A (half) Century of Music

[frigidmagi]

I'm rather indifferent to Abba myself. Is it me or is easy listening really popular at this time?

[LadyTevar]

Slow ballads were in vogue, they later became "Easy Listening" staples. About the only place you hear them anymore, and many channels only play them as instrumentals anymore.

[Hotfoot]

I would probably rate Carry On My Wayward Son at a solid A and Hotel California at a B. ABBA is probably a B to me as well.

Soon though, the disparity will grow.

[General Havoc]

I would probably rate Carry On My Wayward Son at a solid A and Hotel California at a B. ABBA is probably a B to me as well.

Soon though, the disparity will grow.

To me, Carry on my Wayward Son is a slightly less interesting version of More than a Feeling, whereas Hotel California is the signature song of a signature 70s band.

And as to ABBA, y'all hatin'.

[Hotfoot]

I mean to me, Carry On and More Than a Feeling are fantastic songs, so it's like getting me to choose between Indiana Jones and Star Wars.

Hotel California meanwhile is a really good song, it just doesn't hit the same chords in me.

[General Havoc]

1978
Yearly GPA: 2.096





I'm shocked too, believe me. After all, this is the highest score of any year so far! Better than 1966. Better than 1976. Better than anything. The first year to break a 2.0 GPA for god's sake! This must be the best year in history, right? What could possibly have happened?

Well the answer is simple. The BeeGees happened. And they dominated this year like no group I've ever seen. Fully 2/3s of the year is occupied either with Bee Gees songs or with other songs from the Gibb brothers, songs sung by them or written by them and sung by someone else. As such, if you like the Bee Gees (which I sort of do, kinda), then this year is going to be massive. If not, you will hate everything this year stands for. I'm consequently unsure if it's reasonable to count 1978 in our standings, but in all fairness it IS the highest-scoring year to date. So without further ado...



Player - Baby Come Back
Number 1 song from January 14th-February 3rd, 1978 (3 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: C
Soft Rock, yes, but at least it's moderately interesting soft rock. Granted, we're grading on a curve here, but still, it's nice to hear a song that sounds genuine out of that genre for a change.



The Bee Gees - Stayin' Alive
Number 1 song from February 4th-March 3rd, 1978 (4 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: C
One of the most recognizeable disco songs in existence, Stayin' Alive is decent, but I've never thought it great. It's a good strutting song, a song to play when walking down the street or some such, but I'm not sure I'd listen to it by itself. Still, it's a strong C, and a song I certainly can't offer much objection to when people call it a classic.



Andy Gibb - Love is Thicker than Water
Number 1 song from March 4th-17th, 1978 (2 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: C
This song's a strange little Disco-Soul piece from one of the BeeGee's component songwriters. The Brothers Gibb had a BIG year in 1978, mostly to the charts' advantage, and while I don't love this song, it's interesting enough to be worth a listen.



The Bee Gees - Night Fever
Number 1 song from March 18th-May 12th, 1978 (8 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: B
I did just say a BIG year, right?

I actually quite like Night Fever, to be honest, regarding it as one of the better Disco songs of the late 70s. Rarely do you see a single band hijack the charts like this, but the BeeGees were on fire this year, and the result was to everyone's benefit. This song's a borderline B but a B nonetheless.



Yvonne Elliman - If I Can't Have You
Number 1 song from May 13th-19th, 1978 (1 week)


Havoc's Grade: C
Think we've escaped? Think again. This song is actually a cover of a single from the previous year written and performed by, you guessed it, The BeeGees. I prefer this version. The chorus isn't much to speak of, but the verses are interesting enough to keep it out of the bad parts of the scale.



Wings - With a Little Luck
Number 1 song from May 20th-June 2nd, 1978 (2 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: C
At long last, someone breaks the stranglehold of the BeeGees on the charts. Not that Wings is an improvement, mind you, just something different. That said, this is one of Wings' better offerings, musically speaking at least. I can't really hate this song, as it's one of the first synthpop songs ever, and McCartney lets himself sound like something other than a tired ex-Beatle by the end of the song. Miracles never cease.



Johnny Mathis & Deniece Williams - Too Much, Too Little, Too Late
Number 1 song from June 3rd-9th, 1978 (1 week)


Havoc's Grade: D
Well the streak couldn't last forever, could it. This soft-rock borefest was the first of Johnny Mathis' duets, something he would do for years to come. This one was not very good. Neither were most of the others.



John Travolta & Olivia Newton-John - You're the One that I Want
Number 1 song from June 10th-16th, 1978 (1 week)


Havoc's Grade: D
Grease is a terrible movie, and this song is not much better. John Travolta simply can't sing very well, and even if he could, this brainless Pop Musical number would not be anything special. I don't think I need to warn most of you to skip this.



Andy Gibb - Shadow Dancing
Number 1 song from June 17th-August 4th, 1978 (7 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: C
You didn't think we were done with the Bee Gees did you? This song was the number 1 of the year, and turned Andy Gibb into the first singer to have his first three singles hit number 1. I'm not sure why, to be honest. This song is... all right, but no better. It's certainly the weakest of Gibb's three singles so far, with nothing beyond an interest musical structure and some genuine funkyness to say for itself.



The Rolling Stones - Miss You
Number 1 song from August 5th-11th, 1978 (1 week)


Havoc's Grade: D
Rolling Stones doing a disco song? Check.
Mick Jagger singing falsetto? Check.
Terrible, lethargic beat that never stops repeating? Check.

Bad grade? Check.



The Commodores - Three Times a Lady
Number 1 song from August 12th-25th, 1978 (2 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: D
Buckwheat did it better.

Yeah, I didn't actually know that Lionel Richie was with the Commodores (they were one of those bands I knew the name of without knowing anything about). Regardless of who sang it, this song is molasses slow, way too much so. I'd call it easy listening if it required listening. It's practically Muzak.



Frankie Vallie - Grease
Number 1 song from August 26th-September 8th, 1978 (2 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: C
So that's what Frankie Vallie's real voice sounds like. Honestly, I have to admit that this song isn't so bad. But then I did a little research and found that this song was written by, who else, Barry Gibb, of the Bee Gees. This was clearly their year.



A Taste of Honey - Boogie Oogie Oogie
Number 1 song from September 9th-29th, 1978 (3 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: D
Yeah, I think the title is stupid too, but the song is actually fairly funky, at least in terms of its baseline. If we're gonna have nothing but disco, then at least we can get a little funk going, can't we? But other than the baseline, this song is utterly useless. No thank you.



Exile - Kiss You All Over
Number 1 song from September 30th-October 27th, 1978 (4 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: C
Exile's one and only major hit, this song isn't bad as far as 70s soft rock goes. One could certainly do worse, but if it seems like I'm damning with faint praise, I do actually kind of like this song, though probably not for defensible reasons. It's audibly a product of the 70s, but that needn't be so bad.



Nick Glider - Hot Child in the City
Number 1 song from October 28th-November 3rd, 1978 (1 week)


Havoc's Grade: C
It's a slow song, yes, but this is actually on the upside of C for me. It's an ode to runaways and prostitutes forced into their circumstances, the sort of song that would have been thrown off the air even three years before. I'm not about to run out and buy the single, but it's an effective, evocative song, with a good sound despite simplistic lyrics.



Anne Murray - You Needed Me
Number 1 song from November 4th-10th, 1978 (1 week)


Havoc's Grade: D
This song is so slow that it's become a joke of sorts. I have basically no use for it, whatsoever. Though I confess I don't understand where the claim that this is a country song comes from. Not that this is my genre, but still...



Donna Summer - MacArthur Park
Number 1 song from November 11th-December 1st, 1978 (3 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: C
The original version of this song is 18 minutes long. Fuck that. That said, this version by one of the Queens of Disco is... okay. Summer has a wonderful voice, but the song is a little underwhelming, if only because high power ballads and disco beats don't go all that well together. Still, I kind of like the song despite its flaws.



Neil Diamond & Barbara Streisand - You Don't Bring me Flowers
Number 1 song from December 2nd-8th, 16th-22nd, 1978 (2 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: B
Shut up.

Just shut up. I don't want to hear it. There is a difference between sentiment and sap, and this song is the former and that's the end of the matter. If you don't believe me, then you're an idiot, and I don't care what you think. No it's not particularly well structured, no I'm not normally a fan (at all) of Barbara Streisand. No there's nothing musically that interesting in it. Yes, my grade stays. Go be hipsters somewhere else.



Chic - Le Freak
Number 1 song from December 9th-15th, 1978, December 23rd, 1978-January 5th, 1979, January 20th-February 9th, 1979 (6 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: D
A bog-standard disco track whose notoriety came from the oddity of its lyrics. I almost had mercy on this song, but it's too long on top of everything else, and three words are not enough to make an interesting song from my perspective.

This is also the first song to hit number 1 three separate times. It won't be the last.








Supplemental Songs

So let's see what songs the Bee Gees, in their utter dominance of 1978, kept off the charts, shall we?


Queen - We Will Rock You / We Are the Champions
1978 Billboard Top 100 position: 25


Havoc's Grade: C / B
These two classic Queen songs were released as part of the same single, and I've decided to include them both, even though I think only one of them worthy of inclusion. We will rock you is a nice foot-stomping chant, but We Are the Champions is a song that's been overused to such an extent that people forget just how good it is. It's probably one of the simplest Queen songs ever released, but what of that? Sometimes complexity is unnecessary.



Styx - Come Sail Away
1978 Billboard Top 100 position: 56


Havoc's Grade: B
Oh shut up, yes I'm perfectly aware that Styx was a ludicrous joke, apparent to everyone except themselves. I don't give a shit. This song may not be the most rocking thing ever written, but I do like it a good deal, and I don't really care who has a problem with that. I've already admitted to far more embarrassing stuff.



Santa Esmerelda - Don't Let me Be Misunderstood
1978 Billboard Top 100 position: 80


Havoc's Grade: B
Damn close to an A guys, damn close. The only issue I can really point to on this song is that the 1978 version was mixed pretty horribly (vocals are too quiet, drowned out by the music), which juuuuust keeps it from the A grade. But the song is simply a riot, a salsa and flamenco-infused re-imagining of the original Animals song that kicks it up another notch. It is hard not to groove to this song. And that alone should tell you much.



Jackson Browne - Running on Empty
1978 Billboard Top 100 position: 82


Havoc's Grade: B
I always thought that Jackson Browne was trying to be Bob Seger even before Bob Seger started writing songs, but Running on Empty is probably the best he ever did. It's a very atmospheric song, relaxed like an Eagles number, nuanced like a Hornsby piece. Browne never really broke into the ranks of A-list Singer-songwriters, but this song is a worthy thing to be remembered for.



Meat Loaf - Paradise by the Dashboard Light
1978 Billboard Top 100 position: DNQ


Havoc's Grade: B
I'm a HUGE Meat Loaf fan, especially of his work with long-time collaborator Jim Steinman and while this is neither my favorite album, nor my favorite song from it, there is really no objecting to this ridiculous, insane, three-part ode to teenage lust, baseball metaphors, vows of eternal love, and god knows what else. It's almost the quintessential Meatloaf song, so far over the top that it becomes almost rapturous. This song is absurd to the point of lunacy, and I love it so. And yet Meat Loaf would go on to do so much more...



Other noted songs from 1978:
Billy Joel - Just the Way You Are
Meat Loaf - Two out of Three Ain't Bad
Dan Hill - Sometimes When We Touch
Kansas - Dust in the Wind
The O'Jays - Used'ta Be My Girl
Paul Simon - Slip Slidin' Away
The Trammps - Disco Inferno
George Benson - On Broadway
Linda Ronstadt - Blue Bayou (HORRID song)
Heatwave - Always and Forever
Barry Manilow - Copacabana
Jackson 5 - Blame it on the Boogie
Kennie Loggins - The Gambler
Chaka Khan - I'm Every Woman
The B-52s - Rock Lobster
Warren Zevron - Werewolves of London
Eric Clapton - Wonderful Tonight
Rod Stewart - You're in my Heart

[LadyTevar]

~STOP RIGHT THERE!
I Gotta Know RIGHT NOW
Before we go any further do you love me
Will you love me forever
Do you Need Me
Will you never leave me
Will you make me so happy for the rest of my life
Will you take me away
Will you make me your wife
Do you LOVE ME
Will you love me for ever...

[LadyTevar]

Once again, I could sing Every. Single. Song.
Even the bad ones. That's what growing up in the era and having a roller rink that played the Top 40 does for you.

[General Havoc]

1979
Yearly GPA: 1.558





1979 is a bit of a return to normalcy, and yet honestly I'm surprised it came out this low. The year that Disco reached its zenith was also the year in which it began to be replaced, and by the end of the year we will begin to see what would come to replace it over the course of the next eighteen months. The abrupt fall of the house of Disco is a long and laborious tale, of course, but for our purposes, we need only record that the disco phenomenon, which dominated the late 70s, came to an end. And these are the songs that saw it on its way.



The Bee Gees - Too Much Heaven
Number 1 song from January 6th-19th, 1979 (3 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: B
You didn't think we were done with the Bee Gees did you? This soft-tempo R&B number is actually one of their best songs, I think, one of the only ones where their falsetto singing was manifestly the only right choice. I admittedly had no idea what the lyrics were actually supposed to be before now, but it's a small matter.

The Bee Gees, incidentally, donated all of the royalties from this song to UNICEF.



Rod Stewart - Da Ya Think I'm Sexy
Number 1 song from February 10th-March 9th, 1979 (4 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: D
I'd say that disco is not Rod Stewart's strongpoint, if I could figure out what his strong point was. Not that I hate every song he's ever done, but pop-disco is definitely not his forte, particularly when he's completely off-key. This song is simply not of much use at all, and I can't point to anything I like about it.



Gloria Gaynor - I Will Survive
Number 1 song from March 10th-23rd, April 7th-13th, 1979 (3 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: B
Now this is a bit more like it. I don't care for Disco overmuch, but it's hard not to like this, arguably the greatest disco song ever written. Certainly one of the most recognizable. The secret with I Will Survive was its stripped-down production, in an era of overproduced monstrosities, this song was a single singer singing in a natural tone over a basic but effective beat. There's a reason it has "survived" where its contemporaries have not.



The Bee Gees - Tragedy
Number 1 song from March 24th-April 6th, 1979 (2 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: A
Holy Christ, what the hell was that?

Seriously, I've never heard of this song before in my life. Where the hell has it been? This is one of the finest disco songs I've ever heard, a wonderful electronic minor-chord rock-disco hybrid, easily the best thing the BeeGees ever did, or at least the best thing I've ever heard from them. Honestly, this song is the reason I started this damned project in the first place, to encounter songs I'd either forgotten or never heard of in the first place, and found that I loved. This is one such song. I'm so glad to have encountered it.



The Doobie Brothers - What a Fool Believes
Number 1 song from April 14th-20th, 1979 (1 week)


Havoc's Grade: C
I really can't hate this lighthearted bubble-pop/funk song, despite the fact that I have, to this day, not the faintest idea what the lyrics are about. It's just so earnestly foolishly peppy, that I can't really help myself. Sue me.



Amii Stewart - Knock on Wood
Number 1 song from April 21st-27th, 1979 (1 week)


Havoc's Grade: C
Pretty average, but interesting enough in its own right to be worth a listen to, albeit barely. As it turns out, this song is a cover of an Eddie Floyd number from 1966 that was covered in turn by Eric Clapton, David Bowie, and Otis Redding. I'm not sure how to picture any of those people doing this song, but I'm sure the recordings are out there somewhere.



Blondie - Heart of Glass
Number 1 song from April 28th-May 4th, 1979 (1 week)


Havoc's Grade: D
I have no use for this song, but Heart of Glass was one of the more important songs of the year, a disco-ish track from a band that was part of the forefront of a movement that we will come to know very well in these lists, New Wave. Blondie, a punk/new wave act from New York, took immense flak for "selling out" by making a disco song, dedicated as the movement was to destroying disco and all its works. As we all know, they would shortly succeed, but for the moment, Blondie felt it prudent to follow the crowd on this song.



Peaches & Herb - Reunited
Number 1 song from May 5th-June 1st, 1979 (4 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: D
A boring, sopoforic R&B number, interchangeable with a hundred others, suitable only for putting small children to sleep. Which I've seen it used for. This song isn't worth saying anything more about.



Donna Summer - Hot Stuff
Number 1 song from June 2nd-8th, 16th-29th, 1979 (3 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: B
This song was considerably better than I remember it being, or perhaps I'm just a big fan of rock-infused disco. The song is just a very solid number, with an excellent bass line and driving guitar work. I can't really defend it, you like it or you don't.



The Bee Gees - Love You Inside Out
Number 1 song from June 9th-15th, 1979 (1 week)


Havoc's Grade: D
Lest anyone think that I'm just a gushing BeeGees fanboy, this song is basically useless. A meandering fake-funk disco-light song that's about nothing and goes nowhere. I forgot everything about the first half of the song while listening to the second half. Next!



Anita Ward - Ring my Bell
Number 1 song from June 30th-July 13th, 1979 (2 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: D
This song isn't terrible, but it overstays its welcome really quickly. The song was originally written for an 11-year old teenybopper to sing, and it retains that quality in its adult form. Cloying and simplistic, it really has nothing to bring to the table relative to the rest of this year.



Donna Summer - Bad Girls
Number 1 song from July 14th-August 17th, 1979 (5 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: D
Supposedly, this song was written when one of Donna Summers' assistants was mistaken for a prostitute by a police officer. I'm not sure I get it, nor do I much like it. The song meanders along without purpose for most of its padded run-time, when it isn't using schoolyard taunts as a melody. Summer was capable of better than this.



Chic - Good Times
Number 1 song from August 18th-24th, 1979 (1 week)


Havoc's Grade: D
Chic took the lyrics and rhythm from the Depression-era 1929 number by Milton Ager "Happy Days are Here Again" for this song, supposedly so as to comment on the late-70s economic troubles. I'm not sure that made it through, honestly, as the song is remembered today as the forgettable and inoffensive disco-party number that Chic disguised it as. And that's all there really is to say about it.



The Knack - My Sharona
Number 1 song from August 25th-October 5th, 1979 (6 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: C
I'm sure I'll get pilloried for this one, as My Sharona is one of the only non-disco songs of the year, and a well-regarded bit of power pop history. I simply don't like the stutter-style of the song, and I really don't care for random, un-necessary solos that take up half the runtime. The song is simply not interesting enough beyond the fact that it isn't everything else from that year, and that's only enough to get you so far.

Though apparently it's enough to get you to the number 1 song of the year. Go figure.



Robert John - Sad Eyes
Number 1 song from October 6th-12th, 1979 (1 week)


Havoc's Grade: D
A boring soft-rock ballad, instantly forgettable, which manages to sound like a karaoke version of itself. Entirely useless.



Michael Jackson - Don't Stop 'til you Get Enough
Number 1 song from October 13th-19th, 1979 (1 week)


Havoc's Grade: D
I had honestly forgotten that this song was from Michael in his pre-Thriller days. The era of Michael's absolute dominance of the pop charts is coming, but meanwhile we have this little taste of disco-funk to tide us over. Frankly, I'm not a fan. It's just nothing but forgettable beats and unintelligible lyrics repeated ad nauseum while Michael, not yet the perfectionist of the 80s, dances sloppily over abstract shapes. No thank you.



Herb Alpert - Rise
Number 1 song from October 20th-November 2nd, 1979 (2 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: C
I was all set to hate this song, but as it played, honestly, it started to grow on me. It's nothing revolutionary by any stretch of the imagination, but Alpert's trumpet is actually a very good match for the disco-funk beat and the entire thing has a nice , relaxed feel to it that I found myself rather unconsciously grooving to.

Oh and speaking of nice relaxing grooves, this song was used as the theme to a rather infamous rape on the show General Hospital. You know, for relaxation!



M - Pop Muzik
Number 1 song from November 3rd-9th, 1979 (1 week)


Havoc's Grade: C
Disco, at this point, was not dead, but this is one of the first indications as to what would come to replace it, the very first synth-pop New Wave song to hit number 1. It's... okay I suppose, certainly a different sort of thing than the songs that preceeded it. But Pop Muzik's influence was greater than its qualities, and even U2 wound up covering this, the first song that can properly be called part of the landscape of the 80s.




The Eagles - Heartache Tonight
Number 1 song from November 10th-16th, 1979 (1 week)


Havoc's Grade: C
Heartache Tonight is a better song than I remembered it being, an ode to Sam Cooke which would later be covered by Conway Twitty of all people. It's not a spectacular song, but it's solid enough to merit a place amidst the Eagles' other classics, and it, along with the previous song, can be seen as the beginning of the end for Disco. Neither this song nor the previous one were by themselves good enough to bring Disco down, but they represent, as in 1963, a generalized search for a new sound and a new thing in the waning days of the 1970s, something which would take a few years to find its place but would eventually produce wonders...



The Commodores - Still
Number 1 song from November 17th-23rd, 1979 (1 week)


Havoc's Grade: D
I don't hate Lionel Richie, but this song is slow even by the low standards of the Commodores. It's got some virtue as a soft piano ballad, I suppose, but I simply can't get behind a song this slow unless there's a particularly sentimental note to it, and this one just can't muster the necessaries. I might have taken pity if it had been shorter, but it's five damned minutes long. Too much.



Barbara Streisand & Donna Summer - No More Tears (Enough is Enough)
Number 1 song from November 24th-December 7th, 1979 (2 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: D
Enough is indeed enough. This song takes forever to get going and hasn't got enough of interest once it actually is. I wouldn't say I HATE this song, but it doesn't have anything to command the attention, not even once it gets running, nor even at a ten second sample.



Styx - Babe
Number 1 song from December 8th-21st, 1979 (2 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: D
Even my patience has its limits. This song, Styx' only number 1 hit, is emblematic of why so many people regard Styx as a joke. A slow-paced easy listening ballad, this song was destined from the start to make the rounds of lite rock stations for the next thirty years, which is precisely what it did. Styx was always a strange band, and would go on to get stranger, but little of what made them unique is audible here.



Rupert Holmes - Escape (The Pina Colada Song)
Number 1 song from December 22nd, 1979-January 4th, 1980, January 12th-18th, 1980 (3 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: D
This song is stupid. I don't think I'm turning any heads by saying that, and while I don't regard it with utter revulsion that some do, I have very little use for it, being a rather stupid version of what the blue-hair crowd regards as a "risque" song. This is a viewpoint shared by Rupert Holmes himself, who said once that while he was happy that the song made him famous and wealthy, it also overwhelmed the rest of his career, ensuring that he would be known for "an empty-headed song about a drink that tastes like cough medicine."

And on that wonderful lounge note, we bid adieu to the 1970s, in favor of my favorite decade of all...







Supplemental Songs

But of course Disco, and its replacements, was not the only thing on offer in 1979. These are the gems that were, in someone's infinite wisdom, kept off the charts:



The Village People - Y. M. C. A.
1979 Billboard Top 100 position: 8


Havoc's Grade: B
Anyone who doesn't like YMCA even a little bit can kiss my ass. This is one of the most enduring legacies of the Disco age for a reason, to say nothing of its popularity in Gay circles. Yes, the lyrics are filled with racy double-entendres, but what of that? It's not like the rest of music in 1979 was squeaky clean and I don't hear anyone complaining about that. But most importantly, the song is simply catchy as all hell. The powerful beat, the simple bass line, the excellent singing from frontman Victor Willis... it all comes together just right. This song is awesome. Stow your hipster glasses.

Oh, fun fact? The actual YMCA actually sued the Village People for defamation when this song came out, afraid that their brand would be tarnished by the massive number of hidden homosexual references and double-entendres. Then they realized that A: They would lose, and B: The popularity of their brand exploded thanks to the song. Now they use it as their corporate theme song.



Charlie Daniels Band - Devil Went Down to Georgia
1979 Billboard Top 100 position: 50


Havoc's Grade: B
Fire on the Mountain, Run boys Run!

I had no idea this song was so recent. Devil went down to Georgia is a sort of survey of Appalachian folk music, referencing everything from traditional ballads from the 19th century to The Animals' House of the Rising Sun. The song has a bit of all-buildup-little-payoff thing going on, but it's still a solid bluegrass piece, instantly recognizable and a hell of a lot of fun.



The Police - Message in a Bottle
1979 Billboard Top 100 position: DNQ


Havoc's Grade: B
The Police at the height of their Reggae-Rock, Post-Punk roots, Message in a Bottle might be the best work they ever did in the 1970s. The Police were always something of a strange band, and would go on to get bigger still, but this is still a fine, fun song, and a welcome preview of better ones to come.



Meatloaf - Bat Out of Hell
1979 Billboard Top 100 position: DNQ


Havoc's Grade: A
You know how I mentioned that Paradise by the Dashboard Light while awesome, was not the pinnacle of what Meat Loaf and Jim Steinnman would go on to achieve? Well this is what I meant. Bat Out of Hell is one of my favorite songs of all time, a soaring, nine-minute operatic rock anthem derived from equal parts Bruce Springsteen and Alfred Hitchcock (yes). Exploding with energy, this is the sort of song that leaves everyone, the band, the audience, and all others concerned, dead on the floor at its conclusion, sapped and drained of all energy. The very definition of an epic song, Bat Out of Hell may or may not be Meat Loaf and Steinnman's best work, but it's a song nobody who's ever heard it can possibly forget. To quote the editor in chief of Q, "It sounds like it was beamed in from another planet."



The Village People - Go West
1979 Billboard Top 100 position: DNQ


Havoc's Grade: B
I honestly had no idea that the Village People wrote this song, as the only version I was familiar with was the Pet Shop Boys' version, but while that one was an anti-communist new wave piece, this one's a disco track idealizing San Francisco as a Gay Mecca. I'm not quite as fond of this piece as the aforementioned one, but then I'm a New Wave fan at heart. This song does still showcase the brand of pop-disco that was their strongest suit, and I can always use some more of that.



AC/DC - Highway to Hell
1979 Billboard Top 100 position: DNQ


Havoc's Grade: B
I'm of mixed mind on AC/DC, as some of their songs just tend to amble along despite the rock guitars. That said, Highway to Hell is one of their better songs, and it would seem wrong to leave them off this list as a result.



The Ramones - I Wanna Be Sedated
1979 Billboard Top 100 position: DNQ


Havoc's Grade: B
A great exemplar of early Punk, this might be my favorite Ramones song, a wonderful slice of early-80s pop-punk, before the Punk movement went completely off the deep end.



The Clash - London Calling
1979 Billboard Top 100 position: DNQ


Havoc's Grade: B
A harsh, apocalyptic, polemical rant in the form of a punk rock song, London Calling is unquestionably The Clash' greatest work, laden with minor chords, incoherent screams, and morse code signals for help, all without turning into some kind of random insanity. I wouldn't say I LOVE London Calling, but it deserves a place in the pantheon of songs at the turn of the decade.



Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band - Old Time Rock & Roll
1979 Billboard Top 100 position: DNQ


Havoc's Grade: A
I've literally never met anyone who didn't like this song, a classic throwback-style Rock and Roll song that hearkens back to the old days of classic rock, before the endless bifurcations that divided it among all the various genres. Immortalized in Risky Business, this song is just a massive amount of fun, and on top of that argues against hipsterism in favor of appreciating the classics, no matter what anyone thinks. I could hardly object to that sentiment.


Other noted songs from 1979:
Randy VanWarmer - Just When I Needed You Most
Kenny Rogers - The Gambler
The Village People - In the Navy
Sister Sledge - We Are Family
Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band - We've Got Tonight
The Buggles - Video Killed the Radio Star
The Captain & Tanille - Do That To Me One More Time
Cheap Trick - I Want You To Want Me
Blondie - One Way or Another
The Sugarhill Gang - Rapper's Delight
Michael Jackson - Rock With You
The Police - Roxanne

[LadyTevar]

Well, I thought that 79 ended with a bang. All these new "rock" songs that were just amazing to hear, as well as hearing my dad gripe about how much it sounded like cats mating.

[Lys]

Havoc's project has made me seriously doubt my ability to recognize disco when I hear it. I keep being surprised that all these familiar songs being disco. Not upset or anything, nothing wrong with the genre, I just never thought of Dancing Queen and I Will Survive, among many others, as being disco. I'm starting to think my mental criteria for what is and isn't disco consists entirely of whether or not I've seen people disco dancing to it. Staying Alive looms large in that category.

I'm disappointed you managed to go through the 1970s without mentioning Jethro Tull even once. If nothing else, Heavy Horses belongs in the 1978 supplemental list. It's one of the most beautifully melancholic songs ever, having an emotional weight to it that just penetrates to your soul and bowls you over completely. A similarly weighty song is Gordon Lightfoot's The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which somehow failed to make the 1975 supplemental despite it being made out of distilled melancholy delivered with tremendous emotional impact. These two songs number among a very few, perhaps four or five, have actually moved me to tears.

Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?

Gets me every damn time.








On the subject of 1979, I do not comprehend how Styx's Babe made it to number one, but the best song of the year, also by Styx, only made it to #16. Havoc, of course, does not deign to give it a mention, so I suppose it's up to me. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you one of the best rock songs ever written:

Well, I thought that 79 ended with a bang.

Yeah, there was a bang all right. The 35th anniversary's coming up in a couple of weeks, actually.

[General Havoc]

Dancing Queen and I Will Survive are absolutely disco songs, particularly the latter, which is regarded as one of the great classics of the genre. Disco is indeed a bit hard to define at its fringes, as it wound up being applied to all sorts of dance music from the late 70s, but those two are firmly within the umbrella.

In fairness, I didn't expand my supplemental list to non-top-100 songs until late in the decade, which is probably why some of these things aren't there. Also, I am, in all candor, not a big fan of Jethro Tull. And since I only call out Supplemental songs that stand out to me somehow, songs I don't care for or don't recognize at all will not be appearing. There are well over three hundred songs per year otherwise, and I'd rather get to 1983 some time before the heat death of the universe :)

As to the songs you brought up, my position is as follows:

Jethro Tull - Heavy Horses


Havoc's Grade: C
Honestly, I'm being nice. I get it, believe me, but to me, the song is just too disjointed and far too long. I like mournful fake-celtic ballads as much as anyone, but I just don't get anything from this song. Which is fine.



Gordon Lightfoot - Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald


Havoc's Grade: B
I didn't much care for this song when it started, as, for one thing, it doesn't sound much like Gordon Lightfoot as I've come to know him. But over the course of its runtime, the pace and evenness of the song grew on me. I wouldn't call it a stone classic, but it's a very nice little ditty about a lost vessel on the Great Lakes.



Styx - Renegade


Havoc's Grade: C
I'm sorry, Lys. This thing just doesn't hook me the way the great classic rock songs of the 70s do. Compare this thing to More than a Feeling or Layla or even Styx' own Come Sail Away and it comes off sounding very flat by comparison. It's certainly not a bad song, it's well put together with excellent guitar solo work, but one of the greatest rock songs ever it is not.

Yeah, there was a bang all right. The 35th anniversary's coming up in a couple of weeks, actually.

Ah, Disco Demolition Night. What an abject catastrophe that was. And yet so emblematic of the era...

[Lys]

In fairness, I didn't expand my supplemental list to non-top-100 songs until late in the decade, which is probably why some of these things aren't there. Also, I am, in all candor, not a big fan of Jethro Tull. And since I only call out Supplemental songs that stand out to me somehow, songs I don't care for or don't recognize at all will not be appearing. There are well over three hundred songs per year otherwise, and I'd rather get to 1983 some time before the heat death of the universe :)

I can see why you would want to pare things down a little. There is so much iconic music that came out of the 70s, it's amazing once your really start thinking about it. I mean, here's another really good song you missed. It's instantly recognizable to most people, hit #12 in the Hot 100, and was called the best song of 1976 by Rolling Stone magazine.



We could probably spend all day digging up these kinds of songs that did well in the charts, are generally well regarded, and yet you didn't mention because there's just so damn many. I mean, I wasn't going to mention Blue Oyster Cult because their best album, Fire of Unknown Origin, isn't until 1981, but they have some gems scattered throughout the 70s, and Don't Fear the Reaper is the best those.

I'm sorry, Lys. This thing just doesn't hook me the way the great classic rock songs of the 70s do. Compare this thing to More than a Feeling or Layla or even Styx' own Come Sail Away and it comes off sounding very flat by comparison. It's certainly not a bad song, it's well put together with excellent guitar solo work, but one of the greatest rock songs ever it is not.

I always considered Renegade to be 80s heavy metal, even though it's technically late 70s hard rock. I remember when Marina introduced it to me she declared it to be the best rock song ever, though I don't know if she still holds that opinion as she can be temperamental in her tastes. Still, I consider it the best thing Styx ever did, as it has real emotional gravitas and tells an interesting story, whereas Come Sail Away is just as silly song that's fun to listen to. You might actually notice that as a big difference in how we evaluate songs, you care a lot more for the musical aspect whereas I focus on emotional impact. If nothing else, it makes you the more consistent reviewer, since my emotions have this habit of randomly running every which way. Like that time I spent two days obsessed over some mediocre 60s rock song that I can't even remember now.

[General Havoc]

Ah, Blue Oyster Cult. Definitely their best song, this one, and had I known it hit in 1976 I would have thrown it onto the Supplemental list as it's definitely worth a B grade, my cuttoff point for supplemental songs. But once again, I didn't see it because Don't Fear the Reaper did not even make the year-end hot 100 list, from whence I was taking my supplemental lists, nor did it make the rather arbitrary lists of other notable songs that hit that year. Probably it should have. But I am dependent on these lists ultimately because I do not know every song that ever existed. You will, for instance, notice a distressing lack of The Who on my lists. That's because by the time I noticed I had missed them, it was too late.

I'm now using a much more comprehensive list, and have been since 1978, but even so, there will be songs missed. Anything I considered and discarded will appear on my "Other notable songs" list of brief mentions. Anything that isn't there at all is likely a song I have either never heard of or didn't see.

Such is life.

[General Havoc]

1980
Yearly GPA: 1.846





It may not look it from the first few songs, but 1980 gets things started surprisingly well, all things considered. The early, pre-Thriller 80s are not fondly remembered and for good reason, but all manner of genres came into their own in the 80s, not just Pop, and many of those are on display here. If nothing else, this year showed off some variety in terms of which songs made the top of the charts, and that's never a bad thing.



KC & The Sunshine Band - Please Don't Go
Number 1 song from January 5th-11th, 1980 (1 week)


Havoc's Grade: D
This song was so boring it broke up the band a week later. I kid, I kid, but it's not a good sign when the Mike Posner cover of your song is actually an improvement. This is an interchangeable love ballad, the sort of which the early half of the eighties were well supplied with.

Not the way I wanted to start the new decade, but that's life.



Michael Jackson - Rock With You
Number 1 song from January 19th-February 15th, 1980 (4 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: D
Michael Jackson's first hit of the decade he would come to define is... not very good. Rock With You is one of the last great Disco hits, and whatever you think of Disco, it deserved to go out better than with this boring R&B hybrid song. Michael isn't awful here, but his own defined sound would come to be much better than this.



Captain & Tennille - Do That To Me One More Time
Number 1 song from February 16th-22nd, 1980 (1 week)


Havoc's Grade: D
This song has a recorder solo. Do I need to say anymore.

Easy Listening is going to be with us for a while, guys. The first three or so years of the 80s were a pretty fallow period for music, as New Wave and Hair Metal and all the rest of the glorious excesses of the decade were still gathering themselves. Be prepared.



Queen - Crazy Little Thing Called Love
Number 1 song from February 23rd-March 21st, 1980 (4 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: C
I love Queen, but this is far from their best. Freddie Mercury's Rockabilly credentials are not particularly strong, and his attempt to imitate Elvis, while it sounds authentic, just serves to remind me why I was never a huge fan of his in the first place. Queen did better when sticking to their own style of orchestral glam-rock, not this. Still, the song certainly isn't bad, just fairly inconsequential.



Pink Floyd - Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)
Number 1 song from March 22nd-April 18th, 1980 (4 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: A
Pink Floyd's most enduring masterpiece, Another Brick in the Wall is one of the finest Prog Rock songs ever written, a sparse, haunting piece that mixes Disco beats with an electric guitar overlay that could be ripped straight from the Eagles, and yet winds up sounding like something wholly unique. Famously impossible-to-work-with Roger Waters told producer Bob Ezrin to fuck himself when he suggested using a children's choir for the second verse, a decision I can only hope he came to regret. Whether it sounds like the rest of Pink Floyd or not, this song is one of the greats, a welcome addition to an uneven year.



Blondie - Call Me
Number 1 song from April 19th-May 30th, 1980 (6 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: B
I'm just not a Blondie fan, but repeated listening made this one grow on me. It's all in the underlining bass riff, a wonderfully strong piece of hard dance-rock (if you can have such things), and a verse structure that builds wonderfully, and while I'm not very fond of the chorus, it's not enough to push this song below the water. I've certainly heard FAR worse songs of the year.

Oh, didn't I mention? This was the biggest song of 1980. Now do you see why I couldn't wait to get to this decade?



Lipps Inc. - Funkytown
Number 1 song from May 31st-June 27th, 1980 (4 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: C
Funkytown is one of the most mercilessly catchy songs of the early 80s, a disco-funk-synth-pop (yes) number whose tagline as it were is instantly recognizable. I admittedly don't have a lot of use for it beyond about 30 seconds or so, but it's still a very solid, classic piece, considerably better than the rock cover that would surface some seven years later.



Paul McCartney - Coming Up
Number 1 song from June 28th-July 18th, 1980 (3 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: D
Well I'll say this for McCartney, he finally decided to change things up. Not that I'm fond of this over-synthed piece of bubblegum ephemera, but it's a step in the right direction. John Lennon, shortly before he was murdered, credited this song as getting him to come out of retirement and begin songwriting again. If only...



Billy Joel - It's Still Rock and Roll to Me
Number 1 song from July 19th-August 1st, 1980 (2 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: B
Billy Joel trolls punk and new wave. No seriously. This song was written as a spiteful slap back at music critics and 'auteurs' who cared more about a band's look and genre allegiance than whether their music was any good, or even what it sounded like. It's a wonderful little minimalist piece, complete with sax solo (a staple of the 80s). I really like it.

Oh, fun little fact. I believe this is the first number one hit to be covered by Weird Al Yankovic. Listen in. It's quite a number.



Olivia Newton-John - Magic
Number 1 song from August 2nd-29th, 1980 (4 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: D
And just when I thought there was something good going on this year, here comes Olivia Newton-John to spoil my party. If I'm being brutally honest, this song isn't AWFUL, but it's just got nothing particularly good about it. Of course what do you expect from a song that headlined the Xanadu soundtrack, a movie that starred Newton-John herself. I've heard worse certainly, but there's nothing really transcendent about this song, even though it does vaguely resemble songs I would like later in the decade.



Christopher Cross - Sailing
Number 1 song from August 30th-September 5th, 1980 (1 week)


Havoc's Grade: C
I... like this song. I can't help it. I remember listening to it at the age of about five. I found it soothing then and I find it soothing now. This is the way soft rock is supposed to work, evocative singer-songwriter pieces that produce emotional resonance not through pounding riffs and drums but through atmospheric sound. Yes, I'm sure most of you were put straight to sleep by this song, but this is my list, dammit.



Diana Ross - Upside Down
Number 1 song from September 6th-October 3rd, 1980 (4 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: D
GO AWAY DIANA ROSS!

Okay, yes, this isn't actually an awful song, but it just meanders and goes nowhere, you know, like every damn song she ever made? I'm just so tired of her cloying tee-hee asides to the audience and her fake non-singing disguised to sound like singing and the lethargic beats and music she layers it all over. Enough.



Queen - Another One Bites the Dust
Number 1 song from October 4th-24nd, 1980 (3 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: C
Queen's great contribution to CPR training worldwide, Another One Bites the Dust is a decent song, but I've never thought it was a great one, perhaps because I always preferred Queen at their most bombastic. Supposedly this thing became a single because Michael Jackson advised Freddie Mercury to release it as such. I like the relentless beat and bass line of the thing, but it always seemed to be a prelude to some other, bigger song that never arrived.



Barbara Streisand - Woman in Love
Number 1 song from October 25th-November 14th, 1980 (3 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: C
So... we're now getting into the era where there are a number of light rock, love ballad-esque songs that I actually... like. Perhaps this is because I grew up with them playing on the radio. Perhaps this is because they are of higher objective quality than the ones that preceded them. Perhaps I have bad taste. But this is something that will be with us for the next two decades, and so I'd better get used to embarrassing myself before you ritually with some regularity.

In the case of this song, I actually think this is one of, if not the only Streisand song that's actually good. It starts out slow admittedly, but the sheer size of it covers many ills by the end. With female ballad singers like Streisand (or others), I find that I like the song considerably more if it goes all-out rather than trying to be mincing, cloying, or restrained. A sense of desperation, importance, gravity, all help when it comes to selling a song like this, and while this is hardly the best example (at all), it's the first of a number that I expect to see that will provide endless hilarity to all of you going forward.



Kenny Rogers - Lady
Number 1 song from November 15th-December 26th, 1980 (6 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: D
I damn near failed this one entirely, a boring Lionel Ritchie-written ballad that doesn't go anywhere and accomplishes nothing but proving that Kenny Rogers couldn't really sing. It has enough residual promise during some of the restrained earlier verses that I can't quite condemn it forever, but it's nothing to go hunting for.

Of course, this song was ranked number 10 for the entire decade, so go figure...



John Lennon - Just Like Starting Over
Number 1 song from December 27th, 1980-January 30th, 1981 (5 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: C
John Lennon was murdered on December 8th, 1980. By the end of the year, his last single had hit number one and would not relinquish the spot until the end of January of the next year. And while the success of this song was certainly influenced by his untimely demise, it's not an... awful song. Certainly not by the standards of former Beatles' solo work. I don't know if it served as a "fitting coda" to Lennon's career or not, but it has a place in music history, and is perhaps worth a listen, if only to honor one of the men who shaped music as we know it.








Supplemental Songs

So with a reasonably good year under our belts to kick off the decade, shall we see what else was cooking around in 1980 that did not manage to break through?



Bette Midler - The Rose
1980 Billboard Top 100 position: 10


Havoc's Grade: B
I did mention a number of highly embarrassing ballads, didn't I?

Actually, no. No, this one I do not think I shall take embarrassment over. I think this time I shall simply state that this song is an extremely emotional piece, sung to absolute perfection, and filled with deeply personal resonance that I shall neither explain nor apologize for. The headline track from the 1980 movie of the same name based on the life of Janis Joplin, this song basically made Bette Midler, who was always a far more talented singer than the majority of her contemporaries. And if Conway Twitty thought it was good enough to cover, then I think it's good enough to praise here.



Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band - Against the Wind
1980 Billboard Top 100 position: 51


Havoc's Grade: B
Probably Bob Seger's greatest hit, Against the Wind has a wonderful sense of place to it, and resembles, non-coincidentally, some of the Eagles' greatest hits. And while I'm always sort of waiting for it to break into the heights of the great Singer-Songwriter pieces, it's still an extremely solid piece, one of the better Heartland Rock pieces to be had from that era.



Air Supply - All Out of Love
1980 Billboard Top 100 position: 55


Havoc's Grade: D
... wait... wait no. No this isn't right...

Andru Donalds - All Out of Love
1999 Billboard Top 100 position: DNQ


Havoc's Grade: B
That's more like it.

Yes, this is cheating a bit, but I knew I wasn't going to get a chance to touch this song when the cover came around, so I decided to drop it here, if only because it illustrates the point that even famously bad songs can be salvaged by a change of genre and a better singer. Maybe you hate the remake too, and that's fine, but you have to admit it's at least a shade better than Air Supply's version, don't you?



Bob Marley & The Wailers - Buffalo Soldier
1980 Billboard Top 100 position: DNQ


Havoc's Grade: B
I wasn't sure what to do with this song, as it came out this year, but wasn't released as a single until 1983. I ultimately decided to place it here, as I wanted to have something on the list this year I didn't have to be embarrassed about. Buffalo Soldier is one of Marley's greatest songs, a highly listenable piece that remains one of my favorite Reggae songs.

Oh, and as a nice little note, Vanilla Ice covered this song. Think about that.



Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb
1980 Billboard Top 100 position: DNQ


Havoc's Grade: B
This is not Floyd's greatest song, nor their greatest of the year, but it's still a fine, moody prog classic, off one of the weirdest album-films ever conceived of. I can't exactly call myself a die-hard Pink Floyd fan, but I can appreciate it for what it is.



Ozzy Osbourne's Blizzard of Oz - Crazy Train
1980 Billboard Top 100 position: DNQ


Havoc's Grade: A
Listen to that riff. LISTEN TO IT! That is one of the great riffs in Metal, and this is one of the great songs. Ozzy was probably never better than he was here, and this song has all the hallmarks that make early 80s metal great. I don't have much else to say about this song except that it rocks. Go forth and be rocked.



AC/DC - You Shook Me All Night Long
1980 Billboard Top 100 position: DNQ


Havoc's Grade: A
Oh and speaking of rocking the hell out, this song is, in my mind, AC/DC's undisputed best work, a wonderful anthemic rock song that just blows the roof off anywhere it plays, at least in my experience. I'm sort of lukewarm on AC/DC overall, I kind of think most of their songs sound the same, but this one is a BIG exception.



Other noted songs from 1980:
Air Supply - Lost in Love
Christopher Cross - Ride Like the Wind
Billy Preston and Syreeta - With You I'm Born Again
Barbara Streisand & Donna Summer - No More Tears (Enough is Enough)
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Don't Do Me Like That
Pat Benetar - Heartbreaker
MASH - Suicide is Painless
Blondie - The Tide is High
Motörhead - Ace of Spades
Hall & Oates - Kiss is on My List
AC/DC - Back in Black
Bob Marley & The Wailers - Chant Down Babylon
Willie Nelson - On The Road Again
The B-52s - Rock Lobster
Frank Sinatra - New York, New York
Pat Benetar - Heartbreaker
The Pointer Sisters - He's So Shy
The Vapors - Turning Japanese
The Romantics - What I Like About You
Tom Waits - Jersey Girl
James Ingram - Just Once

[White Haven]

I have a very difficult time seeing how you can score Comfortably Numb over Another One Bites The Dust.

[General Havoc]

Fairly easily. Comfortably numb and Another One Bites the Dust are completely different songs, and I simply enjoy the vibe of the former more. I think Another One Bites is too simple, flat out. Queen were at their best when doing massive glam-pop overtures, not minimalistic beats. Just my opinion.

[LadyTevar]

Fairly easily. Comfortably numb and Another One Bites the Dust are completely different songs, and I simply enjoy the vibe of the former more. I think Another One Bites is too simple, flat out. Queen were at their best when doing massive glam-pop overtures, not minimalistic beats. Just my opinion.

If this means I see "Flash Gordon" rated higher than "Highlander", I'll be upset

[Lys]

]AC/DC - You Shook Me All Night Long
Oh and speaking of rocking the hell out, this song is, in my mind, AC/DC's undisputed best work, a wonderful anthemic rock song that just blows the roof off anywhere it plays, at least in my experience. I'm sort of lukewarm on AC/DC overall, I kind of think most of their songs sound the same, but this one is a BIG exception.

Bollocks, AC/DC's best song is Back in Black, followed by Thunderstruck. Hell, I'm not even sure You Shook Me All Night Long even rates an A. Solid B for sure, but it's not a song that really stands out or I go out of my way to listen to, it's just not metal enough. Whereas Thunderstruck is pretty metal, has far better guitar work, more memorable lyrics, one of the most iconic and recognizable opening riffs ever, and really gets the blood pumping. You want to blow the roof off a place? Play that. As for Back in Black I rate it as the best AC/DC song not just for the excellent use of bass and drums, clever lyrics, exuberant singing, and triumphant tone, but also for being the most Australian song ever written. I mean, it's a gleefully cocky song about how great it is to be a criminal who has escaped hanging, sung by an Australian band. The only thing that could be more Australian than that would be Saxton Hale hunting drop bears with an Owen gun while riding a boxing kangaroo and screaming, "YOU FUCKIN' WOT MATE? I'LL GLASS YA, YA CUNT!"

[General Havoc]

I admit I forgot about Thunderstruck when making that declaration (it's from the 90s, not a period I associate with AC/DC normally), but there is no way Back in Black is a superior song to You Shook me All Night Long. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Back in Black is strongly overrated, Aussie credentials or otherwise. I cannot groove to a song whose underlying music is simply meandering, however hard they care to make it. It's not a bad song, but I'm certainly not about to heap praise at its feet.

[Hotfoot]

There are other songs I rate as being "Fucking Auzzum" from AC/DC, including Evil Walks, Highway to Hell, If You Want Blood, Shoot to Thrill, Dirty Deeds, War Machine, and a few others, in addition to Back in Black and Thunderstruck.

But Shook Me All Night Long? I mean it's good, but it's not "FUCKING AUZZUM!"

That said, let me fucking clear up some bullshit you left languishing in the other songs of note:

MASH - Suicide is Painless
A harsh song for a strange movie, but still it deserves special mention for being a song that everyone knows, but virtually nobody knows the lyrics to.

AC/DC - Back in Black
Lys covered this, but it deserves a high five.

Willie Nelson - On The Road Again
You may not like country, but god damn man this is the Red-Headed Stranger, and this is one of his best, most iconic songs.

Pat Benetar - Heartbreaker
You love the 80's, but no love here? I mean come on man.

The Vapors - Turning Japanese
Same here, it's goofy, but it's fast paced and fun.

The Romantics - What I Like About You
And I mean come on, this is like the cavalcade of 80's music here and you're just sweeping it under the rug?

But mostly, I need to take you to task because sir, you left a gaping motherfucking hole here.

Motörhead - Ace of Spades

GRADE: A

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We've had hard rock and proto metal and early metal up here, and we've finally gotten some honest to god actual metal with Ozzy and now Motorhead. Ozzy's always been trippier and has a better grasp on fantastic riffs, but here, here we have POWER. Motorhead hits you hard and fast and keeps that shit going until your head just starts to bang on its own. You know what you do with a bunch of kids that don't know how do anything but bang their heads all day? You start a revolution, Lars.

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[General Havoc]

So in response to Hotfoot's foul slanders, allow me to explain the nature of reality:

Suicide is Painless: I don't like the Doors. I've never liked the Doors. The fact that it was a cover or attached to a television show doesn't change that one bit. If someone else manages to get something out of this song, that's fine, but I get nothing from it whatsoever.

Back in Black: As I mentioned above, I simply don't care for Back in Black the way I care for Shook Me All Night Long, Thunderstruck, or Highway to Hell. It's languid, it meanders, and for all the vocal dexterity, it's just not that interesting, not to me.

On the Road Again: I've got nothing against Willie Nelson, but this isn't my taste. Travelogue songs need to be carefully calibrated to appeal to me. Compare this song to Cash's I've Been Everywhere.

Heartbreaker: Listen to it again. This isn't even close to Benetar's best.

Turning Japanese: Yes, it's certainly goofy, and yes, it's classic 80s cheese, but I'm here to call out songs I actually like, not ones that are wacky.

What I Like About You: Similar to the above reasoning, I'm not throwing something on my supplemental list simply because it has Kitch value. If I did that, we'd never get through. And What I Like About You just isn't a very good song. There's far better 80s to be had.

And as to Motorhead, well... this is just where we're gonna differ. I'm not a big metalhead, abberations like Hair Metal aside. You are. And so a song like Ace of Spades is gonna appeal to you more than me. I just hear a fairly pedestrian riff played fast while someone shouts about "the Ace of Spades". You hear the cornerstone of modern Metal. Such is life.

[General Havoc]

1981
Yearly GPA: 1.692





1981 starts off well, but near the end collapses with a couple of long-charting pieces of garbage that really serve to ruin the year. But lest anyone object too much, this year actually has quite a bit to recommend it. 1981 saw the birth of MTV and the establishment of the New Wave as major forces in music, both of which would turn out much in the way of good work as time went on.



Blondie - The Tide is High
Number 1 song from January 31st-February 6th, 1981 (1 week)


Havoc's Grade: C
A borderline case, as I don't really much like this song, but the reggae baseline for it is decent enough. I won't claim this is some kind of masterpiece, but Blondie just manages to squeak by. A common theme for Blondie it appears.



Kool & The Gang - Celebration
Number 1 song from February 7th-20th, 1981 (2 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: C
I've heard this song called "Post-Disco", which is apparently the transitional music during Disco's evolution into House. Regardless, this is a decent enough song, nothing particularly amazing, but energetic and funky enough, I suppose. I'm kind of lukewarm on it, but there's nothing particularly wrong with Celebration beyond a bit of over-polish.



Dolly Parton - 9 to 5
Number 1 song from February 21st-27th, March 14th-20th, 1981 (2 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: C
This song garnered a mass of Grammy and Academy Awards for Dolly, and frankly, I've heard worse reasons to do that. I don't love 9 to 5, but it's probably one of Dolly's better songs, and I can't begrudge it a small spot on the list.

Incidentally, this is actually one of two songs named 9 to 5 that will appear on the list this year. Go figure.



Eddie Rabbitt - I Love a Rainy Night
Number 1 song from February 28th-March 13th, 1981 (2 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: C
A pretty basic country-pop four chord song, but nothing that I'm gonna get up in arms over. I realize that this year has been pretty boring so far, not even bad enough to get mad at, but that's the way it goes in the early 80s.

This is the last time in history that two country songs followed one another on top of the pop charts. But I suppose anything is possible in the future.



REO Speedwagon - Keep on Loving You
Number 1 song from March 21st-27th, 1981 (1 week)


Havoc's Grade: B
"Instead you lay still in the grass, all coiled up and hissing..."

Anyone who doesn't like this song can kiss my ass. One of REO Speedwagon's best works, as well as one of the first real metal ballad songs of the decade, Keep on Loving You is a great song, short and flat though the ending may be. I damn near gave this thing an A, that's how much I like it. This is the sort of music I suffered through the fucking early 60s and mid-70s to get to.

Oh, by the way, this song was the very first number 1 hit to be played on MTV, 17th video shown overall. So that's another milestone upon us.



Blondie - Rapture
Number 1 song from March 28th-April 10th, 1981 (2 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: D
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the first number 1 hip hop single of all time.

No, I'm serious. The entire coda of this thing is hip hop, and it's as wretched as you'd expect. The song is nothing to crow about either, boring bubble-crap in the usual style of Blondie. I've no use for this.



Hall & Oates - Kiss on My List
Number 1 song from April 11th-May 1st, 1981 (3 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: D
This is about typical for Hall & Oates, really. Not my thing overall, as I'm not a big fan of H&O with a couple of exceptions (one of which at least we'll be getting to). There's nothing particularly WRONG with the song, save that the chorus is noodling and weak, and the song consequently doesn't work for me. To each their own. Supposedly, Van Halen sampled this song to produce Jump. Who knew?

Oh, one last bit of trivia from this group. Apparently Hall & Oates met one another in 1967 at the Adelphi Ballroom in Philadelphia when both of them showed up to a contest with their own bands. A gang shooting broke out between rival crews, and they took cover in the same service elevator, eventually discovering that they were at the same school and that they both wanted to make music. The rest, as they say, is history...



Sheena Easton - Morning Train (9 to 5)
Number 1 song from May 2nd-15th, 1981 (2 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: C
This song is nothing special, but the chorus is decent enough to warrant a listen. This is obviously the other song with the same name from this year, and like the previous one, it's not amazing, but not awful either. Perhaps that's the theme for this year.



Kim Carnes - Bette Davis Eyes
Number 1 song from May 16th-June 19th, June 27th-July 24th, 1981 (10 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: C
This song is a perfect example of music over lyrics. The sound of the thing is actually quite good in an early-new-wave synth-heavy sort of style. Yet the singer is simply not that good, attempting a sort of proto-Tina-Turner throaty style without being able to pull it off, winding up off key and poor-sounding. Yet this song was a blockbuster smash when it hit, winning Grammy awards and the song of the year moniker from Billboard. Such is life, I suppose.



Stars on 45 - Stars on 45
Number 1 song from June 20th-26th, 1981 (1 week)


Havoc's Grade: B
Well that was unexpected.

So Stars on 45 is apparently a long-running disco-house medley band from the Netherlands whose 1981 LP hit the charts conspicuously hard, hard enough to touch off a full-on medley craze for the next year, one that swept up everyone from the Beach Boys to the London Philharmonic. This song supposedly also inspired Weird Al's obligatory Polka medleys on most of his albums.

I gotta be perfectly honest, I really like this thing. It's a very basic medley, not over-processed, and yet it poaches many of the songs we've already heard without letting any of them overstay their welcomes, including a whole pile of songs I would not have expected to hear on something like this, such as Eve of Destruction. If I'm being brutally honest though, I can't be absolutely certain that this is the actual song from 1981, as it's damnably hard to figure out which one of Stars on 45's medleys are which, and this could be entirely the wrong one, but to hell with it. To the best of my ability, I've determined this is the right one, and I'm not tremendously interested in beating my head against the question further when I have a perfectly serviceable song.



Air Supply - The One that you Love
Number 1 song from July 25th-31st, 1981 (1 week)


Havoc's Grade: D
Utterly forgettable Air Supply style lite rock. Barely worth getting upset over.



Rick Springfield - Jessie's Girl
Number 1 song from August 1st-14th, 1981 (2 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: B
One of the best examples of 80s power pop, Jessie's Girl is a great song, a stomping, dance-worthy rock ode to jealousy and bitterness. It's shit like this that made me look forward to the 80s with such anticipation, the ability to scan down the charts and find a classic song I love but had completely forgotten about.



Lionel Ritchie & Diana Ross - Endless Love
Number 1 song from August 15th-October 16th, 1981 (9 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: D
Oy. This song is garbage, as was inevitable given who was singing it. A simpering, endless love ballad that simply slurps from place to place without really going anywhere. It's basically a waste of time. And it did indeed waste SO MUCH TIME.



Christopher Cross - Arthur's Theme (When You Get Lost)
Number 1 song from October 17th-November 6th, 1981 (3 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: D
Not that much else was going on, mind you. I will defend some of Christopher Cross' work, but he just sounds awful here, like he's trying to headline a big band, something he has no talent for whatsoever. His work on the verses here is particularly abysmal, as he's off-key and stammering like an idiot. Avoid at all costs.



Hall & Oates - Private Eyes
Number 1 song from November 7th-20th, 1981 (2 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: D
They're trying guys, but this is not a great song, as Hall & Oates were still trying to get their own style to work for them. I admit though, I had forgotten just how big this duo was during the early eighties, as this is the third of six number one hits they had. The other three are, by and large, better.



Olivia Newton-John - Physical
Number 1 song from November 21st, 1981-January 29th, 1982 (10 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: D
Well HERE's a video to remember...

Physical is a terrible song, that much should be apparent, and yet the video always makes me laugh, if only because it reveals everything that was the early 80s in one tight package. The leotards and leg warmers, the bad electro-pop dancing, it's all here. This song (spoiler alert) was the biggest song of the year 1982, which promises wonderful things for next year. But that's a story for another day.

This video, incidentally was the first one ever shown on Beavis and Butthead. The duo quickly turned it to the Ramones I Wanna Be Sedated. And they said those two had no taste...








Supplemental Songs

How about we see what songs I can get in trouble for praising THIS time round, shall we?



Joey Scarbury - Theme from Greatest American Hero (Believe it or Not)
1981 Billboard Top 100 position: 11


Havoc's Grade: B
Oh shut up.

Yeah, this song is the theme song of one of the dumbest TV shows that even the 80s had to offer. But it's just a fun song, so what the hell do you want with me? I know it's tainted by association and isn't that amazing to begin with, but to hell with it. I like this song. Go make your OWN lists.



Pat Benetar - Hit Me With Your Best Shot
1981 Billboard Top 100 position: 46


Havoc's Grade: B
Now this one I expect to get much less flak for. This is probably Pat Benetar's best song, a very simple little pop-rock number that showcases Benetar's best skills without overdoing things. Benetar and I have kind of a lukewarm relationship, but this song's a very good one, and worth remembering.



Juice Newton - Angel of the Morning
1981 Billboard Top 100 position: 25


Havoc's Grade: B
*Sigh*

I grew up with this song, guys. What the hell do you want from me. I'm not about to disown one of the songs I used to listen to when I was five just to pretend that my tastes are objectively good. This was my fucking era, and not everything I liked in it was defensible, but this song... I just always really liked this song.

It's not like you guys are such paragons of manly taste!



Bruce Springsteen - Hungry Heart
1981 Billboard Top 100 position: 49


Havoc's Grade: B
Not Springsteen's best song, but still a damn good piece, this song was famously called "A Great Record" by John Lennon on the very day of his murder. It was also one of Springsteen's first really big solo hits, having written many hits for other acts previous to this. I'm a huge fan of the Boss, so it was inevitable a song like this was going to wind up on my list.



Neil Diamond - America
1981 Billboard Top 100 position: 62


Havoc's Grade: B
There's no chance of me escaping this decade with my dignity intact, is there?

Yes, I like Neil Diamond. Yes, I like this song by Neil Diamond. Yes, I know that it's a bad joke to most people. Call it rose-colored glasses if you want, or mock that which has long-been mocked, I don't really care. I can't resist symphonic-rock at the best of times, and if the patriotic stuff makes you sick, then that's simply your problem, not mine. Mock away, you bastards, mock away. None of you have the balls to admit to your own bad tastes in public.



The Police - Don't Stand So Close to Me
1981 Billboard Top 100 position: 71


Havoc's Grade: B
One of the Police's better songs, Don't Stand So Close to Me is a wonderful little reggae-rock/new wave number from the masters thereof. It runs out its welcome a bit by the end, as do a lot of Police songs if I'm being honest, but I do like it, and it earns a place here.



Devo - Whip It
1981 Billboard Top 100 position: 94


Havoc's Grade: B
I don't love Whip It, but it's weird enough and interesting enough to merit a place. This song (and video) inspired enough controversy to sink a battleship with people ascribing meaning to it as varied as an endorsement of Sado-masochism, to a call for communist revolution, to a critique of Jimmy Carter. Lily Tomlin famously threw Devo off of the Midnight Special show she was hosting for having "demeaned women" with the song, and then publicly burnt copies of the album in a bonfire. Any song that can engender that reaction is worth considering, in my opinion.



Phil Collins - In the Air Tonight
1981 Billboard Top 100 position: DNQ


Havoc's Grade: B
Never released as a single stateside, this song catapulted Phil Collins' solo career into relevance. It's a macabre, atmospheric prog piece, containing what might be the most famous drum intro in all of music, and built around a series of dark, twisted chords that have inspired all manner of strange interpretations over the years, my favorite being that it's the story of Collins accusing someone of drowning a woman and then singling him out in a concert hall. Collins himself claims that 99.9% of the lyrics were spontaneously written by himself. And that that fact scares the hell out of him.



John Lennon - Imagine
1981 Billboard Top 100 position: DNQ


Havoc's Grade: B
Re-released following his murder in the winter of 1980, Imagine is regarded by many as being John Lennon's finest work. I'm of two minds on it. It's a beautiful piece of music, serene, almost hymn-like, a careful and deliberate encouragement to imagine a better world. On the other hand, the criticisms that the piece is a mealy-mouthed attempt to justify a life poorly-led have something to them, as there's something a bit tendentious about a millionaire sitting in a mansion asking people poorer than him to imagine living without possessions. Still, I've never met anyone who has literally nothing good to say at all about Imagine, and when Rolling Stone polled US listeners in 1999 as to the best music ever, Imagine was voted in as the number 1 song of the 20th century, and number 2 of all time after Ode to Joy.



Queen & David Bowie - Under Pressure
1981 Billboard Top 100 position: DNQ


Havoc's Grade: A
Under Pressure is one of the finest songs the 80s ever produced, and I'll hear no objection to this statement. The product of an extended jam session in Switzerland in mid-1981, it was a serendipitous coming together of bass line, singers, and songwriters to produce something special. I openly adore this song, and regard it as the pinnacle of both Queen and Bowie's careers.

Following Mercury's death, Bowie made a point of singing this song together with other great performers and dedicating every single performance of it to his memory. His duet with Annie Lennox stands out in my mind, but the original is where it's at.



Billy Idol - Dancing With Myself
1981 Billboard Top 100 position: DNQ


Havoc's Grade: A
A Power-pop remix of the original Punk ballad, this is probably the best Billy Idol ever got. This recording was made with Sex Pistols' guitarist Steve Jones, who proceeded to have a drug-induced seizure and pass out on the floor as soon as the recording was complete. At least it didn't impede his playing ability, as this song is simply a hell of a lot of fun, and I love every second of it.



Depeche Mode - Just Can't Get Enough
1981 Billboard Top 100 position: DNQ


Havoc's Grade: A
Depeche Mode's poppiest single might actually be their best, though I'm not sufficiently in the know of the godfathers of Synthpop to say that with authority. Still, this song, their first single released in the United States, is one of the classics of the early 80s. It might as well be the synth-side of the New Wave as far as I'm concerned.



Other noted songs from 1981:
Grover Washington Jr. & Bill Weathers - Just the Two of Us
The Pointer Sisters - Slow Hand
A Taste of Honey - Sukiyaki
Queen - Another One Bites The Dust
Stevie Wonder - Master Blaster
Steely Dan - Hey Nineteen
Santana - Winning
Hall & Oates - You've Lost that Loving Feeling
Sheena Easton - For Your Eyes Only
Adam and the Ants - Stand and Deliver
Falco - Der Kommissar
Air Supply - Every Woman in the World
AC/DC - For Those About To Rock (We Salute You)
Duran Duran - Girls on Film
Dead Kennedys - Nazi Punks Fuck Off!
Bruce Springsteen - The River
Billy Joel - She's Got a Way
Rick James - Super Freak
Kenny Rogers - Through the Years
Journey - Who's Crying Now

[General Havoc]

1982
Yearly GPA: 2.112




Welcome to the 80s, gentlemen.

1982 is a watershed year in many ways, as unlike 1978, it is not where it is because one band that I happen to like was dominating the charts, but because the all manner of good things were happening on the charts. New Wave, Hard Rock, Instrumental and Soundtrack pieces, even lite rock got into the act this year, and the result is the best year we have yet come across in since the charts were born. This was the sort of thing I was hoping and praying that we would find in the 80s, and now that we've found it, I couldn't be happier. Obviously the good times can only last so long, but for now, let us simply sit back and enjoy the glory that is popular music's greatest flowering.

Oh, something else was also born in 1982, but we won't discuss that...



Hall & Oates - I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)
Number 1 song from January 30th-February 5th, 1982 (1 week)


Havoc's Grade: B
This is what I meant when I said that H&O got better as time went on. I Can't Go For That is one of their best songs, a tightly-crafted Synth-pop jazz-funk fusion song that oozes early 80s style and charm, in addition to being one of the first sax-heavy numbers on our list. One of the most famous R&B songs of the 80s, this song was one of the only ones that Michael Jackson admitted lifting from, as he supposedly approached Daryl Hall a few years later and told him that he had taken the bass line for Billie Jean from this song because "he couldn't get it out of his head". Hall had no hard feelings, and nor should he, as Jackson, at least, put the lifted track to good use.



The J. Geils Band - Centerfold
Number 1 song from February 6th-March 19th, 1982 (6 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: B
I gotta admit, this song gets this score purely because of that opening riff. Not that the song is lackluster, but for me at least, building a song around a solid bass line is the best way to get me to like it. This would be J. Geils' only major hit, but the 80s was awash in 1-hit wonders, so that should surprise nobody. Still a great start to a great year.



Joan Jett & The Blackhearts - I Love Rock & Roll
Number 1 song from March 20th-May 7th, 1982 (7 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: B
To my surprise, I Love Rock & Roll was not actually a Joan Jett song originally. The Arrows recorded this thing in 1975 with a version that, if I'm being blatantly honest, is actually better than Jett's. That said, Jett's version is still a good song, not the best work she'd ever do mind you, but still a defiant rock anthem, justly remembered as a highlight of the early 80s. By far Jett's biggest hit, I admit that I like this song mostly because it brought the Blackhearts to my attention, but there's no denying its objective qualities.



Vangelis - Chariots of Fire
Number 1 song from May 8th-14th, 1982 (1 week)


Havoc's Grade: B
One of the most iconic instrumental themes of all time, Chariots of Fire is an extremely evocative piece. Vangelis was sued by another composer for stealing the melody, only to turn around and convince the judge that the key elements of the theme were "common to all music" a precedent which destroyed what was left of the music copyright lawsuit business after the Harrison disaster. As to the piece itself, I've long been a fan of it. There's just a wonderful sense of glory to the thing, an ethereal theme for champions and dreamers. One could do worse than that.



Paul Mccartney & Stevie Wonder - Ebony & Ivory
Number 1 song from May 15th-July 2nd, 1982 (7 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: D
*Sigh*

I suppose the good times couldn't last forever, and while Ebony and Ivory is not anything close to the worst duet in the history of music (as it was named by Blender), it's still pretty piss poor, and saccharine as all hell. I've no use for this song, and despite its popularity at the time, history would indicate that neither did anyone else.



The Human League - Don't You Want Me
Number 1 song from July 3rd-23rd, 1982 (3 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: B
A basic but very solid synth-pop song, this was the Human League's biggest hit. I was honestly surprised by how stripped down this song is relative to what I remembered, but then it has been remixed a number of times. This is a borderline grade, admittedly, but you have to take this song in the context of how well it mutates into other styles of rock, and that was enough to push it over.



Survivor - Eye of the Tiger
Number 1 song from July 24th-September 3rd, 1982 (6 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: B
Despite suffering from some pretty extreme overplay, Eye of the Tiger is one of the better movie theme songs out there, instantly recognizable and forever associated with the Rocky movies, even though it was originally written to go with a Gary Busey movie by the same name. I don't particularly love it, but I do respect the hell out of it, one of the most perfect workout anthems of all time.



The Steve Miller Band - Abracadabra
Number 1 song from September 4th-10th, September 25th-October 1st, 1982 (2 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: D
This song was a tremendous disappointment for me, for it was a song I'd never heard of from a band I liked, but it turns out it was nothing more than a bog-standard C-level New Wave/rock hybrid with weak singing and an even weaker chorus. This song almost feels limp, boring and stultified. This from the band that wrote The Joker?



Chicago - Hard To Say I'm Sorry
Number 1 song from September 11th-24th, 1982 (2 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: C
Since this exercise has apparently turned into me admitting all manner of terrible sins against music, I believe it's time to admit that I don't hate Chicago. In fact there's a number of songs of Chicago's that I actually like. This isn't really one of them, but I don't mind it at all, mostly because of the instrumentation work behind it.



John Cougar Mellencamp - Jack & Diane
Number 1 song from October 2nd-29th, 1982 (4 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: C
Mellencamp's biggest hit was a pretty good exemplar of his style of Heartland Rock. I always sort of regarded Mellencamp as a sort of combination of the less talented parts of Springsteen and Jovi, but there's nothing really wrong with this song, particularly the instrumental bridges. I can't claim to love it, but it's a decent enough little piece.



Men at Work - Who Can it Be Now
Number 1 song from October 30th-November 5th, 1982 (1 week)


Havoc's Grade: C
A middling New Wave piece elevated by its sax work, this one's a borderline case, but I can't really point to anything in particular I don't like about it. It's all right, if no better, and had a correspondingly short run. Men at Work was capable of better.



Joe Cocker & Jennifer Warnes - Up Where We Belong
Number 1 song from November 6th-26th, 1982 (3 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: D
I wanted to like this song, I really did, but the base fact is that it's just not that interesting. Joe Cocker is a soulful bastard, but the song is just mealy-mouthed sentimental crap off the Officer and a Gentleman soundtrack (a film to match). This song effortlessly put me to sleep when I was about five, and it does the same now.



Lionel Richie - Truly
Number 1 song from November 27th-December 10th, 1982 (2 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: D
I don't hate all soft, soulful ballads, guys. I've admitted as much already and will do so again, and for about forty seconds of this song, I had hopes for it, but this one turned into the sort of thing you'd hear over the P/A systems of a department store, and all trace of genuine sentiment was instantly gone. Obviously I've never been the biggest fan of Lionel Richie, and this tendency to go for wandering schmaltz instead of actual emotion is what really kills it for me. The best singer-songwriters of this era made evocative pieces that stand out whatever their tempo. Richie made elevator music.



Toni Basil - Mickey
Number 1 song from December 11th-17th, 1982 (1 week)


Havoc's Grade: C
I have never, ever, been able to figure out what the hell this song is, or who thought it was a good idea, but for sheer insanity, it gets a tick or two from me. The music video looks like something that might have been filmed in a mental asylum in Gotham City, and the song is just so... berserk, almost deranged, that can be hard to look away. The author of this song, one-hitter Tony Basil, reportedly said that "When it's a guy singing about a girl [which it originally was], it's a sweet line. But when a girl sings it, it must mean butt-fucking!" I confess that's an interpretation I never picked up on...



Hall & Oates - Maneater
Number 1 song from December 18th, 1982-January 14th, 1983 (4 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: B
Full disclosure: When I was six, I thought this song was called "Mad Demon". I still kinda wish it was.

Maneater is H&O's biggest song ever, and I can see why. Maneater is a beautiful sax-heavy pop-rock piece set over (of all things) a Reggae beat, a song that oozes style and 80s cool the way Hall and Oates always managed to do. A perfect send-off to one of the best years in number 1 history.








Supplemental Songs

Even a great year leaves plenty off the list to be found. And among the best songs of the 80s that did not make their way onto the top of the charts, we have...



Soft Cell - Tainted Love
1982 Billboard Top 100 position: 10


Havoc's Grade: B
Soft Cell's Tainted Love is actually an almost unrecognizable cover of a 1964 soul flop by Gloria Jones. Completely torn apart and pieced back together, this song is unique even by the standards of the 80s, and its video is one of the creepier things MTV was showing in its first, fledgling months.



Willie Nelson - You Were Always on my Mind
1982 Billboard Top 100 position: 22


Havoc's Grade: B
The Red-Headed Stranger does not have the same rules as everyone else, and a song like this, which could easily have been nothing more than another boring slow-ballad are elevated by his lack of histrionics and straightforward, grated-vocal style. Nelson won a Grammy for this song, and even I can't speak ill of it.




Journey - Open Arms
1982 Billboard Top 100 position: 34


Havoc's Grade: B
I am an unabashed Journey fan, and I'm not interested in anyone's opinion otherwise. And while Open Arms isn't their best song, nor even the best one off this album (we'll get to that), it's still a fine example of the great 80s staple, the Power Ballad. I don't regard it as one of the greatest of all time (as some do), but I do like it a great deal. Your mileage may vary.



Dan Fogelberg - Leader of the Band
1982 Billboard Top 100 position: 35


Havoc's Grade: A
Dan Fogelberg wrote this song as a tribute to father Lawrence, a musician in his own right who died barely a month after its release. It's one of the finest singer-songwriter ballads ever produced, an incredibly emotional piece, understated and reverential, unquestionably Fogelberg's finest work. I understand why someone wouldn't get much out of this song, but take it from me, the resonance is very strong. And I'll not apologize for my grade here.



Asia - Heat of the Moment
1982 Billboard Top 100 position: 40


Havoc's Grade: B
We do indeed now find ourselves in '82. Supergroup Asia's Prog debut single became one of the more famous cheesy smash hits from the early 80s, and while I sort of waffle on how much I like it, something with this strong a rock undertone can't be doing that much wrong. It does kind of just peter out, but the opening is powerful enough to cover many sins.



Journey - Don't Stop Believing
1982 Billboard Top 100 position: 73


Havoc's Grade: A+
Don't Stop Believing might be my favorite song of all time.

Written by local boy Steve Perry (it's become an anthem of my San Francisco Giants), Don't Stop Believing is a triumphant, epochal anthem of a song. It is the reason I invented the supplemental list at all. A song survey of popular music that did not include it would be a laughable joke, irrespective of the criteria used. Words cannot describe how great this song is. It does not rock the hardest, it does not display the finest guitar-work, it does not have the finest harmonies, it is simply the best. Nobody, ever, is allowed to front on Don't Stop Believing, and as proof, I offer the following statistic: Of all the rock songs that have ever been written or released, this one has sold the most single copies of any of them. Ever. In a thousand years, when children ask what Rock & Roll was, any answer that does not at least include Don't Stop Believing will be a lie.



Joan Jett & The Blackhearts - Crimson and Clover
1982 Billboard Top 100 position: 78


Havoc's Grade: B
Crimson and Clover, a cover of the 1968 Tommy James & The Shondelles song, is a version of Joan Jett we don't otherwise get to see much. Still rocking, but a bit softer than her usual, and if I'm being honest, I like this version better than the original (but then I'm a big Jett fan). An interesting 80s-rock adaptation of an old classic, it fits nicely into Jett's discography.



Joan Jett & The Blackhearts - Bad Reputation
1982 Billboard Top 100 position: N/A


Havoc's Grade: A
Some argue for I Love Rock & Roll (as mentioned above), but for my money, this is the best Joan Jett song, an explosive, punk rock anthem, the title track off the Blackhearts' 1980 album. Released as a single after the success of I Love Rock & Roll, the video for this song chronicles the many, MANY rejections Jett and her band received from record companies prior to becoming a success. I love this song, it's energy, its pace, its sound, everything about it, and in my mind, Jett never got better than this.



Modern English - I Melt With You
1982 Billboard Top 100 position: N/A


Havoc's Grade: A
Post-Punk seems to be my thing, it appears. I Melt with You, a wonderful entry in what I call "Pop-Apocalypse" music (see Nena), this was Modern English' only real hit, but it's a doozy, a high-tempo dance-beat new wave thing that I never get tired of hearing.



The Clash - Should I Stay or Should I Go
1982 Billboard Top 100 position: N/A


Havoc's Grade: B
Borderline case, but this is a decent enough song to merit inclusion. I'm not wildly fond of watered-down punk, but the song retains enough edge to get it over the top. Fun fact, the backing vocals on this song are Ecuadorian Spanish, translated by the tape operator's mother on the spur of the moment.





Other noted songs from 1982:
Quarterflash - Harden My Heart
Foreigner - Waiting for a Girl Like You
The Go-Gos - We Got the Beat
Air Supply - Even the Nights are Better
Hall & Oates - Private Eyes
The Go-Gos - Our Lips Are Sealed
A Flock of Seagulls - I Ran So Far Away
The Police - Every Little Thing She Does is Magic
The Go-Go's - Vacation
Van Halen - Oh, Pretty Woman
Kim Wilde - Kids in America
Loverboy - Working for the Weekend
Kenny Rogers - Through the Years
Van Halen - Dancing in the Street
Huey Lewis & The News - Do You Believe in Love
Duran Duran - Girls on Film
Motörhead - Iron First
Iron Maiden - Number of the Beast
Duran Duran - Rio
Billy Joel - She's Got a Way
Foreigner - Waiting for a Girl Like You

[General Havoc]

1983
Yearly GPA: 3.058





We made it, guys. We made it to the best year of all.

Obviously I can't guarantee that, but I cannot, for the life of me, imagine that any year will ever top the absolutely shattering quality of the number one hits this year. Every song with barely any exceptions is a winner this year, some guilty pleasures that I like despite their flaws, but mostly awesome songs of impeccable vintage, among the greatest songs ever written, remembered fondly more than thirty years later. It wasn't simply that this year was good, it's that it was SO MUCH BETTER than everything else around it, even the (comparatively) amazing year that was 1982. I know that too much is made of the 80s, and that rocks and shoals await, but this here is the reason I look back on the music of that decade with such fondness. This is the year of wonders. Dig in and enjoy.



Men at Work - Down Under
Number 1 song from January 15th-February 4th, February 12th-18th, 1983 (4 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: B
Men at Work's most famous (and best) song was also the occasion for one of the most infamous copyright infringement cases of all time, when Larriken Music, owner of the rights to the famous 1932 Australian ballad 'Kookabura' sued Men at Work for infringing on their copyright in 2009, 28 years after the release of the song. The resulting lawsuit was so bitter that flautist Greg Ham killed himself in despair, afraid that he would forever be remembered as a thief for having unconsciously thought of the same melody as Kookabura.

Fun fact, this song gets covered by some of the weirdest groups. Among the versions of Down Under to be found out there are the Red Army Choir's rendition (with accordion accompaniment) and a traditional Orthodox Jewish wedding song.



Toto - Africa
Number 1 song from February 5th-11th, 1983 (1 week)


Havoc's Grade: A
I unironically love Africa, Toto's greatest hit and one of the weirdest songs to grace the admittedly very weird early 80s. It's supposedly about a white kid from America dreaming about a continent he knows nothing about, and it certainly sounds like it. And yet the song has a wonderful sound to it, a unique rhythm that stands out from the other soft rock classics of the day, some form of strange world-New Wave mix, and it has been sampled by seemingly every singer in the history of time. Despite the famously awful lyrics, this song is among my favorites of the decade.



Patti Austin & James Ingram - Baby Come to Me
Number 1 song from February 19th-March 4th, 1983 (2 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: B
The theme song to long-running soap opera General Hospital, this slow R&B Love Ballad is... if I'm being brutally honest... actually pretty decent. The genre is more or less wasted on me, but this song is at least musically interesting, with a slow burning vibe to it that most songs simply try to fake, and the talents of two very talented R&B singers in Austin and Ingram. For a genre mostly comprised of simpering nonsense, this song actually manages to be emotional and sensual. I'm not gonna call it one of my favorites of all time, but it's all right in my book.



Michael Jackson - Billie Jean
Number 1 song from March 5th-April 22nd, 1983 (7 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: B
Ohhhh yeah.

Thriller was one of the greatest albums of all time, the one that catapulted Michael into the position he would never relinquish, that of the King of Pop. It's first single, That Girl is Mine, will not be appearing on this list, nor will the title track, but this song covers for all ills. With one of the greatest drum lines of all pop music, the song is a dark, sharp, desperate piece, reportedly based on several different obsessive groupies that Michael and his brothers had to deal with. The impact of this song was so gargantuan as to defy belief. His performance of this song at Motown's 25th anniversary concert instantly made him the face of popular music. It was voted the third greatest song in history by a poll of seven hundred thousand voters. Its achievement is so staggering that I can't help but respect the hell out of it. And while it's not my favorite Michael Jackson song of all time, and obviously I can't give it the best score of all, please do not assume that I'm somehow disrespecting one of the most important songs of the decade here. Billie Jean is awesome. It's just not as awesome as... some.



Dexy's Midnight Runners - Come on Eileen
Number 1 song from April 23rd-29th, 1983 (1 week)


Havoc's Grade: B
Anyone capable of explaining to me what this song is about, or even what the lyrics are, but this Celtic-New Wave Folk-rock hybrid is still a hell of a lot of fun, even if I know about six words of its lyrics. Dexy's Midnight Runners was a complex, layered band that other people are far more qualified to speak to the qualities of than I am, but nevertheless, the song is a fun one, a classic piece of 80s lore that, like so many other songs, erupted out of nowhere and disappeared just as fast.



Michael Jackson - Beat It
Number 1 song from April 30th-May 20th, 1983 (3 week)


Havoc's Grade: B
Beat It was a game-changer, arguably more than Thriller was. The best song off the Thriller album, at least in my view, this dance-rock number is actually quite unlike most Michael Jackson numbers, and the video, which I have so thoughtfully linked you all to above, was, as much as thriller itself, instrumental in catapulting Michael to the pinnacle of greatness. Van Halen performed the guitar work on this piece, and legendary producer Quincy Jones arranged it, but the driving force was all Michael, and it remains one of his finest works. Obviously I'm not giving it the highest possible score, as I think the song sort of runs out of steam somewhere around the 2/3 mark, but I have too much respect for Michael Jackson, despite all the controversy and comedy that was to come, to speak ill of this song. His best work lay ahead of him at this point (we'll get there), but this song cemented his position as the King of Pop, a position he would never really relinquish.



David Bowie - Let's Dance
Number 1 song from May 21st-27th, 1983 (1 week)


Havoc's Grade: C
I respect Bowie, but I have no idea what to do with Let's Dance, a strange disco-New Wave hybrid song that, once again, reinvented his career into something new. Supposedly it was intended as a statement against racism and prejudice, which is admirable enough, though I confess I don't get it at all from the song, which seems to be sampling the Beatles Twist and Shout. Still, there's nothing really wrong with the song, and Bowie sings it well, as he always does. I suppose when one is dealing with David Bowie, one should get used to madness like this.



Irene Cara - What a Feeling
Number 1 song from May 28th-July 8th, 1983 (6 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: A
Shut. The hell. Up.

Yes, it's from an insipid movie that should be justly forgotten. I don't care. Flashdance's one claim to fame was an incredible 80s soundtrack, and this song might have been the pinnacle of the bunch. High-tempo, energetic, infectious dance music is not something I'm going to let slide simply because the movie it was attached to was a tremendous piece of shit. I don't care how overplayed it is, or how stupid others find it. This is not the last embarrassing revelation I will be making here. I adore this song and will grade it accordingly.



The Police - Every Breath You Take
Number 1 song from July 9th-September 7th, 1983 (8 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: A
Now this song I expect far less quibbling over. Every Breath You Take is far and away both Sting and The Police's finest work, a dark, moody, twisted song about surveillance, stalking, desire, and jealousy. The video was a masterpiece of tone and feel, featuring a Sting shrouded in shadow with his slap bass, playing the signature four-chord bass line of this epochal song. Every Breath You Take is a stone masterpiece, and was rewarded for its qualities with eight solid weeks of success, song of the year honors, and a Grammy award. The Police broke up almost immediately after this song, and none of them, Sting included, would achieve this level of success again. But this song remains their most enduring legacy.



The Eurythmics - Sweet Dreams are Made of This
Number 1 song from September 3rd-9th, 1983 (1 week)


Havoc's Grade: A
Yeah, that's right, THREE A's in a row, motherfuckers. And once again, I anticipate no objections here. The Eurythmics' best work by far, Sweet Dreams is a haunting song, produced, allegedly, when David Stewart accidentally played a bass track backwards and added an analog synthesizer riff to it. The video was one of the most famous of the eighties, trading on Annie Lennox' famously androgynous appearance to produce something unique and intriguing, like a view to a strange cult whose practices concealed the mysteries of the universe. This song is infinitely fascinating, and I adore it.



Michael Sembello - Maniac
Number 1 song from September 10th-23rd, 1983 (2 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: C
I really can't hate on Maniac, a high-energy, uptempo synthpop number that's reasonably inconsequential but still manages to be pretty fun. The chorus is basically the only thing anyone remembers, but I still can't play Arkham Horror without thinking of this song every time a Maniac is spawned to kill the investigators...



Billy Joel - Tell Her About It
Number 1 song from September 24th-30th, 1983 (2 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: C
I was ready to hate this song, to be honest, but it's a better song than I remember, high energy and tempo dance rock stuff. I don't regard it as Joel's finest work or anything, but the man had something like a hundred billion songs (and counting). It will do in a pinch.



Bonnie Tyler - Total Eclipse of the Heart
Number 1 song from October 1st-28th, 1983 (4 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: B
I agonized over whether to give this song a C or a B, but if I'm being brutally, blatantly honest, I like it enough to just BARELY clear the necessary vault. That said though, I do kinda like this ludicrous piece, whose video is one of the most absurd things of the early 80s (and boy is THAT a list). The literal music video for this one is a stone classic.



Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton - Islands in the Stream
Number 1 song from October 29th-November 11th, 1983 (2 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: D
We were so close, guys, so close to a clean sweep of the entire year without a single song below a C, but the segment of the populace that likes bad music needed to be placated too. Not that Islands in the Stream is godawful, it's just a bad version of a boring song. Rogers can't sing, never could sing, and Parton, who can, just can't carry him through it. Pras' 1998 remix, Ghetto Superstar, is a considerably better song, and when I'm saying that about a late 90s cover of an early 80s song, you know something's gone terribly wrong.



Lionel Ritchie - All Night Long (All Night)
Number 1 song from November 12th-December 9th, 1983 (4 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: C
I'm not a big fan of Lionel Ritchie, to put it mildly, but I don't hate this song. In fact I didn't know it was Lionel Ritchie for a long time. A reggae-soul crossover hit for the Commodores, this song got Ritchie in hot water when it turned out the "African Creole" breakdown in the middle of the song was just nonsense gibberish he made up to sound Caribbean. I don't love this song, but I listened to it far too often on the radio without complaint to pretend that I always hated it.



Paul McCartney & Michael Jackson - Say Say Say
Number 1 song from December 10th, 1983-January 20th, 1984 (6 weeks)


Havoc's Grade: C
This is basically a bog-standard Michael Jackson song that happens to "feature" Paul McCartney, and while I prefer that to the reverse, the song is still not as good as the rest of Jackson's work off that seminal album of his. That said, the video for this one, as standard with Jackson's Thriller work, is extremely good, and I agree with the critic who said that it "turns an otherwise forgettable song into something worth watching". I think the song is more or less all right, but only just. Still, we'll take it.












Supplemental Songs

And the party doesn't stop there, friends. Even the supplemental list of 1983 was packed with good stuff.



Taco - Puttin' on the Ritz
1983 Billboard Top 100 position: 31


Havoc's Grade: B
This New Wave Synthpop remix of the 1929 Irving Berlin showtune, this song was responsible for Berlin, then 95, becoming the oldest songwriter to ever have a composition in the Top 10. I can't really put my finger on what I like about this remix so much, perhaps it's just the time-honored juxtaposition of the dark sound and lighthearted lyrics, the same thing that attracted me to the Turtles.

Incidentally, Taco, despite the name, was a Dutch act. Which may explain why he was able to get away with having actors in blackface in his music video.



Men Without Hats - Safety Dance
1983 Billboard Top 100 position: 35


Havoc's Grade: B
Ivan Doroschuk claimed he wrote this song after one too many bouncers threw him out of dance clubs for pogoing to New Wave music. He should have thanked them. Canada's offering for 1983's New Wave scene is an infectiously silly song, high-energy and with the trademark synthpop sound that I apparently love. The 80s was the era of the 1-hit wonders, and songs like this are why, the essence of a band's potential and energy condensed into a single, wonderful piece.



Phil Collins - You Can't Hurry Love
1983 Billboard Top 100 position: 37


Havoc's Grade: A
I mentioned back in 1966 that while the Supremes were decent on this song, it was Collins' version that I really loved, and here it is. Admittedly it's basically the same number as 1966, just with a more sophisticated recording facility, the tempo turned up, and most of all, no Diana Ross! Seriously, I love this song, a perfect example of someone taking the elements that made Motown great and running with them. Mock Blue-Eyed Soul all you like, it had some valid pieces in it.



Naked Eyes - Always Something There to Remind Me
1983 Billboard Top 100 position: 46


Havoc's Grade: B
A cover of Lou Johnson's minor 1964 hit, this song's synthpop rebirth is a borderline case, but I'm including it on my list because of how quintessentially 80s it is. As with several of the songs above, this was Naked Eyes' biggest and only remembered hit, but it's quite a good one, albeit not anywhere close to the best that this magical year had to offer.



Journey - Faithfully
1983 Billboard Top 100 position: 81


Havoc's Grade: B
Who wrote Faithfully is apparently something of a complex question, but it's one of Journey's classic Arena Ballads, a soulful, stripped down piece that some might not like but I regard as an excellent example of the genre.



Violent Femmes - Blister in the Sun
1983 Billboard Top 100 position: DNQ


Havoc's Grade: B
The 80s are not famous for the quality of their Alternative Rock, and I honestly thought this song was from the mid-90s, but apparently not. I do like this song, but half the reason it's on this list at all is the incongruity of seeing it here amidst the Michael Jackson and New Wave bands.



Huey Lewis & The News - Heart and Soul
1983 Billboard Top 100 position: DNQ


Havoc's Grade: B
Not one of the News' best hits, Heart and Soul is nonetheless a superb song off the Sports album, the News' finest work. Most of the singles from the album would hit the next year, but this song, though it sank without a trace when it came out, remains one of my favorite pieces of theirs, as it represents roughly the closest that Huey Lewis ever got to Hard Rock.



ZZ Top - Sharp Dressed Man
1983 Billboard Top 100 position: DNQ


Havoc's Grade: B
And speaking of hard rock, Sharp Dressed Man might be my favorite piece from the perennially bearded ZZ Top, a relentless rolling song that, among other things, is perfect highway driving music. The song's only flaw is its sheet length, the guitar solos go on seemingly forever, but it's got a wonderful, driving pace, one that I can (almost) not get enough of.



Other noted songs from 1983:
Culture Club - Do You Really Want to Hurt Me
Donna Summers - She Works Hard for the Money
Eddie Rabbit & Crystal Gayle - You and I
Hungry Like the Wolf - Duran Duran (Yes, this song does not make my cut. Go find someone else to moon over Duran Duran)
Eddy Grant - Electric Avenue
Thomas Dolby - She Blinded Me With Science
Prince - Little Red Corvette
Joe Cocker & Jennifer Warnes - Up Where We Belong
Styx - Mr. Roboto
After the Fire - Der Kommissar
Marvin Gaye - Sexual Healing
Hall & Oates - One on One
Journey - Seperate Ways (Worlds Apart)
Kenny Rogers & Sheena Easton - We've Got Tonight
Prince - 1999
The Clash - Rock the Casbah
Madness - Our House
Air Supply - Making Love out of Nothing at All
Lionel Richie - My Love
Musical Youth - Pass the Dutchie
Talking Heads - Burning Down the House
Kiss - Lick it Up
U2 - New Year's Day
Duran Duran - Rio
Def Leppard - Rock of Ages
Sunday Bloody Sunday - U2
Michael Jackson - Thriller
Peabo Bryson & Roberta Flack - Tonight I Celebrate My Love