Jump to content

OLD 55's Yearly Top 10 Singles Of The Rock Era


OLD 55

Recommended Posts

  • Replies 573
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

I am positively delighted to see my beautiful Duran Duran make the list. :bow: I am prepared for any backlash that statement might provoke.

Nobody's mentioned Tina Turner. This was the beginning of her comeback, when she metaphorically pimp slapped Ike like he had literally done to her for years. I can take or leave her music, but I have the utmost respect for her. What a strong, amazing woman.

I was born in 1984! What a great year!

Hush your mouth, young'un, and fetch my denture cream. :crazy:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I remember Phil Collins being all over the radio at that time. I liked Prince's music. He reminded me a mixture of Little Richard and Jimi Hendrix. Me and my wife saw him in concert in 2004. He's a great performer. The crowd was very interesting, too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am positively delighted to see my beautiful Duran Duran make the list. :bow: I am prepared for any backlash that statement might provoke.

Peaches, my girls both loved Duran Duran, especially Simon LeBon. Boy George and David Lee Roth were pretty big at our place too.

I remember a lot of great Video Clips from around that era.

:thumbsup:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

THE TOP TEN U.S. SINGLES OF 1985

1. WE ARE THE WORLD / USA FOR AFRICA*

2. Say You, Say Me / Lionel Richie **

3. Careless Whisper / Wham! featuring George Michael

4. Money For Nothing / Dire Straits ***

5. Shout / Tears For Fears ****

6. Can't Fight This Feeling / REO Speedwagon

7. Everybody Wants To Rule The World / Tears For Fears

8. We Built This City / Starship

9. I Want To Know What Love Is / Foreigner

10.Broken Wings / Mr.Mister

..................................................

11.St.Elmo's Fire (Man In Motion) / John Parr

12.Everything She Wants / Wham! featuring George Michael

13.The Power Of Love / Huey Lewis & The News

14.Heaven / Bryan Adams

15.One More Night / Phil Collins

16.A View To A Kill / Duran Duran

..................................................

AND THERE WERE ANOTHER 10 U.S. #1s THIS YEAR:

Crazy For You / Madonna

Don't You (Forget About Me) / Simple Minds

Sussuido / Phil Collins

Everytime You Go Away / Paul Young

Oh Sheila / Ready For The Word

Take On Me / A-ha

Saving All My Love For You / Whitney Houston *****

Part-Time Lover / Stevie Wonder

Miami Vice Theme / Jan Hammer

Separate Lives / Phil Collins & Marilyn Martin ******

..................................................

CHART NOTES

* Won 3 Grammys; Record Of The Year, Song Of The Year for its writers Michael Jackson & Lionel Richie; Best Vocal, Duo or Group.

** Won the Best Song Oscar (from the Movie White Nights).

*** Won Grammy for Best Rock Performance, Group.

**** The dreaded Chart arrival of Techno Pop, although I did like Tears for Fears.

***** Grammy for Best Pop Vocal of the Year, Female.

****** The love theme from White Nights.

What a great year for Phil Collins, with 3 #1s, plus 2 Grammys for (A)Album of the Year No Jacket Required, and (B)Best Pop Vocal of the Year, Male.

..................................................

U.K. TOP 3

1. The Power Of Love / Jennifer Rush *

36 weeks in the Chart, 5 @ #1, Platinum Record.

2. 19 / Paul Hardcastle ** 5 weeks @ #1.

3. I Know Him So Well / Elaine Paige & Barbara Dickson *** 4 weeks @ #1

.................................................

*There were 3 different songs titled "The Power Of Love" in the U.S./ U.K. Charts in 1985.

A. This one, which also hit #1 in Australia, but poor Jennifer couldn't place it in the U.S. Top 50. Celine Dion took it to #1 there in 1993.

B. Huey Lewis & The News.

C. Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

** 19 was the average age of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam. Mike Oldfield reckoned it sounded similar to Tubular Bells and successfully sued U.K. writer/producer Paul Hardcastle. Australian Band, Redgum, had released a tribute to Australian Diggers in Vietnam, I Was Only 19, a couple of years before. Maybe they should have sued too, because their's was the far superior song.

*** From the stage musical Chess.

..................................................

AUSTRALIAN TOP 3

1. We Are The World / USA For Africa10 weeks @ #1.

2. Species Deceases / Midnight Oil 8 weeks @ #1.

3.I Want To Know What Love Is / Foreigner 7 weeks @ #1.

:headphones:

410/1470

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Looks like music was full-part of the establishment by 85... :)

And my fave song of the year was "Careless Whisper". Or maybe some stuff by The Smitherens... but they never were on the charts.

I remember Madonna singing "Revolution" behind the Tomphson Twins in "Live Aid"... didn´t she play tambourine too?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for looking !

"Thanks for looking"?? :P :laughing:

Oldfif, you´re one of the best posters and everything you post is more than interesting... and you say "thanks for looking"?? Thanks for posting!! :):):) :bow: :bow:

By the way, I had to translate the whole"Live Aid" tapes into Spanish for the radio/TV station that had the rights... interviews with the performers, Geldoff explaining things, some of the lyrics for the subtitles on TV... it took me a couple of weeks or maybe more, it was very interesting but they payed me very little.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've never seen them in Concert Edna...REO really did put on a great show...saw them a few times...once in 79 and in the 80's....and just last summer, Styx opened for them...Styx were really good...they played quite a long time too...REO sounded just as good as they did years ago.

Edited by Guest
Link to comment
Share on other sites

so it turns out we do not agree on what was good pop in the 80s old55! i'm keen on electropop!

You´re right... technopop was the "avant-garde" music in the 80s, though it begun with Devo or Kraftwerk, in the seventies or even with that hit, "Popcorn", quite before...

I liked some of these bands, or at least some of the things they did. Gary Numan, Blancmange, Ultravox, Yazoo, Depeche Mode, wow, there are so many... The weird thing in these times was that everybody with a casiotone or something like that could make a techno band.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I found good info in Wikipedia . I believe this kind of music didn´t chart as high as standards as the record companies pefered to spend more money on well-known artists rather than the new wave. But after a while they saw how bands like Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran or Depeche Mode would be quite successful (spelling??) though that didn´t happen till the end of the 80s. And by then there was already a comeback to the garage sound and you had people like Phil Collins sounding on the radio constantly... :stars:

Techno bands didn´t seel as much as MJackson or Dire Straits or even Paul McCartney... but they were very popular.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am positively delighted to see my beautiful Duran Duran make the list. :bow: I am prepared for any backlash that statement might provoke.

Ah yes.."Lucifer's Chosen Ones".....

The problem with the Durannies was...well...where does one start? But before I do, I should confess a little secret..(in a hushed whisper) I actually quite liked them at first :o :blush: though it would have shamed me to admit it then as much as it does now. I remember hearing their debut single "Planet Earth" for the first time (in a tiny record shop in Doncaster). It wasn't that bad..."a breath of fresh air" even. The follow-up, "My Own Way" was under-rated, scarcely troubling the charts. They peaked early..."Girls On Film" :thumbsup: was unexpectedly excellent (I enjoy it to this day...), but thereafter they plummeted spectacularly in my estimation, beginning with the indescribably execrable "Rio", the nauseating "Save A Prayer" (a cynically self-conscious stab at snaring the "incontinent teen-girl" audience), and eventually reaching a nadir with the utterly diabolical "Reflex" }:| : a song so irritating that the very thought of it brings on my prickly heat. (See "Diving for the Off-switch" thread for further insight...)

In between times, they got away with so many serious crimes, I swear there must have been corruption afoot... Simon Le Bon's straining vocal in "Wild Boys" resembles a donkey being catapulted with stones and is about as tuneful. In fact, thinking about it,"Wild Boys" has to be up there with "Ant-Rap" in the pantheon of preposterous piffle...

Having set out in thrall to their heroes Bowie and Roxy, DD became the 80s equivalent of The Bay City Rollers, though thankfully avoiding the "running over pensioners in the bus queue" hazard. (Easily done when you only ever travel by private helicopter...but I digress wildly...)

However unsavoury I may have found the Durannies, they were as nothing compared to their unfeasibly despicable peers , Spandau Ballet, whose oeuvre caused me year after year of unremitting misery. Although their debut single "To Cut A Long Story Short" (I lorst my mind!) had an undeniable "ludicrous charm", the rest of their repertoire stank like the sh!thouse-door of a trawler. They quickly became slick purveyors of "faux-soul", but also pioneered the genre of "Oily-R" Soul, in the form of chanteur Tony Hadley and the even more greasily repellent Steve Norman.

Style-fascists to a man, the Spandaus boasted that they would rather stay in than be seen out wearing a "jeans and T-shirt" ensemble. For a time, North-Londoner Hadley styled himself as a "country gent". (A minuscule moment of wordplay later and you're significantly nearer the mark...)

You can scarcely imagine the outrage in Fitter Mansions when the Spands (as they were oft-known) had a chart-hit entitled "Instinction", which to my knowledge is not even a (bleep)proper word }:( }:( }:( ... (and let's not forget that my vocabulary assumes Brobdingnagian proportions... ;) )

May all their bowel movements be hedgehogs!

But if Spandau Ballet were soooooo evil, why do I repeatedly cite Duran Duran as the servants of Satan? Both bands were preening narcissists who gloried in the bloated decadence of the times: I hated both with an intensity bordering on passion. (Their more modest contemporaries Japan had more art, class and poetry than the pair of them put together,but that's just my opinion...)

But whilst Spandau Ballet had no apparent redeeming features, (20 years of hindsight having failed to reveal any to this day), there have been worrying moments when The Durans have found chinks in my virtually impenetrable armour, and I have nearly begrudgingly tolerated them. And that's why......Satan is nothing, if not subversive...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You've been had BF! Duran Duran remain in the service of the horned, teflon geezer. Witness their recent performance at 'Old Gits Save The World (again)'. Simon LeBon's pout is more reminiscent of an old dog's bottom pre-poot than ever!

I find myself strangely drawn to the S&M pixies that are Depeche Mode, of that era... Japan weren't half bad either IMO.

Regards

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Duran Duran remain in the service of the horned, teflon geezer. Witness their recent performance at 'Old Gits Save The World (again)'. Simon LeBon's pout is more reminiscent of an old dog's bottom pre-poot than ever!

I find myself strangely drawn to the S&M pixies that are Depeche Mode, of that era... Japan weren't half bad either IMO.

I have been maintaining for some considerable time now that Le Bon and his pals are His Satanic Majesty's Agents On Earth and who listened? (Who?) I'll tell you who listened...no (bleep)listened, that's who...I was just trying to explain why its them and not S****** B***** doing Lucifer's work.

Other candidates, for different reasons, include The Thompson Twins and Tanita Tikaram (I know she appears harmless enough, but I'm convinced the unhinged witch has been stalking me...)

As for your strange attraction to Depeche Mode, I'd keep that one close to your chest, mate.

IMHO, they produced nought but drivel for many years, including some of the most risibly lamentable lyrics in history.

"Enjoy The Silence" and "Personal Jesus" are both pretty good though...

PS. I'd have to agree with you on the subject of Le Bon's fizzog: if our dog had a face like that, I'd shave its arse and teach it to walk backwards...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now

×
×
  • Create New...