As you can see from yesterday's proliferation of posts, I've gotten re-excited about blogging. I don't know how Oran "Juice" Jones's masterpiece "The Rain" popped into my head, but it did, and it got me thinking about other canonizable 1980s pop nuggets. I was born in 1972, so my taste was crystallizing throughout the 1980s. What's great about being into pop music when you're young is that you like anything. Genres don't matter as much as they will come to when you get involved in whatever scene you end up in. As I got older and pop music started to suck and college rock made inroads among the white kids (c. 1985), I pretended to like hardcore, alt rock, art rock, free jazz, show tunes, and folk at various times, because those were the genres favored by the people I was hanging out with/trying to impress. The truth was that I often liked pop, or at least poppy examples of hardcore, alt rock, etc. Sometimes you just don't want to work that hard to enjoy music, and there's nothing wrong with that.
I have a pretty expansive definition of pop. I think it's about accessibility, so it might be a big hit within a certain alternative genre that has mainstream appeal. Or it might be an offbeat album track on a massive hit record that catches the interest of the alternative kids. On my hit parade are a few songs that never made the Billboard Hot 100 but everyone in my universe knew about at some point. There are a lot of guilty pleasures, but a guilty pleasure is just as good as any other. I'm not trying to out-cool anyone here. This list is just what I came up with off the top of my head when I thought of the 1980s. I arranged them alphabetically by artist.
Historian's note: the dates in parentheses are when the song first appeared, on an album or as a single, anywhere in the world, not the date of the first U.S. chart appearance. I took the dates from Wikipedia. In several cases I was not cool or old enough to have heard of these songs when they were released, so I tried to figure out when I did hear them.
Bauhaus, "Bela Lugosi's Dead" (1979) OK, this came out a little early, and it's goth, not pop, but at my high school even future sorority girls were wearing black by the mid-1980s, so I'm counting it. Truthfully, until I started hanging with the theater kids (c. 1987), I associated Bauhaus with buildings. Pat Benatar, "Hell Is for Children" (1981) Is a 32-bar guitar solo overdoing it? Not when you're raising awareness about child abuse! Did she really say " 'pologize"?
Blondie, "The Tide Is High" (1980) The first pop song I ever liked. I heard it on the 8-track in my neighbor's maroon Jeep brand Cherokee.
Cocteau Twins, "Sugar Hiccup" (1983) This is the first of several 1980s songs I'll discuss that I was exposed to at summer camp in rural Ohio. We heard the hits over WOMP FM (pronounced "womp," never "w-o-m-p"). But the more out-there stuff was imported by suburban campers and counselors, like the ankh-wearing one with dyed black hair who listened to Joy Division, This Mortal Coil, and Cocteau Twins (c. 1987). God, she was cute. I wondered why I couldn't understand what Elizabeth Fraser was singing. She explained that it was all nonsense syllables. It turns out this was not true. Thanks, Internet, for spoiling the sense of mystery for me.
The Dead Kennedys, "Kill the Poor" (1980) Isn't that a great name for a group? The small band of skater kids in high school liked them. I think Jello Biafra would smack you if you called it pop, but I'm including "Kill the Poor" because it's poppy enough to pass muster with me (not a punk fan). It sounds like the Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop" but it's funnier and smarter. Just so there's no misunderstanding, it's satire—like Swift's "Modest Proposal," only with a neutron bomb.
Duran Duran, "The Chauffeur" (1982) Stupid sourpuss rockist Robert Christgau gave Rio a C- when it had two monster singles and this sleeper. No, "The Chauffeur" didn't have any (air quotes) "hooks" or whatever, but it did have that awesomely creepy "sing, blue silver" line. As with any DD song, no one had any idea what it meant. But if you were super cool in 1984 or '85, you'd watched the artsy black-and-white x-rated video that had (maybe) S&M (maybe) lesbians. "My daddy let me see it," said one girl at camp.
Hall and Oates, "I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)" (1981) Everyone knows this one, but I want to share my story about it. My mother sent me to social dancing lessons with a bunch of prep school morons starting in fifth or sixth grade. We learned the cha cha cha by dancing to this song...over and over. One, two, cha cha cha! One, two, cha cha cha! I should hate it, but I could never get that groove out of my head. Please, everyone, keep sampling this song.Paul Hardcastle, "19" (1985) I do hate "19," but I think it's a good example of 1980s consensus thinking about Vietnam (i.e. it was a bad thing, but the way we treated the vets was worse). Easy for you to make an antiwar song 20 years later, Paul Hardcastle! Oddly enough, this made it down to WOMP FM, and I remember a conversation between two counselors about it: "I just don't think they should be making a pop song about such a serious topic." "Well, I think it's a profound political statement." Would she have said that if she knew it was produced by Simon Cowell and what kind of stuff he'd foist on us in the 21st century?
Don Henley, "Dirty Laundry" (1982) It's about sensationalism on TV news. Kind of a dumb song masquerading as social critique (see also Paul Hardcastle). But I love it just for the first 16 bars, before the vocal comes in. What a great beat!
The Jesus and Mary Chain, "Just Like Honey" (1985) Did you know there's an alternate ending to Some Kind of Wonderful where Mary Stuart Masterson and Lea Thompson ditch the boys and go to prom together? This is their slow dance song. Gorgeous.Oran "Juice" Jones, "The Rain" (1986) Discussed in a previous post. Don't mess up that $3700 lynx coat.
Laid Back, "White Horse" (1984) What is this song about? I assume "ride the white horse" is a drug reference, but what about when they start singing about the white pony?
LL Cool J, "Big Ole Butt" (1989) They wouldn't play this (and most other hip-hop songs) on the radio, I guess because it's about big ole butts and LL dwells on cheating on his girlfriend with a Red Lobster waitress, at the Red Lobster—oh, but wait, he forgot his girlfriend works at the same Red Lobster, and then the girlfriend shows up to work!
Madonna, "Express Yourself" (1989) Before I heard this song I thought Madonna was for twelve-year-olds who wanted to wear their 32A bras out trick-or-treating. This made me realize there was something more there.
The Mary Jane Girls, "In My House" (1985) I downloaded this recently and was struck by how much it sounded like a Rick James record. Then Wikipedia informed me they were Rick James protegées.
Milli Vanilli, "Baby Don't Forget My Number" (1989) You were so shocked that two Afro-German Fabio lookalikes didn't sing on their own album that you filed a class action lawsuit? Please. You got what you deserved.
Olivia Newton-John, "Xanadu" (1981) Truth to tell, the first ON-J single I remember is "Physical," which was released the year after "Xanadu." But for me "Xanadu" is hands down the jewel of the N-J oeuvre simply because it evokes polyurethane-wheel roller skates. Here's the awesome film clip, featuring funambulists, zoot suiters doing the robot, and lots and lots of Robin Williams pants.
Nitzer Ebb, "Join in the Chant" (1987) I was into industrial? I can't believe it. But this makes the pop list because someone brought That Total Age to camp and we used to listen to it as we mucked out the stables. One lyric is "Muscle and hate!" And all these years I thought it was "Bustle and haste!" Ha ha, not really.The Pet Shop Boys, "I Want a Dog" (1988) I like the version on Introspective, although there's one on Actually. "I want a dog. A Chihuahua. When I get back to my small flat I want to hear somebody bark." Yeah, but a Chihuahua? A friend of mine once called it "music to listen to when you don't know what to listen to."
The Pixies, "Debaser"/"Wave of Mutilation" (tie) (1989) I bought Doolittle because it had a jangly little MTV hit called "Here Comes Your Man," but the rest of the album was so jarring I felt like filing a class action lawsuit. After listening to it for a while, though, I decided to start a band called Nirvana.
Rufus and Chaka Khan, "Ain't Nobody" (1983) I am so proud that this was the first record I owned. OK, I didn't save up and buy it with my own money; my dad and sister picked it up as a birthday present when the record store at the mall was out of the 45s I asked for. (Yes, I did buy 45s.) "We just grabbed it," my sis said. But I wore this one out. Even if I didn't buy it, I get credit for liking it.
Scritti Politti, "Perfect Way" (1985) Oh my god. Four and a half minutes of pop madness. Makes me want to sell 4,000 boxes of Thin Mints and then buy them back and eat them all.
Tears for Fears, "Mad World" (1982) Did you know that TFF had an album before Songs From the Big Chair? Well, they did. Sellout bastards.
T'Pau, "Heart and Soul" (1987) Until two seconds ago when I googled T'Pau I thought they must be a black Bananarama cover band doing backup vocals for Enya's sister. Sadly, I was mistaken. But I love anyone who can make me wait 1:22 for the chorus.
Whodini, "Friends" (1984) One of the first crossover rap songs at my junior high. I copied the lyrics into a notebook and practiced rhyming with a girl I knew from Sunday school. But I couldn't figure out the lyric "Couldn't trust her with cheese, let alone your keys." CheeseQuest is all about self-promotion, but why cheese, Whodini? Why not peas? Why not trees? Jeez.
