Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Jul 16, 2011 13:04:26 GMT 1
26TH OCTOBER- TAKE ON ME- A-Ha! (3 weeks)Released twice in 1984 the song failed to impress anyone outside of their native norway, but come major investment from Warner Brothers in the US into a ground breaking Pencil sketched video which was, at the time, groundbreaking, plus a new mix and hey presto you get a US No 1. Make no mistake though "Take On Me" is a brilliant pop song. I once had a discussion in a pub about what the perfect pop song was, there were several proposals if i recall correctly "Baby One More Time", "I Should Be So Lucky" "Wannabe" but it was this track that proved less divisive than the others. Writing perfect pop is just as complicated as writing any other genre, the temptation or the tendancy for things to end up "chessy" or "irritating" precisely because they are aimed at mass approval, "Take On Me" treads that line and never oversteps it. With an instantly memorable synth line that announces its arrival and a falsetto that I couldn't possibly emulate the song has classic stamped all over it (It was finally awarded a UK no 1 status when covered by Boyband A1 in 2000) the song deserves to be remembered as one of the best No 2 hits of the decade. But lets try to get to the bottom of why it's a classic- as with all things it is both timeless AND entirely reflective of a zeitgeist. Post "Thriller" there was a greater emphasise than ever before on the pop video, obviously first and foremost there has to be the song, and whilst it has not got anything remarkable about it lyrically, it's the irresistability, the optimistic turn of phrase, its sheer joi di vivre that makes "Take On Me" great. To condense that all down to just 4 minutes is an art, and even just for the 4 minutes of this track, A-Ha! are as near perfection as anything the 80s had to offer...
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Post by iant21 on Jul 16, 2011 13:11:32 GMT 1
Haha! Isn't it great how we're all different? But Holiday is a CLASSIC!!! Always loved Crazy For You, too. Just goes to show... x
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Post by Whitneyfan on Jul 16, 2011 14:37:38 GMT 1
Holding out for a hero definitely would be in my top 100 of all-time.
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Post by evansabove on Jul 16, 2011 16:29:16 GMT 1
What a great soundtrack Footloose was which is remarkable given how dreadful the film was. Holding Out For A Hero is fantastically over the top
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Post by Earl Purple on Jul 16, 2011 23:30:42 GMT 1
"Holding Out For A Hero" was a big hit just after "We Don't Need Another Hero" by Tina Turner, which peaked at #3 just a few weeks before it. So a bit of a conflict in lyrics there.
"Take On Me" actually completes 1985, in the last few weeks no songs peaked at #2 and the next single to do so would be behind A-Ha's next single which did reach #1, and would be 11 weeks after Take On Me vacated the #2 spot.
With regards to Madonna, when "Live To Tell" comes up I will clearly take issue if you don't like that one. She had 5 #1s in my chart and that was the first of them. In the UK chart it was cruelly denied by that dreadful "Rock Me Amadeus".
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TheThorne
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Post by TheThorne on Jul 17, 2011 11:38:34 GMT 1
"Holding Out For a Hero" also featured on a long forgotten US TV Show that year. It was on BBC1 at peak time and Wikipedia claims it was called 'Cover Up' but the name doesn't ring a bell although the theme of the series does. I actually knew the song for being the theme to this show before i had heard of 'Footloose'
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jul 17, 2011 12:00:17 GMT 1
There were loads of those rubbish shows. Manimal, Bring 'Em Back Alive, Blue Thunder...
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Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Jul 18, 2011 18:45:25 GMT 1
25TH JANUARY 1986- WALK OF LIFE- Dire Straits (1 week)The odds were firmly stacked against this song being a top 10 hit. It's the third single from the "Brothers In Arms" LP which was the best selling album of the decade and which had already sold over 1.5 copies by the time "Walk Of Life" made it as a single. There must be something pretty special about this then to make it to No 2? well again not really, lyrically nothing to write home about, and though it's actually a pretty good choon (certainly one of their most commercial songs) a fair amount of the explanation for this must be the traditional January slump accompaning the lack of much new music being around which made an easier climb than normal up the charts. It has a certain finger snapping joy, and a carefree sentiment that is certainly representative of the band at this point in their career but for me "Romeo & Juliet" will always be the one song in their repertoire that just hits the right spot. What saves "Walk Of Life" is just that lightness of touch and abandonment of profundity which so much of their stuff reaches for and misses the mark, ending up as rambling dirges. Succinct, catchy, and upbeat- what more do you want in a pop hit? Actually hats off to the intro- it's fantastic and far better than what follows- though as a song it's enormously more enjoyable than 1982's "Private Investigations"
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Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Jul 18, 2011 18:48:31 GMT 1
1ST FEBRUARY- ONLY LOVE- Nana Mouskouri (1 week)
Now I think in any other year of the 80s I would be scathing about this pile of tripe, but really there is much much worse to come so it's lucky old Mouskouri for now. Believe it or not, but Mouskouri had been famous since the 60s, selling millions "on the continent" as they say, and even performed Luxembourg's 1963 Eurovision entry despite being Greek by birth. Moving through time and Mouskouri was asked to write and sing the theme to a new BBC drama called "Mistral's Daughter" and "Only Love" was born. Post the 80s the singer took up politics becoming the UN goodwill ambassador and an MEP until retirement in the early 00s, her reputed global sales are 300 Million thanks to her many recordings in other languages, all of this despite being regularly parodied by Benny Hill on his TV show.
But back to the single, yes "Only Love" is drivel, saccherine to the point of being vomit inducing. Now the only thing that saves this from the being the biggest pile of s***e that 1986 has to offer is another No 2 single which is just on the horizon, but I shan't pre-empt that, the mid 80s were a curious time and no year more so than 1986. It's a kind of transition year between the big hitting bands and boldness of the early 80's and the full on onslaught of the charts by S/A/W which 1987 brought, and as such it's a year that really doesn't have a flavour, suffice to say that confusion lets some quite bewildering records float all the way to No 2, not all of them bad but some are just perplexing and this is one of them. I've just turned 10 and I can in no way remember this and its chart run seems to indicate it didn't outstay its welcome......the only good thing I can say about it really.....
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borneoman
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love is tough, when enough is not enough
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Post by borneoman on Jul 18, 2011 19:13:25 GMT 1
funny how Aha went to #2 with Take on Me and #1 with The Sun Always... hope it had been the opposite, Take on Me is a far better song. Classic of classics. Cannot remember the A1 cover, really went to #1?? and I agree with the Crazy For You comment. It also lacked something for me and doesn't compare to other ballads like Live to Tell, aka best song of the whole 80s yes
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Post by evansabove on Jul 18, 2011 21:16:11 GMT 1
I can't recall the Nana Mouskouri song at all. It sound like the sort of ballad which would have done well in Eurovision at the time thought this is totally the wrong time of year for it. Not great but at least better than the Dire Straits monstrosity before it
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Post by Earl Purple on Jul 18, 2011 22:29:57 GMT 1
A-Ha replaced the Pet Shop Boys at #1 in the early part of 1986 so in some ways still "new romantic" as they were both synth-based bands, thus is hadn't died just yet, just that there were new players. Culture Club would return to the top 10 one more time (before the 1998 comeback).
A big year for Genesis and its members, past and present: Phil was rather quiet as a soloist but Peter Gabriel had a huge album out, Mike & The Mechanics also appeared on the scene and even Steve Hackett was involved in a hit album with GTR (primarily a collaboration with Steve Howe), an album I bought.
It is also the year The Smiths released The Queen Is Dead and Paul Simon released Graceland.
Madonna led singles-wise but I think the year will be more remembered for some important albums than it will for its singles.
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vya
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Post by vya on Jul 18, 2011 23:35:43 GMT 1
Oh I prefer "The Sun Always Shines On TV" to "Take On Me". Both great pop songs, but the first one is just that bit more satisfying....
Jim Steinman's spin-off all-female trio project Pandora's Box are worth checking out IMHO. Obviously now everyone knows their nearly-a-hit single "It's All Coming Back To Me Now" thanks to a couple of frankly inferior remakes (proof that he liked the song, though...) - but the whole EP it's on (I had the 3" CD single in snakeskin-style leather case and folded-up lyric and picture sheet...), complete with a heavy metal take on Verdi's Requiem, is well worth checking out, even if they disappeared straight after that, a couple of follow-up singles and an ignored album
Have no recollection of that Nana Mouscouri song at all either. And I don't imagine I will have any recollection of it in future either. Supremely dull and formulaic...
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mfr
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Post by mfr on Jul 18, 2011 23:46:10 GMT 1
Sales of releases on two differrent labels of Nana Mouskouri's Only Love were added together for chart purposes rather than chart them separately.
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Post by Earl Purple on Jul 19, 2011 0:12:03 GMT 1
"Original Sin" is one of my favourite albums of all time. You would probably know almost all the songs on it anyway, as several of them were then recorded by Meat Loaf or other artists. That was 1989 though so is rather random in here.
It's close to call between the first two A-Ha hits. The first is a simple pop song, the second is darker which I like but I can't dispute the simplicity of Take On Me. The example where I definitely prefer the #1 over the supposedly better known #2 is with the Verve - I much prefer "The Drugs Dont' Work" to "Bitter Sweet Symphony". But that of course is 1997.
The point I was making with my last post is that the significant hit albums of the year didn't produce top 2 hits: Genesis's "Invisible Touch" didn't even reach the top 10 until the live version in 1992, The Smiths didn't have a top 10 hit single from "The Queen Is Dead" whislt Peter Gabriel and Paul Simon both took the biggest htis off their albums to #4. For me at least, 1986 is significant for those albums plus "A Kind Of Magic" by Queen (had a #3 hit) rather than most of the singles. I think only "Holding Back The Years" which peaked at #2 in 1986, is a track from a significant album of the year, in fact the biggest selling album artist of the late 80s->early 90s.
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Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Jul 19, 2011 18:06:30 GMT 1
15TH FEBRUARY- BORDERLINE- Madonna (1 week)I like Borderline anyway, but being sandwiched between "Only Love" and "Starting Together" illustrates exactly why she became a star. Madonna was the first female pop star to truly grasp the power of the pop promo, perhaps not the first woman to understand the power of sexuality, but certainly the first to be open about her sexual needs and desires and to be agressive about them in the public arena. "Borderline" was of course a throw back to her first album and bombed in the charts of 1984 when it made No 56, but now a major star ths time around the song bounded to No 2 in early 86. Whereas "Holiday" is full of youthul exhuberance, "Borderline" is more mature and lyrically about the shaking the bonds of male chauvanism, emphasising her desire to control her own body and needs. The song is much more conservative in structure than the free flowing "Holiday", but it's the marked adultness of theme that makes this seem less like a back step than "Holiday" did, there's even a bit of interracial relationships in the video, still quite adventurous and provocative for 1984 America. In short its quite a quiet record in terms of his provocativeness, whereas "Like A Virgin" was a full on assault at sensibilities (well it was perceived as such anyway) of the time, "Borderline" was far more subtler and cleverer, and all a better record for it.....
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Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Jul 19, 2011 18:15:24 GMT 1
22ND FEBRUARY- STARTING TOGETHER- Su Pollard (1 week)Dear reader, I do try to find something good in most records really I do, but this is beyond me. Commisioned as the theme tune the BBC Series "The Marriage" (a fly-on-the-wall documentary of newly weds) the single rocketed up to No 2 without anyone really noticing. Actually, come to think of it there is a BBC connection with "Only Love" as well- is this the kind of rubbish our licence fee was going on 25 years ago? makes you thankful for "Pointless" now. Anyway Pollard had become a household name in the country by 86 thanks to her part as Peggie in the BBC (again) "comedy" Hi- Di- Hi, and had a brief brush with the charts in 1985, but this was her only other hit. Now I'm sure that Su is a lovely lady but this record is god awful. Sling a book of cliches into a song, a cringe worthy video (in which I don't even know what that pink creation she is wearing is), some meaningless twee lyrics and you might start to get there, she does manage to "Clever" with "Together" though so a point for that. When writers attempt to sing and write about love there is always danger, and whilst records like "Zoom" tread the line successfully, this runs over it, and continues far into the distance, just completely unnecessary in anyone's book. Judge for yourself if you will but it may scar you......deeply....forever....
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jul 19, 2011 18:42:55 GMT 1
Sling a book of cliches into a song, a cringe worthy video (in which I don't even know what that pink creation she is wearing is), some meaningless twee lyrics and you might start to get there... Got a bit lost. Are you talking Pollard or Madonna?
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Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Jul 19, 2011 18:50:23 GMT 1
Sling a book of cliches into a song, a cringe worthy video (in which I don't even know what that pink creation she is wearing is), some meaningless twee lyrics and you might start to get there... Got a bit lost. Are you talking Pollard or Madonna? tut tut- I know one poster who is gonna be very angry with you!
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borneoman
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love is tough, when enough is not enough
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Post by borneoman on Jul 19, 2011 19:33:58 GMT 1
love love love Madonna's Borderline <3 so good!!! her first pop masterpiece
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