The 100 Greatest Pop Singles of the 1980s (60-41)
May 09 '06 (Updated May 31 '06)
The Bottom Line In which the author can dream about you (if he can't hold you tonight).
And we're back...
100-81
80-61
Is it just me, or are the commercial breaks getting longer?
-60-
Song: Love of the Common People
Artist: Paul Young
Album: No Parlez
Debuted May 1984
Peaked #46
Water in the milk from a hole in the roof where the rain came through... what can you do?
Paul Young may ultimately be best known as the adult pop artist whose songs showed up on a zillion feel-good chick flick soundtracks, but there once was a time when he was considered alternative - when the soundtracks he turned up on were supercool John Hughes movies. You don't hear much of it, but if you're listening closely, this one shows up in Sixteen Candles.
No Parlez may have been his "debut" album, but in fact, falling squarely between the skinny-tie new wave (think Squeeze) sound of his early bands Streetband and The Q-Tips, and his later Magic 98 hits, it was a very pivotal record which melded together the best parts of both personae, bubbling over with confidence and a wonderful sense of sonic whimsy (thanks in large part to producer Laurie Latham). With a cover of Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart", he brought out the soul of post-punk; and vice versa with his minimal, sonically challenging take on Marvin Gaye's "Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home)".
But this is probably my favorite Paul Young moment, a touching, wintery take on another southern soul chestnut by John Hurley and Ronnie Wilkins (the [gay] songwriting team that brought us "Son of a Preacher Man"). A steady choral hum, the ringing of sleigh bells, the playful vocal accents (moo-nah! moo-nah! moo-nah!), and a sweet, sympathetic vocal performance. Feels like Christmas every time I hear it.
-59-
Song: One on One
Artist: Hall & Oates
Album: H20
Debuted January 1983
Peaked #7
And when you're movin' close, a little bit means so much...
And oooh-oohh yeah, if you ever needed proof of Daryl Hall's vocal prowess, this ecstatic falsetto tour-de-force is it. Oh my gawd. I think I'm stripping again. Quick. Epinions towel! STAT! (More from these guys later...)
-58-
Song: Be Near Me
Artist: ABC
Album: How to be a... Zillionaire!
Debuted August 1985
Peaked #9
The message is perfectly simple, the meaning is clear...
I wrote at length about the many wonders of this song when I reviewed How to be a... Zillionaire! last fall, but the highlights bear repeating. Midnight in the theatre district of your favorite metropolis. Maybe it's December, all chilly with twinkly Christmas lights encrusted with an evening's frost, like great, jewelled necklaces in the trees. Or maybe it's a summer night after a show, and people are out on the streets, basking in the balmy night sipping fancy herbal teas under awnings. It's cosmopolitan. Stylish. Impeccable. And yet utterly, utterly sincere. (More from these guys too.)
-57-
Song: Heat of the Moment
Artist: Asia
Album: Asia
Debuted April 1982
Peaked #4
And now you find yourself in '82, the disco hotspots hold no charm for you...
BAHHH- BAAAAH- BAAAAH-BA- BA-BAAAAAAAAAM!!!
Four chords that practically invented what summer would sound like for me for, like, ever. I remember being wholly offended several years later when I heard Asia referred to as a heavy metal band. It was so at odds with what I thought of them. Heavy metal was hair and swagger and the guys who smoked at school. Asia was something completely different. Powerful, yes - but in a very grand, orchestral way; but the grandeur of their sound was always matched (or surpassed) by massive pop hooks. Volume knobs were made for this.
-56-
Song: Wishing Well
Artist: Terence Trent D'Arby
Album: Introducing the Hardline According to Terence Trent D'Arby
Debuted January 1988
Peaked #1 (1 week)
Underneath the sycamore tree...
To be honest, I hated Terence Trent D'Arby when I first heard of him. In fact, long before I'd actually heard a word he'd sung, I hated him. I mean, really hated him. It was one of those intangible things. Was it the fact that his album was #1 on Billboard and I still hadn't heard any of his songs? Or the fact that it just had such a long, weird title? Or the fact that I couldn't open a music magazine without meeting his super-confident visage staring back at me over breathless captions. He was just so damn hate-able. Until, of course, I actually heard "Wishing Well" - that sleazy rasp in his voice delivering the lewdest lyric this side of a PMRC hissy fit, all capped off with that synthesized Disney movie summer camp whistle break. And then, for a moment - but only a moment, mind you - I really liked Terence Trent D'Arby. And to this day, I'm still a little curious about what it must feel like to be kissed like a bandit stealing time (underneath a tree of some sort - red oak, maybe?)
-55-
Song: The Promise
Artist: When In Rome
Album: When In Rome
Debuted September 1988
Peaked #11
If you need a friend, don't look to a stranger...
When our friend Casey first spun this song for me on his weekly countdown in 1988, it felt immediately anachronous. Surely, I had to be listening to some obscure hit single that somehow escaped my attention 5 or 6 years earlier - it was a long distance dedication right? I mean, listen to the words. Listen to that calm, melody. Listen to the comforting steadiness of the pulsing bass. The smart vocal interactions, the octave jumps from verse to chorus. It was, like, totally long-distance dedication material. And it was totally Blancmange. But wait... it couldn't be. It could, however, be one of those perfect one hit wonders.
-54-
Song: Tender Love
Artist: The Force M.D.'s
Album: Chillin'
Debuted February 1986
Peaked #10
Candles, they light the dark...
One day, I recorded this song from the radio onto a blank TDK tape. And then I spent most of a Saturday afternoon, pressing play for about 5 seconds, then pausing to write down the lyrics, then pressing play, then pausing and writing, and pressing rewind and then play again to make sure I'd gotten them right, or to hear a particular line that I wasn't making out. (This was before Google, obviously.) And finally, when I'd gotten it all down on a page of my trusty lyric spiral (yes, I had a lyric spiral, full of lyrics transcribed from TDK cassettes in just this manner), I spent an hour copying it over onto faux parchment stationery with a calligraphy pen. And then I gave it to Tanya.
-53-
Song: Birds Fly (Whisper to a Scream)
Artist: Icicle Works
Album: Icicle Works
Debuted April 1984
Peaked #37
We are, we are, we are, we're just children...
The great Midnight Oil once wrote a song called "Drums of Heaven", and this is the song they were writing about. Well, okay, probably not. But the drums here are heavenly. Actually, I don't know of any other song where, like, 97% of the hooks are delivered by the percussionist. Caroline, of course, would hate it; but never fear, Caroline. It's got some great folk-flavored guitars too, and one helluva great singalong anthem of a chorus.
-52-
Song: Suburbia
Artist: Pet Shop Boys
Album: Please
Debuted December 1986
Peaked #70
Where's a policeman when you need one to blame the color TV...
I'd never heard the word "suburbia" until the Pet Shop Boys, and so naturally, I thought they'd invented it with this song, the fourth (and best) single from their debut album Please. And hearing it now, I kinda still think they might have, if not invented the word, then at least defined it: a facade of style and tranquility masking Neil Tennant's descriptions of crisis and intrigue as sound effects increasingly suggest the kind of E.L.E. only Bruce Willis and a gang of lovable misfits could save us from. Oh no! We're out of Kibbles N' Bits! Whatever shall we do?
-51-
Song: Perfect Way
Artist: Scritti Politti
Album: Cupid & Psyche '85
Debuted September 1985
Peaked #11
You've got a heart full of complacency too...
"Perfect Way" represented the culmination of Scritti Politti's five-year(-or-so) metamorphosis from jagged, hyper-intellectual, hyper-artsy, hyper-socialist post-punk cranks to shiny-shiny, synth-pop (but still intellectual, still artsy, still socialist) maestros. The song has the highest rate of polysyllabic words per minute of any other song released in the 1980s, and the first 10 seconds of the song may be my favorite 10 seconds of music, like, ever.
-50-
Song: Just Like Heaven
Artist: The Cure
Album: Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me
Debuted October 1987
Peaked #40
I found myself alone, alone, alone above a raging sea...
If ever a vocal performance were to remind me of myself doing karaoke, this is it. Robert Smith is out of control when, more than a third of the way through the song, he finally starts singing the first verse. But there's a hint of darkness in the wild happiness of the verse. As wonderful as things seem; as high as we are, we're "spinning on a dizzy edge"; and in the final verse, the inevitable loss is apparent. It's actually a very, very sad song. I'm, like, totally gonna cry now.
-49-
Song: Open Your Heart
Artist: Madonna
Album: True Blue
Debuted December 1986
Peaked #1 (1 week)
I've had to work much harder than this...
I'm not sure if she's actually singing about a boy here, or about her audience. Madonna is still trying to prove herself every time she puts out a new album (and no matter what she puts out, someone's always quick to point out how washed up she is), but her earliest albums are clearly her "hungriest". This song, as delicious as its synthesizers, and supple as its rhythms - has claws and fangs. And they're bared. The very definition of Blonde Ambition.
-48-
Song: Hands to Heaven
Artist: Breathe
Album: All That Jazz
Debuted April 1988
Peaked #2
Tomorrow, I must leave; the dawn knows no reprieve...
Good-byes totally suck. Unless, of course, David Glasper is singing them, in which case, they will turn you into a pathetic puddle of goo; and not only will you be unable to stop him from leaving, but, in a strangely masochistic way, you'll almost want him to leave you over and over and over (and over and over) again.
-47-
Song: Looking for a New Love
Artist: Jody Watley
Album: Jody Watley
Debuted March 1987
Peaked #2
Other guys will have me, they'll appreciate my love...
If songs could kill... And who knows, maybe songs could kill. They can certainly get you elected. I'm looking for a new Gov, baby.
-46-
Song: Time After Time
Artist: Cyndi Lauper
Album: She's So Unusual
Debuted April 1984
Peaked #1 (2 weeks)
The second hand unwinds...
This song always makes me cry. I used to think it was just the video. Remember when videos could, like, really choke you up? And this one always got me. Even before the song starts, when we see Cyndi all cuddled up (with a teddy bear) in an Airstream out in the middle of the woods, mouthing the lines to a favorite late-late-nite movie - I cry. Or when she and her boyfriend are fighting and the guitar case is just totally getting swung around - I cry. Or when she's on the bus, face pressed against the good-bye window, whispering "time and time, time after time" - I cry. I totally cry.
But then, I saw her singing this song on a VH-1 Classic Concert special - totally removed from the video - with Rob and Eric from the Hooters (who wrote the song and played the part of Cyndi's back-up band on She's So Unusual, before briefly making it on their own). I saw women my age in the audience singing along as if their very lives had once depended on the song (and maybe they still do - may mine still does sometimes, too). And I cried. Totally, totally cried. (James laughed, by the way.)
-45-
Song: Better Be Good To Me
Artist: Tina Turner
Album: Private Dancer
Debuted September 1984
Peaked #5
Oh, yes, I'm touched by this show of emotion...
Gloria Gaynor famously declared that she would survive the man who done her wrong. But, in 1984, Tina wasn't satisfied with mere survival. She's gon' kick his ass. And a delicious asswhuppin' it is. The woman has never sounded more empowered than here. She lived this song. And you'd know that even without the backstory or the biopic.
-44-
Song: I Would Die 4 U
Artist: Prince
Album: Purple Rain
Debuted December 1984
Peaked #8
I'm not a woman. I'm not a man. I am something that you'll never comprehend...
Or pronounce? (groan) Oh get over it! It always sorta boggled my mind that the PMRC got so hung up on "masturbating with a magazine" when right on the other side of the record, Prince was calling himself our messiah - and actually making a good case for such an outrageous assertion.
-43-
Song: I Can Dream About You
Artist: Dan Hartman
Album: Streets of Fire Soundtrack
Debuted May 1984
Peaked #6
Moving sidewalks...
Conclusive proof that even really bad movies can give us really good songs. Dan Hartman (who died of AIDS in 1994) was one of those artists who can never really be fully appreciated. Though we generally don't recognize his name (as David Mead would say, he's got a name that's hard to remember), he had a brilliant 20 year career as a songwriter and producer working with artists as diverse as Edgar Winter, Wendy O. Williams, Tina Turner, and Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Holly Johnson.
He also recorded on his own though, including one rarified slab of discofied funk (or is it funkified disco) called Instant Replay in 1978; and then there's this brilliant single which conjures up visions of the Temptations in their mid-60s (Smokey Robinson-era) prime. Simple. Sublime. Full of urbanity and shadows and romance.
-42-
Song: Hard to Say I'm Sorry
Artist: Chicago
Album: Chicago 16
Debuted June 1982
Peaked #1 (2 weeks)
Everybody needs a little time away...
The song that put Chicago back on the map was also the song that introduced me and all my friends to the band, the song that we all tacitly promised ourselves would be the song they played at our proms when we got to high school (if only the far-less engaging "You're The Inspiration" hadn't gotten in the way).
-41-
Song: The Sun Always Shines on TV
Artist: a-ha
Album: Hunting High and Low
Debuted November 1985
Peaked #20
I fear the crazed and lonely looks the mirror's sending me these days...
You didn't really think I'd put "Take On Me" on here, did you? I mean, don't get me wrong, "Take On Me" was wonderful. But "The Sun Always Shines on TV" is so much wonderfuller. I always knew this, of course, but I'd always felt sort of alone in knowing it. That is, until one day at a rehearsal for the play Corpus Christi, the guy playing Phillip (the tramp) broke out his cassette of Hunting High and Low and everyone asked him to skip to track 6, and we all danced and laughed and sang along. And damned if we didn't know all the words. (But then again, we were all damned for doing Corpus Christi anyways). And it was so marvelous to think that maybe we'd all felt alone in our affection for this song, and suddenly we weren't anymore. This song should have cemented a-ha's place in the pop pantheon, but, sadly it only proved there one-hit-wonderhood (here in the States at least).
Coming up next: The Top 40! The Top 40! Huzzah!
40-21
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
plorentz
|
 - Top 500 |
|
Member: Paul Lorentz
Location: The Land of Limburger and Leinenkugel's
Reviews written: 952
Trusted by: 277 members
About Me:
Somebody turn the lights on...
|
|
|
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.