Today's AT40...

[acroyear]

...is November 15th, 1986, just through the first half of my Junior Year.  And not a bad one, I think. Yes, I spent most of this time getting into blues-rock with Clapton and the Doors (my dad's vinyl, of course), but there were still some goodies coming out with Rock outwriting the Pop-Dance scene (something that by late '87 would have changed considerably).

My social calendar got a little more full earlier in the year, my first year in marching band.  Band-wise, it was our 2nd year with Markham, and our first with Kristi Thomas (still in Fairfax County Schools, btw) in Concert 3.  My descent into the depths of hell that was American Lit hadn't quite started yet.  Psych class was excellent.  And then there's of course, the Wrath of Keim we had to deal with...

Last week's top 3 were True Colors, I Didn't Mean to Turn You On, and Boston's Amanda, none of which were actually played so the songs today are long or he's got lots of extras to go through.  It looks like this might be one I did last year, but didn't have the time to actually comment much on, so things will be different today.

• He's talking FAST today (hard to keep up typing), but we're starting out with a one-hit-wonder, David & David, with Welcome to the Boomtown, a song for which I have no recollection...
• Daryl Hall's solo song, Foolish Pride.  Not nearly as successful as Dreamtime.  It's not a bad track.
• Crappy ballads weren't done yet, as Billy Ocean's Love is Forever comes in at 38.
• 37 has the debut of Genesis's Land of Confusion, one which would stay on the airwaves and MTV for months and months.  The video was by Spitting Image, a British comedy satire puppetry group, which I'd known about for a year before the video made them famous to other Americans.
• Survivor's Is It Love, which will still be hanging around well into '87 (as my other posts have shown).  It's grown on me recently through these countdowns.
• Ugh.  Here's one I hated at the time, Robbie Neville's C'est La Vie.  Got WAY too much MTV airplay and was instrumental in me turning off WAVA pretty much permanently.  I flipped between DC101 and the new New Age station that took over 105.9, before it gave up on that and became DC's first ever Classic Rock station later in '87.
• Bob Seger's Like a Rock is a long distance dedication...sheesh, after how many years of that car commercial, aren't we all just sick of THAT one.
• Howard Jones, You Know I Love You Don't You.  Not his best (not by a long shot).  This was used in a movie, I think but I'm not sure which one.  I know "Like to Get To Know You Well" was used in Better Off Dead, but not sure about this one.
  
• David Byrne's Talking Heads have a Wild Wild Life.  Casey talks about Byrne was up to that point the only pop star to not just have his face on the cover of Time, but to have actually assembled the cover himself.
• Canada's "Rush Light", Triumph, return to the countdown after 4 years (Hold On) with Somebody's Out There.  Total synth pop-rock...low how the (kinda) might had fallen.
• More slow ballads, again from the Soul chart, Gregory Abbott's Shake You Down.  Very late-era Marvin Gaye, the kind of song that 3 years later wouldn't exist unless you're a "boy band".
• Duran Duran returns (after that whole Arcadia and Power Station thing) with Notorious, the first with Warren Cuccurullo on guitar, who though a session player, would stay with them all the way until the original 5 reunited this past decade.  Beyond this single, the album did little thanks to heavy turnover at the top of EMI - read the UK headlines today and you might realize that after 22 years, that label hasn't changed at all.  Fripp is right now arguing with them over royalties (and illegal sales post-contract) for the Crimson back catalog.

• Janet Jackson's When I Think Of You.  Don't know about you, but I'm just sick of hearing about this family, then or now...
• One of my absolute favs of all time - 'Til Tuesday's What About Love.  I bought this tape in the record store in the Crystal City Underground, so to a degree, my brain always flashes back to what it used to look like back then.  Guiseppi's comics had lots of Anime stuff back then (before we called it "Anime", mind you).
  
• At 27, The Pretenders' Don't Get Me Wrong.  I wish I knew why I really just never liked their stuff.  There's nothing explicitly wrong with it, but it just never grips me.  This one's better than others (I *really* hate Brass in Pocket), mind you.
  
• OMD follow up If You Leave with the song that guaranteed they'd be a one-hit-wonder.  Not even worth naming it.  Very typical brit-pop at the time, kinda a second-hand Pet Shop Boys sound.
  
• Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam with Full Force (say that ten times fast) have a ballad, All Cried Out.
• Freedom Overspill from Stevie Winwood.  Probably my fav of his 80s hits.
• Benny King's Stand By Me is back in the countdown, thanks to the Wil Wheaton movie, at 23.
  
• Aretha Frankin's cover of Jumpin' Jack Flash, again connected with a movie (a Whoopi Goldberg film, I think).
  
• The Bangle's Walk like an Egyptian at 21.  There's one of those songs that simply never went away...
• #20 is Tina Turner, with Typical Male.  Quite forgettable.

• Anita Baker's Sweet Love at 19.  Never a fan of this one.
• Mr. Sunglasses, Corey Hart with a lost hit, I Am By Your Side.  It's actually not too bad, if on the typical 80s sound.
  
• Here's one that never went away, Wang Chung's Everybody Have Fun Tonight.
• "William Broad", aka, Billy Idol, with his most pop-induced hit, To Be A Lover.  Certainly not my fav of his, that's for sure...
• The Cars's Rik Ocasek's last major hurrah, Emotion in Motion.  Around this same time, the late Ben Orr's Stay the Night came out and became one of my favs of this "era".  Hard to believe his marriage to Paulina Porizkova has survived all these years considering most celebrity marriages, but there you go...
  
• Bruce Hornesby and the Range's first and biggest hit, The Way It Is, is at #14.
• Lionel Richie started his descent into "who cares"-dom with Love will Conquer All
• Toto, formed out of the backing session players from the 70s (all meeting while playing for Boz Scaggs), with the ballad I'll Be Over You, which got a lot of "adult contemporary" airplay, of course.
• Huey Lewis holds onto popularity after the Back to the Future hits, and proves it's Hip to be Square.
  

And into the top ten of mid-November, 1986...

10. Cindy Lauper's True Colors drops like a rock from 3 to 10.
9. Oran "Juice" Jones with The Rain.  I only have vary vague memories of this, and hearing it again now, it doesn't surprise me.  The talking section sounds like it inspired the silliness of Weird Al's recent Confessions pt 3.
   
   Hah - DC's Q-107 (now entirely dedicated to Adult Contemporary) got the "great radio stations" list!  (WAVA was a Rick Dees station at the time).
   
   
8. Peter Cetera and Amy Grant with Next Time I Fall
   
7. Cameo's Word Up.  Comes up a lot in the '86/'87 countdowns, and I hate it...ick ick ick.
   
6. Late and lamented sharp dresser, Robert Palmer, with I Didn't Mean to Turn You On, also dropping from its top-3 spot the previous week.  Quite the shuffle considering some weeks the top three is unchanged.
   
5. Bon Jovi's You Give Love a Bad Name, the first of 3 huge hits from SlimeySlippery When Wet, comes up.  This was certainly at the time the most unavoidable song on the airwaves and MTV.
   
4. Eddie Money with Ronnie Spector peak with Take Me Home Tonite.  As I've written before with this song, why do video directors insist that some people fake-play instruments they have no idea how to play (in this case, Eddie with the saxophone)?
   
3. Madonna's True Blue, of the MTV video contest that nobody remembers anymore...including VH-1 Classic which runs the European video instead.
   
2. The Human League's ballad, Human (so this isn't the same week as the one last year)
   
   And staying at number 1...
   
1. Boston's Amanda