Ha! Yeah the forum won't let you post multiple vids in a single post or I'd have included this one and several others in my missive about Channel 61. It's hilarious.
I honestly think CC's decline was pre-heroin. The downfall IMO came with their third album, which George himself largely disowns and admits it was a rush-job that they had six weeks to crap out essentially ordered by Virgin who wanted an album out by Christmas when the reality was that after a long tour for Colour By Numbers they wanted to take the rest of the year off and start work on new music at the start of 1985. That and also overexposure
Saw her live last month, she's still a fantastic and captivating performer that I couldn't take my eyes off of for the 90 minutes or so she was on. Money well spent
You're only thinking of the solo or single artists. 70s R&B bands were huge. Commodores and Earth, Wind & Fire, especially, were at the top. I'm not so sure about that last part. Some of we younger boomers also had hip-hop in our youth and loved it. It was our high school and college years. When people talk about boomers hating hip-hop, and maybe R&B, they mean a certain segment of that demographic. Mark Goodman did not originally make that statement. It was those same kids who went ga-ga over Aerosmith being on a Run D-M-C record.
From what I’ve seen, celebrities are largely doing the right thing through all of this. Especially those in the target demo. Seeing Prince Charles has tested positive has been a real eye opener. My wife and I are both in the entertainment business which renders us completely unessential. Like NO UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS unessential. But thankfully we are not in the same dire straits as many in our field due to my in-laws and a few other life rafts. I’m just hoping all of you on this years long thread are doing okay during this tough time and looking forward to a return to normalcy soon!
Well you're correct, I was mainly looking at sales stats though. Except for "Songs In The Key Of Life" selling 10 million copies, there were really no African American acts releasing albums selling in the Rumours, Saturday Night Fever (the irony being Bee Gees were essentially doing r&b music and selling tens of millions) or Hotel California did, no Led Zeppelin/Pink Floyd level selling acts. Michael seemed to be the one who was the one able to approach Beatles/Elvis level territory and the rules changed afterwards. Perhaps I'm a little harsh on that assessment, but when I see it online, usually the people who hate hip hop are those who came up with the mindset that rock was the beginning, middle and end, and they resent hip hop even 40 years after its onset. Outside of one poster on this forum who is in his late 30s but wishes he was a boomer, you might see people in their 30s/early-mid 40s who might not consider hip hop their favorite genre of music, but you don't see the hatred for it that a 60 year old who still gets excited by the Stones regurgitating the same setlist they've been playing since Tattoo You will foam at the mouth of when the subject of rap comes up. Well it'd been a minute since I'd seen that interview, but I pulled it up just to make sure I remembered it. Mark didn't exactly say "suburban kids want rock and roll, they wouldn't understand Prince", but around 1:42 he does say "kids in the midwest will be scared by Prince". Which is ironic and funny because kids in the midwest were lapping up millions of copies of Purple Rain just one year later (and even 1999 was a very sizeable hit in 1983)
Duran do get two trips to #1, and of course quite a few more top 10's lasting until ten years down the road. HLTW did actually perform better in the US than in the UK where it got to #5. Also an interesting tidbit after doing some reading, this isn't the only big hit that the model in the video would appear in the video of. 2 1/2 years later she will appear as the wife of the love interest in the first of a long string of #1's from a late diva whose name had been mentioned in the past couple pages as one of the preeminent African American superstars of her day.
True. The followup had five #1 singles, sold 10 million in the US and 35 million worldwide, and still was considered disappointing by many including Michael himself (who stopped touring the US after 1988 because he felt like American audiences were rejecting his post-Thriller music... much different than when Queen stopped playing the states at a time their sales and hitmaking appeal had gone into freefall while retaining their popularity overseas). Honestly I would've loved MJ to have the gall to do a Tunnel Of Love, Tusk or Around The World In A Day type of followup that deliberately knew it wasn't going to reach the same level as the predecessor, but Michael seemed to have his sights that because lightning struck for him once, that duplicating Thriller would come easily, and then he was always disappointed even though Bad and Dangerous were both massively successful smash worldwide hits but they came up short next to Thriller.
I think they released a dud album, but the heroin use followed shortly thereafter and essentially blocked any sort of potential for a comeback.
I absolutely love Billie Jean, but I love Do You Really Want To Heart Me just as much and I wouldn't have minded it going #1 for maybe a week. That's an amazing Top 2.
So much was happening on the charts at this time. In the top 20, peaking at #13 during Billie Jean's run was this classic. Around the time of ABBA's disbanding, Frida went and did a solo album produced by Phil Collins before he'd become ubiquitous. The big single here was a solid rock track that sounded much more like Pat Benatar than ABBA, and while only getting to #13, spent so much time on the charts that it ended up the #20 single of 1983. She never had another solo hit, but it was definitely a killer track and a nice coda to her time with ABBA. Agnetha Faltskog would later that year also crack the top 30 with a rockish track unlike her hits with ABBA. I much prefer the single version as the album mix (which is the one they play as muzak at work) drags on a tad too long, the single/video mix fades out at the right spot)
What I mean is that Bob Pittman originally said that white kids in the suburbs didn't want to see black faces on TV. He was soundly criticized for that comment. Mark Goodman worked for Pittman, so...
The good thing is that Pittman was certainly proven wrong. Michael and MTV had a very symbiotic relationship and they both made the other bigger than before than if they'd gone on different paths that never met..
Do You Really Want To Hurt Me: One of the songs that helped to usher in the 1980s as we tend to remember them . It had a vibe that was familiar yet forward thinking; mellow enough to appeal to the AC crowd but it boasted a modern sound that drew on r&b, reggae, and a pinch of new wave. Hungry Like The Wolf : Another song that heralded the arrival of the MTV era. To give you an idea of how much the radio landscape had changed over the past several months, "Hungry Like The Wolf" was ignored by radio in America upon its initial release in June, 1982. It was only after the video went into heavy rotation on MTV (as well as a remix) that the single took off.
Getting here a little late, but... Billie Jean is a pretty near perfect pop record, just absolutely irresistible. And the Motown 25 performance is permanently etched in my memory, even though I caught it entirely by accident. I'd just gotten home from work and turned on the TV, randomly flipping channels on the old, tiny black-and-white portable that was my only TV at the time (I was relatively young and pretty poor). And there were Michael and his brothers doing their old hits, and then the others left the stage and... BAM! Even in black and white on a 7" screen, I was floored -- and went out and bought the album the next day.
It’s too bad this song got kind of swallowed up in its day. At the time I had no idea it was Anni Frid from ABBA. I remember hearing it in random places both in pop circles and in the more “alternative” streams...it sounded both moody and fresh right along side other cool new artists that I was beginning to listen to...Yaz, Depeche Mode, etc. At the time, I certainly didn’t recognize the signature Phil Collins/Hugh Padham gates verb drums and had no idea the singer had the history she had, even thought I had been an ABBA fan and had a crush on her. To me it sounded like a young singer, not a 38 year old veteran.
Absolutely loved this song and the video, which Channel 61 played...but not enough. Didn't quite realize yet there was a whole "sound" coming from Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, Hugh Padgham, etc. and that this was one of its earliest chart ambassadors. Although I think within a few weeks - and another couple of hits along the same lines - that it would become more obvious a definitive '80s "sound" had evolved.
Again, thank God for MTV. Radio would have kept playing the same tired crap for the next 20 years - to ever-diminishing record sales - if MTV hadn't rolled along and rendered most of radio's dull, white favorites extinct overnight.
Billie Jean I thought this was great at the time, really exciting. In hindsight, I think it's a good song, but the excitement level has really dimmed. Which isn't Michael's fault, "Billie Jean" was a new sound in 1983, but when you strip away the newness of it, it's still '80s R&B. And, I;m just not real fond of '80s R&B. Give me '70s and '60s R&B any day. Oh, and Prince > Michael Jackson
When not sheltering in, I’m the resident DJ at the big pub in town and have carte blanche as to what I can play. Because of our 4am closing time, locals and college kids tend to come out later. Sometimes several hours past my 9 or 10pm start. I’ll play different genres during the ‘dead’ periods but one thing is a guarantee: If I’m doing an extended 80’s set, I always work in “There’s Something Going On” and it never fails to provoke someone coming up to ask who it is, what it is, etc. When I reveal that it’s one of the former singers in ABBA with Phil Collins and almost 40 years old it blows their minds. EVERY time. Great tune!
I'm actually kinda stunned Frida didn't have more hits after this. She really knocked it out of the park for her lead single. The woman clearly knew exactly where pop music was headed, even in her late-30's.
The other good thing about MTV backing down (coerced) is that "Billie Jean" also opened the door for general pop music. Soon, everybody could enjoy what MTV had to offer.
