Chart Week: June 23, 1984
Song: \u201cObscene Phone Caller\u201d – Rockwell
Chart Position: #39, 8th week on the chart. Peaked at #35 the week of June 30.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have always prided myself for knowing minor hits by artists who have been labeled as One Hit Wonders by the general public. Others find this trait annoying, but it\u2019s kind of too late to change now. Not that I\u2019m in-your-face about it. But I also do not hesitate to point out how Scandal or whoever actually had X<\/em> other songs that cracked the top 40 in addition to their one, big, unforgettable hit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So it pains me to admit I have zero memory of this song, the follow-up to Rockwell\u2019s massive debut single, the #2 hit \u201cSomebody\u2019s Watching Me.\u201d I mean, this was in the peak of my top 40 radio listening. When I listened to AT40<\/em> on Sunday mornings and The Rick Dees Weekly Top 40 Countdown<\/em> on Sunday evenings. When I would switch between the two top 40 stations in Kansas City on a regular basis. When I would watch every second of MTV I could when over at friends\u2019 homes. But when I heard this song recently, nothing about it rang a bell. Not the title. Not the melody. Nothing about the music or Rockwell\u2019s vocal performance. I am ashamed of myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s an easy explanation for the difference in chart performance between the songs, and of why Rockwell never again hit the top 40: his boyhood pal Michael Jackson sang on the chorus of \u201cSomebody\u2019s Watching Me.\u201d There is little doubt that having the biggest artist in the world drop in to sing the most memorable lines made that track stand out from all the other new music in the spring of 1984.<\/p>\n\n\n\n People were freaking nuts about Michael, and with Thriller<\/em> pretty much milked of every possible hit fans snatched up anything they could get to hear new Michael. \u201cSomebody\u2019s Watching Me\u201d was the biggest example. At the same time that \u201cObscene Phone Caller\u201d was making its brief chart run, a recycled Michael track from the early \u201870s, \u201cFarewell My Summer Love,\u201d hit the charts for two weeks. There was The Jackson\u2019s Victory<\/em> album, which was mostly crap but had two top 20 singles thanks to Michael\u2019s vocals.1<\/a><\/sup> Later in 1984, big sister Rebbie had the only top 40 pop hit of her career with \u201cCentipede,\u201d a song that Michael wrote and produced. It\u2019s safe to say some of Prince\u2019s success in1984 was because of walls that Michael had battered open for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Lionel Richie might have said, Michael was outrageous from late 1982 through 1984.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By the way, isn\u2019t it a little strange that Rockwell\u2019s two hits were titled \u201cSomebody\u2019s Watching Me\u201d and \u201cObscene Phone Caller\u201d? And in 1985 he had a single titled \u201cPeeping Tom\u201d? I\u2019m sensing a trend, and it\u2019s a little disturbing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s also pretty fresh that Rockwell and his management began the video for \u201cObscene Phone Caller\u201d with a few seconds of \u201cSomebody\u2019s Watching Me.\u201d Just a little reminder of why you loved him a few weeks earlier. And always a sign that the next song isn\u2019t going to be nearly as good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n