Look at October 1982 vs April 1983 and I don't think there had been a more drastically different six months since The Beatles hit. Even in a decade people talk about how drastically different grunge, gangsta rap and the country boom was but we still had 1992 as a slow transition year where Genesis, Def Leppard and smaller hits from acts like Jody Watley and Howard Jones were coexisting with Nirvana, Dr Dre and Billy Ray Cyrus on the charts. 1983 seemed a much more dramatic shift with less transition time.
I can't and don't want to imagine with Berry was thinking when recording/releasing arguably the worst #1 song in history...………...
Good point, after 1993 it was much harder for older/established acts to get any foothold in the top 40 charts and that trend has continued into 2020...…….a sad shift indeed! That is where top 40 radio lost me forever at this point...……….
Honestly the 90s was probably the best decade to be a pop star over 50. Cher, Santana, Tina Turner, Elton John, Aerosmith, even Barbra Streisand who'd last gone top 10 in 1981 had big hits over the age of 50, around 2001 or so suddenly radio went ageist crazy and a 40 year old Whitney was less acceptable than a 52 year old Cher just a few years prior and its stayed this way ever since. But this is waaaaay far off
yeah but I feel in 1993 was the start of the over 40 ageist chart change....don't forget Eric Clapton had a monster "chart resurgence" for a while in the 90's too! But then again hit makers like Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, David Bowie, Moody Blues, Glenn Frey, Bob Seger, Doobie Brothers would all put out great singles around that time that stiffed on the US singles charts!
Good point, though I think those artists had all essentially moved away from "pop" music compared to Aerosmith working with Diane Warren and some of the other acts going for big AC pop hits (like Santana working with younger, hotter acts and reaping the commercial rewards). As a teen, I can attest that at least while they weren't scoring top 40 hits anymore, MTV was still playing new videos by Bowie (The Heart's Filthy Lesson, I'm Afraid Of Americans), Paul McCartney (The World Tonight) and the Rolling Stones (Anybody Seen My Baby, Saint Of Me) in the mid/late 90s, which is more than we could say about aging artists in a post-TRL world where everyone over 35-40 was put to pasture (the irony being now many of those original TRL stars are now facing the same ageism).
I think there's always been ageism, I mean the hottest artists have always been between the ages of 18-35 imo. I think a lot of artists by 40 are over their prime and have already been beat into the concious of the public for so long and people get tired. Paul McCartney, David Bowie and Paul Simon, simply looked out of place in the early 90's alongside Grunge, Gangsta Rap etc.
Also artists by the time they get to their mid-30's are well established and don't even care to play to Top 40 and it's trends anymore.
This is a very important point. By this time most artists have a faithful fan base and their release are more geared towards that. All you have to do is look at the concert receipts to realize the over 40 set is doing just fine and not at all worries about too 40 placement. When they do actually break through it’s always a nice bonus however
Wow, surprised by that as well. I'd assume it was at least a Top 30 hit, given how much radio played it in Phoenix. I will say it became a perennial - until I stopped listening to the radio around 2003 I heard it constantly. I loved this one but had no idea who did it. After INXS broke big I finally figured it out.
Exactly. We heard little glimmers of what the '80s were gonna sound like during and not long after the almost overnight collapse of disco - "Cars", "Pop Muzik" and later "Call Me", "Physical" and "Bette Davis Eyes" being noteworthy examples - but for the most part the early '80s had been defined by bland adult contemporary on the Yacht Rock side of the fence and American corporate rock like Journey, plus the country boom. A little scattered New Wave was thrown in, like pearls in slop. And then suddenly over a six month period what had been dominant became scattered turds in the punchbowl.
don't necessarily agree with Bowie. Nirvana had a big hit in 94-95 covering "The Man Who Sold The World" and Bowie himself got back on MTV thanks to embracing the influence he had over Nine Inch Nails by doing a video with Trent Reznor. He spent the 90s shedding the image that the next song to hit #1 on this thread and its subsequent followups painted for him and it helped rebrand his image after being lost in 1980s pop for a spell.
I'd argue that Bowie didn't look out of place at all. A slew of grunge acts took their inspiration from him, and while Outside wasn't a commercial success, it was certainly an improvement over his post-Let's Dance output.
Yep. If there was a 60s/70s artist who was able to embrace the 90s without looking like an old man posing, it was him. Just like he influenced so much of the 1980s new wavers, he also played a big influence on a lot of the 90s alternative artists as well
This is true but a lot of artists just as influential on current music trends can still be 'yesterday's news'.
I remember the song.It was one of a number I taped on my very nice Aiwa mini system.Talk about forgotten though.It probably hasn't been heard on radio in thirty five years.
But MTV was in fact playing Bowie videos in the mid 90s. He'd gone closer in style to his late 70s work which also didn't slay the charts. There were many older artists that were irrelevant in the 90s, Bowie wasn't one of them. You need to remember outside of brief spells in 1975-1976 and 1983-1984, he was more a beloved influential cult icon than a chart topping hitmaker
As if '83 wasn't cool enough already, Bowie made a huge comeback stateside and scored his second and final #1 hit here with another fantastic, slamming, funk-tinged stomper sporting an appropriately-iconic video. It's one of the few videos of the '80s that still feels contemporary in its themes even today - while everyone else was celebrating conspicuous consumption and exploitation, Bowie was eviscerating it. And this wasn't even the best video off Let's Dance - "China Girl" was even better. I know it's been fashionable for decades to slam Bowie's more commercial turn on Let's Dance, and sure half of the album isn't worth writing home about, but the hits off of this thing are fantastic, good as anything he'd ever done. He also managed to bring Nile Rodgers back from the commercial brink. Rodgers would go on to produce the sophomore album from an act who'd begin her chart career in November of this year, an album that would launch her into superstardom. So not only is "Let's Dance" a slamming funk/rock workout, but it's also arguably one of the most important singles of the decade for the influence it would have on the industry. Leave it to Bowie to change the course of pop music. Again.
Agreed. And nothing wrong with doing a more accessible album that brings in new fans. I became much more interested in his back catalog because of his Let’s Dance album. And I don’t even think it was a sell out album. It was just a Bowie that was more fun imo.
Meanwhile, Rodgers' partner in Chic, Bernard Edwards, was on his way to becoming "the forgotten one" of that group (as I seem to remember @Grant putting it - if I'm mistaken he can correct me one way or another). This had, the month before, topped the UK Singles Chart, of which there was some discussion on the Every UK #1 Single of The 1980's Discussion Thread.
