Our second trip to the year of a famous blizzard in my area. But enough time has passed that there won't be a huge amount of overlap, and I always like covering charts where I can actually remember hearing most of the songs on pop radio, so bring it on:
40 - "Swingtown," The Steve Miller Band
39 - "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours," Peter Frampton
38 - "Thunder in My Heart," Leo Sayer
37 - "Here You Come Again," Dolly Parton
36 -"Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft (The Recognized Anthem of World Contact Day)," The Carpenters
35 - "(Every Time I Turn Around) Back in Love Again," L.T.D.
34 - "Gone Too Far," England Dan and John Ford Coley
33 - "The King is Gone," Ronnie McDowell
32 - "Your Smiling Face," James Taylor
31 - "I Go Crazy," Paul Davis
We kick off with two corporate rock heavyweights. "Swingtown" is one of the few Steve Miller Top 40 hits to not crack the Top 10, but it's still pretty well-remembered, and may have inspired the title of a recent short-lived CBS series about wife-swapping in the Me Decade. Meanwhile, Peter Frampton followed up the title track from his first studio album as a superstar by covering Stevie Wonder. "I'm in You," was his biggest hit single, reaching #2. This one just scraped into the Top Twenty. The decline had begun
A lot of easy-listening stars in this bunch. After "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing," Leo Sayer took another stab at disco. He didn't go to the falsetto on "Thunder in My Heart," however, and that may or may not be the reason this attempt was much less successful. England Dan and John Ford Coley return with a song that isn't "I'd Really Love to See You Tonight, so who cares? James Taylor shows up with a late 70s hit that isn't an R&B cover, so that's refreshing. And "Your Smiling Face," is actually pretty nice. And Paul Davis' "I Go Crazy," is certainly familiar, and it obviously had some sort of staying power, because it spent a then-record forty straight weeks in the Billboard Hot 100.
Two of the three new entries on the chart are at 37 and 35. After establishing herself as a country star, Dolly Parton began a concerted effort to cross over to pop with "Here You Come Again." It worked, as it reached Number Three. Soon afterward, Dolly was profiled in Rolling Stone, and in conjunction with that was photographed by Annie Liebovitz being cradled in the arms of the then little-known bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger. Funk band L.T.D. don't have a similarly sexy story attached to them, but their hit didn't need it. It's just good music, and the singer sounds a little like Tom Jones.
I end this section with the battle for this week's Uneasy Rider Award. I was certain that if I ever came across "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft," it would take home an Uneasy Rider in a walk. I mean, come on. It's The Carpenters, the poster-siblings of safe, unthreatening MOR, covering a trippy, unwieldily-titled song about trying to contact extra-terrestrials which was originally performed by a band many people thought were a cover for a reunited Beatles. Surely it would take some Herculean feat of cheesiness to top that, right? Well, it did, and then-unknown country singer Ronnie McDowell was the man to perform it. As the title and the date would probably indicate to you, it's a tribute to the recently-deceased Elvis Presley. If that's all this song was, it wouldn't be that remarkable. But trust me, it isn't. It starts out with McDowell, in spoken word form, proclaiming that he grew up listening to and emulating Elvis to the point where his greatest dream was for people to say that he sounded just like The King. And then McDowell decides to use the occasion of his idol's death to try to make that dream a reality by singing a bombastic ode to the man in a very good Vegas-years Elvis voice. McDowell's choice to mourn his hero by imitating him, combined with the reverent, almost hymnlike lyrics (McDowell even sings "Long live his name" in a way which suggests that in his mind he envisioned an uppercase "H" on "his"), make "The King is Gone" an extraordinary artifact of its moment. How no one did this for Michael Jackson (at least not with this level of commercial success) is beyond me.
30 - "Slip Slidin' Away," Paul Simon
29 - "My Fair Share," Seals and Crofts
28 - "She Did It," Eric Carmen
27 - "Keep it Comin' Love," KC and the Sunshine Band
26 - "Come Sail Away," Styx
25 - "Isn't it Time" The Babys
24 - "Daybreak (Live)," Barry Manilow
23 - "Send in the Clowns," Judy Collins
22 - "It's So Easy," Linda Ronstadt
21 - "Cold as Ice," Foreigner
Here's where we first start encountering repeaters from the last '77 chart. KC and the Sunshine Band were hanging in with their first Top 40 hit not to go all the way to the top, while Foreigner we're still around with one of their most memorable rock staples.
A couple of 60s survivors are here. Paul Simon had yet another hit with a rumination on life and love that can currently be heard (in Canada at least) in a commercial for snow tires. Judy Collins, meanwhile, had two Top 40 runs with her version of a number from Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music; it got to #36 in 1975, then came back two years later and made it to #19. Not bad for a song from a musical based on an Ingmar Bergman film.
The easy-listening squad is never far away in this decade. Seals and Crofts, fortunately for all of us, were near the end of their run when they had this hit from a Robby Benson movie called One on One (by the way, are there any more truly 70s phrases than "Robby Benson movie?") which contains odd lyrics about Lady Justice and actually has Seals and/or Crofts singing "Sleep with me if you dare." I don't dare. Not under any circumstances. Meanwhile, Eric Carmen is here with something a little more upbeat than his other, more maudlin solo hits. That's nice and all, but still, without the Raspberries, he sucks. And Barry Manilow didn't chart much higher than where he is here with this live bit of peppy positivity, but I definitely remember it.
We end this half with three examples of rock in the forms it took at the time. Styx, who you'll recall are the Bob Seger of Chicago (still scratching my head about that one, Casey) are here with this week's chart's second tale of alien encounters. But I didn't realize that at six. I was too busy rockin' out and trying to sing as high as Dennis DeYoung. The gramatically-incorrect-and proud Babys are here with the first of their two U.S. number 13 hits. It's lightweight pop rock; catchy, yet hardly classic. Their singer, John Waite, would go on to score two Number Ones in the 80s: "Missing You" by himself, and "When I See You Smile" with the "supergroup" Bad English. Finally, Linda Ronstadt is at 22 with her second hit Buddy Holly cover (after '76's "That'll Be the Day). And in case you didn't hear, yes, her ex Jerry Brown will once again be the governor of California. I wonder if Linda regrets not having the chance to fill the shoes of Maria Shriver.
So there's Part One. Tomorrow: somebody doubles up on their hit count for the week, two hits from two of the decade's biggest albums, and one of the biggest hits EVAH!
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