that the high school years can be tough. I’m hoping M has a little invincible in her for the next four years. And that she never gets herself into any legal misunderstandings like Helen Slater did in the summer of ’85.

Chart Week: July 24, 1976
Song: “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” – Elton John and Kiki Dee
Chart Position: #8, 4th week on the chart. Peaked at #1 for four weeks in August.

What a song. I could stop right there, throw up the video, and that would be enough. A quarter-century after its release it was a Saturday night staple at a bar many of my friends and I frequented, a song that brought a smile to the face of everyone in the house as people sang along with those “OHHH-OH! Nobody knows it,” lines.

The summer of 1976 was a big one in my life. That was the summer my family packed up and moved from a small college town in western Kansas to a small college town in southeast Missouri as my dad began his teaching career. I was used to moving. I believe my parents moved every year the first five years I was alive as they completed their educations and began their careers, bouncing around from yearly rental to yearly rental. This move was more exciting, though, as it took us two days of driving to get to our new home. And it was in a whole new state! ¹

My memories of that summer are about as hazy as you would expect, the actual events being 43 years in the past. Everything comes back to me with a Kodachrome tint to it. I remember the heat and humidity of southeast Missouri in the summer. I remember hearing cans of soda, which failed in the boiling heat, exploding in the cooler in the car trunk that my parents forgot to remove. I want to say I remember watching a presidential debate while at a hotel somewhere in southern Missouri.² I thought the hotel was the coolest because A) I had never stayed in a hotel before and B) they had a pool I got to swim in. I can only imagine what a dump it was, being 1976, located on the side of a highway, and my parents not having much money. Motel is probably the better word here.

I also remember the music of that summer. “Afternoon Delight.” “Shop Around.” “You’re My Best Friend.” “Turn the Beat Around.” “Let ‘Em In.” “A Fifth of Beethoven.” “Sara Smile.” All these tunes playing over-and-over as my mom and I drove in our car with my dad driving the moving van behind us.

Force me to pick one song from that summer, though, and it would have to be “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart.” As I would do with friends in a bar three decades later, my mom and I would sing it loudly as we travelled over the hot asphalt. We had to sing loudly; we had no air conditioning and rolled the windows down to get some relief from the heat. I’m sure my sweaty skin stuck to the vinyl seats and it was uncomfortable as hell. But Elton and Kiki made it tolerable for a few moments. And then I waited to hear it again an hour or so later, when one station faded out and we searched for another down the dial.

As a bonus, Craig Finn joined Frightened Rabbit for a messy and delightful cover of this for a 2010 FR B-side. They performed it once live, as far as I know, and, happily, there is video of that wonderful night.

I figure most of my readers are taking it easy on this holiday week. So I will slow the pace here a bit, get caught up on some things, and otherwise take advantage of the lazy week.

Chart Week: June 29, 1985
Song: “19” – Paul Hardcastle
Chart Position: #27, 5th week on the chart. Peaked at #15 for two weeks in July.

Wow, it’s been awhile! My around the house music habits have changed a little and I haven’t been listening to as many countdowns as I did over the winter and early spring. I did hear bits of this countdown multiple times over the weekend, as it was both the Sirius and local choice. It was an interesting week, filled with both fantastic and forgettable/regrettable songs.

I was glad I heard this track, though, a song that has always stuck with me and that I don’t think gets nearly enough respect.

For sure it was unlike anything else on the chart that week. Unlike Harold Faltermeyer’s “Axel F,” which was just ahead at #24, it was not an electronic song built to be a soothing ear worm attached to a major motion picture. “19” was jarring and confrontational. It picked a scab that most Americans still did not want to pick. Even more, anti-war songs weren’t exactly en vogue in 1985, when we were in the heart of the Reagan era of pumping up the military.

Yet it hit. It reached #1 on Hardcastle’s home charts in the UK. While it didn’t peak nearly as high here in the States, I do remember hearing it a lot that summer. At least enough for it to make an impact on me and be a song I sought out when we transitioned to the digital file era.

What made it hit was another rather remarkable element: Hardcastle went beyond mere dancey, synth-pop and incorporated the more electro sound pioneered by legend Afrika Bambaataa. Hardcastle wasn’t mining the clubs of Manchester or Berlin for sounds. He was tapping into the hip hop sounds of New York that were about to reach the boiling point when they could no longer be confined to the “Black” audience of New York. I believe “19” deserves to be placed with songs like “Rapture” and “Genius of Love” on the list of tracks by white artists that helped force hip hop into the mainstream.

So there is that beat from New York. Hardcastle added some bits from his jazz background. And there are those unforgettable spoken lines, some pulled directly from Vietnam-era news broadcasts, that give the track a chilling, personal quality. It is easy to imagine yourself as a father or mother listening to a kitchen radio or gathered around the big, family TV hoping that the latest bulletins from Saigon don’t contain word that the area where your son is deployed has seen heavy fighting in recent days.

Put them all together and it’s a hell of a song.

Our Internet was out almost all day yesterday, so my web time was greatly reduced. Fortunately I had some notes pulled together for this post, which I was able to hammer out between other activities.

Chart Week: April 26, 1986
Song: “West End Girls” – Pet Shop Boys
Chart Position: #3, 7th week on the chart. Peaked at #1 the week of May 10.

What is 80s music? Sounds and fads ebb and flow over a ten year period. They didn’t magically start fresh on January 1, 1980, continue unabated for ten years, and then come to a screeching halt on December 31, 1989 clearing the way for the ‘90s. Quintessentially 1980s music covers a wide range of genres. Do you put Blondie and Soft Cell and Michael Jackson and Van Halen and Lionel Richie and Guns ’n Roses all in the same bucket? Maybe in terms of airplay – at the time – but what made ‘80s music so great was how big the tent was and how many sounds it pulled in.

While I think the greatest stretch of music in the ‘80s came from mid–1983 through mid–1985, I would expand that a little to say when I think of ’80s music I most think of what arrived between early 1982 and the summer of 1986.

So this week’s countdown was one of the last, great runs before music and my tastes began to change. The top 20 was filled with songs that I would label as absolute classics. Level 42’s “Something About You” at 20; OMD’s “If You Leave” at 18; the magnificent “Tender Love” by Force MD’s at 17; INXS’s monster “What You Need” at 11; Janet Jackson’s first big hit, “What Have You Done For Me Lately” at 8; The Bangles singing the Prince-penned “Manic Monday” at 4; Robert Palmer with “Addicted to Love” at 2; [1] and Prince’s “Kiss” at #1.

A bunch of legendary songs. It sure seems like more than three of these should have hit #1 but I guess they were keeping each other out of the top spot.

“West End Girls” has always stood out to me. I’m still not completely sure what it is about. Is it ripping on girls from the West End of London? Ripping on men who chase those women? Celebrating one or the other? Does it have something to do with class tensions in the UK in the Thatcher era? Or is it a more subtle take on the themes Bronski Beat explored in “Smalltown Boy,” about the perils of being openly gay in Britain in the ‘80s?

I could probably make compelling arguments for any of those, and it speaks to the song’s genius that a pop track is open to so many interpretations.

But what the song has always been about for me is sound and mood. It all comes from that intro, 40 seconds of pure genius. The slow fade up, the noises that could be the trains of the Underground, a street sweeper, or the surf on the shore. The sweeping synths that are simultaneously lush and stark. The icy taps on the high hat. Then the single beat before an unforgettable bass line comes in to snap the song into place.

BOM-BOM-BOM Budum-budum.

The rest of the song is great, but you could put those first 40 seconds on a loop and I would listen to it forever.

My love of this song is partially because of how I was listening to music at this point in my life. I went through a phase that spring when, at night when I could pull it in, I listened to Chicago’s WLS, 890 AM a lot.[2] When I was younger that was the station my parents switched over to at night to hear newer music than what our local stations offered. And it was our soundtrack when we took overnight trips across Kansas out to my grandparents’ homes. I guess I was feeling nostalgic that spring and wanted to hear the same songs that Q–104 and ZZ–99 in Kansas City were playing in a slightly different order and with a far worse signal.

There was something about hearing “West End Girls” in mono with static crashes that added to its mood. Maybe it was the line, “From Lake Geneva to the Finland Station,” that made it seem proper to hear the song via a more distant signal. Neil Tennant’s lines sounded like a strange transmission from across the globe that I happened to stumble across in my search through the wavelengths.

Chart Week: April 20, 1985
Song: “We Are the World” – USA for Africa
Chart Position: #1, 5th week on the chart. Spent four weeks at #1.

Ah, the 1980s celebrity/cause single. It seems like there were tons of these but a check of Wikipedia shows there really weren’t that many original songs written for this or that benefit. I guess it’s because so many came in a pretty tight window that they seemed so prevalent.

Let’s get this out of the way quick: “We Are the World” is a bad song. It is trite, patronizing, and kind of boring. To be fair that is the case with many of these songs. They were written, recorded, and produced very quickly. They were designed to cram a bunch of recognizable performers into them rather than for those artists’ particular talents. They are generally repetitive and simplistic. And even if we greeted the songs warmly at first listen, man did they have a way of getting on your nerves quickly.

The two obvious “Yeah Buts” to all of that are “Do They Know It’s Christmas” and “Sun City.” The first is set apart because it has become a Christmas classic, troublesome lyrics or not, and because it sounds like what British pop music sounded like at the time. I think if it wasn’t a Christmas song it too would have faded into obscurity, but I bet we would regard it better than “We Are the World” because of its sound. Regardless, it’s the biggest charity single ever because it’s been played four weeks a year for nearly 35 years now.

“Sun City,” on the other hand, is a pretty good song that happens to be a charity song. Little Stephen saw where music was going and understood that his message would be both better received and get wider coverage if he pulled in hip hop artists. Back in my iTunes days I had the song in my library and would listen to it a couple times a year.

“We Are the World” does fit its time well. It’s a big, glitzy, Hollywood production of a song, which perfectly sums up the US recording industry in 1985. What bugs me the most about it now is how it has no sound. Or, rather, it sounds like a bad Lionel Richie song. Since Lionel co-wrote it with Michael Jackson, that makes sense. While Lionel’s solo music always had a sound, that sound wasn’t revolutionary, genre-defining, or really all that unforgettable. Using the worst of his agreeable blandness and turn into an epic, all star, repeating song was destined to make folks hate it.

But my point today wasn’t really to critique the song like that.[1] Nope, my intention is do something that has been done before but which I was inspired to do after hearing the song this New Year’s Eve night while listening to the Top 100 hits of 1985: critique each solo singer on “We Are the World.” There will be no comments about folks who just showed up and sang with the group. If you didn’t have a line of your own, you don’t make the cut. Sorry Sheila E., Lindsey Buckingham, and assorted Jackson siblings, among others. Each artist will be rated on a 1–5 scale, with five being highest. So here we go!

Lionel Richie, appropriately gets us started. He was a pro, and kicks off the song with a professional take. It is right in his pocket: clean, smooth and safe. Yet somehow also forgettable. Score: 3
Stevie Wonder: Man, you have to give Lionel some props for, despite being the song’s co-author, only taking a quick line and then handing over to Stevie Fucking Wonder. That shows a lot of humility. And this was just hours after he tried to make the word “Outrageous!” a thing while he hosted the American Music Awards. Anyway, Stevie’s lines are just a tease, because he’s coming back for more later. Score: Incomplete
Paul Simon: Here’s how crazy these songs were. Paul Simon is one of the greatest song writers in the history of American music. In 1985 his cultural relevance had faded a bit, although he would begin recording his final massive contribution to American records, Graceland, six months later. He gets nine words and drifts across them without making an impression. Grade: 2.5.
Simon passed to Kenny Rogers, who gets just eight words to himself. Kenny had some pipes, man. He was kind of the country Michael McDonald: a white dude with some serious soul in his voice, great hair, and a beard. Kenny also looks very happy to be here, unlike some other folks. Grade: 3.5.
James Ingram makes a very brief appearance but will be back, so his line gets an incomplete.
Next is Tina Turner, coming off the biggest year of her career, and one of the greatest stories in American pop music history. But her line does not match her voice. She needs to be able to stretch out a little bit, to get the growl going, and have a chance to make us feel it. None of that is here. But it’s not her fault. Grade: 2.
Tina passes to Billy Joel, who also gets a lame line. But his voice is much better suited to it. Grade: 3.

Quick Intermission: Man, am I grading too hard? All 2’s and 3’s? I wonder if it will get better as we get deeper into the song.

Michael Jackson comes in to sing the chorus for the first time, solo. I remember getting chills the first time I heard his line. 1985 me was all like, “Here we go!” But it’s another tease, as Mike passes to Diana Ross, who was still one of his mentors and great friends, before they close with a quick duet. Grade: 3.
Diana Ross is a bit of a cross of Tina Turner and Kenny Rogers. Her lines don’t let her really get into it, but like Kenny she still makes it work. Plus she does a little fist pump after she and Michael finish their lines together. Grade: 3.5.
Dionne Warwick is next. Dionne would go on to have a massive charity single of her own later in the year, “That’s What Friends Are For,” with Elton John and Stevie Wonder. That was a cover, though, so I put it in a completely different class of song. I wonder why she was on this song. This should have been a Pointer Sister. Grade: 2.
If Kenny Rogers was pop-country, Willie Nelson was the old school, real country representative. And he does just fine, doing Willie things. Grade: 3.
Al Jarreau. What the fuck? Did he take Prince’s place, since Prince famously refused to attend? Or did he just show up and Lionel, Michael, and Quincy were all like, “Oh, shit, Al is here! Where can we slide him in?” Grade: 1.
Fortunately, Bruce Springsteen was there to save us. He’s kind of the Bono of the song: the guy who really throws down and everyone has been making fun of ever since. Because Bruce was INTO IT, MAN. Grade: 4.
Onto Kenny Loggins. Why was he invited? Did they think it was a movie soundtrack or something? Grade: 2.

Quick Intermission #2: Ok, things have been pretty mediocre so far. Only Springsteen has garnered a four or above so far. Whether by intent or because the folks later in the song had to wait longer to record their lines, we are about to hit the song’s high point.

Steve Perry gets that stretch started. And he just fucking nails it. It’s like the final line of the last verse on a massive Journey power ballad. He’s singing so the kids in Peoria, Chattanooga, Spokane, and Buffalo can hear him. Grade: 5.
Poor Daryl Hall has to follow Steve up. Which is kind of fucked up. Daryl was a bigger star than Perry in 1985. He’s a bigger star now. And he does perfectly fine on his lines. But somehow they seem like a letdown. Grade: 4.
Michael comes back for a few more quick lines as you can feel the song climbing further. In retrospect they could have easily made this a Michael Jackson-fueled machine. But it was genius to show some restraint and just offer a little bit of The King of Pop. The Jacksons would kind of use the same strategy on their album later that year! Grade: 4.
When it comes to unlikely baton passes, Michael to Huey Lewis is right up there. But you know what? My man crushed it. Grade: 4.5.
We’re nearly three minutes into the song when Cindi Lauper gets her chance. And she says, “Fuck it, I’m making this bitch mine.” She takes the song, slaps it around, makes it confess to her, then makes sweet love to it, and turns her lines into the biggest and most memorable of the entire joint. Grade: 5+.
Kim Carnes was up next. She had one of the biggest hits of the 1980s with “Bette Davis Eyes.” But she is just a distraction because Cindi and Huey join her at the end of her section, with Cindi blowing her away with a “YEAH YEAH YEAHHHHH!” Was Cindi showboating? Maybe. But she was trying to feed some kids in Africa. Grade: 2.

We finally hit our first, big group chorus. The lines that are stuck in your head forever. Ugh.

I was never a Bob Dylan fan. But it’s kind of cool he showed up. He does Bob Dylan things here, which will be overrated by his legion of fans, and underrated by people that never dug him. Grade: 3.

Big chorus number two. Double ugh.

Here we hit the only part of the song that can be called genius . Mike, Li, and Q throw in just a touch of the African American gospel experience to give the song a little extra weight but without turning into a “Black” song. Because that might have offended some people.

Ray Charles gets the first run, and even though he was 98 years old, he knocks it out of the park. Just a tremendous performance. Grade: 5.

Finally, the song closes with two quick duets. First are Stevie Wonder and Bruce Springsteen, singing back and forth to each other. Both show why they are Hall of Famers and music legends, arriving in full character and throwing themselves completely into their lines. It’s also fascinating to hear the Boss’ voice harken back to his younger days. I hear more “Hungry Heart” than anything off of Born in the USA here. Grades: 5 for both.
Ray comes back in to close things out with James Ingram. Ingram was a favorite of Quincy Jones, likely explaining why he got this plum assignment. He is more than capable of playing catch with Ray, singing his lungs out and giving us the “Ya Mo B There” double fist pump on each syllable. Ray will not let the young fella steal his thunder, though, and closes the song with a big “WHOOOOOO-HOOO! Good God!” Grades: 5’s.

Happy Easter everybody!

Chart Week: February 25, 1978
Song: “How Deep Is Your Love” – Bee Gees
Chart Position: #10, 23rd week on the chart. Peaked at #1 for three weeks in December 1977 and January 1978.

The most amazing chart stretch of my life was the Bee Gee’s run in the late ‘70s. They absolutely owned the charts thanks largely to the monster that was the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.

The soundtrack, which sold over 45 millions copies and spent over six months at #1 on the album chart, featured seven #1 singles – although three of those topped the charts before the album was released.¹ The Gibb brothers wrote eight of the double album’s 18 tracks, and those were the most successful of the original songs on the soundtrack.

Disco may have died a fiery death soon after the peak of Bee Gee’s fever, but their success in 1978 was never repeated in the pre-streaming era.

This week’s chart was a perfect example of how hot the Gibbs were in that moment.

“How Deep Is Your Love” is just an amazing song. Seriously, put headphones on, crank it up, and disappear inside of it. The layered vocals on the chorus are absolutely brilliant.

This week was its 15th week in the top ten. Which, according to Casey, was a new record. It would spend one more week in the top 10 before finally dipping outside after a full four months there. Three of those ten weeks it topped the charts. It wasn’t until April, seven months after its release, that it finally slipped outside the Top 40.

Top spots higher at #8, the next SNF single, “Night Fever,” had jumped into the top ten in just it’s fourth week on the chart. It would spend 13 weeks in the top 10, eight at #1.

At #5 was the Gibb-penned song “Emotion” by Samantha Sang. It would spend 10 weeks in the top 10.

At #2 was little brother Andy Gibb with “(Love Is) Thicker Than Water.” Co-written by Barry Gibb, it would spend 11 weeks in the top 10, two in the top spot.

And at #1 four the fourth-straight week was the iconic “Stayin’ Alive.” It would also spend 11 weeks in the top ten.

Oh, and way down at #29 was Yvonne Elliman, six weeks into her chart run with “If I Can’t Have You,” which would also peak at #1 and last for 20 weeks in the top 40. Again, a song written and produced by the Gibb brothers.

It was just a ridiculous run. Sure, eventually the Bee Gees, Saturday Night Fever, and the entire disco movement became a joke. But there’s no denying what an immense accomplishment it was to dominate the charts the way they did in early 1978. And now that we’re well past 40 years since the disco era died, it’s safe for us to admit that most of these songs are pretty great, with or without the context of the pop culture moment they were a part of.

An aside too long for a footnote: “How Deep Is Your Love” also did America the great service of breaking the 10 week stranglehold on the #1 spot Debbie Boone had with “You Light Up My Life.” Man, people can shit on disco all they want, but it was better than that travesty of a song. I remember taking a car trip from southeast Missouri to Kansas City that fall,² a trip that back in the day of 55 MPH speed limits took about eight hours. I swear we heard “You Light Up My Life” 8000 times on that trip. The ‘70s, man…

Chart Week: March 1, 1986
Song: “Beat’s So Lonely” – Charlie Sexton
Chart Position: #26, 12th week on the chart. Peaked at #17 for three weeks in March/April.

One-hit-wonders come in all size, shapes, sounds, and types. Charlie Sexton may be one of the cruelest examples of a OHW.

Sexton was a bit of a musical prodigy, trained in his preteens by legendary bluesman W.C. Clark. Soon after he was performing with bands and recording his own music. When he was 16 he recorded his first album, Pictures for Pleasure, which earned attention for his combination of Texas blues and Bowie-esque New Wave. The video for “Beat’s So Lonely” got sucked into the MTV hype machine based on Sexton’s good looks. It wasn’t a massive hit but did spend nearly five months on the charts.

After that, Charlie never hit the Billboard Top 40 again. He recorded more music on his own. He opened for David Bowie in 1987. But eventually he transitioned away from the life of a solo artist. He wrote music for movies and even had cameos in a few films. He formed a band with Stevie Ray Vaughn’s old partners. And he has been a long-time member of Bob Dylan’s touring band.

Really not a bad career. I bet he’s had a pretty steady paycheck for his entire adult life. Yet, to much of the music masses, he’s either forgotten or mocked because he only had one radio hit in the MTV era.

I wonder which is worse: to do what Sexton did by scoring a hit immediately and then never reaching those heights again, or to be like, say, Michael Sembello, another man who was a musical prodigy (he joined Stevie Wonder’s studio band when he was just 17) but had to work for years before his only hit, Flashdance’s “Maniac”? That’s probably not a fair comparison since “Maniac” is an iconic song of its era that still gets plenty of airplay, while “Beat’s So Lonely” is only remembered by us music geeks who delight in the esoteric.

I guess the important thing is to have the hit.

By the way, this is one of those songs I think the Music Gods wanted me to write about. Last week’s local and SiriusXM countdowns were both from 1986, and I heard this song a total of four times between Saturday morning and Monday afternoon. It was already in my Spotify library so I hear it a few times a year, but to hear it that often in such a short time was odd.

One of those times L was in the car with me and heard Mark Goodman talking about how Sexton recorded this song when he was just 16. When the song started and she heard his voice, she said, “HE WAS ONLY 16? HE DOESN’T SOUND 16!”

Nope, he did not.

Chart Week: November 6, 1976
Song: “The Rubberband Man” – The Spinners
Chart Position: #15, 9th week on the chart. Peaked at #2 for three weeks in December.

As promised, our first journey into the 1970s. This is the perfect jam to make that deeper run into the chart history.

As I’ve said many times in the past, my parents listened to a lot of soul, R&B, urban, or Black music, whatever you want to call it. Within their record collection were albums from both mainstream artists like Stevie Wonder and The Commodores and more traditional soul outfits like The Spinners. So I go way back with these cats. It’s obvious why they were in my parents’ stack of albums: they simply made great songs.

I always had a special affinity for this song. My five-year-old mind took the song rather literally and imagined a cartoon character made from a rubber band. He was a totally 70s dude, big cheesy smile on his face, wearing some funky shoes, bouncing around town fighting crime, going on adventures, making kids happy, or whatever. To me this song wasn’t much different than songs like “Kung Fu Fighting” or “Disco Duck,” which was #2 on this week’s chart.

Turns out the song was originally called “The Fat Man” and was written by Thom Bell in an attempt to give his son, who was overweight, a boost of self-confidence. Man, the 70s were a weird time. Someone, I don’t know if it was Bell or one of the Spinners, realized a better title might be in order and somehow they landed on The Rubberband Man. That probably made Bell’s son feel better than a song with the word fat in the title.

Fast forward a few years, probably to the spring of 1981. I was watching the NBC pregame show for the college basketball game of the week and they ran a feature on Tulsa’s Paul Pressey, who had been given the nickname “Rubberband Man” because of his dunking prowess. The piece featured clips of some of his best dunks over the song from which he earned his name.

Spinners song + cool nickname + generic 1980s dunks = very excited (almost) 10-year-old me! Paul Pressey was probably my sixth favorite basketball player on the planet that spring, behind Magic, Kareem, Darnell Valentine, Tony Guy, and Phil Ford. Which was kind of weird because I’ll guarantee you in our no-cable-having days I never saw Pressey play other than in that 2–3 minute NBC feature.

I remember being so inspired that I sat down and drew my version of the Rubberband Man, which came from those mental images I had put together five years earlier. I drew a long, twisted rubber band with a wink on his face, floppy basketball socks and Converse high tops, reaching for the rim to throw down a dunk. I was not a very artistic kid, but I guarantee this was the greatest picture I ever drew. I’m bummed I didn’t save it so I could prove it.

Anyway, great song, fun memories. And this video? Holy shit!

(BTW, I wondered if I had ever written about this before. [Turns out I had]. But I’m not not posting this, so if your memory is good enough to remember a post from almost 10 years ago, my apologies for wasting your time.)