Okay, welcome to the new era. But as I promised, I'm not going to leave the past completely behind. So before we go to 1989, let's make a stop at August 30, 1975.
KC and the Sunshine Band were on top with "Get Down Tonight." Other Top Ten highlights included "Rhinestone Cowboy," "Jive Talkin'," "At Seventeen," and "Why Can't We Be Friends."...First newbie shows up at 17, "Holdin' On to Yesterday," by MOR machine Ambrosia. The usual blandness...#22 is held down by Johnny Rivers' completely unnecessary cover of The Beach Boys' "Help Me Rhonda." My advice to Rhonda: don't...Cat Stevens' penultimate U.S. hit was the sweetly soulful "Two Fine People," found this week at #33...At #36 is the last of three minor pop hits by funksters New Birth, a cover of Jerry Butler's "Dream Merchant."...The final pop Top 40 for the legendary Temptations is at #37, a funky reminder not to hurl stones if one lives in a "Glasshouse."...And The Doobie Brothers scraped in at #40 with their last pre-Michael McDonald hit, the bluesy "Sweet Maxine."...But this week's 70s spotlight falls on...
21 - "Tush," ZZ Top
Pre-Eliminator, the biggest hit by these hirsute Texans was this immortal grinder about going downtown to, as the kids say "troll for booty." In a way, it's too bad MTV wasn't around yet when this came out. Now that could've been a video.
And now we enter the post-Casey AT40 universe. With some very welcome assistance, I acquired a copy of the original Shadoe Stevens broadcast. I'll comment on Mr. Stevens' style at some point as we go along, but for now, let's get into what really matters, the hits.
40 - "Partyman," Prince
39 - "When I Looked at Him," Exposé
38 - "If You Don't Know Me by Now," Simply Red
37 - "You're My One and Only (True Love)," Seduction
36 - "Hey Ladies," The Beastie Boys
35 - "Bust a Move," Young MC
34 - "Runnin' Down a Dream," Tom Petty
33 - "The Prisoner," Howard Jones
32 - "Toy Soldiers," Martika
31 - "Lovesong," The Cure
I'll begin with the male solo acts. First there's Prince with the second hit from his soundtrack album to Tim Burton's Batman film. It's a fairly decent funk track that features samples of Jack Nicholson's Joker dialoge from the movie. But amongst Prince's catalog, it's rather forgettable. Tom Petty's second single from his solo debut, Full Moon Fever, was this iconic, fuzz-guitar-driven rocker about driving down the road searching for adventure while singing along with Del Shannon. Perhaps it's been blunted a little by classic rock overplay, but still, an undeniably great track. And Howard Jones is here with an okay slice of synth-rock that seems to look at love as a game of cat-and-mouse. And it seems that Howard was the mouse. Interesting.
Two girl groups appear in this bunch. The times I've encountered Miami's Exposé in previous entries, I've found them not all that interesting. Now, here they are again with this ballad about falling in love, and I'm still not interested. But this was their sixth straight Top Ten, so someone must have liked what they heard. And New York's Seduction had their first hit with this standard bit of Latin freestyle that features one of the ladies rapping in the middle of it, comparing her and her man's romance to a French river, a statue in the Guggenheim Museum, and a Mike Tyson punch. Whichever one she was, she should have stuck to singing.
Two British groups are here. Manchester's Simply Red picked up their second and final U.S. charttopper with this cover of Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes' classic 1972 ballad. Mick Hucknall does okay, in his way, but let's face it, he's no Teddy Pendergrass. And West Sussex's goth-poppers The Cure had their second and biggest American hit with this atmospheric New Wave track that succinctly states how much better Robert Smith feels when he's with his lover. I definitely wouldn't say it's this band's best song, but it's charmingly affecting in its simplicity.
We close our look at this section with two rap classics and a song that would later be sampled by a prominent MC. The Beastie Boys had broken through two years earlier with the rowdy rap-rock of Licensed to Ill, but they decided to move in more sophisticated lyrical and musical directions on their next album, Paul's Boutique. The single that introduced that LP to the world was this jittery little number about picking up women which featured references to, among others, Vincent Van Gogh, game show host Chuck Woolery, and Japanese baseball star Sadaharu Oh. Both the single and album were commercial disappointments initially, but have gained in stature over the years, and set the stage for a career that probably lasted longer than it would have if they'd contined in the frat-rap direction. British-born, New York-raised Marvin Young, who had scored success behind-the-scenes earlier in the year as the co-writer of Tone Loc's hits "Wild Thing" and "Funky Cold Medina," made his own impression behind the mic with this memorable bit of motivation for shy men to approach women on beaches, in movie theatres, at weddings, and during other functions. I'm sure it's encouraged many a male wallflower not to "hang yourself with a celibate rope." Just brilliant. And Californian Marta Marrero, who had broken into show business as an extra in the 1982 film version of Annie (yeah,, I saw that in a theatre too), had her biggest success with this #1 ballad about the devastating effects of a friend's drug addiction. It's a pretty effective look at that situation, with evocative lyrics like "Only emptiness remains/It replaces all the pain." I like it better now then I did then. And fifteen years later, Eminem would sample it to great effect for his song "Like Toy Soldiers."
30 - "Don't Look Back," Fine Young Cannibals
29 - "It's Not Enough," Starship
28 - "Headed for a Heartbreak," Winger
27 - "Put Your Mouth on Me," Eddie Murphy
26 - "So Alive," Love and Rockets
25 - "Batdance," Prince
24 - "That's the Way," Katrina and the Waves
23 - "Soul Provider," Michael Bolton
22 - "Kisses on the Wind," Neneh Cherry
21 - "Talk it Over," Grayson Hugh
We begin with four British acts. Fine Young Cannibals were formed by two ex-members of early-80s ska stars The (English) Beat, and named after a 1960 Natalie Wood-Robert Wagner movie. They broke through in America this year with the back-to-back #1s "She Drives Me Crazy" and "Good Thing." Their third, and last, U.S. hit, this rocker about wanting to hit the road in search of better fortune, just missed the Top Ten, but I think it's my favorite of the three (though still behind their 1986 U.K. Top Ten "Johnny Come Home." And Roland Gift's voice is one that pop radio could have stood to have heard more from. Love and Rockets have a similar story in that they were formed by former members of a band that had already made somewhat of an impact (in this case, the goth-rockers Bauhaus), and were named after an existing pop-culture entity (an underground comic book). But they only had one American hit, and it was this strutting lust-rocker about a brown-haired, long-legged lady. Fine, fine stuff. Katrina and the Waves managed one more post-"Walking on Sunshine" hit with this bright-but-forgettable pop-rock confection on which Ms. Leskanich asks her lover to take things slow when being physically affectionate. A pleasant listen, but still a mere footnote. And Neneh Cherry, the Swedish-born stepdaughter of an American jazz musician who moved to London at 14, had her second and last U.S. Top 40 hit about an girl who attracted male attention at too young an age. I think that's it. It's a decent song, but nowhere near as good as her most famous hit, the fantastic hip-hop classic "Buffalo Stance." I firmly believe that the entire concept, style, and attitude of the Spice Girls was nicked from that song. But don't hold that against it.
Two American bands are here. Starship picked up their final hit with this typically uninspired midtempo ballad about commitment and shit. Good riddance. And hair metallists Winger had their second Top 40 with this middling power ballad about a breakup. They've been largely, and for the most part justly, forgotten, but they have been immortalized on the T-shirt worn by Beavis and Butt-head's frenemy Stewart. So they've got that going for them, which is nice.
We close this section by with four solo American men. Four years after his surprise smash "Party All the Time," Eddie Murphy cracked the charts one more time with a raunchy request set to mediocre New Jack Swing. His vocals are a bad Prince imitation, and at one point he actually refers to himself in the third person as "Mr. Murphy." Just awful. And in reference to the last time I mentioned him here, apparently he's trying to put together a Beverly Hills Cop TV series about the police career of Axel Foley's son. Meh, there have been worse ideas. Prince appears again, this time with the #1 hit from the album that accompanied 1989's film about a certain Dark Knight. It's a truly strange piece of music, combining several different funk raveups, interjections of "Batman!" seemingly inspired by the theme to the campy 60s TV show, and clips of dialogue from the movie that end with Jack Nicholson declaring "This town needs an enema!" Quite bizarre, even for Prince, and the easy choice for this week's Uneasy Rider. Michael Bolton scored his third Top 40 with a smooth ballad about wanting to give a lady the affection she requires. Actually, not too bad. He would go on to do much worse. Much, much, much worse. And Hartford-born Grayson Hugh had his biggest success with a blue-eyed soul ballad that seems to suggest that he and his lover can, and should, settle all their problems in the boudoir. I wonder if that worked. It might've. He has a nice voice.
Tomorrow: a band that caused a tragedy, another band that just made up one for a song, and two guys who would go from huge stars to punchlines within a year.
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