Welcome to the 1980s.
Our first regular weekly trip into this decade takes us to 1983. The year of the M*A*S*H, finale, Vanessa Williams' brief reign as Miss America, and the U.S. invasion of Grenada. Oh, and apparently that November, we almost had a nuclear war. And as summer drew to a close, this is what the American pop music landscape looked like.
40 - "Kiss the Bride," Elton John
39 - "Our House," Madness
38 - "Don't You Get So Mad," Jeffrey Osborne
37 - "All Time High," Rita Coolidge
36 - "Far From Over," Frank Stallone
35 - "Fake Friends," Joan Jett and the Blackhearts
34 - "(She's) Sexy + 17," Stray Cats
33 - "The Border," America
32 - "Making Love Out of Nothing at All," Air Supply
31 - "Dead Giveaway," Shalamar
We begin with rock. Elton John added to his hit collection with this guitar-driven tune in which he regrets not holding his peace at an old flame's wedding. A year later, Elton would kiss his own bride, a German recording engineer named Renate Blauel. Shockingly, it didn't last. Ska-rockers Madness had their biggest American hit with this bouncy new-wave classic about renminiscences of a boisterous family home. I prefer this one to the same-title Crosby Stills and Nash song. The woman born Joan Marie Larkin and her band are here with arguably their best single, a razor-sharp dismissal of false allies who "build you up till you fool yourself that you're something else." It's punchy, spunky, and just all-around awesome. Rockabilly revivalists Stray Cats scored their third and final Top Ten with a typically retro jam about a teenager cutting class to meet his "little Marie," who "acts a little bit obscene." Later, lead singer Brian Setzer would reach further back into the past to revive his career with a swing orchestra.
A couple soul singles here. Jeffrey Osborne, onetime lead singer of 70s funksters L.T.D., had eight solo Top 40s in the 80s, but never made the Top Ten. This one, his third, is a serviceable dance number in which he chastises his girlfriend for chastising him about looking at other women. All right, but not something that makes me think he deserved bigger hits. And vocal trio Shalamar, featuring future solo star Jody Watley, contribute a sleek, sexy number about the thrill of the sexual chase. Good good good.
We have two hits from movies; one the latest in a long-running franchise, the other a completely unnecessary sequel. Boring-ass Rita Coolidge performs a boring-ass theme to the non-boringassedly titled Octopussy. She's no Shirley Bassey. She's not even Sheena Easton. I guess the Bond people figured that out, because for the nest film, they hired Duran Duran, with much better results. Meanwhile, Sylvester Stallone hired his little brother Frank to act in and write music for his latest directorial project, the ill-advised Saturday Night Fever sequel Staying Alive, and the most prominent result was this Top Ten hit, a glossy pop production that has a great piano opening but goes downhill from there. "This is the end," Frankie sings at the beginning, and if he was talking about his career as a legitmate showbiz entity, he was right. This song may be best remembered now for being in the background of Harry Shearer and Martin Short's classic "male synchronized swimmers" SNL sketch. Oh, and Staying Alive is another film that I'm embarrassed to say I actually saw in a theater.
We finish with MOR. America scored the last hit in the country they were named after with this unremarkable song about trying to get to a lover. Not much to say about it. That can't be said about Air Supply's effort hit, the one time they rose above blandness to achieve something legitimately memorable. Of course, most of the credit for this goes to writer and producer Jim Steinman, whose bombastic lyrics and operatic production was bolstered on this record by guitarist Rick Derringer and two members of Bruce Springsteen's E Street band. I love Steinman, and I wish he had been more prolific in his non-Meat Loaf hitmaking. He's the go-to guy for overblown earworms.
30 - "Total Eclipse of the Heart," Bonnie Tyler
29 - "Promises, Promises," Naked Eyes
28 - "How am I Supposed to Live Without You," Laura Branigan
27 - "1999," Prince
26 - "Human Touch," Rick Springfield
25 - "Saved by Zero," The Fixx
24 - "After the Fall," Journey
23 - "Don't Cry," Asia
22 - "Tell Her About It," Billy Joel
21 - "Rock of Ages," Def Leppard
We start with a couple women belting it out. Bonnie Tyler, who had first hit with the wonderful country-rocker "It's a Heartache," returned, bringing her sexy rasp to the second Jim Steinman production on this week's list. Once again, Derringer and E Streeters Roy Bittan were on hand to bolster the big sound. We all know it, we all love it. At least we should. Oh yes, and this song hit #1, and was primarily responsible for holding "Making Love Out of Nothing at All" to #2. Jimmy S. ruled the fall of '83. And Laura Branigan scored her third Top 40 with this desperate final plea to a departing lover. Six years later, the song's co-writer would have an even bigger hit with it, going all the way to #1. But to me, this beats the shit out of Michael Bolton's version. That was just awful, whether he wrote it or not.
A couple British New Wave groups are here. Bath's Naked Eyes followed their Top Ten Burt Bacharach cover "Always Something There to Remind Me" with this #11 about a guy who can't stop believing his lover's false pledges. A couple more minor hits followed before the band's lack of staying power was exposed. And London's The Fixx (the second "x" was added by a nervous record label worried about the name's drug connotation) had their first American hit with a song about rejecting the idea that acquiring material things will lead to happiness. 25 years later, this song was annoyingly ubiquitous as part of an ad campaign to sell Toyotas.
Three of the decade's solo male hit machines are here. The man born Prince Rogers Nelson is here with the title track to his breakthrough album, a synth-drive floor-filler that was among pop culture's earliest predictions that the world would end in the year 2000. He was wrong, but this song retains it's doomy charm. Rick Springfield's entry this week is about the desire for human contact in an increasingly technology-driven world. The sentiment remains relevant, but the song itself most certainly does not. And Billy Joel would go to #1 with this Motown-flavored advisement to not keep one's infatuations secret. It was the first of six hits from the album An Innocent Man, all of which were homages to artists and/or musical styles of the past. To me, this was the best of them all, with maybe "The Longest Time" running second.
We finish with rock. Journey, arguably the decade's corporate-rock kings, are here with a meh midtempo ballad about regret over letting a lover go. Only when Steve Perry starts belting did this make me pay attention, but only a little. Asia, the band made up of British prog-rock all-stars best known for "Heat of the Moment" and putting out several albums with one-word titles that began and ended with the letter "a," had their second and final Top Ten single with this bit of assurance to a woman that everything's all right now that he's in her life. To me though, the coldness of the synthesizers on the track undercut the sentiment somewhat. And Sheffield, England's Def Leppard had their second hit with this classic hair-metal pledge to "set this town alight" with the power of ROCK. Oh yes, and in case you don't know, those German-sounding words spoken at the beginning ("Gunther glieben glauten globen") are completely meaningless.
Tomorrow: a song you can dance to if you'd like to, a song from 1929, and a song whose video remains one of the coolest things I've ever seen.
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