{"id":11388,"date":"2022-09-07T09:10:34","date_gmt":"2022-09-07T13:10:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/?p=11388"},"modified":"2025-11-01T10:29:05","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T14:29:05","slug":"reaching-for-the-stars-vol-77","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/2022\/09\/07\/reaching-for-the-stars-vol-77\/","title":{"rendered":"Reaching for the Stars, Vol. 77"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chart Week: August 30, 1986
\nSong: \u201cHeaven In Your Eyes\u201d – Loverboy
\nChart Position: #33, 5th week on the chart. Peaked at #12 for two weeks in October.<\/p>\n

\n

A quick entry this time, based on a cultural nugget that shows how much the world has changed since 1986.<\/p>\n

Casey shared that Loverboy keyboard player Doug Johnson refused to appear in the video for \u201cHeaven In Your Eyes.\u201d Why? Because the song was on the soundtrack for Top Gun<\/em>, and Johnson was a pacifist. He felt that the movie glamorized war and military service.<\/p>\n

Think about that for a minute.<\/p>\n

A musician taking a stand against the troops. Can you imagine if that happened today?!?!<\/p>\n

Even the most anti-war artists during the Iraq War were careful to say that they were \u201cagainst the war but for the troops.\u201d Or used some other similar language to make it clear their issues were with policymakers and not those who volunteered to serve.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cagainst the troops.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But I don\u2019t remember any real blowback about Johnson\u2019s stance in 1986. Maybe it was because he was Canadian and Loverboy was on the backside of their career.[1]<\/a> 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<\/em>. Or maybe it was just because in 1986 people weren\u2019t so reflexive about defending the idea that only one view of the world can be patriotic.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t imagine Ryan Seacrest or any of the people who host the various countdowns on SiriusXM making a similar statement today. I don\u2019t think it was an accident that Casey chose to share Doug Johnson\u2019s story.<\/p>\n

I guess things were indeed just different in 1986.<\/p>\n

As for the song, it sucks. Loverboy carved out an awesome and unique niche in the corporate rock world of the early \u201880s. 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, \u201cAlmost Paradise,\u201d which had been on the Footloose<\/em> soundtrack a year earlier.<\/p>\n

The Top Gun<\/em> 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<\/strong><\/p>\n