EVERY Billboard #1 hit discussion thread 1958-Present

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by alphanguy, Jan 29, 2016.

  1. W.B.

    W.B. The Collector's Collector

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    In that shot, KC seemed to almost resemble another "KC" - American Top 40's Casey Kasem.

    But I seem to recall that not only was this their last #1, but also T.K.'s. The label would last only one more year before Henry Stone's empire collapsed.

    It's also one which it was ages since this was last played on the radio.
     
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  2. Victor/Victrola

    Victor/Victrola Makng shure its write

    Please Don't Go - Please do go, KC, you've overstayed your welcome. Never thought I'd hear a such a boring snoozer from the king of disco party records. Wake me up for the next #1.
     
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  3. SITKOL'76

    SITKOL'76 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Colombia, SC
    Were they on their way out by then? It seems like it.
     
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  4. Hey Vinyl Man

    Hey Vinyl Man Another bloody Yank down under...

    I agree, but then the late '80s were so horrible as to make this period sound pretty good to me.
    I've heard of "Please Don't Go", but I'm not sure if I've ever heard it. This, interestingly, was at the tail end of a few years of my early childhood where I do remember pretty well what was on the radio. For example, I remember hearing "Music Box Dancer" all the time, and in a few months, Bette Midler's biggest hit to date. But after the summer of 1980, nothing until I started listening to AT40 in late 1987. My best guess as to why is that my parents bought their first house in April 1980 (before that we lived in apartments) and with the additional space, I was less likely to overhear the radio. Or maybe they just stopped listening to the radio anyway. (We didn't have cable until years later, so no MTV for the time being - and yes, I know it didn't start until 1981 - and when we did get it, I was big into oldies and couldn't have cared less about then-current stuff.)
     
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  5. W.B.

    W.B. The Collector's Collector

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    They seemed to straddle the fence here - starting with ballad territory, then slowly moving up to their "dance" grooves - albeit at a slower tempo than their numbers up to this point.

    Meanwhile, here's KC's other hit of the period, duetting with Teri DeSario on this cover of the old Barbara Mason chestnut from 1965 (another one you hardly hear anymore):
     
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  6. W.B.

    W.B. The Collector's Collector

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    In a sense, one could see with this #1, that title seemed to be KC's message to his audience. After this, they (meaning, the audience) went.
     
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  7. W.B.

    W.B. The Collector's Collector

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    It wasn't just in "the field." There were far more record companies and places to go to have your product put out than today.
     
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  8. bare trees

    bare trees Senior Member

    "Please Don't Go" is a guilty pleasure for me. It might be repetitive and and the lyrics are terrible but I love how the vocal melody melds with the instrmental track.
     
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  9. Wild Horse

    Wild Horse Forum Resident

    Location:
    California
    Please Don't Go

    It's okay, but it's no "Get Down Tonight" or "That's The Way I Like It". Although, I guess it's not trying to be.

    Kind of a weak start for the first 80s #1.

    The next one coming up would have been a better start.*


    *it appears that Pina Colada thing comes back again first for a few weeks before the next new #1, probably because it missed annoying a few people the first time.
     
  10. Wild Horse

    Wild Horse Forum Resident

    Location:
    California
    Yep. They pretty much disappeared in the 80s, never to return.
     
  11. Jo B

    Jo B Forum Resident

    Location:
    Minnesota USA
    The video is very 1980 that now ends up being a bit distracting in a checking for fire suppressing sprinklers kind of way, but the song holds up rather nicely.
     
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  12. Glenpwood

    Glenpwood Hyperactive!

    Not to nitpick this statement but Helen's albums easily outsold Cher's & probably equaled Diana in the seventies. Reddy had seven albums in a row peak between six to sixteen. Because of that weird RIAA rule, most of her million sellers pre 1976 show as gold only except I Am Woman which Capitol paid to recertify in the nineties as Platinum & her Greatest Hits set as Double Platinum. Her last gold record, Music Music, was her only true half million seller in the string.

    Cher had two million sellers in the 70's, the Cher aka GT&T album & Half Breed, then a gold disc for Take Me Home, even though Casablanca was notorious for flooding the marketplace with LPs that didn't actually sell to up their marketplace share. She never really started selling albums in a big way until her Geffen years and beyond.

    As much as love Diana, she only really had 6 albums in the 70's that either sold gold or platinum- the two self titled sets, Lady Sings The Blues, Diana & Marvin, The Boss, and Touch Me In The Morning. Her only album of the decade that Motown allowed the RIAA to certify was The Boss. That puts her on about equal footing with Reddy but probably only surpasses her due to Motown putting out plenty of mild selling fodder like TV Soundtracks, a pair of Live albums, and the albums that only spawned minor hits like Baby It's Me.
     
  13. MielR

    MielR THIS SPACE FOR RENT

    Location:
    Georgia, USA
    Let's not forget there was also a version in Spanish- Por Favor No Te Vayas:
     
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  14. tmoore

    tmoore Forum Resident

    Location:
    Olney, MD
    I remember thinking/hoping on January 1, 1980 that the '80s would be a return to the '60s, musically. I mean that in terms of --- experimentation with artist development being uppermost, not the bottom line. Of course, that turned out not to be the case, but now that we are just about 40 years out from THAT, it is obvious in retrospect that things couldn't go back to the way they were.

    I do like about the first third of the '80s, musically. But around the fall of 1983, the music and me began to part ways. I'll talk about this more when we get there. (that's not to say that I don't like any songs dating from 1984 or later. It's just that, as a percentage of the whole, there are far fewer of them)

    Before we leave the '70s, to me that remains the most interesting decade of music, from start to finish, in terms of variety. The #1 songs are just a part of it. I'm also talking about artists that never saw the Top 40. It has been interesting to read the other posts above here listing people's favorite songs. I'll hold off on doing that, because if I make a post like that I want it to be comprehensive --- which requires a lot of thought --- which requires time that I don't have to spare right now.

    I have a lot of self-burned CDs (with favorite tracks), and a large percentage of them have '70s music on them.
     
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  15. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    I looked ahead and my opinion of many #1s in 1981 and 1982 will be much more negative.

    The 60s and 70s were the best! The quirky stuff, stuff people here have expressed hate for like "Run Joey, Run", "Me And You And A Dog Named Boo", "Telephone Man", and many other records that never saw the top spot were among the best things about the 70s. And the variety was unparalleled! I love "Evil Boll-Weevil" by Grand Canyon.
     
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  16. The Slug Man

    The Slug Man Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Carolina
    "Please Don't Go"

    We may have reached the 80s, but it's not quite time to break out the Miami Vice suits, Swatches, parachute pants, and Rubik's cubes just yet. "Please Don't Go" seems like a plea by KC for his remaining fans not to turn their backs on him (or disco in general).
     
  17. The Slug Man

    The Slug Man Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Carolina
    I seem to remember an audio interview with John Lennon around the time of his final album coming out in 1980, shortly before he died, where he said something to that effect. "Weren't the '70s a drag? Let's try to make the '80s more like the '60s." The closest the '80s would get to the 60s, however, would just come in the form of the natural 20-year-nostalgia cycle (kind of like what the '70s did for the '50s).
     
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  18. Hoover Factory

    Hoover Factory Old Dude Who Knows Things

    Location:
    Spokane, WA
    1979 Roundup

    Favorite Number Ones:

    Heart of Glass
    Bad Girls
    Hot Stuff
    Pop Muzik
    My Sharona

    Hate Them:

    Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?
    Knock on Wood
    Love You Inside Out
    Sad Eyes
    Escape (The Pina Colada Song)

    Favorite Singles (Not Number 1):

    Dreaming - Blondie
    Dream Police - Cheap Trick
    Oliver’s Army - Elvis Costello
    Life During Wartime - Talking Heads
    Let’s Go - The Cars
    It’s Different for Girls - Joe Jackson
    Transmission - Joy Division
    Life Begins at the Hop - XTC
    London Calling - The Clash
    I Don’t Like Mondays - The Boomtown Rats
    Girl of My Dreams - Bram Tchaikovsky
    Brass in Pocket - The Pretenders
    Do You Remember Rock n Roll Radio? - The Ramones

    Favorite Albums:

    Eat to the Beat - Blondie
    The Clash (US Version) - The Clash
    London Calling - The Clash
    Armed Forces - Elvis Costello & the Attractions
    Damn the Torpedoes - Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers

    Favorite Song of 1979:

    “Union City Blue” - Blondie



    1979 - a great year for music
     
    Last edited: Sep 13, 2019
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  19. Hey Vinyl Man

    Hey Vinyl Man Another bloody Yank down under...

    Seems like every time I mention Rolling Stone's "Top 100 albums of the '80s" and people ask me what #1 was, it gets the same response - "Wasn't that released in 1979?"
    The answer: Yes, just about everywhere except the US.
     
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  20. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    Heh! We're already into 1980 and we're still talking about the 70s. I thought you guys were in such a hurry to get to the 80s.:D
     
  21. Hey Vinyl Man

    Hey Vinyl Man Another bloody Yank down under...

    To be fair, everything we've discussed at this point was recorded in the 70s.
     
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  22. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    True. And "Please Don't Go" had most of its momentum in the 70s.
     
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  23. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    I wouldn't go that far. The singles charts weren't too adventuresome - although even there, you get some truly epic standout #1s - but on the album front the '80s were quite another thing. Plenty of innovation going on there. I think the difference was that radio was becoming far more fragmented than it was in the '70s, both by genre and by geography (the rise of music on FM, with its shorter-range transmitters, and the death of music on AM with its long range and enormous footprint helped accelerate that trend). And the continue move away from singles and toward albums meant that most of the focus - and the innovation - went into the long form. It didn't matter so much what happened on the singles charts, and they became much more lowest-common-denominator than they'd been before.
     
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  24. Damiano54

    Damiano54 Senior Member

    I don't think this gem from '79 was posted yet

    Shape Of Things To Come - The Headboys

     
  25. Hoover Factory

    Hoover Factory Old Dude Who Knows Things

    Location:
    Spokane, WA
    Except, I distinctly remember purchasing it at the University of Maryland Record Co-op in late December 1979. I remember this because I flew out to California to visit family 2 days after Christmas, and I was playing the album while packing my bags for the trip.
     
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