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.
