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I've always wanted to do this...again...
( the icon collection... )

Today's AT40...

...is Feb 6th, 1988.  Mostly dance stuff, mostly stuff I ignored in my senior year as MTV was on its way to sucksville.  Still, there's laundry to be done, so off we go...

• not a good start - 40 is "Rocket 2 U" by The Jets.  Guys, the Prince "2 U" thing was SOOOOO 1984.  sheesh.  (or was it, as i remind myself of O'Connor's cover of the Prince song that goes nameless that would be huge the next year)
  
• Mullet Man's still in there, Ice House's Crazy at 39.
• oh brother..."Stryper", that first Christian Heavy Metal band (though of course, this song is a ballad and as such, the metal is kinda missing)
• and it doesn't get any better as Michael "he's the one who sucks" Bolton's crappy cover of Dock of the Bay comes up.  I may give up on this week if this keeps up. :)
• and so it goes - Man in the Mirror from Michael Jackson, which would soon set a new record for 4 #1s from a single Album (up 'til then, he'd been at 3 tied with the Bee Gees (twice), Madonna, Wham, and Whitney Houston (twice)).
• ah, that's more like it.  Def Leppard's Hysteria (title song).  as i wrote before, I was sick of the album at the time (overplayed and inescapable), but I've gotten over it.
• Take that Spears (and Agulara and ...), here's Debbie Gibson, proof that if you actually take responsibility for your actions and career and define success on your own terms instead of some artificial standard, you can continue to be a success.
• Be Still my Beating Heart from Sting - I liked this one but it was years later before I actually got the album.  "We'll Be Together" was never indicative of how the rest of the album sounded but it stuck out so much by being the only thing MTV played.  Today, VH-1 Classic knows that Englishman in NY was the better song and plays it more often.
• Boy did we get sick of this one - Candle in the Wind from Elton John.
• heh - Richard Marx started out as a commercial jingle singer and (later) writer.  no wonder Disney's picked him up for writing for them.
• That song that's just six words long is back - George Harrison.  I preferred "Fab" and his Wilbury work over this.
• Pop goes the World, from Men without Hats is at #20.  Never really cared for this, but maybe that's just 'cause the video sucked.
• two women's rock-pop hits, Cher's I Found Someone and Belinda Carlyle's I Get Weak.
• after a few ballads, one of my fav songs from one of my fav albums, Fleetwood Mac's Everywhere (a Christie McVie song) from Tango in the Night.  I adored her songs on this, and Lindsey's even more, but I felt that Stevie's songs just weren't as good as what she'd been putting down on Mirage or her solo career.  Maybe it's 'cause she wrote them so dense, like Seven Wonders, that there really wasn't much room for Lindsey and the band to actually add anything to them to make them Mac.
• John Fogerty had held the record for most top ten hits that never made #1 (10, including his CCR days), but Bruce just broke it with 11, with Tunnel of Love.  He would add one more to that with Streets of Philadelphia in '94.  As for Tunnel of Love, why the hell does the first 15 seconds of drumbeating have nothing to do with the rest of the song?
  
• George Michael's Father Figure, which would contribute to George Michael almost tied with Michael Jackson for most #1s from a single album, that very record mentioned above...except Jackson would break it again when Dirty Diana hit #1 later that summer.  go fig.  If there hadn't been so much censorship around I Want Your Sex (reducing its airplay numbers), GM would have tied it.  According to Wikipedia, Casey would never actually name the song on the air...geeze, people, it's just a word.
  
• Rick Astley's Never gonna (blah blah blah).  trite lyric, but absolutely incredible voice...and fashion sense.  :)
• Dirty Dancing is ruling the top ten, with Patrick Swayze's She's Like the Wind starting it off.  My guess is that Hungry Eyes has already disappeared and that it's the title song further up, on its way up or down from #1.
• Paul Carrack with a rare solo hit in between all of his collaborations with Squeeze and Mike and the Mechanics (and Roger Waters, with whom he toured as singer and keyboardist on Radio KAOS just 4 months earlier), Don't Shed a Tear.  Good stuff.
  
• Foreigner, Say You Will Say You Won't...include a guitar in this song?  Maybe?  YES!  Now, was that so hard, guys?
  
  Not that the damn thing is very loud in the Mike Stone-esque mix.
  
• After ELO as a long distance dedication (go fig - the letter writer was 27), the Bangles cover of Hazy Shade of Winter.  Not too shabby, I thought at the time.  It's followed by INXS's Need you Tonite, on its way down from its former #1 spot.  I like it more now than I did then, and in hindsight would rather the rock world continued in that direction rather than the sharp 90-degree turn it took when Nirvana showed up.
• Pet Shop Boys with the late Dusty Springfield, What Have I Done To Deserve This.  Another I like a lot more now than I did at the time.
  
• nope, I was wrong - the other Dirty Dancing hit today was Eric Carmen 'cause Casey is about to do an essay on how Carmen steals melodies from Rachmaninoff (All by Myself stole from Piano Concerto 2, and Never Gonna Fall In Love Again from the 2nd Symphony) - yes, the Rachmaninoff estate sued and he's paying royalties on that.  Carmen's Hungry Eyes is the hit for today, and supposedly it's all original...
  
• at #3 is one of those songs that made me quit listening to pop music - "Roger" with I want to be your man.  ick then, ick now.  Sorry dude, but to be treated like a man, first learn to sound like one (see Frankie Valley)
  
• #2 - Expose's Seasons Change.  More typical pop-balladness.  If I'd been 4 years younger, maybe...
• but not for the #1 song (for the second week in a row: Queen of the Mall Rats, Tiffany with Could've Been.

oh well, not much to end on, but as I said, I quit pop music 'cause of that sort of thing.  see you next week!