EVERY Billboard #1 hit discussion thread 1958-Present

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

  1. Dougd

    Dougd Forum Resident

    Location:
    Fla.
    The next No. 1, the one before Please Don't Go, made chart history.
    But, we will discuss that when it comes up.
     
  2. MikeInFla

    MikeInFla Glad to be out of Florida

    Location:
    Kalamazoo, MI
    DeYoung on the term:

    Corporate rock? Who you calling corporate rock? Styx co-founder Dennis DeYoung, speaking to In the Studio, fires back at the old pejorative hurled Styx’s way after they began racking up platinum sales in the late 1970s.

    “Styx never took a dime in endorsements from anybody — and we were offered endorsements all the time, for everything,” DeYoung tells radio host Redbeard. “We never took a dime for our tours. We always funded everything we did ourselves. The idea of us being corporate rock was nonsense from the beginning. It was something that was made up in someone else’s mind. The band only ever did what it did best — which was write the best songs they could, record them and play the best shows they knew how.”

    Styx never took a dime from anybody. I still get offers. I got an offer from Burger King for ‘The Best of Times,’ and I said no. I figured it was going to end up being ‘The Best of Fries.'”
     
  3. alphanguy

    alphanguy Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Missouri
    Next is "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)" by Rupert Holmes, #1 for 3 non consecutive weeks, December 16 - December 29, 1979, and again from January 6 - January 12, 1980.

     
  4. W.B.

    W.B. The Collector's Collector

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    The only #1 in the history of Infinity Records - which was already out of business by the time this peaked, its roster (including Mr. Holmes) having been absorbed into MCA.
     
    pudgym, Grant, SomeCallMeTim and 2 others like this.
  5. Hoover Factory

    Hoover Factory Old Dude Who Knows Things

    Location:
    Spokane, WA
    I don’t like the song.

    I also think a pina coladas is a lousy drink.
     
    1983 and Grant like this.
  6. John54

    John54 Senior Member

    Location:
    Burlington, ON
    Not BS, it makes perfect sense
     
  7. Wild Horse

    Wild Horse Forum Resident

    Location:
    California
    Escape (The Pina Colada Song)

    Somebody please make it stop.


    Okay, the story is kinda cute

    ... the first time you hear it.
     
    joemarine, Damiano54, Grant and 3 others like this.
  8. Wild Horse

    Wild Horse Forum Resident

    Location:
    California
    Since we're at the end of the 70s, I want to post my choice for the song from that decade that most deserved to hit number one but didn't ...




    It stalled at #2 in the summer of 1975. One of the best songs of the 1970s, IMO. Sublime.
     
  9. Wildest cat from montana

    Wildest cat from montana Humble Reader

    Location:
    ontario canada
    Pina coladas are crappy. The song somewhat less so.
     
  10. Wildest cat from montana

    Wildest cat from montana Humble Reader

    Location:
    ontario canada
    Definitely should have been #1. Different , weird and catchy. What kept it out of the top slot anyway? It was #2 for three weeks. Probably some inanity like ' Thank God I'm A Country Boy ' I seem to remember that one being out at the same time. " Life ain't nothing but a funny funny riddle , pancakes on the griddle, playing my fiddle , piggy in the middle.." Good God.
     
    AppleBonker, Jrr, joemarine and 3 others like this.
  11. Wild Horse

    Wild Horse Forum Resident

    Location:
    California
    :D

    The Hustle, One of These Nights and Jive Talkin' kept it out of the number one spot.

    Must have been frustrating for 10cc to watch all those songs leap frog over it.
     
    joemarine and pablo fanques like this.
  12. ChrisScooter1

    ChrisScooter1 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Athens, GA
    You’d have to pin that on Neil Peart, not Ged...Ged had to sing it, but he didn’t write it.
     
    Grant, Hey Vinyl Man and MikeInFla like this.
  13. ChrisScooter1

    ChrisScooter1 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Athens, GA
    Apples to oranges...I don’t find it
    Yep. Apples to oranges. Both Barry’s falsetto or Ged’s potently piercing high vocals are both fodder for dislike, from usually completely different camps. I actually liked both of them, but not for any similarity in their timbre, simply because of their range. But I also understand why they were disliked as well. We may get to them in another year or two, but I think Rush’s chart success was definitely helped when Ged lowered his pitch and avoided the really high notes.
     
    MikeInFla likes this.
  14. ronm

    ronm audiofreak

    Location:
    southern colo.
    This takes me back to my sisters basement in Denver the summer of '75.I would listen to radio hits through a RCA pecan wood table am/FM radio.It was a strange song I always thought..."be quiet stop crying".
     
    1983, Wild Horse and Hey Vinyl Man like this.
  15. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Oh, I loved this one - hey, I was 11 - and what a perfect hit to straddle the transition from the '70s to the '80s. Definitely tapped into the cultural and political zeitgeist, in its own affable, Yacht Rockified way.

    It's appropriate that the last #1 hit of the '70s was a story song with a twist. A great way to cap off the decade that sent "Dark Lady" and "The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia" (among others) to the top. We'd be seeing far fewer of these in the '80s.

    For a songwriter, Rupert Holmes is really effective as a performer. He comes across like a laid back Barry Manilow without the Broadway affectations. "Escape" is a great example of why people call this subgenre of pop "Yacht Rock" - it's full of references to the shore and the tropics (Pina Coladas, dunes of the cape, the feel of the ocean) - and has an almost-reggae inflected beat. It's vaguely reminiscent of Jimmy Buffett, without the touches of country music.

    Critics of course savaged this sexist paean to monogamy, lyrically too clever by half, but it was perfectly in sync with the times even if it quickly became a punchline.

    Holmes probably hit a year too late to become a bigger star, although I loved his subsequent single "Him", and I think it's both more adventuresome (I'm not sure if the hooting is lame or genius, but it's certainly different) and has aged better than "Escape".
     
  16. Jo B

    Jo B Forum Resident

    Location:
    Minnesota USA
    I dated a guy in college whose dad was somehow associated with Styx, tour manager possibly. He would occasionally call and tell him airline tickets for him & I were at the airport to fly to one of their shows, maybe four or five times this happened. Neither one of us was particularly crazy about Styx but his dad was great and really treated us to a great weekend when we went.
     
  17. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Yup. We're entering into a period where the singles and albums charts only partially reflect one another. The #1 albums of 1979 in order were:

    Barbra Streisand's Greatest Hits, Volume 2 Barbra Streisand
    52nd Street Billy Joel
    Brief Case Full Of Blues Blues Brothers
    Blondes Have More Fun Rod Stewart
    Spirits Having Flown Bee Gees
    Minute By Minute The Doobie Brothers
    Breakfast In America Supertramp
    Bad Girls Donna Summer
    Get The Knack The Knack
    In Through The Out Door Led Zeppelin
    The Long Run Eagles

    I think only roughly half of those (I'm leaving out the hits collection) had a #1 single.
     
    joemarine likes this.
  18. tommy-thewho

    tommy-thewho Senior Member

    Location:
    detroit, mi
    Pina Colada is an ok song.
     
  19. Wildest cat from montana

    Wildest cat from montana Humble Reader

    Location:
    ontario canada
    I like all those songs but...
     
    joemarine, sunspot42 and Wild Horse like this.
  20. Victor/Victrola

    Victor/Victrola Makng shure its write

    I like Rush, but they're second (sometimes third) tier prog rock. I like their singles a lot and a couple albums are worth owning, but most of the time, a Rush album has two or three good tracks and the rest is filler. They don't stray far from their comfort zone so a Rush binge all melts together rather quickly. I never paid much attention to the lyrics and I much prefer Geddy's vocals when he switched to a lower register, around the time that Moving Pictures was released in 1976.

    Rupert Holmes had a lot of failures before hitting it big with Escape, and I really like his album from 1974 called Widescreen even if it's a bit cheesy and dumb in places. It is, in turns, melodramatic, satirical, deadly serious, tragic and funny. Escape takes the cheese factor even further and gives us a predictable twist to the old "looking for action on the side" tale. But a little Rupert Holmes goes a long way and I tired of Escape very quickly. It's one of those things you only need to hear once.
     
    sunspot42 likes this.
  21. W.B.

    W.B. The Collector's Collector

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    The only degrees of success Mr. Holmes had up to this point was in two realms: as "Street People," with a single "Jennifer Tomkins" in late 1969; and as a songwriter, with The Buoys' "Timothy" in 1970-71. But that some got tired of "Escape" sort of reminded me of the guy in that song viz his "lady."
     
  22. The Slug Man

    The Slug Man Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Carolina
    "Pina Colada"

    Can't stand this song but I guess I can understand its appeal to the 30 and 40-somethings of its time. It's become something of a cult hit and the Yacht Rock Revue never fail to include it in their shows. Rupert Holmes' much-less popular followup, "Him," is marginally better.
     
    sunspot42, Grant and pablo fanques like this.
  23. W.B.

    W.B. The Collector's Collector

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    I.I.N.M., "Escape" can now be heard on some radio ads for Bounty paper towels, "The Quicker Picker Upper." It's one of those where, if something spills, it slows down to a stop.
     
  24. Hey Vinyl Man

    Hey Vinyl Man Another bloody Yank down under...

    Coincidentally, I just heard "Escape" on the radio this evening. It does get played surprisingly often on the easy listening station here, which always leaves me wondering how many Australians know where The Cape is.

    I did a certification course a couple of years ago in teaching English as a foreign language, and our instructor played it for us as an example of...actually, I can't recall of what. What I do remember is, one of my fellow students had never heard it before, but she guessed the ending correctly.
     
  25. HGN2001

    HGN2001 Mystery picture member

    I was pretty happy as 1979 came to a close. A few weeks earlier, my all-time musical hero, Herb Alpert had hit number one with "Rise", and here at the close of the year, my little-known hero also hit number one with "Escape".

    In 1974, I picked up Rupert Holmes' first Epic album called WIDESCREEN from a throwaway pile at the radio station I was working for. I loved that album the first time I played it - and I played it often. It was one of those little-known discoveries that you and only you know about. Every one of my buddies got a taste of that album, and they all liked it too. It is my understanding that it was a bigger factor in England and the Philippines, but here at home in the States, it went nowhere - except for those of us who indeed had discovered it.

    Rupert followed that up with two more albums for Epic, one was self-titled and one was oddly called SINGLES. When one titles an album, "SINGLES", it usually implies a sort of greatest hits album and connotes a collection of singles, but not with Rupert. His was titled after a song on the album which cleverly dealt with the "singles scene" and other uses of the word. As I recall, the only track of his to this point that I ever heard on the radio was "Weekend Lover" from that third album. It was played for a short time and then quickly dropped.

    Rupert moved on to the Private Stock label with an album called PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS. This one had another track that played quickly on radio, but went nowhere, called "The Long Way Home". By this point, he'd amassed quite a string of single-45 releases, with little to show for it on the charts. It didn't matter to me. All of his albums to this point had great stuff on them, and I was only too happy to be the man's "only fan."

    Then it happened. Rupert moved again to Infinity Records, and "Escape" parenthetically titled ("The Piña Colada Song") so as not to confuse folks with its one-word real title, actually shot up the charts to number one. When you've been rooting for a guy for five years, hearing him hit it big is quite satisfying. And while "Escape" gets derided as a "hear it once and that's enough" song, I'll happily put it in my little special category of really happy chart-happenings. "Him" was the followup hit, and also on the album you'll find "Answering Machine", a song that got recorded to the message side of many answering machines in the early '80s.

    Though Rupert Holmes followed up with two more albums, ADVENTURE and FULL CIRCLE, he never again tore up the charts like he did with "Escape" and "Him". Doesn't matter - I still really like the guy's music.

    Oh, and if you're looking for a good digital copy of "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)", steer clear of the original MCA CD (MCAD 10841). It's muffled and really crappy sounding. I made a better copy with a needledrop from clean vinyl, but there are remasters of the song out there on compilations that sound better.

    I also like the fact that Rupert's big little hit manages to belong in two different decades.
     

Share This Page

molar-endocrine