I'm back again, still with one foot in the 70s. This time, it's the chart from the month after the world's first "test tube baby" was born.
40 - "Shadow Dancing," Andy Gibb
39 - "Love Theme from Eyes of Laura Mars (Prisoner)," Barbra Streisand
38 - "Right Down the Line," Gerry Rafferty
37 - "Think it Over," Cheryl Ladd
36 - "Don't Look Back," Boston
35 - "Get Off," Foxy
34 - "A Rock n' Roll Fantasy," The Kinks
33 - "Oh! Darling," Robin Gibb
32 - "Just What I Needed," The Cars
31 - "Whenever I Call You Friend," Kenny Loggins and Stevie Nicks
We begin with disco. Andy Gibb picked up his third and final #1 with this song in which he asks someone to "drag me across the floor." Romantic. But I believe Andy's starting to grow on me. And Miami's Foxy scored the biggest of their two pop hits with this song whose sound and lyrics are every bit as raunchy as the title would indicate. "We keep under the sheets with two lovelies so we can get off," they sing. Ah, those crazy seventies.
A big chunk of the soft stuff in this bunch. Producer Jon Peters bought a screenplay called Eyes of Laura Mars for his then-lover Barbra Streisand to star in. Babs decided against doing the movie, which was about a fashion photographer who has murderous visions, allowing Faye Dunaway to snap up the role. But she did contribute this song to the soundtrack, a showy but unremarkable ballad comparing romantic love to captivity. Irishman Gerry Rafferty followed up the smash "Baker Street" with this sweet ode to a loyal woman who's been "as constant as a northern star" in his life. It's the only other song of his I remember from childhood, though apparently he had two more hits back then. Cheryl Ladd was best known for appearing in TV commercials when she was tapped to replace an unhappy Farrah Fawcett on Charlie's Angels While she appeared on that show, she tried her hand at reviving the music career she had sort of begun earlier in the decade singing on the Josie and the Pussycats cartoon. The result was this unspectacular piano-pop number that advised listeners to "learn from love and not from numbers." Her name got her on the radio, but it couldn't make it stick, as the song would only climb three more notches on the charts. Robin Gibb is here on his own with this limp cover of a track from The Beatles' Abbey Road album. This was on the soundtrack of the legendarily insane Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band movie, which starred The Bee Gees, Peter Frampton, Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, Steve Martin, George Burns, and many, many more. I should search that out sometime for shits and giggles. And Kenny Loggins made his first Messina-free impression on the charts with a little help from Fleetwood Mac's resident witchy woman. It's a cool little pop song, made better by the implications that the two of them call each other more than just "friend." "I know forever we'll be doin' it..." they sing, before adding, "...right." But then at the end, they drop the right, and just keep repeating "doin' it." Get a room, you crazy kids!
The rest of this section is rock. Boston are here with the title track from their second album, which leader Tom Scholz considered a "rush job" in spite of it coming out two years after their debut. Their third album came out in 1986. Part of that was because of lawsuits between the band and their record label, but I'm not sure how much quicker it would have come out without the legal trouble. As for the song, well, all their stuff that isn't "More Than a Feeling" tends to blend together in my mind. They just seem generic to me. The Davies brothers and their Kink Ko-horts had their first American pop hit in eight years with this melancholy number that alternately celebrates and dismisses the power and relevance of pop music. This is the kind of complicated theme that Ray Davies excels at conveying. And Boston's fellow Bostonians The Cars made their Top 40 debut with this song about a woman bassist Benjamin Orr likes having around, even if she is "wasting all my time." This was one of America's first introductions to New Wave, and as calling cards go, it's pretty damn good.
30 - "Rivers of Babylon," Boney M.
29 - "Close the Door," Teddy Pendergrass
28 - "You Needed Me," Anne Murray
27 - "Hollywood Nights," Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band
26 - "Macho Man," The Village People
25 - "You," Rita Coolidge
24 - "Two Tickets to Paradise," Eddie Money
23 - "Reminiscing," The Little River Band
22 - "Stuff Like That," Quincy Jones
21 - "Summer Nights," John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John
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We begin this section with disco and soul. Boney M. were a group of singers and dancers put together by German record producer Frank Farian. They had a number of hits in Europe, but they only cracked the American Top 40 once, with this cover of a reggae song whose lyrics come directly from the Bible, specifically Psalms 19 and 137. It's okay, but both in my childhood and in my current incarnation, I greatly prefer their wonderfully warped disco take on Russian history, "Rasputin," which didn't crack the U.S. but was pretty big in Canada. Oh, and it was later revealed that not all of Boney M.'s vocals were performed by the actual group members. Something similar would later come out about another Farian creation, Milli Vanilli. Teddy Pendergrass became a huge R&B star after leaving Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, but he only managed one solo pop Top 40, a sultry slice of midtempo soul in which he promises to treat his lady to pleasures rated both G ("Let me rub your back when you say it's sore") and R ("Plenty good lovin' all through the night"). He's definitely up their with 70s soul's supreme lovermen. The Village people first penetrated mainstream America's consciousness with their first Top 40 single, a glorification of machismo which proved that, as threatened and disgusted as much of the general population still was by homosexuality at the time, those same people did not know a thinly-disguised gay anthem when they heard one. And I think the world ended up better for it. And megaproducer Quincy Jones scored his first hit as a recording artist with this funky number about a joint where a lot of very...interesting things go down. Vocals on the track were provided by Chaka Khan, as well as the husband and wife duo of Nicholas Ashford and Valerie Simpson. Nick Ashford died this past week, so RIP.
Oh, and now that I'm a respectable distance from paying my respects to the deceased, I've just gotta say that Quincy's daughter Rashida is some kinda hot.
The middle of the road is a little less crowded around these parts, but there's still plenty of action. Nova Scotia's Anne Murray had her only American pop charttopper with this pretty ballad that I still say is more about how much she needs the person she's singing about than the other way around. Rita Coolidge is here with a peppier-than-usual number for her, but it can't disguise the fact that she's Rita Coolidge, and Rita Coolidge music sucks. As does Little River Band music, the suckiest example of which is this hunk o' crap that insults the memories of Glenn Miller and Cole Porter by mentioning them. And yet it was their biggest American hit. I guess that figures. And John and Olivia, or should I say Danny Zuko and Sandy Olsson, are assisted by various T-Birds and Pink Ladies on this fun he said/she said singalong from Grease. It was good (ba ba ba), you know what I mean (ba ba ba).
And we'll finish off this half with some meat-and-potatoes rock. The Styx of Detroit had another of their hits with an anthemic rocker about a boy from the midwest who gets caught up in the fast livin' and fast women of Los Angeles. Nothing original, but definitely one of Seger's best. And Eddie Money picked up his second hit with this chugging offer to take his love away to somewhere "so far from here." His lack of specifics would make me wonder, but I'd probably still go with him, were I the type of girl to date Eddie Money. And I'm not that type of girl. Or any type of girl, for that matter. Sorry, Eddie.
Tomorrow: the perils of being a rock star, a fictional nightclub tragedy, and Buckwheat strikes again.
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