Today's AT40...

[acroyear]

is March 29, 1986, 2/3rds through my sophomore year, slowly pulling myself out of the typical depression of that age.

Last Week

• 3 Secret Lovers - Atlantic Starr (bleh)
  
• 2 Sara - Starship (I liked it then...I got over that), down from #1 the week before that
  
• 1 These Dreams - Heart (Still have a fondness)
  

And this week

• 40 Cherrelle w/ Alexander O'Neal, Saturday Love, a soul ballad I've no memory of at all.  It's actually not too bad for what it is; I probably would have liked it at the time.
• 39 Jackson Browne - For America - another debut, and another I've never heard before.  Ironically, the 6 drop-outs this week were all HUGE hits (Russians from Sting, Sweetest Taboo from Sade, Northern Town, When the Going Gets Tough, and more), but the debuts seem to be all unknown lost songs.
• 38 Miami Sound Machine with Bad Boys (a debut I actually remember).  With the cast of Cats dancing with her, one of the first videos that never actually showed the rest of the band.  For some reason, I have memories of seeing this video before (LONG before) ever hearing Conga, but Wikipedia insists Conga was a hit first.
  
  Trivia note: there was a commercial single, "3 minutes of silence", released in 1953, that became a huge jukebox song.
  
  
• 37 here's a debut I also fondly recall (with its funny video that vh-1 classic keeps cutting the punch line off of when they show it), Phil Collins Take Me Home.  Phil may have gotten sequencer-heavy at the time, but at least the sequences he came up with were cool.  Rather than random percussion noises, they were rhythms he would have played
  
• 36 Bob Seger with American Storm, which I have no memory of, but sounds again pretty much like every other song he's ever written.  It may be because he only writes in one key, 'cause it's in the same key as Breakdown and Even Now.
  
• 35 Aretha Franklin's Another Night, which I have no memory of at all...and don't need to hear again.
• 34 The Cars with I'm Not The One, which I don't know if it is a new recording or just an edit, as the original is on Shake It Up (1981), but this version is from Greatest Hits as a followup to Tonight She Comes.  That album (the Greatest Hits) still brings back memories of our bus during the band trip to South Carolina, 'cause it was the only CD that Chip brought for one of the longer legs of it.
• 33 Marylin Martin, a popular background singer who was coming off of the Separate Lives duet with Phil Collins, sings about Night Moves.  Pretty cool sound to it, but I'd never heard it before.  Very typical 80s sound, and I think the guitarist is Michael Sembello of "Maniac" fame, based on the sound to it.
• 32 Opus from Austria does Live is Life.  I remember the riff, but only vaguely.  I think the lyrics were just being too trite to keep my interest.
  
• 31 Stevie Wonder is Overjoyed...while I am unimpressed.

• 30 The Outfield continue climbing with Your Love, which was definitely on heavy rotation on the radio around here, and continues to be on 80s on 8 today.
• 29 Dire Straights are So Far Away.  good guitar lick, but the song does tend to go on a little too long...
  
  The long distance dedication came from a teacher in Montgomery County, MD.  It was about a Czech tour guide the teacher met (before the fall of the iron curtain) who listened to AT40 illegally from Austria over the border.
  
  
• 28 Janet Jackson finally hits the top 40 for the first time with What Have You Done For Me Lately, first in a long string of hits...that I all hate.
• 27 Mike and the Mechanics with Silent Running, Paul Carrack on lead vocals.  Cool video, even if it didn't always make sense.  No relation to the 1972 film, Silent Running, which if you look at wikipedia, shows a model that was definitely either used in, or an influence on, a model used in Battlestar Galactica (both old and new).
• 26 a totally forgotten song by Janet's brother Jermaine, I Think it's Love.
• 25 How to be a Millionare, by ABC...between this and  "I want money, lots and lots of money" (though the ABC song is, like Pet Shop Boys' Opportunaties, being sarcastic about it), I think we kinda hit one negative side of the 80s revival: the idea that the rich should live under different rules from the rest of us.  Repeats of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous used to run on one of the cable channels a while ago...they don't anymore.  This isn't a bad thing.  Not my fav ABC song, by a long shot.
  
• 24 Van Halen *debuts* at #24 with Why Can't This Be Love, their first with Hagar.  Overplayed, of course, but there's some very nice double-guitar work here, Hagar on straight chords, Eddie on the heavy pedal work.  Double-guitar done well was a highlight of some of the best 80s rock bands, including Def Leppard and Big Country, as well as the GTR album.  Shame nobody today tries to do it as well.
• 23 Stevie Nicks with I Can't Wait.  They're playing a heavily dubbed dance mix version of it, not nearly as good as the more stripped down album version.
• 22 Another Rocky IV song, There's No Easy Way Out.  You know, after a time they ran out of footage from the movie to use in the videos.
• 21 ELO's brief revival with Calling America (3rd song so far with America in the title).

• 20 The Rolling Stones with one of my least fav songs from them (and that joins a LARGE group, mind you), The Harlem Shuffle.
• 19 Pet Shop Boys' first (and still biggest) hit, West End Girls
• 18 Whitney Houston's How Will I Know, falling from a recent #1 peak.  Another I liked at the time, and certainly got over.
• 17 Charlie Sexton, with a very David Bowie influenced Beat's So Lonely.  I never heard it, but I did know of him later from the David Bowie Glass Spider concert video where he guests.  Sexton was only 16 when he released this album.
  
• 16 The Force MDs, Tender Love, which got a TON of WAVA airplay at the time.  Utterly inescapable.  I never quite understood how MTV airplay and radio airplay weren't more tightly linked (granted, a naivete of myself at the time), but this was one of those.  No video, no MTV rotation, huge radio hit.  Exactly the sort of thing that shouldn't exist anymore.
  
• 15 Mr. Mister (featuring future King Crimson drummer Pat Masteloto) with Kyrie, another recent #1 (lots of turnover around this time, it seems)
  
• 14 Simple Minds with another from one of my all-time fav albums, Sanctify Yourself
• 13 Robert Palmer's Addicted To Love, certainly one of the most famous videos of all time, is preceded with a story about the rise of label guru Christ Blackwell and his Island Records.
• 12 The Thompson Twins with King for a Day.  Certainly a huge hit for them, but never really a fav of mine.  Not sure why.
• 11 The first big hit for The Bangles, written by Prince, Manic Monday

And into the top ten we go...

• 10 Loverboy joins the ballad-band bandwagon with This Could Be The Night.
• 9 Sly Fox's Let's Go All The Way.  Really never did "get" this one.  Still don't.
  
• 8 Mickey Thomas's Starship's Sara starts its rapid descent, falling from #2.
  
  And just when you thought I could go a week without a mention of the "where's your fucking guitars, man", Foreigner's I Want to Know What Love Is ended up a long distance dedication.  *sigh*.  As inescapable as "I Will Survive"...
  
  ...ok, maybe not.
  
  
• 7 Elton John's song about a girl named Nikita (nevermind that, as anybody who watched pop-up video knows, that's a boy's name in Russia...was Elton hinting at something back then? ;) )
• 6 INXS smash their way to a renewed fame with What You Need
• 5 My absolute all time least fav Prince song ever.  And I do mean that.  Kiss.
• 4 John Cougar Mellencamp's ROCK in the USA.
  
  odd memory associated with this: at the time, the PE class was "conditioning", where we were alternating between weight-room and aerobics.  This song was one of the songs we did Aerobics to, so it sticks out with that.  Similarly, last week (and maybe this week's) #1, These Dreams, I first really got to hear playing over the radio in the weight room, so as soon as I hear it, I think of that room (and how embarrassingly skinny I was at the time).
  
  
• 3 Atlantic Starr are still holding at #3 with Secret Lovers.  meh...
• 2 Nope, Heart drops to #2 with the Nancy Wilson led These Dreams

making the new #1...

1. Falco's Rock Me Amadeus

And with that, I'm back to cleaning.  later, all...

Comments

[voltbang.livejournal.com]

"My absolute all time least fav Prince song ever. And I do mean that. Kiss."

Do you mean least favorite song he made while called prince, or least favorite including all the stuff he did while he was a symbol? I like Kiss, but I only started liking it after I heard a cover version, then the song made sense to me.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

That includes the "unpronounceable" years.

the only reason I don't hate it more than other songs I hate (like, say, I Will Survive) is because it doesn't crop up in circles outside of "lets play 80s hits" moments, and even there, it's not going to rank terribly high.

It's not one that has additional associated meanings for people (like being played commonly at weddings or charity walks or other dj'ed parties with the standard rep) that make it constantly come back to haunt me.

[voltbang.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Is "least favorite" the same as "most hated"? Because even if I did hate that song, he has plenty of songs from the symbol era especially that I just don't give a crap enough to even dislike, much less hate. My "least favorite" would have to be one of those. He does have a few I hate, but they at least have the virtue of being noticable.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

in my case, or at least when i'm referring to standard radio songs (of then or now), yes, "least fav" is "most hated".

i only take "least fav" to mean less than most hated when dealing with groups where i don't really hate anything of, like prog rock bands.