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?