acroyear | Todays AT40

Is January 14, 1984

Last Week's top 3 were...

Union of the Snake
Say it isn't So
Say Say Say (which as we know from last week it was the #1 song of the year, not saying much for the year to come)

So this was my 8th grade year, in the deep of a north florida winter. Not too many memories of this other than digging the music. I remember more about the spring, once biking around became a little less painful. One particularly annoying day around this time was that my dog followed me to school and I had to wait it out (outside in the cold) while the office called my mom to give me permission to walk her back.

The PE class would actually still have outdoor games even if it was near freezing (that school has a gym building now, but they didn't back then). I remember a particularly frozen soccer game with us all yell-singing "we're having a heat wave!". didn't work too well.

And the countdown is off on a good start with...

40: Send me an Angel from Real Life

39: Robert Plant (who likes Bulgarian folk music) mellows out In the Mood for A Melody
38: The Motels with a lost song, Remember the Night. It's actually not too bad. Might put it on the playlist if it made it to the greatest hits album I have (which it did)...
37: The Police with my fav song from Synchronicity: Synchronicity II
36: crossover-country is still around with Debra Allen's Baby I Lied, which is so damn light soft-rock that it kinda predicts the direction country music would go in by today's time...
35: Ya Mo Be There - Ingram and McDonald, debuts this week. One of the better engineering jobs in working with McDonald's voice without it overwhelming the mix (unlike most Doobie Brothers songs at the time, where his sound totally changed the band's tone). Really nice key changes in this, far more complex than a pop song normally gets, to account for the different ranges of the two singers.
34: The Pretenders are in the Middle of the Road. This one gets a LOT of vh-1 classic play from the Dick Clark New Year of 83->84. Probably one of the few Pretenders songs I'm not utterly sick of. :)
33: Quiet Riot was the first Heavy Metal band to hit #1 with their debut album. Come on Feel the Noise is the single playing now.
32: a lost song by The Fixx: The Sign of Fire - I quite like this, actually. Maybe I can get First Wave to throw it in their playlist
31: So Bad (Girl I Love You) from Paul McCartney's Pipes of Peace album

30: Stay with me Tonite, Jeffrey Osborne. 'eh.
29 Gold from Spandeu Ballet. Pretty catchy. I like it far more than True.
28: Billy Joel title track from An Innocent Man. I kinda liked the poppy dance tunes a bit more than this one.
27: Culture Club's Church of the Poisoned Mind is on its way down.
26: Shanon's Let the Music Play. The DJ for some social dances I went to played this a lot.
25: Madonna's first huge hit, Holiday.
24: a forgettable mellow-soul song from Debarge, Time Will Reveal. a lot of 70s is blatant in this thing - this would have been huge in '76 to '78, too, but in 1984 it's just too retro to make any sense to me.
23: home town Jacksonville's .38 Special with If I'd Been The One. Style-wise, they were starting to repeat themselves a bit, but still not too shabby.
22: John Cougar Mellencamp continues to show his popularity would survive his returning to his real name with Pink Houses. MTV had a contest of getting your house painted pink, along with $25,000. Not sure they ever awarded it, as it would cost that much to paint it all back again after your HOA yelled at you for violating the neighborhood standards...Like "Born in the USA", also written by a unrelenting liberal, the Republican party has tried to hijack this song for their own campaigns starting as early as '84's Reagan reelection. McCain's campaign used it without permission this past year. "Forgiveness Beats Asking Permission" is kinda a trend here, isn't it?
21: Christopher Cross's Think of Laura made it big thanks to the Luke & Laura storyline of General Hospital. Cross himself has stated that he wrote "Think of Laura" to mourn the death of a female friend named Laura who died when she was struck by a stray bullet while riding in a car.

20: Ray Parker Jr Still Can't Get Over Loving You, and I still can't get over his ego. ;)
19: Peter Schillings one English hit, Major Tom (Coming Home), a great song, one of my dad's favs
18: Barry Manilow still holds onto a career with Read 'em and Weep. Very "Steinman"-esque and over the top...yup, it's Jim Steinman (I looked it up).
17: Genesis's "country and western" phase with That's All. Genesis's "pop" era may have been weaker than their earlier rock days (and weaker than the rock songs on the albums that didn't get released or as much airplay), but it's still better pop than most.
16: Jump in the Saddle with the novelty hit, The Curly Shuffle. I'd totally forgotten about this, but now I'm having flashbacks to the video which got some significant MTV time.
15: Pat Benatar's Love is a Battlefield. Got a LOT of MTV time, back in the day where video producers would take a song with no real plot but make a story out of it. Shame those days of artistry are gone, replaced by movie special effects transitions and make-up jobs that turn singers (of both sexes) into porn stars. Though fiction, the video at least reflected something of a gritty reality today's videos want nothing to do with.

Casey talks about MLK Jr's life (and the new holiday), mentioning that I Have A Dream is the only speech to make it to the pop singles hot 100 chart, released as a record after King's death.

14: Billy Joel's more upbeat Uptown Girl, with the video that featured his future ex-wife.
13: Cool and the Gang's Joanna (#1 on the soul chart).
12: The Rolling Stones (who in '81 did a tour of small clubs, with takes of less than $1000, in an attempt to get back to the Rock spirit (which given their late 70s crap output, I don't blame them for)), with Undercover of the Night
11: Lionel Richie's solo hits start with All Night Long, with the "uninterrupted" video that later inspired Janet Jackson's When I Think of You. Of course it's "All Night Long" and the video takes place in the day time. go fig.

And into the top 10 we go with

10: Richie continues (this one on its way up), Running with the Night
9: Culture Club's Karma Chameleon
8: Elton John guesses Why They Call It The Blues
7: Break My Stride, from Matthew Wilder. faireraven loves this but I was 'meh then and 'meh now.
6: The Romantics hear you Talking In Your Sleep. Liked it, but since I started my 80s revival, it's come up a little too much on XM Radio's playlists.
5: ONJ's Twist of Fate, which really grew on me recently in my fitness craze given the tempo. Probably was a big aerobics song (after Physical, which started the craze). Written by the same guy who wrote Physical and much of the non-ELO tracks from Xanadu. This would be the last hit he'd write.
4: Duran Duran's Union of the Snake dropped out of the top 3.
3: Say It Isn't So helps Hall & Oats surpass The Everly Brothers as top duo of all time
2: Yes's Owner of a Lonely Heart from 90125 hits #2 (on its way to #1, Yes's biggest anything ever). Most probably know this (not sure if Casey ever did), but Trevor Rabin had this sketched and demoed before he met Squire and White (nevermind Jon, who joined late in the process), and had gotten the idea for the original riff while sitting on the toilet. Some classic Yes fans consider that prophetic of the Rabin years, but I didn't care.

Oddly, Michael Jackson's Thriller is still the #1 album, even though he's not in the countdown with anything from it, as his single is #1 without being actually from that album:

1: Say Say Say

And with that, I'm eating lunch and cleaning the kitchen.

(technical issues, the "now playing" is off - it hasn't shown the right song yet, and actually isn't even close (like it's calling The Fixx's Sign of Fire as Chicago's Stay the Night!)...but I'm not complaining)