"Territorial" is a nice euphemism the way I see it. I think of it being more like the "r" word. Why? These same rock fans didn't like Black rockers on their rock radio stations back in the 70s. Michael Jackson was Black, so...
The good thing is that, at least from an alternative fan's perspective, that racism seems to have cooled off. I mainly listen to a local NPR station that mostly caters to alternative, folk and rock tastes (but also a love for classic soul and blues, it's fairly ecletic but alt-rock is still its primary bread and butter)... when Beyonce dropped Lemonade a few years ago, the station played two of the more "rock-friendly" tracks into heavy rotation and actually took polls about it and over 80% of the polled had no problem hearing Beyonce mixed in with Cage The Elephant, Beck and Jason Isbell, and since the mostly positive reception to Beyonce, the station has started adding more urban artists into the mix like Kendrick Lamar, Childish Gambino, Lizzo, Janelle Monae and others
Yup! I remember hearing it for the first time on the same station during a feature called "Tomorrow's New Tunes" but am refraining from going any further as it is a future #
This is when Weird Al crossed over from Dr. Demento straight into the mainstream. Amazingly, he had a longer career as a hitmaker than most of the artists he parodied. "Eat It" was particularly genius - the second (after "I Love Rocky Road") in a long line of food-oriented Al parodies. The best of those is yet to come... That certainly impacted the chart performance of subsequent singles from Thriller. The economy had finally sorta recovered from the crushing interest rates in the earlier part of the decade, and tons of deficit spending was stimulating the job market, so consumers had some cash to spend on albums again. And now thanks to MTV, they actually had interesting music to spend it on. I wasn't a huge MJ fan, and even I ended up with a copy of Thriller - might have been a gift from my uncle in '83 for my birthday. I know I didn't actually buy it, but I wasn't sad to own it. "Beat It" was an incredible single and a fantastic video, with its West Side Story homage elements it expanded the cinematic possibilities of pop videos for MTV. The Eddie Van Halen guitar solo was the perfect representation of the merger of pop, rock and R&B taking place on the pop charts in '83 - Prince with "Little Red Corvette" would be the other standout example. That kicked off a trend which would dominate the charts over the next few years, as MTV functioned like the nation's radio station, as a result blending genres and genders into a much less stratified musical melting pot.
Yes! This! A thousand times this! The wall of beige on the radio had completely collapsed. I still grumbled about the charts, but I was listening again. A lot. And I was buying contemporary albums and singles again, not just oldies and Vangelis records.
That's not really what he did, though. He performed the song in concert, not planning on it being a single (besides being dirty, it was too long), and a deejay in Boston started pushing it. There's no evidence that Berry ever thought "this'll get me back on the charts!".
Interesting fact, the oldest artist in the Hot 100's Top 10 currently was born in 1983. Future. Drake is the 2nd oldest (born in 1986) and the rest were born in the 90's.
Did Johnny Carson ever do a Karnak on "Beat It"? (holds envelope to turban) "What should you do if your hair catches on fire?"
Perhaps, but the B-Side had a live cut of “Johnny B. Goode” that 11 year old me played to death. It’s how I discovered him.
Some would say very badly. But I've had a soft spot for it, and I may have noted in the past that its release went so far back that Columbia pressing plants still had Chess' late 1960's label blanks on hand for initial first-pressings.
Oh I have read differently...…..Berry loved the return the glory. Also many musicians including Pete Townshend and Paul McCartney basically said that song is when Chuck Berry "jumped the shark"...lol
To me "Beat It" was the bigger, more noticeable hit than "Billie Jean". It doesn't have the slick disco power of 'Billie Jean" for me decades later, but it's a pretty cool hybrid of hard rock/rock/r&B and i can't help but like it.
HA HA HA. My brother had this thing about this song. He was constantly trying to convince me that Kajagoogoo was going to be the next big thing; it was probably the stupid name that appealed to him. He would walk around the house doing hilarious piss takes on this song. I can't even tell you how 'happy' he was when Never Ending Story came out. Yes, he was being extremely sarcastic. As a result, Kajagoogoo (or The Kaj as he alone called them) are (perhaps unfairly) one of the biggest jokes of the 80s to me.
I prefer Falco, who also got a lot of airplay for his German language version of the song. I even liked the exceedingly tacky video more.
Hopefully I am not repeating myself. I first heard "My Ding-a-Ling" on the 1972 segment of the History of Rock and Roll radio program in 1980-81. I had never heard it before. Imagine my surprise when I found out later it had gone to #1! I do remember late 1972 (when it was #1), and I do remember (from that time) a lot of other songs that were on the charts at or about the same time. That tells me that a lot of stations wouldn't touch it. I find it an interesting commentary on those times, that a song like that could get to #1. I am indifferent to the song --- when restricting myself to radio (and not my own collection), the ONLY time I've ever heard it was in connection with the History of Rock and Roll program. I am aware it was derived from an earlier song from the '50s.
