Filed under: lists, music, the dan fogelberg and hair metal decade | Tags: olivia newton-john, suggs, the hair metal and dan fogelberg decade
In this installment of my favorite pop hits of the 80s, some lesser-known hits by some of the decade’s biggest artists, as well as the biggest American hit of one of the best British bands of the sixties, and lots of English people in general.
90. Fleetwood Mac, Think About Me [1980, #20]
The least successful of the three singles from 1979′s Tusk album–which is odd, considering that one of them was Tusk–Think About Me is the sort of languid mid-tempo song that Fleetwood Mac were best at.
89. The Eurythmics, Who’s That Girl? [1984, #21]
Who is Annie Lennox? The baroque soul singer who seriously sings about someone who’s cooler than ice cream but warmer than the sun? Or is she the ice queen that shaves her head and wears kinky masks and sings like an angry general over frosty synths? In this song, the former eventually wins out, thanks to the one-line chorus, but this is the Eurythmics single that best rides the line between chilly fascism and over-the-top balladry.
88. Genesis, Invisible Touch [1985, #1]
Trying…so hard…to resist…but it’s just so frigging catchy. I can’t help it. Don’t judge me.
87. Madness, It Must Be Love [1983, #33]
In the hands of anyone else, this 1971 Labi Siffre song could have been totally drecky. But Madness turned it into one of their best singles, a really simple ballad that’s undyingly happy, but with just enough restraint that it’s not a goopy mess. Also, I really like the video, which I had never seen before today; who knew that Suggs was such a looker?
86. Kim Wilde, Kids In America [1982, #25]
Kim Wilde wasn’t actually American, and her song wasn’t a hit in this country until a year after it had reached the rest of the world. Go fig.
I’ve always liked Kids In America, but was never quite able to place what exactly made it so awesome. I think I only just realized it’s the keyboards during the ‘na na na na na na’ parts, which give the song the aura of an alien invasion. It’s sort of like the musical equivalent of a They Live!, only with an English lady and not Rowdy Roddy Piper.
85. Pat Benatar, We Live For Love [1980, #27]
Less aggressive than Hit Me With Your Best Shot and less dramatic than Love Is A Battlefield or Heartbreaker, it makes sense that We Live For Love is one of the Benatar’s less remembered hits. It’s got quite the guitar hook, though, and the super-high chorus is a lot more interesting than hearing her yell about how hell is for children. Above, watch how well the song’s theme of living for love translates into the lives of doctor/possessed woman/lady in a cage/Smokey Robinson enthusiast Marlena and her man, John Black/Roman Brady.
84. Def Leppard, Animal [1988, #19]
More or less the only hair band I liked then, and definitely the only one whose albums I would ever consider putting on today, Def Leppard were poppier than Skid Row or Great White or whoever else the kids were listening to in late 1987. Though this wasn’t the biggest single off the (still good) Hysteria album, it was my favorite at the time and I still like the guitar solo and repeated choruses at the end.
83. Olivia Newton John and ELO, Xanadu [1980, #8]
My favorite Olivia is the country ballad Olivia of the mid-seventies, the one who sang Have You Never Been Mellow? and did pretty covers of God Only Knows and Banks of the Ohio. But I’m also fond of Xanadu Olivia, the one that tried to be all glitzy and glamorous but somehow ended up in a tacky musical opposite the ugliest leading man in the history of cinema. The song’s not much, really, but like the movie it has the sincere charm of something that just isn’t quite as great as it ought to be.
82. Stevie Nicks, Edge of Seventeen [1982, #11]
Embarrassing confession: I didn’t actually know what this song was until Nikki McKibbin sang it on the first season of American Idol. Which is funny, because that happened a year after the song was sampled in Bootylicious, and Stevie Nicks even appears in the Destiny’s Child video for about a quarter of a second. Silly, right?
81. The Kinks, Come Dancing [1983, #6]
Much like Verdelle Smith’s Tar and Cement, Come Dancing reminds us of a time before everything got turned into parking lots. Featuring a big band and the sort of longing British domesticity that Americans more or less only liked in 1983, Come Dancing was the Kinks’ biggest-ever hit in the US, and, in a rare agreement with the US pop charts, I’d agree that it’s one of their best.
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