This week we travel back to the year Diego Maradona led Argentina to the World Cup (with a little help from the "Hand of God"), Prince Andrew married Sarah Ferguson, and the world learned that there was nothing in Al Capone's vault. But it wasn't Geraldo's fault. D'oh! Anyway, here are some of the songs that were popular 25 years ago this week.
40 - "True Colors," Cyndi Lauper
39 - "Velcro Fly," ZZ Top
38 - "I Didn't Mean to Turn You On," Robert Palmer
37 - "Point of No Return," Nu Shooz
36 - "That was Then, This is Now," Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork
35 - "Sweet Love," Anita Baker
34 - "We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off," Jermaine Stewart
33 - "A Matter of Trust," Billy Joel
32 - "Money's Too Tight (To Mention)," Simply Red
31 - "Mad About You," Belinda Carlisle
I'll start with some staight-up, female-sung pop. Cyndi Lauper is here with the first single from her follow-up to her huge debut album, She's So Unusual. It's a tender, comforting ballad promising unconditional friendship. In lesser hands, it could be sappy, but something about that little rasp in Cyndi's voice just makes it touchingly sweet. Valerie Day and her husband John Smith made music under a poorly-spelled synonym for mint footwear, and they broke through earlier in '86 with the catchy, hiccupy "I Can't Wait." This week, they appear with their second and final hit, a less-successful, less-memorable number about crossing the line from friendship to romance. After this, Nu Shooz were Ohld Nooz. And ex-Go-Go Belinda Carlisle made her solo debut with a peppy romp describing her and her lover as "a couple of fools run wild." I always liked Belinda's voice, but somehow, I enjoy it more on Go-Gos songs. Don''t know why.
Next we go to songs sung by American males. ZZ Top are here with another example of the combination of synth-pop and blues-rock that turned them into MTV sensations in the mid-80s. The song is essentially about the advantages of wearing pants that use the hook-and-loop fastening system invented by Swiss engineer Georges de Mestral as opposed to zippers or buttons. But a quick scan of the lyrics, with their repeated use of the word "snatch" and lines like "It feels so right when you squeeze it tight/When you reach the end, do it over again" would indicate that there might be something else going on. Regardless, it's still a song about Velcro, which is enough to qualify it for this week's Uneasy Rider. Ex-Monkees Dolenz and Tork recorded "That was Then, This is Now" for a hits compilation that was released to cash in on the band's TV show achieving new popularity on cable. The song, about trying to regain a lover's trust, is mildly catchy, but doesn't really live up to the legacy of earworms like "I'm a Believer" and "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone." Yes, I used the word "legacy" when referring to The Monkees. Deal with it. And Billy Joel picked up another hit with this underrated rocker where he tries to assert that his relationship is so strong that it won't be taken down by deception and dishonesty. At the time, he was married to Christie Brinkley. They're not together anymore. Take from that what you will.
We've got two tunes crooned by Brit blokes in this section. Robert Palmer followed up his #1 smash "Addicted to Love," with this darkly funky cover of a 1984 Cherrelle R&B hit about not knowing the power of one's own attractiveness. Yeah, I have that problem too, Bob. And Simply Red, led by ginger Mick Hucknall, also followed up a #1 ("Holding Back the Years") with a cover of an American R&B song from earlier in the decade. As the title would indicate, it's about economic hardship. It also features multiple criticisms of Ronald Reagan, and a seemingly incongruous line that seems to speculate on the quality of Nancy Reagan's sex life ("Did the earth move for you, Nancy?"). Did The Valentine Brothers, the originators of this song, believe that Nancy got off on trickle-down and supply-side fiscal policy? Who knows, maybe she did. Only her astrologer knows for sure.
We'll finish with two different kinds of soul. Detroit jazz-pop vocalist Anita Baker made her first big impression with this sexy ballad that helped propel her Rapture album to huge sales. For some reason, my mother didn't like her singing. I never found out why. I'm not sure even she knew. And Jermaine Stewart had his biggest success by far with this bouncy celebration of the fun that couples can have without disrobing, telling an overly-amorous companion "I'm not a piece of meat, stimulate my brain." The emergence of AIDS surely gave this song extra resonance. In addition to being on the chart, this song was also one of this week's Long Distance Dedications. A girl in Georgia dedicated it to her fellow teenagers to encourage them not to just jump into bed with each other. Clearly she wanted them to follow the song's message: Don't have sex, just dance and party. And drink cherry wine.
30 - "Heartbeat," Don Johnson
29 - "Twist and Shout," The Beatles
28 - "Love Walks In," Van Halen
27 - "Typical Male," Tina Turner
26 - "All Cried Out," Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam with Full Force
25 - "Heaven in Your Eyes," Loverboy
24 - "Glory of Love," Peter Cetera
23 - "Missionary Man," Eurythmics
22 - "Yankee Rose," David Lee Roth
21 - "Press," Paul McCartney
We start with a couple of guys and their biggest hits. According to legend, Miami Vice began life in the form of a memo from NBC executive Brandon Tartikoff that read simply "MTV cops." Given that, perhaps it was inevitable that the show's two main stars would actually try to get themselves on MTV. In 1985, Philip Michael "Tubbs" Thomas took his shot first by putting out an album, but nothing came of it. But the next year, Don Johnson, aka Sonny Crockett, had his turn, and was rewarded with this Top Ten hit. Listening back to it, its success seems almost entirely attributable to his television fame, because it's generic pop-rock with nothing lyrics, and Don's singing is...okay, I guess. But this song has been forgotten by most people, and with good reason. And Peter Cetera, the man who crooned most of Chicago's wussiest hits, had struck out on his own by this time with a goopy ballad of his own, which appeared on the soundtrack of The Karate Kid, Part II. Naturally, it went to #1. If there's one thing I can't understand about the music I grew up with, it's the public's high tolerance for Peter Cetera-sung love songs. He's certainly not the hero I've been dreaming of.
The Fab Four are here in two incarnations. The Beatles themselves were back on the charts with their original recording of a song first done by The Isley Brothers. Its renewed popularity was powered mainly by its use in the parade scene in the hit film Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Also at this time, Rodney Dangerfield was being seen performing the song in Back to School. The other connection between the two movies was the fact that both featured future "troubled actors" in small roles: Charlie Sheen and Robert Downey Jr., respectively. Hey,I find that interesting. Meanwhile, the band's bassist had a hit of his own with a jumpy synth-pop number in which he suggest that his beloved tell him to "press" whenever she wants him to love her. I...don't get it. I also don't know why he sings the lyric "Oklahoman was never like this." What does that have to do with anything? And they said John was the weird one.
We also have another pair of songs connected to one band, even though the names on the record labels were different. Van Halen are here with the third hit of the Sammy Hagar era with a ballad that seems straightforward enough, but contains odd lyrics in which "some kind of alien waits for the opening, simply pulls a string." Well, the Red Rocker has claimed that he has been in contack with extra-terrestrials, so...Meanwhile, their former singer, the man known far and wide as "Diamond Dave," was doing fine without his old band. On this rocker, which features a couple of spoken word interludes in which Roth has conversations with Steve Vai's guitar, he sings about a woman with his typical leering lasciviousness. But this time, he's singing about a very special woman who at the time was 100 years old and weighed over 200...tons. But before you start panicking and screaming "This enormous woman will devour us all!" I must tell you he was singing about the Statue of Liberty, which in 1986 was being celebrated for both its centennial and its recent refurbishment by a foundation led by Lee Iacocca. Well, I guess it was the least he could do after taking all that Chrysler bailout money.
Two songs sung by women that reached #3 on the soul charts are here. Tina Turner is here with another hit from her 80s resurgence, a song where she tries to seduce a lawyer with her "female attraction." We know this because she twice refers to the person she's singing to as "lawyer." Her basic point is that underneath all his education and sophistication, deep down, he's just a horny guy like all the rest. A little too high-concept, perhaps, but still pretty good. And the combination of three different acts that we encountered last week on "I Wonder if I Take You Home," returns with this ballad about a woman devastated by a breakup. "My body never knew such pleasure, my heart never knew such pain," Lisa sings. Well, better to have loved and lost, etc.
We finish with a couple groups. Canada's Loverboy are probably best remembered these days for fun, dumb rockers like "Working for the Weekend" and "Hot Girls in Love," but they also did pretty well with ballads, as represented this contribution to the Top Gun soundtrack. Nothing special, but perfect background music for the tender moments in an 80s action flick. I guess Loverboy was an apt name, eh? Eh? Eh...sorry about that. And Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox are here with one of my favorites of theirs, a tough, abrasive rocker about a charlatan posing as a man of God. It's not clear exactly what this guy does that's so terrible, but Annie seems so convinced that this guy's eeeeeevil, so that's good enough for me not to want to mess with him.
Tomorrow: a glimpse at '76. Plus: a fragile cat, one half of a very successful whole, and another song does double duty.
No comments:
Post a Comment