EVERY Billboard #1 hit discussion thread 1958-Present

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

  1. Grant

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

    Nah! Listen to her "What'cha Gonna Do For Me" album. Her vocals take the cake on it. But, it's a very good album, too. I'm sure you'll enjoy it. She does the best cover of "We Can Work It Out" ever, IMO.
     
    pablo fanques likes this.
  2. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    When Chaka isn't in full on scream mode I like her a lot. But in the '80s a lot of ladies became fairly scream-y. Plenty of men too, come to think of it.

    Must have been all the coke.
     
    WLL and pablo fanques like this.
  3. SITKOL'76

    SITKOL'76 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Colombia, SC
    The song is AMAZING, the video is COLORFUL and VIBRANT and George Michael was a cutie, so was his partner. They look like a cute 80's gay couple that watch Dynasty and The Golden Girls together.
     
  4. Jmac1979

    Jmac1979 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Louisville, KY
    I think the problem with Waking Up was that the material simply wasn't there. George admits in hindsight he and the other guys were burnt out by the end of the Colour By Numbers tour (in August 1984) and then when planning on taking a few months off, her told that Virgin wants a new album by Christmas, and therefore they pretty much rushed out an album nobody in the band wanted to record, so they basically crapped out an album and had it on shelves within three months. I think had Culture Club come back perhaps in the spring or summer of 1985 well-rested and with stronger material, they might've been able to hold onto the gold a little bit longer
     
    Grant and Lance LaSalle like this.
  5. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    Perhaps, but you'll not convince me they had apples/apples music.

    When CC was hot in the US in 1983 and had a slew of great singles, Wham! couldn't buy a hit.

    When Wham! had an album with lots of good material and CC released an album that was spotty at best, Wham! became more popular.

    So IMO, they didn't "run on the same musical playground". "Colour" was vastly superior to "Fantastic", and "MIB" was vastly superior to "Waking".

    If they'd both had out albums of similar quality, then you might have a point. But given that this wasn't the case, the comparisons don't work...
     
    Lance LaSalle and Jmac1979 like this.
  6. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    Bowie stands out as one of the very few artists who lied to claim he wasn't straight!

    He claimed to be bisexual, and though I'm sure he had some dalliances with men, he was really straight.

    While all the gay musicians pretended they were straight, Bowie was a straight musician who pretended to swing both ways! :laugh:
     
    AppleBonker, Grant and Lance LaSalle like this.
  7. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    You should be banned from the SHF for such a ludicrous statement! :realmad:
     
    AppleBonker and Lance LaSalle like this.
  8. Jmac1979

    Jmac1979 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Louisville, KY
    Despite their bad rap, I really liked Wham, such good fun.

    But of the four big singles off Make It Big, "Wake Me Up" is by far my least favorite and the most disposible.
     
    Lance LaSalle and sunspot42 like this.
  9. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    CC also wanted new material for the fall 1984 US tour.

    It's crazy how little time they had off. Setlist.fm lists the last show of the "CbN" tour as being July 11 1984 in Sydney - and the "Waking" tour started October 25 in Dallas! :eek:

    Of course, that was the norm 20 years earlier, but still, it's a pretty rough schedule, and all the touring in 1983/84 left little time to create new material...
     
  10. Jmac1979

    Jmac1979 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Louisville, KY
    It seems to be a common theme where female pop stars love to claim to be bisexual. Nicki Minaj famously claimed to be bisexual when her first album came out, and then a year or so later said she made it up for attention. That was one thing in the era of Bowie given at that point, not even Elton John or Liberace were out and it was potentially career suicide (Elton's popularity plummetted after coming out to RS in 1976) but Nicki only cheapened it and made it that much harder for legit LGBT artists to come out without looking like they're fake and phishing for attention.
     
  11. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    I'd take it over "Careless Whisper". I admit "CW" is the superior song, but it just gets on my nerves - that sax! :wantsome:

    Though it did spawn this! :laugh:

     
    Grant likes this.
  12. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    Seems much less risky for females to claim to be bi than men. Much more stigma for guys to indulge in sex with other guys vs. women with women.

    Not sure Elton's decline in popularity was due to claims of bisexuality as much as the material wasn't as good! Elton had already started to decline after "GBYR", and after "Blue Moves", the slump became even worse...
     
  13. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    I compared the style of music, not the quality. Although again, if Wham! hadn't been around - with a really solid album and a slew of singles in a similar style - I think it's likely Waking Up would have seen a much warmer commercial reception. Which doesn't mean it wouldn't have been a lesser effort, just that it wouldn't have been so badly buried. As it stands, it withered under the competition.
     
    pablo fanques and Lance LaSalle like this.
  14. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Not really. Didn't do Dusty Springfield any favors back in the early '70s.
     
    pablo fanques likes this.
  15. Wild Horse

    Wild Horse Forum Resident

    Location:
    California
    Wake Me Up Before You Go Go

    This is a little too 'chirpy' and fake Motown for me, but I was out to lunch with my 83 year old mother the other day and this song was playing on the restaurant sound system and it really seemed to make her happy, and then I realised that yeah, this is a happy song. So it's not all bad.

    And, you guys back a few pages are too funny discussing that finely tuned gaydar was needed to tell if George Michael was gay back then.

    You've seen the video for this song, right? :laugh:

    [​IMG]


    :D
     
    Grant, sunspot42 and pablo fanques like this.
  16. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Well, to my friend's credit, she spotted it before this video, but yeah.
     
    pablo fanques likes this.
  17. Grant

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

    No. Face it. You just don't like high voices.:laugh:
     
    Last edited: Aug 1, 2020
  18. Grant

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

    It was the drugs. He claimed to not remember the entire year of 1975. That's the year he went on Soul Train, the second White artist to ever do so. Elton John was the first. Or was it the other way around? They both had R&B hit singles in that same year.
     
    pablo fanques likes this.
  19. Grant

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

    On the other hand, everyone knew Johnny Mathis was gay. Oprah Winfrey once asked him if he was when he was a guest on her show, and he said the reason he never mentioned it is because he assumed everyone already knew.
     
    pablo fanques likes this.
  20. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    I like early Kate Bush, so I'd say that "high voices" aren't the problem.
     
    pablo fanques likes this.
  21. Grant

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

    I was around and old enough to know that his slide from popularity in the U.S. was directly related to his admission that he "liked girls as well as blokes" in late 1976. His last single at the time of the interview was "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" with Kiki Dee, which was a one-off single. After that interview, he quickly released "Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word" as a single, and it didn't do too bad. He didn't have another major U.S. hit single until 1979. So, after two years, America no longer cared about his sexual preferences. When he released "Mama Can't Buy You Love", it was in the peak of the disco era, and it had that famous Philadelphia sound.

    I didn't think "Bite Your Lip (Jump Up And Dance)" was a bad song at all. It was just the wrong time to release it. But, then, how does one explain "Can't Stop Dancing" by The Captain & Tennille, which was musically very similar.

    The funny thing is that everyone pretty much already knew Elton John liked men before the admission. But, no one cared before that. It was a wink and a nod kind of thing.

    And, Kiki Dee? It turns out she's gay too.

    Rod Stewart? He was never even close to being gay, but I remember back in 1977, people were spreading around the semen and stomach pump rumor, probably from the guys still pissed off that he ditched The Faces.
     
  22. Grant

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

    To me it just looked like they were hamming it up. Check out Andrew Ridgley's eyes. He was probably thinking how he couldn't wait until it was all over.
     
    pablo fanques likes this.
  23. AppleBonker

    AppleBonker Forum Resident

    Location:
    Seattle
    Liberace had a TV show in the 50s that was huge with middle aged housewives. No joke, his appeal to them was that his many many (almost exclusively female) fans wanted to 'mother' him. 'If only that wonderful Liberace could find a nice girl and settle down'. Yeah, they were clueless.
     
    SomeCallMeTim and Lance LaSalle like this.
  24. WLL

    WLL Popery Of Mopery






    ...I still remember hearing (female) WNEW-FM DJ Bernie Bernard announce Elton's nuptials one overnight shift:pineapple:!
     
  25. WLL

    WLL Popery Of Mopery






    ...I really really really liked " Through the Fire " at the time, I never had the album:tsk:.
     

Share This Page

molar-endocrine