…if you want it.

Really, it is so, if you want. 

Five minutes or less: I couldn't think of what to say

Oh, the languorousness of this first single off the fifth, overall kinda meh TT album! Up to the incongruous DD-style bridge--no wonder, as with "The Reflex," Alex Sadkin produced the album/track, which Nile Rodgers came in and zhuzhed (Chic-ed?) up--it's delightful. Unlike "Doctor! Doctor!," which, when played on the radio, I would gaze up at my DD poster hung in the angled ceiling of my closet, this track was reserved for thinking about 3D humans that you'd see putting books into lockers and kicking soccer balls. The songs, Irish twins released only 11 months apart in the same year, illustrate the difference between a teen in 8th grade (and at the end of 8 long years in the same grade school) and a teen in high school. Still moony-eyed when expensive synths play exotic sounds, but with different objects of the gaze.

I was in a terrible mood today ("life seems much too long," etc.) up until (sidestepping the obvious puns) I heard this track. 

Five minutes or less: Some things will never change

Can I write a post in five minutes or less? Sure, if it's something I've heard on the radio an untold number of times, lyrics I can decipher, and that makes me feel a modicum of emotion or memory. Can inequity be addressed in a pop song? Sure, give it to rootsy-meets-Billy-Joel-future-Dead-hired-hand Bruce Hornsby (and the Range--I forgot he had a band!). 

Would an office worker ca. 1987 pause their word processing, look into the middle distance, over the shoulder holder on their phone receiver, and think about the d*ck in the silk suit, and the larger issue at hand? Maybe.

Take you far from this place and time

Today in Soft Rock Saved Me:

In what feels like the 99th hour today and yesterday of wrangling the mundane and the wild mind, this came on SiriusXM and suddenly I floated away to a white coastal house ringed by a wide porch, palms spiking and lazy trees swaying around it, the air heavy and sweet. And I look down and see my tan chest and shoulders under a white cargo top...no, a boatneck, filmy...oh, hell, it doesn't matter because I am finally in a moment that makes all the bland and monkey-minded time worthwhile, I have no worries, I have no cares, I don't have to check email, any email, I can feel the sun.

This mirage is all I have since the sun won't be back for another 120 days, really...

Could it really, really be?

Oh, you sing of love and longing, the joy and the helplessness of it, better than anyone. That sweet, easy voice--stronger and more primal than actual memory, woven into my childhood mind and heart, even if it was coming out of a tinny Toyota radio.

And then, when I grew up, and loved and longed for "sweet----wonderful you" with "your mood...like a circus wheel, changing all the time" while "waiting for the sun to come up," the words and the tone and the feeling merged and I understood what you were doing more deeply.

These Tusk songs mean more to me than the formative stuff on WLAP when I was a kid, somehow. Maybe because they are (relatively) new discoveries, made in adulthood. And "Songbird" is too unearthly to even hear outside of life events.

Somehow, because I didn't hear her singing these out of the car radio or from vintage vinyl of their perfect, signature album, the songs are mine, to me, for me, from her.

Wonder why you haven't before

I used to loathe this song. Not so much the song itself, but what it stood for, of course. The end of opaque R.E.M., cool (whatever that meant to you) R.E.M., blah blah. Now I know it was self-admittedly "stupid" and that it passes the float test for me right now: "Singer Michael Stipe has said of the song's meaning, 'It's about making decisions and actually living your life rather than letting it happen.'" 

The general synopsis at one-eight-double-o

I wish to drift in the day the way that this sounds. For TFF, this was a snippet, a throwaway experiment, a b-side with the instrumentation of "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" with a recording of British Isles' daily Shipping Forecast.

How comforting it sounds, an almost lyrical recitation of the weather on the faraway seas, intoned four times daily! A schedule, a structure, some wrangling of the uncontrollable. Speaking about the roiling ocean, but not from it, or upon it, or affected by it. Instead, issuing warnings, forecasts, affixing words and numbers to the wind and water.

Maybe Roland added this in the spirit of experimentation, making no connection to the song or its progenitor. 

But I'm glad to discover this odd and wonderful ritual, and feel its comfort while I seek to move to different sea areas.

And you don't come from this town

After five days under the big sky a mile high, fuzzy-headed and languid, this is the perfect fit, just as it was in the humid Kentucky summer in '89, when I was finally fully driving, working full-time at TJ Maxx and figuring out how to continue to live in the liberation I had during that first year of college while staying in my old room back at home. How odd to return to childhood in your last teenage year when you'd gone where you wanted when you wanted, and if you didn't go where you needed when you should have, you and you alone paid the consequences. 

At least I had the freedom of a car. Did they finally have two cars then? Must have, because I was able to take the matte-blue Toyota out at night, to work, to where I needed (and sometimes wanted) to go. I have a distinct memory of sitting at the light on Waller Avenue at Broadway, an intersection where both streets turn into other-named streets, Waller becoming Mason-Headley Road and Broadway becoming Harrodsburg Road. This must have evolved from the junction being the legal boundary of town at some point, where city streets became country roads named either after people or their farms, or the destination/terminus, where a managed thoroughfare, a part of a whole, abruptly ended and became a country highway. 

Anyway: I'm at this light, and this song is on the radio. And I'm sitting there, late in the night, waiting at a red light where the green-lit street is empty, no traffic, where, decades before, what was controlled became free. And I'm noticing that key change in guitar in the song's "doo-doodoo, doo-doo" outro, and I feel...my age. Grown. Living on the highway, not the street.

You're all that's left to hold on to

When I purchased a cassette of The Joshua Tree in November 1987 and for years--decades--of listening thereafter, I barely paid attention to side two of the album. It wasn't until a drive across West Virginia and Virginia (possibly with my sister) in the mid- to late 2000s that JT was put on and, somehow, the sounds of side two--"One Tree Hill," "In God's Country," and especially this one--merged with the ribbon of highway unspooling through the Applachian Hills. 

No wonder it sounds like a landscape: the album was inspired by their views of America, good, bad, ugly. Apparently, though, this track was such a disappointment for the band that they remixed 30 years later with some restored horn-y-sounding synths and re-recorded vocals by an older Bono.

Oh, no. This sounds flat, shiny--and with treated vocals?! Come on! Oh, I'm going to pretend I never heard this. Bono, guys, you didn't need to go back to fix something that was real, human, not tech-manipulated, but more importantly, the choices of your younger selves. 

Maybe that's why I tear up when I hear it--inexplicably, since the source material is really pretty far removed from life today. Maybe it's how I felt about Bono back then, having a poster (not this one, but like it) on my dorm room wall freshman year, my Bono For President campaign of one, how distinctly I remember the start of the Joshua Tree tour stop at Rupp Arena (23rd October 34 years ago) when I could see him emerge in the dimness from the side of the stage during the long wind-up of "Where the Streets Have No Name." I can go see him and him alone now, on a smaller stage, for a small fortune.

But, I don't want to see my hero now. I want to hear him then.

Some day we will both look back and have to laugh

I can't believe I haven't written about this one yet, but BJ's not really been in my daily orbit for a long time. Also not considered in a long time: my junior prom, for which this was the theme (song). "This Is the Time" was the theme song because it was not the students' choice by vote, "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)." Never forget: though my high school was close to the center of the horsey-preppy universe (the actual center being Sayre), we were (mostly) pretty damn cool kids. Not saying that we were Shermer High-caliber or teenage Beastie Boys- hanging-at-Danceteria cool, but this is more than I'd expect based on the high school experiences of friends who grew up in bigger, hipper places than Lexington, Kentucky.

The voting results were scuttled and the school leadership or whichever faculty worked with the prom committee provided this alternative: a mid-chart-peaking hit (that hit some five months before prom) from a guy closer to our parents' age that was destined to emanate from office desk radios tuned to lite-FM stations for years to come. 

I remember snippets of prom day/night, from the picking-up-photo-session that in the background featured my dad in a tie with his Saturday lawn-mowing clothes, dinner at the restaurant owned by my great-uncle, so everyone in my family was up in the business of this, sheer exhaustion at the end of the night (I was allowed to stay out until 1:00? Probably 1:00, surely not 2:00). The event itself, eh, proceeded like the usual dances at my high school--in fancy clothes. 

What's clearest (aside from my awesome black lace-and-taffeta, sweetheart neckline, tea-length dress custom made by my mother) is the moment worthy of the biggest screech of the needle across the jukebox record in human history: when the band playing prom, Velvet Elvis (major score to host a true indie rock band mere months before they got a label deal), stopped playing whatever song they were playing so that Billy's mellow synth chords and meditation on middle-aged love could blare over the crinolined and tux'ed crowd. 

But, damn it all, this was the right song choice. 

I know it now, because, this is, perpetually, the time.

Wouldn't it be good if we could live without a care?

This one never got its due. It didn't break the Top 40, and was not included in the Pretty in Pink soundtrack, instead covered by Danny Hutton Hitters--a lame-ass move as inexplicable as the changed ending. Roughly ten years earlier, Hutton crooned "Black and White" when he was in Three Dog Night. It's a long way from consciousness-raising cowbell to synth squiggles. 

Obviously, the original is the superior version, and Nik got to perform it at Live Aid . I distinctly remember seeing this part of the concert. How goddamn incredible that was, to watch all of my heroes ally day long. Including, hero though he wasn't at that time, Phil Collins on two continents!

It has such an angular and "aggressive"--and, yes, alien--sound for a longing and introspective song.

Whatever the form, it's just right for now, for figuring out where to go now that there feels like there's spaciousness, and the here where you have been is turning into someplace else. 

Evolution time

New talisman from a 30 year-old experience. I never really did hear all of the lyrics clearly, and I didn't pay attention when I sent off to Grand Royal for a lyric sheet. 

That's okay, "I don't see things quite the same as I used to..." And I can paste them here for posterity. 

Stand Together

I don't see things quite the same as I used to
As I live my life, I've got just me to be true to
When I find that I don't know about just what to do
I turn and look within to see what I should do
Now I'm not sure what it takes to be hip
A lot of people making music that to be ain't shit
So I ask creation for rhymes for this jam
Gimme lickle solo and I'll take the mic stand

Love vibe, love vibe, love vibe, love vibe
Love vibe, love vibe, love vibe, love vibe

Yeah, as the earth spins into a brand new day
I see the light on the horizon's not fading away
Gonna shine from within, like a bright white sun
No need to hide and no place to run
Got the vibrations of the music bringing light to your mind
So you can move and groove, and feel the beat of the time
Sense the power in the air as it starts to move
You get a real good feeling that you just can't lose

Love vibe
Contemplation time
Love vibe
Intuition time
Love vibe
Evolution time
Love vibe
Resolution time

Free your mind, it's time for good times
And let yourself move, it's a time to shine
Spread your wings in the sky, feelin' good inside
Breaking fool with no need to hide
I got the music cuttin' through me
Takin' control of my soul
I can't hold back, I've got to let go

Stand together (people come together now)
It's about time (we've got to get together now)
Stand together (people come together now)
I said it's about time (we've got to get together now), come on
Stand together (people come together now)
I said it's about time (we've got to get together, y'all) 

I think we should stand together

Oh, when the cool night brings back memories of a good life

I need to write something so I can feel something. I need to pick something to write to feel about. Climbing up the wagon wheels is daunting. Oh, wait. I am mixing metaphors. I'm climbing back onto a horse, I have not fallen off of a wagon. Or, I'm climbing onto the horse that was once pulling the wagon that I was upon? Did I want to be on this wagon? 

No. No. This should, at least, be easier than clambering to sit astride a horse, but it's not when you feel like your mind is a jumble and the chutes that take you away from the jumble are ultimately unbeneficial and lead to things like watching The Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour into the night, laboring over work emails, and, in fact, writing everything in the style of a work email (I hope you are well!).

Heart: Well, write something already. Pick a song!

Head: But I want to google Paul Davis AND Andrew Gold, compile a comparative synthesis of their lives/styles/origins. And paint my nails. Toes and fingers. 

Heart: *headdesk*

Head: Fine. Fine! All the best, Head.

Well, this one has been around a lot lately. You'd think SiriusXM's programming well would be infinite, but--at least in the soft/yacht/mellow rock areas--there's a lot repeated. That's okay, since hashtag-Soft-Rock-Saved-Me. Paul's gentle plea is cumulatively effective this way. Plus, my flowers are outside literally dying right now because it's the coolest Cool Night we've had since April (or May).

You don't have to take a stand, he says. Lay out any plans. Just come on over. Just be. Just do.

Hear that, Head?

The Days of DD (God Save the Queen Edition): Across the world, on radio, For anyone to hear

Did I ever listen to post-7&RT, post-Arcada/Power Station stand-off DD? Not very much. But it was always there, nearly 40 years of the stuff. I'd never really even dip in, DD would surface and sometimes take my attention when especially captivating ("Ordinary World," "Come Undone"). Be forgiving of this inartful simile, I've not been doing this for a while, but DD popping in the background was kind of like the Queen. Always there, expression always in the official capacity (she never gave interviews), recorded and captured for all time.

Since the show last month, I've made my way from '86 to now, listening to all that DD has captured of themselves since then. This one, from the latest, is delightful, and actually sentimental, though you wouldn't know from first listen--more so from the video. It's a rager, and everyone is there, including QE2, always there, always our connection to the history of the world, the bridge between the 19th and 21st centuries. 

The days of DD: living lonely out on the limb

Before I go there--and by there I mean a Discogs dive to begin a completist mission for all the DD vinyl I can find--can I ask if we can go back in time and create an extended mix of this? 

I need for the gentle contours of this song to be expanded, so I can hold my wistful gazes out of windows at the rococo-pink sunset clouds just a little longer. 

It's ridiculously romantic, even without the gauzy video, even without anything in particular to be romantic about. That bassline bridge. Come on.

The days of DD: I know you're watching me every minute of the day

 In these couple of weeks leading up to my next reunion with my idols, I gotta look back before I go forward. And, look, this was peaking right at this time in '83, so this couldn't be a better time to think back on a song I did indeed like but that preceded my all-out infatuation, which wouldn't blossom until the spring of '84. 

That's right... "ITSISK" emerged in the summer. It sounded like anticipation of fun to me, of all the inside jokes that were going to come out of long pools sessions and my family's beach vacation, and slumber parties with my friend. It's, inexplicably, like laughter bubbling up. There's something actually comic about Simon's delivery in the verses, and, though the chorus is more earnest, it sounds like he's asking, but is actually starting to get over it, but, hell, gonna ask anyway: is this worth saving? Because I have one foot in the future, babe.

And it goes with August, especially, with the bugs at the peak of their noisy insistence to find a mate, the air heavy as hell, the pool getting a little dirty. It's a busy little song, a bridge between Rio and Seven and the Ragged Tiger for Brits and a this-thing-is-not-like-the-other track appended to the self-titled first album when it was remixed and released--out of order--in the U.S. 

The video was subtle, not spectacular, and a bit of a letdown after the Rio vids despite the semi-embarrassing, fully comic bit of Roger, Nick, and Andy Andrews Sister-ing in, I don't know, Napoleonic Wars uniforms:

Duran Duran Is There Something I Should Know GIFfrom Duran Duran GIFs

I haven't thought about that snippet in years, and the delight it brought my friends and I only months later when we perpetually rented a VCR and the DD video album (or, rather, Robin's mom did) for overnights. Bubblin'-up fun. I hope I hear it on the 20th. 

45’s And Under: But as the sun goes down I get that empty feelin' again

Mmm, Player. They get that lonely feeling at dusk, day being done, missing whatever you're missing. 

I'm gonna go look at the August dusk and miss...I don't know what. The ease and possibility of long ago, maybe. Nowadays, I look more forward to the morning than the night. That much I know.

Come see, come see, remember me: The Top 40 of January 28, 1984

"...but I can't trace time" is roiling in my mind because of the tardiness of this post. I'm getting behind--but isn't that always the way it is three or so weeks after you've looked at the fresh slate and snow of the new year, thinking you have plenty of time to grow, build, create, bake, or organize every idea and morsel. 

I don't have any memories of the start of the new year before age 20 or 21, when the party was the thing. I was plodding through the remainder of 8th grade and not really possessing the agency to take any big steps. Life was structured, slow, same--and wearing the same uniform five days each week. Maybe that's why what was the radio at this time is the most tangible essence of this time for me. Colorful, bold, weird, unreal and real.

35. The Sign Of Fire - The Fixx. This ominous last single from The Fixx's breakthrough lp Reach the Beach didn't go very far, only to 32, but I always enjoyed how it sounded like what's playing behind a witch as she stirs her murky cauldron. And the preceding singles--wow. What else sounded like them?

28. "Time Will Reveal" - DeBarge. When the "Dean of American Rock Critics" marks this one in his personal top ten of the 80s, nestled between X and Public Enemy, you know it's something special. I think we took DeBarge for granted in the 80s--it wasn't Jacksons- or Prince-level spectacular, but it also wasn't a lightweight front for some older dude songwriters like The Jets or New Edition. The DeBarge family wrote the songs. Giving the whole album a listen now, it does what it says--holds up to time.

21. "Middle Of The Road" - Pretenders. I distinctly remember continuing the count during the bridge while sitting in the backseat of the car in Gatlinburg, TN, waiting in the parking lot of Chalet Village cabin rentals (again, but different trip!). Also, I loved Chrissie's cat purr and growl before the harmonica solo.

5. "Break My Stride" - Matthew Wilder. An unlikely-looking pop star for the time who looked like he migrated from earlier 80s yacht rock, Wilder became an industry pro, producing things like No Doubt's Tragic Kingdom. Even then I knew this would be a one-hitting anthem, which got as high as the fifth spot. Nevertheless, you can't not stride when you hear the awesome loping, circusy melody. I miss earnest positive pop like this song, a sort of precursor to the Howard Jones positive zen hits to come in the next couple of years.

Come see, come see, remember me: The Top 40 of January 21, 1984

Everyone old is new again this week. Of course, not just this week, but throughout the 80s. The original rock and pop revolutionaries beat on against the newer currents, bringing us back ceaselessly to the past--and to extend this unnecessary Fitzgeralism further, they weren't gonna be the last tycoons to do this. What would change is that the music moved from airplay to the arena, though some also hung on to the lower rungs of the decade charts.

If April is the cruelest month (gotta use this English major somehow, come on now), then January is the longest. I like January because it's a new start and we're coming out of the darkness and obligations of autumn and winter solstice seasons, but my god does it drone on. At least it's broken up by deliberate events and adventures undertaken when the snow and cold relent; in '84 that would have been dances and speech tourneys, the school cafeteria a sweat lodge of fun and traveling to less-bumpkinish-than-you'd-think county high schools in a rattling, frigid school van (dubbed the "Magic Bus" endlessly by my friend Mikey Z.)

Yeah, I'm perpetually grateful for the chance to break through the snow for something new...or new/old.

40. "Uptown Girl" - Billy Joel. This second single from his monolithic throwback An Innocent Man chronicles the time when newly-divorced Billy finally assumed the dating-supermodels mantle of the Big Rock Star. This cat walking girl is on her way out of the top 40, having peaked in November and December at number three. Pure joy, this one--the sound of summer peeking through the bare tree branches.

36. "Nobody Told Me" - John Lennon. At first glance, it seems odd to see Lennon in the Top 40 four years after he passed. Then I remembered that Milk and Honey was the final Lennon/Ono album, released in late 1983. Though this was written for Ringo (can't you hear him cheerfully singing it?), it was completed by Yoko and became Lennon's last hit single. Imagine (sorry) hearing him return to the radio back then--with Julian to debut there months later in '84.

27. "Yah Mo B There" - James Ingram with Michael McDonald. Michael McDonald surfaces from his Doobies legacy, ultimately winning a Grammy for this one. Could I have had any clue that this and other hits on my radio and my dad's stereo would be ironically/not ironically celebrated and placed in a seaside/easy-listening firmament presided over by the trinity of McDonald, Dan, and holy Toto? This one falls on the latter and smooth R&B end of the era, produced by Quincy Jones and written by Q, McDonald, James, and Rod Temperton ("Thriller," "Boogie Nights). 

23. "All Night Long" - Lionel Richie. Now my friends, the time has come. This isn't about then; this song (from Richie's biggest and 1985 Grammy-winning album) is being present in now and future joy. It somehow hit me differently--late in the night at the bar at the turn of one of these past few banana-shit years, under the tent on the beach in banana-shit Panama City Beach. No matter what happens, life is good--wild and sweet. (Also: I want a wardrobe comprised of all the clothing in this video.)

10. "Say It Isn't So" - Daryl Hall & John Oates. At once haunting and poppy, this first and biggest single from their hits compilation Rock 'n Soul Part 1 offered not one but two videos, the first an out-of-the-box affair (literally) with John as tennis-anyone-outfitted other man, and the other, "official" video featuring a lot of shoes, shots of NYC and GE Smith doing some pre-SNL guitar mugging. The latter seems to be cut to the Jellybean Benitez et al extended dance mix--unusual for the time. Why? I got 5 pages into Google search results with no answer (except that the internet is now "optimized" for consumerism and looking at the Big Sites). The single version will climb--and stay--at number 2 in late December.

1. "Owner of a Lonely Heart" - Yes. Oh, you think you're getting pushing-40 dudes who are prog, but you're watching them on MTV, so you don't know they are prog (or what prog is), but then the drop happens at the end of the first chorus and then the video becomes a Lynchian nature fantasy which relaunches the song into one man's fate in a dystopic authoritarian state. This is the video that the parents should have been far more concerned about me seeing on cable than this. But since it predated my reading of Brave New World (and, for that matter, any F. Scott Fitzgerald) by four or so years, it was just downright creepy, an unlikely major player on MTV, much less the charts.

Come see, come see, remember me: The Top 40 of January 14, 1984

This week was about more of the same on the charts, and amid the bare pin oaks all over Lexington, but January like that--on the surface. The temps were all over that week, crashing from 59 to 0. I might have been plodding through more Language Arts nitpickiness, but the radio was as erratic as the weather, a fine, late-stage example of early 80s pop music' zany breadth 

40. "Send Me an Angel" - Real Life. Oh, it's drama, honey. A haunting synth hit for no one-knew-they-were-Australian Real Life, and a hit again five years later after it showed up in movies like Teen Wolf Too (lookit key-oot Jason Bateman!). You can be depressed--and dance to it.

36 "Baby I Lied" - Deborah Allen. Jump down four into a country ballad by not-that-Debbie-Allen. Is the the last time a soft-pop country tune hit the early 80s top 40? Or 80s at all until Garth?

33. "Cum On Feel the Noize" - Quiet Riot. "So you think my singing's out of time? It makes me money!" It's a clapback--but Slade's, not QR's. They essentially disappeared after their second single "Metal Health (Bang Your Head)."

26. Let the Music Play - Shannon. It sounded like nothing else before it, and for a reason. "Let the Music Play"shot to number 8 eventually, but more significantly, beget a genre that I never heard of until now, freestyle, but that I can absolutely recognize in the sounds of music after it. This one reminds me of a multi-family trip to Gatlinburg that winter, one (maybe the last one) of several my parents and their friends and friends' kids gathered for in a mountain chalet rented from Chalet Village (the logo is the same!). But, oh no, that chalet is probably long gone, perhaps the victim of 2016 wildfires. Back in early '84, though, the kids--we were all of 14 down to 4--were shooting pool in the lower level of the A-frame while this was playing on the--radio? Maybe MTV, since we also watched "The Jerk" on a TV down there, which was the first time I saw a rated-R movie all the way through without having to madly push buttons on the cable box. It probably was the video, a basic affair that makes me sad that Atlantic decided to staff Shannon's first outing with dancing cater waiters.

25. "Holiday" - Madonna. I thought she was another Shannon. Wouldn't you? Number 16 is as high as this charted. What? It's hard to believe M's earliest hit was kind of a blip.

18. "Read 'Em and Weep" - Barry Manilow. Although Barry "wrote the songs," it was pop-opera, ratchet-up-to-the-chorus composer Jim Steinman who created this last top-20 hit for BM, slipping some 70s piano banging' into the one last time in the early 80s. But the video's of the moment, with Bob Giraldi directing this backstage mini-drama after "Beat It" and "Love Is a Battlefield."

17. "That's All" - Genesis. The second single off of their officially self-titled but loved-by-fans-as the "shapes" album. Last year, I purchased the "shapes" two times, the transactions within weeks of each other, which says more about how last year was than how much I like the album (which I do).

13. "Joanna" - Kool & the Gang. How can you not smile when hearing this song? Pure R&B/pop with a sweet video. K & the Gang's ode will go to number 2, their first hit since "Get Down On It" in 1981.

5. "Twist of Fate" - Olivia Newton John. The 70s comes calling again with ONJ's final top ten hit ever. But what in the heck is this movie? Strange that I never caught it on cable in the years that followed, but my bad movie viewing slowed once I was sprung from grade school later in '84.

1. "Say, Say, Say" - Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson. The fellas are back. Having just heard "The Girl Is Mine" involuntarily a few hours ago, I must reiterate that this far better song is a relief. And that "Girl" was the first single off of Thriller? As good as "Beat It," "Billie Jean" et al were, I guess we all wanted to forget that duet.

I'll write you a letter tomorrow

Maybe it's because we haven't advanced in life in proximity, only with the scattershot familiarity of the virtual tubes and wires we couldn't have imagined at 19 and 20 and so on, that I'm able to re-realize the significance of our knowing each other, and how and why it set me on a trajectory to further meet who I would meet and be who I would become. 

Can't pretend that growing older never hurts

Straight to the top of my heart with a bullet today.

Come see, come see, remember me: The Top 40 of January 7, 1984

While I wish I had the time to deep-dive into items in the upper 60 like "Rappin' Rodney" (No respect! No respect!) and the months-long descent of "Total Eclipse of the Heart," this series will focus on the Top 40 as Casey K. would have smoothly enunciated between January and December of this hallowed year. 

Why this year? It's the pivotal year, it's the peak year, it's the "it" year of both my brief life until that point and in pop music. If you ask me. You didn't--but you're getting this anyway.

I would have returned to this week for the second half of 8th grade, but not yet feeling the 8th-grade-itis and seeing the horizon of a new life. That didn't happen until spring thawed out what was probably the same raw, wet, gray Kentucky winter. No, it was a return to the underlining every assignment title in red pen with a ruler, why can't I get my hair to look like Kelly Carter's when I have to wear this uniform every day kind of Catholic school experience I was going to as-yet-unknowingly-how-exactly leave behind in a few months. 

And what was playing from the Top 40 while my first teenage January plodded?

40. "In the Mood" - Robert Plant. This moody (oof) second single from his second solo album The Principle of Moments always grabbed me, even if I didn't really understand this was the same man who sang "I wanna give you every inch of my love" 15 years prior. That Phil Collins drums on this track makes it even more of the moment. Stayed at 40.

32. "Gold" - Spandau Ballet. The follow-up to the number 3 "True," released in the US in November, this elegant soarer will land only three more spots on the chart, though it gets kudos for the video, a more posh "Hungry Like the Wolf."

30. "Think of Laura" - Christopher Cross. Imagine my crushing disappointment to discover that this mournful last top ten hit of the Soft Rock Maestro wasn't written for (nor requested for, even) General Hospital's star-crossed Luke and Laura when she returns after having gone missing in their gripping late '83 storyline.

26. "Pink Houses" - John Cougar Mellencamp. One of JCM's finest compositions, in my opinion, that birthed the catchphrase of the ages (11-18, in the first half of 1984), "...and then we paint the mother paink"

21. The Curly Shuffle - Jump 'n the Saddle. Never in my life have I heard or heard of this song. Can someone explain this to me?  Okay, possible explanation: the group is from Chicago, which at least may explain why it sounds like "The Superbowl Shuffle."

16. "Church of the Poison Mind" - Culture Club. Not their biggest hit (though number 10 ultimately), but bloody rager, made so by Helen Terry's backing vocals.

14. "Major Tom" - Peter Schilling. This one's sandwiched in the middle of the German-to-English u-boat (forgive the mixed metaphors) of hits, from Falco's "Der Komissar," rerecorded by After the Fire in early '83, and the gold standard "99 Luftballoons" by Nena. It's best known as my first-one-on-the-dancefloor track always played early in New Wave Thursday nights at Neo two decades later. 4-3-2-1.

9. "Undercover of the Night" - Rolling Stones. It's political, it's violent (in the lyrics and the video), but with Robbie of Sly and Robbie on a whopping bassline and a helluva video, it's a wholly underrated Stones barnburner. Personally, I think it sounds like a Dylan story song filtered through a thousand Marlboros.

3. "Union of the Snake" - Duran Duran. This is where it all started for me. This was the first recording by DD I ever purchased, the 45 with picture sleeve. Not sure when I bought it, but this stayed on the chart a good while, ten weeks, and this was as high as it went. I'm going to say February, when days started to lengthen and when I probably couldn't get this Beyond Thunderdome precursor video out of my head, liking, at that time, all things remotely Indiana Jonesian or hammered-brass jewelry / safari wear-ian. It just sounded like...the rich, exotic world out there.

1. "Say, Say, Say" - Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson. Who doesn't love this? It's far superior to "The Girl Is Mine," and who can resist this pair as medicine showmen who are also Robin Hoods who are also vaudevillians?