Today's AT40

[acroyear]

is December 15, 1984.  My first winter in DC, my first snows, freshman year.  Still 90 lb weakling at only 5'0", and absolutely hating having to take *wrestling* of all things in PE.  I never had much choice in what I was stuck with in those classes...

Lets see if this one works better than last week's technical hassle...though it's starting out at

• 40 with a lost Stevie Wonder song, Love Light in Flight, which I only barely remember on hearing it now.
• 39 is a Billy Ocean hit, Caribbean Queen (down from a #1 spot a few weeks earlier).  pretty typical "party" music at the time, at least for the pop scene...and the kinda thing I liked back then, not really knowing any better. :)
• Rick Springfield, then, claimed he kept getting mistaken for Bruce Springsteen, and wrote a song named "Bruce" describing it which comes in at 38.  Crazy story, and I'd never heard it before.
• "When she called out a name and it wasn't me.  She called me "Bruce"!
  
• 37, the lost band, Beaver Brown with Tender Years, from Eddie and the Cruisers.
• 36 a lost REO Speedwagon song (as in, one that didn't make the greatest hits album, so nobody remembers it), I Do' Wanna Know.  Not used to REO doing "party rock" but that's basically what it is.  If it was a bigger hit, it would have made a K-Tel compilation easily!
  
• 35 More Billy Ocean, "Loverboy".  Not as much a fan of this, then or now.
• 34 Sheila E, one of Prince's "babes", singing a song that pretty much is typical of his output at the time, "The Belle of St. Mark".  Even the electric percussion samples (if you can call them that at the time) are pretty much straight out of Purple Rain.
  
• 33 U2 finally hits the top 40 for the first time (in spite of War's popularity), with the song about MLK Jr, In the Name of Love (one of 3 songs from that album inspired by him), and even with tons of MTV airplay, it still wouldn't get any higher than this.  They definitely came across to this country as an album band with great (or at least popular) videos, rather than a singles outfit (this album and War both hit #12 on the album charts).
  
  Joshua Tree would, of course, change all that.
  
  Unforgettable Fire remains my fav U2 album, and the title track my fav song.
  
• 32 Foreigner wants to know what love is (debuting this week, so there would be months and months of putting up with the suddenly guitarless wonder hit to come...)
• 31 Toto is still around, with Stranger in Town.  I have no recollection of this at all.

• 30 is one of those hits that never ever went away: Phillip Bailey and Phil Collins's Easy Lover.  Technically, it was a Phillip Bailey song (though both wrote it and are credited for the single, it appeared on his album), but the video brought out so much of Phil's humor and style in ways that previous videos (for him or Genesis) hadn't, and really set the tone for No Jacket Required's hit parade of humorous videos.
• 29 Don Henley's Boys of Summer.  Not much to say on this one, except that it was another that never seemed to go away long after it had left the singles parade.  I always wondered why the guitar solo styles sounded kinda familiar, and now I know: the song was co-written and guitar work by Heartbreaker lead guitarist, Mike Campbell.
• 28 Centipede, by Rebbie Jackson, the eldest of the Jackson family.  This was her only hit, and it was written by Michael.  Not terribly interesting, though...in spite of being post-Thriller, it sounds more like Off The Wall tracks than Thriller or Victory.
  
• 27 Ray Parker Jr's Jamie.  Typical of him, and yet another reminder (if any was needed) that Ghostbusters was a fluke driven by the popularity of the movie and not 'cause he's really all that good.
• 26 Prince and the Revolution's title song to Purple Rain.  One of those in the "liked it, then hated it, then liked it again" category, like most of that album.
• 25 Dan Hartman follows up his Streets of Fire hit (the only good thing about that film) with "We are the Young".  'eh.
• 24 Bob Seger with Understanding.  Barely remember this, but it sounds just like Bob Seger, if you know what I mean.  I'm kinda sick of him today, particularly putting up with Old Time (and its million and one parodies of the Tom Cruise moment) and Like a Rock in that damned car commercial.
• 23 The Cars' Hello Again, the opener to Heartbeat City.  I actually didn't know this was a single, 'cause unlike Drive, Magic, and You Might Think, the video for this got no airplay at all on MTV.
• 22 Chicago 17's balladfest of Peter Cetera continues with You're The Inspiration
• 21 Corey Hart's It Ain't Enough.  No memory of this at all, and it ain't terribly interesting.

• 20 Tina Turner says You Better Be Good To Me.  I respect her greatly, but I'm not a fan.  The song leaves me 'eh.
• 19 Jermaine Jackson with Do What You Do.  bleh.
• 18 Huey Lewis and the News are Walking on a Thin Line.  Yet another reminder that they actually were a consistent hit band before Back to the Future, in spite of our faulty memories
• 17 Sheena Easton's reinvention of herself (thanks to Prince) is on its way down: Strut.
• 16 Bryan Adams is gonna Run to You.
• 15 Well after 2 not-Bruce false alarms (Rick Springfield and Beaver Brown), the man himself shows up with Born in the USA.
• 14 General Hospital star Jack Wagner with All I Need.  Definitely a very popular ballad at the school dances at the time.
• 13 Survivor's I Can't Hold Back, their first with a new lead singer (who knew?  I thought the guy from Eye of the Tiger was the same guy as the rest, but it wasn't!)
• 12 Julian Lennon's Valotte.  I quite liked him at the time, and not just because of his father.
• 11 Lionel Richie's Penny Lover.  A slow ballad, so easily forgotten that I totally forgot about it.  And will again...Lionel's album may have been "can't slow down", but this song was certainly slow enough.
  

And into the top ten...

10. Cyndi Lauper's All Through The Night.  I quite like this one, actually.
    
9. Pat Benatar's We Belong. Did any of us know she was actually 31 by then?  Of course, so was Cyndi Lauper, too.  Pat was older by only 6 months.
   
8. "Teen Idols" Wham (his words, not mine), with Wake Me Up Before You Go Go.  As I've written before, I tended to find out about Wham songs AFTER they peaked, and I've never been sure why.
   
7. New Edition, the boy band (average age at the time, 15 1/2) that would spin off Bell Biv DeVoe and platinum albums from the other members including Bobby  Brown, with Cool It Now.
   
6. Paul McCartney, with the help of David Gilmour, gives his regards to broad street with No More Lonely Nights
   
5. Robert Plant and his Honeydrippers on their retro hit Sea of Love.  Not a big fan of the song's style, then or now, so this has never gripped me at all.  I remain ungripped.
   
4. Chaka Kahn's I Feel For You.  Always a reason to switch channels *real fast*, then and now.  bleh.
   
3. Madonna's Like a Virgin.  I won't bother repeating Gallagher's comment at the time.
   
2. Duran Duran's Wild Boys, the obligatory studio track for their live album.  Not my fav, and I've never quite been sure what they were trying to achieve.  In hindsight, they probably weren't either, which is why they took time off to do Power Station and Arcadia for a couple of years.
   
   And the current number one...
   
   
1. Hall and Oats's Out of Touch, their 6th (and last) number one hit.

Not a bad set, I think, and makes up a lot for the last 3 weeks of boring years (1980) and technical crap.  No live-blog next week, 'cause we'll be listening to it in the car driving back from Christmas in North Carolina.

Comments

[sunnidae]

In 1984 I was working at my mom & dad's record store, and you'd be AMAZED at the number of people who came in asking for Bruce but meaning Rick, and vice versa. We started referring to them both as Brick Steinfield.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

I always thought, based on vocal sound, that On the Dark Side from Eddie and the Cruisers (and, learned today, the group was Beaver Brown), was a Bruce song. of course, any Bruce fan out there would yell at me claiming they're nothing alike, but there you go...