Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Hey there, it's justin Richmond. I want to take a
Speaker 2: moment to share a podcast with you that I think
Speaker 2: you'll enjoy. It's called Hit Parade, a show from Slate
Speaker 2: about chart topping hits and what makes a song a smash.
Speaker 2: It's hosted by pop chart analyst and our friend Chris Malanfi.
Speaker 2: Twice a month, Chris tells tales from more than half
Speaker 2: a century of pop chart history through storytelling, trivia, and
Speaker 2: song snippets. Peters Sex how artists you love or hate
Speaker 2: dominated the airwaves and shaped your memories forever. Today, we're
Speaker 2: sharing one of our favorite episodes with you, What's nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty four got to do with It? Edition. In the episode,
Speaker 2: christ Dice Sex eight reasons why nineteen eighty four was
Speaker 2: awesome for pop fans and walks us through all twenty
Speaker 2: years of the year's number one hits, from Jump to
Speaker 2: Hello karm a Chameleon to Caribbean Queen, Let's Go Crazy
Speaker 2: to Like a Virgin. And when you're done listening to
Speaker 2: this episode, make sure to go check out part two
Speaker 2: on Hip Parade's feed and go give the show a
Speaker 2: follow so you never miss another one.
Speaker 3: Now here's Chris.
Speaker 4: Hello, Broken Record fans. Chris Molanfi here. I'm so excited
Speaker 4: to share with you one of hip Parade's most popular
Speaker 4: episodes from the last few months, our exploration of what critics,
Speaker 4: chart fans, and pundits call the greatest year in pop
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty four. What you're about to hear is part
Speaker 4: one of the episode, in which I run down all
Speaker 4: of the factors that made nineteen eighty four an exceptional year,
Speaker 4: from dance music to the Second British Invasion to hair
Speaker 4: metal and hip hop. And there's a whole lot more
Speaker 4: in part two, where we walk through all twenty of
Speaker 4: the number one hits from nineteen eighty four. So when
Speaker 4: you're done listening to Part one, make sure to find
Speaker 4: Hip Parade wherever you listen to podcasts and continue the
Speaker 4: story with Part two. Okay, let's get in the time machine,
Speaker 4: hairspray our bangs, put on some legwarmers, and head back
Speaker 4: to the year when doves cried, feet were loose, and
Speaker 4: girls just wanted to have fun nineteen eighty four. Welcome
Speaker 4: to hip Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from
Speaker 4: Slate magazine about the hits from coast to coast I'm
Speaker 4: Chris molanfy chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's
Speaker 4: Why Is This Song? Number One series on Today's Show
Speaker 4: forty years ago this week, this was the number one
Speaker 4: song in America, an improbable comeback by a regal, statuesque
Speaker 4: singer who'd fought hard to return to the center of
Speaker 4: the pop conversation. For the woman who came to be
Speaker 4: known as the Queen of rock and roll, the late
Speaker 4: summer of eighty four gave her the first and only
Speaker 4: Hot one hundred chart topper of her career, Tina Turner
Speaker 4: with What's Love Got to Do With It?
Speaker 1: Love to Do It?
Speaker 5: By the Hot Man hog at Me Brother.
Speaker 4: Here's a question you maybe haven't considered in all the
Speaker 4: dozens of times you've probably heard What's Love Got to
Speaker 4: Do With It? What is this song? How would you
Speaker 4: classify it? Given Tina Turner's background, you might call it
Speaker 4: rhythm and blues, but Turner preferred to call herself a
Speaker 4: rock singer. Critics note that the songs versus have the
Speaker 4: lilts of reggae or calypso music, but by the way
Speaker 4: way it was first offered to and recorded by a
Speaker 4: white British New wave band. We'll get to them later.
Speaker 4: Tina's recording charted on Billboard's Pop, R and B, Rock, Dance,
Speaker 4: and Adult Contemporary charts. Basically, this is a song for everyone.
Speaker 4: I would call What's Love Got to Do With It?
Speaker 4: Nineteen eighty four music. It represents everything that made that
Speaker 4: year of pop legendary. The hits of nineteen eighty four
Speaker 4: were admirably hard to classify. Bands from the world of
Speaker 4: rock were playing with dance music, funk, even synthesizers job job,
Speaker 4: while artists who were classified as R and B were
Speaker 4: rocking harder than ever. Veteran acts who had been around
Speaker 4: for a decade or more were, like Tina Turner, trying
Speaker 4: new tricks, and a new generation of upstarts were upsetting
Speaker 4: the status quo. Sleek dance music was back, even though
Speaker 4: we didn't call it disco anymore. A new wave of
Speaker 4: teen pin ups were grabbing for pop's brass ring bye Bye,
Speaker 4: and of course, thanks to the dominance of MTV, videos
Speaker 4: made the charts more colorful than ever. Ben Today, on
Speaker 4: Hip Parade, we will travel back four decades to a
Speaker 4: year that's been called the greatest in chart history. What
Speaker 4: made nineteen eighty four so exceptional. Why did rockers and rappers,
Speaker 4: punks and popsters, divas and dream boats all produce some
Speaker 4: of their best work? And why forty years later are
Speaker 4: we still missing that moment?
Speaker 5: Another break down this long distance Lines and Nights.
Speaker 4: It was a time when some of the most innovative
Speaker 4: music wasn't the province of hipster's crew or crate diggers.
Speaker 4: It was power rotated on the radio, like, for example,
Speaker 4: the top hit of the year.
Speaker 1: This is what.
Speaker 5: Wine doves crime.
Speaker 4: And that's where your hit parade marches today. The week
Speaker 4: ending August fourth, nineteen eighty four, when Princes When Doves
Speaker 4: Cry was in its fifth and final week at number
Speaker 4: one on the Hot one hundred, on its way to
Speaker 4: being named Billboard's top hit of the year. It's rare
Speaker 4: that any year's biggest hit is also its best, but
Speaker 4: that's the kind of year nineteen eighty four was still
Speaker 4: the gold standard for chart fans four decades later. So
Speaker 4: join me as we recall a time when rain was purple,
Speaker 4: feet were loose, the reflex was a lonely child, and
Speaker 4: girls just wanted to have fun. Stick around.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back with more from this episode of
Speaker 2: Hit Parade.
Speaker 3: After the break, We're back with hit Parade.
Speaker 4: This is Canadian pop star Corey Hart with Sunglasses at Night,
Speaker 4: a number seven hit in the summer of nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 4: In September of twenty fourteen, thirty years after this song
Speaker 4: was a hit, and ten years ago this month, Rolling
Speaker 4: Stone magazine ran a special commemorative feature ranking of the
Speaker 4: one hundred best singles of nineteen eighty four, and Sunglasses
Speaker 4: at Night was the song they ranked in one hundredth place,
Speaker 4: which is about right. Corey Heart's American breakthrough single isn't
Speaker 4: the most devastatingly brilliant hit of eighty four, but it's
Speaker 4: a bop and it is of its time, a very cheeky,
Speaker 4: kitchy and melodramatic synthpop jam. Maybe all that said, Sunglasses
Speaker 4: at Night still gets played on classic hits radio stations
Speaker 4: to this day and has racked up more than one
Speaker 4: hundred and thirty two million streams on Spotify. And this
Speaker 4: is the nineteen eighty four hit that Rolling Stone ranked last.
Speaker 4: It should also be noted that the magazine hasn't done
Speaker 4: similar commemorative countdowns for other years of pop. In fact,
Speaker 4: when they published their twenty fourteen feature, Rolling Stone boldly
Speaker 4: titled the Countdown one hundred best singles of nineteen eighty
Speaker 4: four Pop's greatest year?
Speaker 1: Is that?
Speaker 4: By the way, here's the song they ranked all the
Speaker 4: way up at number two, Madonna's Borderline. Bet you've heard
Speaker 4: that one on the radio recently too. Rolling Stone's countdown
Speaker 4: is a great read, we'll link to it on the
Speaker 4: Hit Parade show page, and a good argument starter. The
Speaker 4: biggest argument might be over that title pop's greatest year?
Speaker 4: Aren't there other candidates? By the way, three years ago,
Speaker 4: on this very podcast, we at Hip Parade made the
Speaker 4: case for the music of nineteen seventy one, a year
Speaker 4: of greatness from Janice Joplin, The Stones, sly Stone, Rod
Speaker 4: Stewart and Carol King.
Speaker 5: And It's.
Speaker 1: It's to Night?
Speaker 5: Do we really jatindergain?
Speaker 4: To be clear, rolling Stone called nineteen eighty four pop's
Speaker 4: greatest year, not rock's greatest, R and B or rap's greatest. This,
Speaker 4: I think is defensible. As I said at the top
Speaker 4: of our show, nineteen eighty four was a big year
Speaker 4: for pop as a centralizing force. Rock plus R and
Speaker 4: B plus dance plus country plus hip hop all found
Speaker 4: a place on the radio in eighty four, and nineteen
Speaker 4: eighty four was an unbeatable year for the pop single,
Speaker 4: So naturally, chart nerds like your hip parade host hold
Speaker 4: it in a high esteem.
Speaker 6: Let the music play. It moves from thirteen to ten
Speaker 6: in our countdown of the forty biggest, Shannon at number nine,
Speaker 6: here's Cindy Lauper with girls just want to have fun.
Speaker 1: When you look.
Speaker 4: I'll just cop to it as someone born in nineteen
Speaker 4: seventy one who became a teenager in nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 4: my bias is undeniable when it comes to both of
Speaker 4: those years. So of course I think nineteen eighty four
Speaker 4: was a great year for pop. But before I provide
Speaker 4: more objective reasons why it might not just be me
Speaker 4: and the staff of Rolling Stone claiming this, there's one
Speaker 4: more debate we need to address that does often come
Speaker 4: up in these pop nerd discussions. Was nineteen eighty four
Speaker 4: the great year? Or was it actually nineteen eighty three?
Speaker 4: That's the beasts. In a recent installment of his online column,
Speaker 4: radio consultant Sean Ross pulled programmers, critics, and chart fans
Speaker 4: over whether they preferred the hits of nineteen eighty three
Speaker 4: or eighty four. Ross took it as a given that
Speaker 4: this two year duopoly was the high water mark of
Speaker 4: Contemporary Hits Radio or CCHR by just under a two
Speaker 4: to one margin. Ross's police preferred nineteen eighty four, but
Speaker 4: there was a strong eighty three contingent.
Speaker 5: Sweet Teams as.
Speaker 4: I could just as easily have done this episode about
Speaker 4: eighty three. It really was an amazing year, the moment
Speaker 4: when the second British invasion took hold, with Duran, Duran, Eurhythmics,
Speaker 4: Culture Clubs, Spandau Ballet, Madness, Edie Grant and Dexy's Midnight
Speaker 4: Runners all scoring their first American hits, major chart comebacks
Speaker 4: for Donna, Summer Marvin Gay, Elton John and David Bowie
Speaker 4: put on Red, the peak year for Michael Jackson's streak
Speaker 4: of hits from Thriller, a late nineteen eighty two album
Speaker 4: that totally dominated eighty three, as well as the pop
Speaker 4: breakthrough of Prince. What made nineteen eighty three exciting was
Speaker 4: the upsurge before the cultural wave crested. The truth is
Speaker 4: a lot of the nineteen eighty four music we'll discuss
Speaker 4: in this episode was actually released in eighty three. Big
Speaker 4: eighty four hits by Madonna, Cindy Lauper, Lionel Ritchie, Duran, Duran,
Speaker 4: the Pointer Sisters, yes Zz Top and Billy Idol, among
Speaker 4: many others, emerged from the cauldron of eighty three. So
Speaker 4: in a way, you can think of nineteen eighty four
Speaker 4: on the charts as at least two years rolled into one.
Speaker 4: The movements that were bubbling up earlier in the decade
Speaker 4: finally coalesced. As I argued in our nineteen seventy one
Speaker 4: episode of Hip Parade. Seventy one was when the music
Speaker 4: of the sixties came into full artistic fruition. Similarly, the
Speaker 4: innovations of nineteen eighty two and eighty three bloomed into
Speaker 4: full flower in nineteen eighty four. So I'm now going
Speaker 4: to run down a list of eight reasons why nineteen
Speaker 4: eighty four ruled, and the first reason will take us
Speaker 4: back before nineteen eighty three or eighty two. In fact,
Speaker 4: we need to go back to just before the eighties began.
Speaker 4: Reason one for the awesomeness of nineteen eighty four overcoming
Speaker 4: the disco backlash, as we have discussed in several prior
Speaker 4: Hit Parade episodes, nineteen seventy nine was a turning point
Speaker 4: for dance music on the charts and in the popular consciousness.
Speaker 4: In the wake of Chicago's menacing Disco Demolition Night in
Speaker 4: July of seventy nine, disco became a dirty word. The
Speaker 4: music did not actually die. Disco acts like Donna Summer
Speaker 4: and production teams like Sheikh's, Nile Rogers and Bernard Edwards
Speaker 4: continued to score hits into the nineteen eighties, but a
Speaker 4: backlash to the culture of disco turned the charts away
Speaker 4: from anything perceived as to dance oriented or black derived.
Speaker 4: In the first few years of the nineteen eighties, the
Speaker 4: hit parade pivoted toward light balladarie, country crossover, and yacht rock,
Speaker 4: but by nineteen eighty two and eighty three, as new
Speaker 4: wave synthpop began emerging on the charts, the sound of
Speaker 4: this so called new pop was essentially disco in another guise, like,
Speaker 4: for example, ABC's top twenty hit The Look of Love
Speaker 4: Looks and the overwhelming chart success of Michael Jackson provided
Speaker 4: a new model for black music that drew from disco
Speaker 4: production styles but felt more modern. By late eighty three
Speaker 4: and early eighty four, dance music, which is what we
Speaker 4: called it. Then pop fans were careful never to say
Speaker 4: the other five letter D word was doing better on
Speaker 4: the charts than it had since nineteen seventy nine. Sleek
Speaker 4: club styles were finding their place on the radio, like
Speaker 4: the electro dance music of the Pointer Sisters.
Speaker 2: The.
Speaker 4: Explosive freestyle of Shannon, and of course, the nuveaux postdisco
Speaker 4: of a newcomer named Madonna. All discussions of what made
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty four great have to start with the disco
Speaker 4: backlash and the comeback from the backlash, because this informs
Speaker 4: virtually everything that brought pop music back to life, even
Speaker 4: if no one was saying the word disco, dance, music, production, tropes,
Speaker 4: and black informed styles were infecting all manner of hit music,
Speaker 4: not just club music or R and B, but also
Speaker 4: straight up rock like zz Top UK, synthpop like Bronski Beat,
Speaker 4: and even metal. This nineteen eighty four Motley Crue hit,
Speaker 4: their second single ever to make the hot one hundred
Speaker 4: is basically disco slowed down and rocked up. To all
Speaker 4: of this. Erzat's disco from Madonna to Motley Crue came
Speaker 4: packaged with glossy music videos which brings us to another
Speaker 4: development that happened a few years before nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 4: that reached its apotheosis that year. Reason two for the
Speaker 4: awesomeness of nineteen eighty four. The peak of first wave MTV.
Speaker 1: Is Holy mo, it's not funny.
Speaker 3: You was scared? Weren't here? Oh Listen't that scared?
Speaker 4: This is scared, you could say. Nineteen eighty four kicked
Speaker 4: off in spirit on December tewod nineteen eighty three, when
Speaker 4: Michael Jackson's cinematic thriller video, directed by John Landis and
Speaker 4: modeled after his horror film and American Werewolf in London,
Speaker 4: premiered on MTV. Jackson's clip gave the fledgling video channel,
Speaker 4: which had launched just two years earlier, its highest ratings ever.
Speaker 4: Jackson and MTV were good to each other. When Thriller
Speaker 4: the Song was issued as a single in January nineteen
Speaker 4: eighty four, a full fourteen month after Thriller the Album
Speaker 4: came out, It became the LP's record seventh top ten single,
Speaker 4: peaking at number four on the Hot one hundred in
Speaker 4: March of eighty four.
Speaker 1: That's not.
Speaker 4: You can divide early MTV history into before Michael Jackson
Speaker 4: and after Michael Jackson. Legend has it that the channel
Speaker 4: largely refused to play videos by black artists before CBS
Speaker 4: Records threatened to withhold all of their videos unless MTV
Speaker 4: played Jackson's early nineteen eighty three hit Billy Jean. By
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty four, MTV was regularly rotating clips by Jackson, Prince,
Speaker 4: Donna Summer, and Lionel Richie Oh. But MTV was also
Speaker 4: reinventing rock bands that had been around four years as
Speaker 4: video stars. The Cars, the Boston new wave rockers who
Speaker 4: released their debut album back in nineteen seventy eight, were
Speaker 4: rebooted in nineteen eighty four by their shimmering pop album
Speaker 4: Heartbeat City and its string of kitchy videos. Their special
Speaker 4: effects heavy clip for You Might Think Not only made
Speaker 4: that song a top ten hit, the video upset Michael
Speaker 4: Jackson's Thriller for Video of the Year at the first
Speaker 4: MTV Video Music Awards.
Speaker 1: When the phrase.
Speaker 4: Similarly, Huey Lewis and the News, a San Francisco band
Speaker 4: that had been around since nineteen seventy nine, played a
Speaker 4: brand of unpretentious barroom rock and roll. Nothing about the
Speaker 4: band was hip, Indeed, These were the guys who years
Speaker 4: later recorded a song called Hip to Be Square. But
Speaker 4: for their LP Sports, the telegenic Huey Lewis and his
Speaker 4: band recorded a string of high concept, comical and plot
Speaker 4: heavy videos. They and they were rewarded with four straight
Speaker 4: top ten singles on the Hot one hundred, Heart and Soul,
Speaker 4: I Want a New Drug, the Heart of Rock and Roll,
Speaker 4: and if This is It.
Speaker 5: The Never, If This is It.
Speaker 1: It.
Speaker 4: By the time If This Is It cracked the Hot
Speaker 4: one hundred in the summer of eighty four, the Sports
Speaker 4: LP had topped the Billboard album chart and sold five
Speaker 4: million copies. Videos transformed Huey Lewis's career, and they arguably
Speaker 4: spurred rock acts of all kinds to up their game
Speaker 4: to make songs worthy of video treatment. Of course, the
Speaker 4: bands that had benefited the most from the rise of
Speaker 4: the music video in America were British New Romantic and
Speaker 4: New Wave bands, who, starting in nineteen eighty two and
Speaker 4: eighty three, went from curios in America to video superstars.
Speaker 4: By nineteen eighty four, these bands, led by video demigods
Speaker 4: Duran Duran, were also chart conquerors in America. As the
Speaker 4: year began The band's Union of the Snake was lodged
Speaker 4: in the top three on the Hot one hundred. But
Speaker 4: what made eighty four doubly exciting was that not only
Speaker 4: were these UK acts still innovating, the US acts had
Speaker 4: been taking notes. Reason three for the awesomeness of nineteen
Speaker 4: eighty four, the second British invasion and America catching up.
Speaker 4: As we discussed in our British Invasions episode of Hit Parade.
Speaker 4: By the spring of eighty four, forty percent of the
Speaker 4: Hot one hundred was British acts, fueled in America by MTV.
Speaker 4: The UK's post punk, new romantic and synthpop movements redefined
Speaker 4: the cutting edge of cool, as personified by acts like
Speaker 4: synth soul duo Eurythmics. Here they are with their ghostly
Speaker 4: number four hit here comes the Rain Again.
Speaker 5: Comes flying on my head like a memory flying on
Speaker 5: my head, you emotion.
Speaker 4: Now, just for comparison, here's another number four hit from
Speaker 4: just a couple of months later, American Laura Brannigan with
Speaker 4: her ghostly synthpop hit self Control. It's not a copy
Speaker 4: of Eurythmics or really any specific act. In fact, it's
Speaker 4: a cover of an Italian pop song, but you might
Speaker 4: say that Team Brannigan was taking notes on British new
Speaker 4: wave can Take. Or further down the chart that same summer,
Speaker 4: here's a top twenty hit from British duo Wang Chung
Speaker 4: their lush technopop bop dancehall Days, which doesn't sound far
Speaker 4: removed from this top twenty hit from a few months earlier,
Speaker 4: Ray Parker Junior's lush techno pop ballad I just can't
Speaker 4: get over loving you.
Speaker 3: When I do your name.
Speaker 1: I give.
Speaker 3: Does I do.
Speaker 5: Loving you?
Speaker 1: I can't?
Speaker 4: Or a few spots further down the chart, here's British
Speaker 4: progressive rock veterans Yes with their quirky Cacoffinus electro rock
Speaker 4: track Leave It, a number twenty four hit in the
Speaker 4: spring of eighty four. About six months later, here's a
Speaker 4: number twenty three hit by American guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, veteran
Speaker 4: of Fleetwood Mac, with his quirky Cacoffinus electra rocker Go Insane.
Speaker 4: So say, in short, let's call this positive Transatlantic peer pressure.
Speaker 4: Three years of British acts setting the bar for hip,
Speaker 4: smart mass appeal pop had rubbed off on the Yanks.
Speaker 4: Everybody was bringing their a game. So by nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 4: it had become expected that a British blue eyed soul
Speaker 4: group like Culture Club would blend guitars, synthesizers and clattery
Speaker 4: sound effects on a hit like miss Me Blonde.
Speaker 1: You miss Me and miss Me and miss Me Blood.
Speaker 5: You Miss Me.
Speaker 4: But the same week that song was climbing into the
Speaker 4: top ten. Right next to it were Americans Daryl Hall
Speaker 4: and John Oates with their own blend of guitars, synths
Speaker 4: and clatter. Adult Education and the Ruboffs weren't just happening
Speaker 4: across borders. They were happening across genres. Reason four for
Speaker 4: the awesomeness of nineteen eighty four. Everybody was crossing over.
Speaker 4: Let's play a little name that tune. Here's the intro
Speaker 4: to a song that broke on the Hot one hundred
Speaker 4: in December nineteen eighty four. It would eventually peak at
Speaker 4: number two. Who's the artist? Sounds like moody new wave
Speaker 4: guitar rock. Is it Duran, Duran? The Police Tears for Fears. Nope,
Speaker 4: it's R and B singer Billy Oshan with Loverboy the
Speaker 4: a song that, by the way, was co written and
Speaker 4: co produced by famed rock producer Robert John mutt Lang,
Speaker 4: who'd also produced hits earlier in eighty four for The
Speaker 4: Cars and def Leppard. Let's play again? Whose dance floor breakdown?
Speaker 1: Is?
Speaker 3: This?
Speaker 4: Sounds like hard electro funk club music, right, So who
Speaker 4: is this? Chic the Gap band Rick James Guess again,
Speaker 4: it's British punk turned pop star Billy Idol. With his
Speaker 4: Fall eighty four hit Flesh for Fantasy. It made the
Speaker 4: top thirty not only on the Hot one hundred, but
Speaker 4: also Billboards Rock Tracks and dance disco chartssh rash. At
Speaker 4: a time when popular music was coming out of a
Speaker 4: very segregated period in the seventies and early eighties, with
Speaker 4: rock and R and B and disco staying in separate lanes,
Speaker 4: the hits of nineteen eighty four were all over the
Speaker 4: genre map. Virtually no one was staying in their lane,
Speaker 4: whether it was Lionel Ritchie who wrote and recorded a
Speaker 4: straight up country song called Stuck on You that made
Speaker 4: the pop and R and B Top ten and even
Speaker 4: the country charts Top twenty five, an unprecedented chart crossover
Speaker 4: at the time.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the feeding down, deep and massole. Then I just
Speaker 5: came use guess.
Speaker 1: A mon.
Speaker 4: Or Pat Benattar. She'd spent years building a reputation as
Speaker 4: the leading woman on album rock radio. She kicked off
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty four with a post disco club rock hybrid
Speaker 4: whose video featured Benatar leading a troop of dancers in
Speaker 4: a syncopated shimmy. The number five hit Love is a Battlefield.
Speaker 5: That is a bed.
Speaker 4: Or Bruce Springsteen, who, as we discussed in our Springsteen
Speaker 4: episode of Hit Parade, wrote cover me for disco Queen
Speaker 4: Donna summer. Bruce wound up keeping it for himself, but
Speaker 4: maintained its torchy millow dry. The florid operatic rock song
Speaker 4: was a number seven hit for Springsteen and the East
Speaker 4: Street Band in the fall of eighty four. There were
Speaker 4: also improbable team ups. A year after Michael Jackson topped
Speaker 4: the charts with guitarist Eddie Van Halen on Beat It,
Speaker 4: his brothers The Jacksons upped the ante by teaming with
Speaker 4: the Stones, Mick Jagger, Mick and Michael Yowled over a
Speaker 4: hard guitar riff on the number three summer eighty four
Speaker 4: hit State of Shock, and Phil Collins, who'd been adding
Speaker 4: Earthwind and Fire's horn section to his tracks for years.
Speaker 4: He finally returned the favor by teaming up with E
Speaker 4: WF singer Philip Bailey. Their duet Easy Lover, which exploded
Speaker 4: with collins booming rock drums and Bailey's fluttery soul vocals,
Speaker 4: went to number two on the Hot one hundred, number
Speaker 4: three R and B, and number five on the Album
Speaker 4: Rock chart. And I haven't even mentioned Prince, whose guitar,
Speaker 4: vocals and very persona obliterated genre boundaries all over nineteen
Speaker 4: eighty four. We'll talk more about him a little later.
Speaker 4: In the twenty first century, genres increasingly seem like quaint
Speaker 4: relics of a bygone time, and artists record in whatever
Speaker 4: idiom they like, from Lil naz X to Steve Lacy
Speaker 4: Taylor Swift to Post Malone, Beyonce to Shaboozi.
Speaker 3: But in the.
Speaker 4: Eighties, this kind of promiscuous genre mixing was revolutionary, and
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty four was ground zero for all of it.
Speaker 4: More in a moment.
Speaker 2: After the break, we'll be back with the conclusion of
Speaker 2: part one of what's nineteen eighty four got to do?
Speaker 2: With the edition from Hip Parade, We're back with the
Speaker 2: rest of this episode of Hip Parade.
Speaker 4: Besides all this crossover between genres, there was one genre
Speaker 4: that really went out of its way to become more
Speaker 4: accessible in nineteen eighty four. Reason five for the awesomeness
Speaker 4: of nineteen eighty four Metal goes pop. Okay, hold on
Speaker 4: to your hairnet, I Chris malanfy am about to say
Speaker 4: something nice about bon Jovi. Runaway, their debut single, a
Speaker 4: number thirty nine it in April nineteen eighty four, is
Speaker 4: a really good song, maybe because it sounds the least
Speaker 4: like a bon Jovi song on it. John bon Jovi
Speaker 4: fronted a group of Journeymen session musicians he never played
Speaker 4: with again. Runaway was emblematic of glam metal in nineteen
Speaker 4: eighty four, and yes, as we discussed in our Hit
Speaker 4: Parade episode about bon Jovi, they really were considered metal
Speaker 4: at that time. After they began topping the Hot one hundred.
Speaker 4: A couple of years later, the term hair metal was coined.
Speaker 4: This brand of metal was frothy, catchy, laced with hooks,
Speaker 4: and piled with synthesizers. Van Halen, whose LP nineteen eighty
Speaker 4: four was the year's top charting hard rock album, did
Speaker 4: as much for the synthesizer that year as any techno pop.
Speaker 5: Act Yeah You de Sile pure Ses.
Speaker 4: But even when nineteen eighty four metal avoided synths and
Speaker 4: stuck to guitars, it was shamelessly catchy. Like everything else
Speaker 4: that year, metal was helping to define the bounds of
Speaker 4: mass appeal pop. Van Halen scored three top twenty hits
Speaker 4: in eighty four, including aleweight and Panama, and a massive
Speaker 4: number one hit that we'll discuss later. But they were
Speaker 4: not alone. They were joined in the top forty that
Speaker 4: year year by Germany's Scorpions with the number twenty five
Speaker 4: hit rock You Like a Hurricane. La band Rat with
Speaker 4: their metallic love song Round and Round. The single reached
Speaker 4: number twelve, and their LP Out of the Cellar went
Speaker 4: top ten and double platinum. And the garish, flamboyant and
Speaker 4: deliberately cartoonish Twisted Sister. Their music videos featuring bugs, bunny style,
Speaker 4: comic violence against parents and principles, made Twisted Sister MTV stars.
Speaker 4: But it must also be said that their number twenty
Speaker 4: one hit We're Not Gonna Take It, written by outspoken
Speaker 4: Twisted Sister frontman d Snyder, was a heartfelt, melodic and
Speaker 4: stirring anthem god, so even the most meat and potatoes
Speaker 4: rock bands were going the extra mile. In eighty four,
Speaker 4: on the other end of the spectrum, America's most cutting
Speaker 4: edge new genre was infiltrating the zeitgeist. Reason six for
Speaker 4: the awesomeness of nineteen eighty four hip hop culture becomes
Speaker 4: pop culture.
Speaker 1: Faith, physic, dreams of Passage.
Speaker 4: By eighty five four, hip hop had existed for over
Speaker 4: a decade since DJ cool Hirk's legendary nineteen seventy three
Speaker 4: Wreckroom Party, and rap had been a recorded medium for
Speaker 4: more than four years since nineteen seventy nine's Rappers Delight.
Speaker 4: The full pop breakthrough of rap was still a couple
Speaker 4: of years away, but you could feel it getting closer.
Speaker 4: At the start of the year, Melly Mill's irresistible anti
Speaker 4: drug jam Whitelines was something like a phenomenon, bubbling under
Speaker 4: the Hot one hundred and peaking just outside the top
Speaker 4: forty on the R and B chart. Famously, the first
Speaker 4: rap group to break into the top ten on the
Speaker 4: Hot one hundred would be run DMC with their Aerosmith
Speaker 4: cover Walk This Way. That wouldn't happen until nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 4: But in eighty four, run DMC were already making waves
Speaker 4: with their self titled debut album and a string of
Speaker 4: black radio hits, including the rock rap fusion rock Box
Speaker 4: a number twenty two R and B hit No Bright.
Speaker 1: The xnog Babe Manders, Up and Down, Slow Bay For.
Speaker 4: And In the summer of eighty four, Brooklyn rap troupe
Speaker 4: Nucleus scored a national hit with their zany electro funk
Speaker 4: classic jam On It. It reached number fifty six pop
Speaker 4: number nine R and B, remarkable for a rap single
Speaker 4: on an independent label, and speaking as a native Brooklyn Nite,
Speaker 4: I can tell you jam On It was as huge
Speaker 4: on the radio that summer as anything by Madonna or Duranduran.
Speaker 1: Screen.
Speaker 4: The way you could tell hip hop culture was really
Speaker 4: going overground was how elements of the culture scratching, rapping,
Speaker 4: and especially breaking, were infecting middle of the road. Nineteen
Speaker 4: eighty four, pop Records actress and pop star Irene Kara,
Speaker 4: one year passed her number one hit Flashdance, What a Feeling,
Speaker 4: returned to the top ten with the single Breakdance. As
Speaker 4: guileless as this song was, it probably did more to
Speaker 4: introduce breaking to middle America than most rap singles did,
Speaker 4: and famously, nineteen eighty four was the year breaking hit
Speaker 4: the big screen. Canon Films released two back to back
Speaker 4: teensploitation dance movies in eighty four, in quick succession, the
Speaker 4: hit Breakin and the insta sequel Say It with Me Now,
Speaker 4: break In two Electric Boogaloo. The first Breakin generated a
Speaker 4: top ten hit from electro soul duo Ollie Brown and
Speaker 4: Jerry Knight. Ollie and Jerry's Breakin' There's No Stopping Us
Speaker 4: reach number nine in August of eighty four, but possibly
Speaker 4: rap's biggest pop culture moment of eighty four came on
Speaker 4: a single by An R and B Veteran.
Speaker 1: Chuck a con chuck a kon chuck a kN chacka.
Speaker 3: Kan chuck.
Speaker 4: Chuck chaka cohns. I Feel for You was a cover
Speaker 4: of a song by Prince, with guest harmonica playing by
Speaker 4: Stevie Wonder and samples of Wonder's early hit Fingertips, punctuated
Speaker 4: most famously by rapping from Mellie Mill and up to
Speaker 4: the minute scratching and hip hop style production.
Speaker 3: Cha co Let Me tell You What's One to be?
Speaker 4: I Feel for You reached number three on the Hot
Speaker 4: one hundred and number one on the R and B
Speaker 4: chart In November eighty four, Shaka Khan's biggest pop hit ever,
Speaker 4: served as a mainstream ambassador to hip hop culture. Rap
Speaker 4: was also becoming famous for beefs. The dis records Ro
Speaker 4: San Rock San and Rock San's Revenge also dropped in
Speaker 4: late eighty four, but the biggest beef of the year
Speaker 4: happened in the pop world between two female newcomers. It
Speaker 4: was concocted entirely by the media, yet even there something
Speaker 4: positive emerged. Reason seven for the awesomeness of nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 4: Cindi Lauper plus Not Versus Madonna. Cindy Lauper and Madonna,
Speaker 4: two dance pop singers nurtured in New York's downtown arts
Speaker 4: and club scene, released their solo debut LPs She's So
Speaker 4: Unusual and Madonna, respectively, just weeks apart in the second
Speaker 4: half of nineteen eighty three. By nineteen eighty four, both
Speaker 4: LPs were spinning off strings of hits. Because the patriarchy
Speaker 4: won't allow two accomplished women to coexist without trying to
Speaker 4: start a fight. By mid eighty four, the press and
Speaker 4: the music industry positioned Cindy Lauper and Madonna as would
Speaker 4: be rivals. As we discussed in our Lapper episode of
Speaker 4: Hip Parade, neither woman actively engaged in this imagined rivalry.
Speaker 4: The fact that the media even called it a catfight
Speaker 4: was depressing. But here's the thing, this was a happening.
Speaker 4: Not since the early sixties girl group era had two
Speaker 4: women launched careers simultaneously and had this much chart impact
Speaker 4: out of the box. By the end of eighty four,
Speaker 4: Lauper became the first woman to pull four top five
Speaker 4: hits from a single album, the number two hit Girls
Speaker 4: Just Want to Have Fun, the number one Time after Time,
Speaker 4: the number three Shebop, and the number five hit All
Speaker 4: Through the Night. Madonna's success took, believe it or not,
Speaker 4: a bit longer to get rolling. Holiday was only a
Speaker 4: number sixteen hit, Borderline a number ten hit, But by
Speaker 4: the time Lucky Star reached its peak in October of
Speaker 4: eighty four, Madonna had kicked off a six year streak
Speaker 4: of sixteen consecutive top five hits, a still unbroken Hot
Speaker 4: one hundred record, and she matched Lauper's daring from the start.
Speaker 4: Just weeks after Cindy Peak with her ode to the
Speaker 4: Joys of Female Masturbation, she bop Madonna dropped her meditation
Speaker 4: on Reinvigorated Virginity. We'll get to that song in more
Speaker 4: detail a bit later in the show. I choose to
Speaker 4: remember the Cindy Madonna confluence of nineteen eighty four as
Speaker 4: a next level moment for women on the charts, rather
Speaker 4: than a rivalry. Two great artists, each with totally original
Speaker 4: pop persona, were dropping first rate bops every few weeks.
Speaker 4: As the meme says, why not both when they broke
Speaker 4: in eighty four. Madonna was over twenty five years old,
Speaker 4: Lauper thirty years old, fairly mature for brand new pop stars.
Speaker 4: But they were both kids compared with some of the
Speaker 4: year's big hit makers, which brings up one last X
Speaker 4: factor about the year. Reason eight for the awesomeness of
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty four, Old dogs learn new tricks. As I
Speaker 4: said at the top of our show, Tina Turner pulled
Speaker 4: off a major comeback in nineteen eighty four, becoming a
Speaker 4: bigger hit maker than she'd ever been at the ripe
Speaker 4: old age of forty four, and she was in good company.
Speaker 4: A wave of pop veterans scored major hits in eighty four,
Speaker 4: not just keeping up with the whipper Snappers, but totally
Speaker 4: reinventing themselves. You might say Tina Turner wasn't the only
Speaker 4: elder superstar with legs. Legs. Zz Top's first ever top
Speaker 4: ten hit in the summer of eighty four, peaked just
Speaker 4: as the Bearded Texas Trios members turned thirty five. As
Speaker 4: we discussed in our Legacy Hits episode, after spending the
Speaker 4: seventies as electric blues craftsmen, zz Top rebooted themselves on
Speaker 4: their Eliminator album as electro dance rockers, retrofitting their guitar
Speaker 4: crunch with sequencers and synthesizers, and they rebooted themselves as
Speaker 4: MTV stars in a series of cheeky videos. Or let's
Speaker 4: consider a very different but just as senior rock band Chicago.
Speaker 4: They'd been recording since the late sixties. In nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 4: as Chicago's members were all between thirty five and forty,
Speaker 4: the horn inflected troop went multi platinum with Chicago seventeen
Speaker 4: their most hit packed LP. Ever, four of its hits
Speaker 4: cracked the top twenty, and two of them reached the
Speaker 4: top five, including the number three hit Hard Habit to Break,
Speaker 4: and those were just the groups. Veterans soloists were also scoring.
Speaker 4: In eighty four, David Bowie, who had just turned thirty seven,
Speaker 4: kept up his hot streak that he'd kicked off the
Speaker 4: year before on the Let's Dance LP with his glossy
Speaker 4: eighty four single Blue Gene, a number eight hit in November.
Speaker 4: Even some of the apparent young'uns were older than they looked.
Speaker 4: Two men who both turned thirty five in nineteen eighty
Speaker 4: four had each just recorded his biggest, most hit packed
Speaker 4: album ever. Lionel Ritchie, whose CA slowed Down LP produced
Speaker 4: five top ten hits, including two number ones, and Bruce Springsteen,
Speaker 4: who's born in the USA, would produce a record seven
Speaker 4: top ten hits across nineteen eighty four, eighty five and
Speaker 4: eighty six.
Speaker 5: USA US.
Speaker 4: For Bruce, the only bad news was none of those
Speaker 4: seven hits reached number one on the Hot one hundred,
Speaker 4: but several veterans did go all the way on the
Speaker 4: big chart, along with avatars of the new pop from
Speaker 4: George to Madonna, Duran, Duran to Wham. Let's spend part
Speaker 4: two of this show walking through all of these number
Speaker 4: one hits coming up. In part two, we take a
Speaker 4: spin through the twenty songs that reached number one on
Speaker 4: the Hot one hundred in nineteen eighty four. They embody
Speaker 4: all the hallmarks that made eighty four pop's greatest year.
Speaker 4: They were cinematic and charismatic, ballads and bops, old school
Speaker 4: and next wave. And the only artist who repeats is
Speaker 4: let's call him the kid who maybe was just too bold.
Speaker 4: Broken Record listeners, thanks for listening to part one. You
Speaker 4: can listen to part two right now. Just find Hit
Speaker 4: Parade in your favorite podcast app. Thanks to everyone at
Speaker 4: Broken Record or the chance to share this look at
Speaker 4: an amazing year for pop. Our show was written, edited,
Speaker 4: and narrated by Chris Molanfy That's Me. My producer is
Speaker 4: Kevin Bendis. Derek john is Executive producer of Narrative Podcasts,
Speaker 4: and we had help from Joel Meyer. Alicia Montgomery is
Speaker 4: VP of Audio for Slate Podcasts. Check out their roster
Speaker 4: of shows at Slate dot com Slash Podcasts. You can
Speaker 4: subscribe to Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts, in
Speaker 4: addition to finding it in the Slate Culture Feed. If
Speaker 4: you're subscribing on Apple podcasts. Please rate and review us
Speaker 4: while you're there. It helps other listeners find the show.
Speaker 4: Thanks for listening, and I look forward to leading the
Speaker 4: hit parade back your way. Until then, keep on marching
Speaker 4: on the one. I'm Chris molanfy