Yeah, the MTV effect, definitely. But also the radically changed music landscape - weird was definitely in for 1983. The Heads had also been refining their formerly-quirky sound, headed into a somewhat more R&B / New Wave fusion with a big dollop of funk. That just happened to perfectly align with a lot of what was happening at or near the top of the pop charts by the end of '83. A certain purple act was about to show how far you could go with this...
Boy George was a great singer. He is THE reason I liked culture club. The songs were good, but he made them special.
My favorite album of 1983 was Tracey Ullman's "You Broke My Heart In 17 Places", spawned a huge hit in the UK in October of 83 and didn't get top 10 in the US until April of 84... although the album was released on November 25, 1983. I thought it was a great album, and I still love it today.
Eric Records did a very, very nice mastering of this song on their "Hard To Find 45s On CD - Volume 15 - 80s Essentials & Beyond" CD that came out about three years ago. The whole thing is highly recommended for the sound quality alone.
Oh I adored "They Don't Know", one of the great retro hits of the '80s and a cute video as well. Just a perfect callback to Dusty and Lulu and Petula. I figured this would break Ullman as a big star in America, but that was still a few years off (and she was never quite as big here as she was in the UK, although some "friends" of hers became very big stars indeed...).
I loved this one as well. The Paul McCartney cameo was a big deal at the time. It's interesting that she ended up being far more known as a comedienne and actress than a singer (most famously for the Tracey Ullman show, which debuted just a few year after this video). Not that she wasn't good at those things, but thanks pretty much entirely to this video, it took me years to stop thinking of her as a singer who merely dabbled in that other stuff.
And how she became a (relatively) "big star" was from - and via - something else entirely, other than music.
Being 4 in 1983-1984, I didn't know who Tracey was until her Fox show started and my older sister had told me she had been a singer who did "They Don't Know". Surprised she essentially quit music after her second album, but the music was more of a hobby for her and she's done so well as a comedienne and actress, I read where she's the richest British actress, even more than Dame Judi Dench or Helen Mirren or someone like that.
The funny thing is that Tracey doesn't get enough credit for what essentially is her biggest contribution to pop culture, one of the biggest things to come along in the late 80s/early 90s and is STILL around today
Honestly they'd already done that with "Remain In Light" in 1980, pre-MTV. I think the difference is that Speaking In Tongues contained more of a pop element to it that was missing on the previous album
A fave from 1983 that hasn't been touched upon yet is Stevie Nicks' "Stand Back". While her first album had been a smash that showed she was a star on her own accord outside of Fleetwood Mac, the leadoff to her second album fully immersed her in the 1980s, with a Flashdance meets Beat It choreographed inspired music video, synths to the forefront and a now legendary story about how she had heard "Little Red Corvette" and loved it so much she called Prince up to play this song for him (which she felt had taken cues from it) and he ended up playing uncredited synths on the track. Also funny because Atlantic spent big bucks on a music video that she ended up scrapping because she didn't like the way she looked in certain angles (which eventually appeared on a DVD video collection decades later) and replaced with the more low-budget clip posted
Oh absolutely, they'd already started down that path. But Remain In Light just sounds a bit less commercial than Speaking In Tongues, and I think the R&B/funk elements are stronger in the latter. Remember, the first "big" chart success for Talking Heads was Tom Tom Club's "Genius Of Love".
And she looked great in that video, so I don't know what she was on about. With the original video "Stand Back" might have been an even-bigger hit for her. It was very odd hearing Stevie Nicks essentially doing synth pop. It worked, but it was definitely unexpected.
We now know what she was on: Cocaine. And she did sound a bit like she had a head cold in certain spots. But it did work.
Oh this is so good to discover. My copy sounds like complete garbage. Looks like I’m placing an order this evening...
Catching back up on the thread and saw this so I'll fill in the details as I've learned them from Kenny's memoir and a few other industry books. When Bob Buziak replaced Bob Summers as head of RCA around 84-85, he found the label was in a major drought thanks to massive overpressing of titles, poor A&R, rampant overspending by the prior regime, and overpriced contracts. Diana Ross was signed for $20 million for example and would only score 1 platinum & 2 gold sellers out of 6 releases in 7 years. Kenny was guaranteed 4 million per album no matter how well it did. Even the album with Islands In The Stream only did a million. The follow up and the Dolly Xmas projects in 84 did as well and then he went off the cliff until his contract ended in 88. Rogers requested a sitdown with Buziak when his sales and pop chart action went south. There he was told that no matter what product he turned in the label had no real interest in marketing him anymore. Buziak added that if they did, it would make the folks that hired him wonder why they fired Summers. He was only going to only promote his signings. He also considered Barry Manilow's deal unrecoupable so he cut him from the label and let him run back to Clive Davis. This may also help explain why Hall & Oates and the Pointer Sisters also suddenly stopped having consistent hits and a slew of new signings took off culminating in a mega Soundtrack we'll discuss in a bit that netted RCA $150 million.
The RCA thing seems very similar to mid-80s Geffen when they seemed to cut the cord with the early signees (Donna Summer, Elton, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Asia, etc...) who were past their prime commercially and moving more into a different direction finally breaking acts who were probably cheaper to sign like Peter Gabriel and Whitesnake to the mainstream after a long time, as well as resurrecting Aerosmith and Cher from non-existence into being top selling artists again, but also perhaps scoring its biggest success with a band who will make one appearance on here when we get to 1988 with an album that sold 17 million copies. And of course the label would stay strong into the 90s being on top of the alt-rock boom and also signing probably the most iconic (though far from my favorite) band of that era. Geffen and RCA seemed to really perpetrate and "out with the old, in with the new" mentality more than many other labels that were able to keep some of their elder talent strong while also breaking new artists, see how Columbia or Atlantic were able to maintain certain acts around as Columbia could keep acts like Springsteen, Billy Joel and Streisand as strong sellers through multiple decades..
It looks to me that Bob Buziak, while trying to turn a profit, got egotistical about having anyone from the previous administration. It sounds petty to me. It seems like David Geffen mainly just wanted hits, and he wanted his thumb on everything. It was his company, so he could do what he wanted. The people on his label weren't producing results so he played hardball. It seems like he hung onto artists who were willing to cooperate, like Clive Davis. I think sometimes we forget that it is a business and they are in it to make a profit, not a free-for-all where artists could just do what they want on a whim. But, like I said, some label heads have unchecked gigantuan egos that sometimes get in their own way.
Excellent observations. I have heard one of the issues over at Geffen is that David was difficult to get along with, which probably made the “out with the old” more pronounced. It’s hard to fault his killer stable of rock acts later on, which provided him with an enormous buy out payday.
Totally agree. An awful lot of seasoned 80’s artists really forgot about that business aspect of things, though as someone else said, Columbia sure did a good job keeping veteran artist relevant in many cases. Oh...and I love your Simply Red avatar. I just got a first press of that very album and the sq is stunning. Almost all their albums were terrific.
As a lifelong DJ I pretty much have everything from the era but the sound quality varies widely. I’ll take your word that the SQ is up to snuff. I’ve been looking to upgrade for a long time now
Uh, I did make a slight typo in my post that you replied to. I accidentally left out the word "did" after I wrote Clive Davis. Heh! The omission of that word on accident altered the entire meaning of that sentence. Anyhoo...I love Simply Red but totally ignored the lyrics of their future hit. More on that later in the thread.
The people at Eric really dug for first generation sources for those two CDs. No diddling around on the sonics of the tapes, either. The last few volumes of 70s, 80s, and early 90s music sound spectacular. As much as i've come to love their new early 60s stereo stuff of late, I look forward to superb remastering of the 70s and 80s. There is still lots of opportunities in that area.
