EVERY Billboard #1 hit discussion thread 1958-Present

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

  1. The Slug Man

    The Slug Man Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Carolina
    "Owner of a Lonely Heart"

    Loved this song. So did the rest of my 6th grade class...or at least they liked the ultra-hard riff at the beginning. It was my introduction to Yes, and even though they had a 15 year history at this point (with just a few years off between 81-82), I thought of them as new. They somehow slotted right into the radio of early '84 without sticking out in a bad way. As someone pointed out, it did have broad appeal: to the pop people, the hard rock people, new wave people. There was even a dance mix. For the first and only time in their career, they had at least a few screaming girls in the audience.

    It's also one of the first big songs to use that whole "scare" effect on the keyboard that was really common between about '84 and '88 before it disappeared, considered an '80s cliche. Even Prince succumbed to using it in a couple of places ("It" on Sign o the Times, I think). (On "Owner," it's the big bwouumpph! you hear between some of the verses as well as the bridge when Anderson goes "yow!")

    One band they were certainly trying to sound like (or at least compete with) were arch-rivals Asia, who had ex-Yes men Steve Howe and Geoff Downes, even though this was a good 18 months after Asia's "peak." Yes in '84 was sort of like Asia without the Journey-esque douchiness (and I like Journey!)

    It's a shame about Big Generator. I like much of that album and think it's a logical extension of 90125. But politics, etc prevented it from being released until a year after it was due. I think it would've fared a heck of a lot better in '85 or '86 than in '87. By the late '80s "classic rock" was starting to heat up on radio and people were starting to look back to the '70s.
     
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  2. bare trees

    bare trees Senior Member


    Believe it or not, this was the version that I heard first. Nothing can top the original but Tina did a fantastic job and her cover helped to kick off a well deserved career renaissance that would last for almost a decade.
     
  3. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    That was my second yes album. I was also ticked off that it had the live version of "Your Move/I've Seen All Good People". At some point I finally bought "The Yes Album" and "Fragile".

    I still don't care for Emerson, Lake & Palmer.
     
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  4. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    I wasn't into that music as a kid, and neither was my family. All I knew about them back then was what I heard on top 40 radio. It was specifically 1989 when I finally got deeper into it. A "friend" gave me her old copy of The Rolling Stones "Hot Rocks" LP and that turned on the light. Next was Crosby, Stills, Nash/Young, Kiss, Led Zeppelin, Santana, and most recently, The Jefferson Airplane. I wish I had been old enough and aware to have gone to Woodstock in 1969. Uh, but then I probably would have been old enough to have been drafted.:sigh:
     
  5. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    That awkward off-time edit in the single version always annoyed me so I created a new edit that uses a drum fill from another part of the song to make it more natural as they could have played it.
     
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  6. AppleBonker

    AppleBonker Forum Resident

    Location:
    Seattle
    I was going to ask if Leave It was the song where they produced all those videos, each one more boring than the last. Look, in this one they're standing in a row for the entire video! Now the new one they are in a row but upside down! In this one, they're alternately flipped on their heads! Etc. No joke there were like 15 of them. Who produced those things, Yoko Ono?

    The kids in my school thought stuff like that was a good sign that MTV had jumped the shark (though that term was not in use yet). When artists start using gimmicks like that to get noticed, you know you're in trouble. At least no one ended up resorting to Smell-o-vision for a video...

    There was one version of the video which supposedly they would only play if the song reached #1 on the charts. Needless to say, that one never got shown. Too bad. :rolleyes::shh:

    PS - you think I was joking? Have you ever seen a more boring video? And this is one of the more interesting variations... :help:

     
    Last edited: May 23, 2020
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  7. The Slug Man

    The Slug Man Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Carolina
    I remember that. "Saturday night at 8 PM, see all ten versions of 'Leave It.'"! I thought, "why would anyone make more than one version? This song must be incredible--not even Michael Jackson has made that many different videos!" And then I heard the song and liked it a lot less than "Owner."
     
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  8. My intro to Yes was 3 years earlier when I picked up Drama & Classic Yes. I was only 13 or 14.

    "Owner of a Lonely Heart" reminds me of driving around in my brother's car early spring with the windows down. This is on the radio. I can still remember the exact street I was on when it came on the radio. I never owned 90125 until recently though I had heard it. I liked it just fine, but have never heard anything post 1984 from Yes, and I am A-Ok with that.

    This song sounds so 1984. Yes grooves successfully with funky beats. Nice FX.
    A worthy #1.

    The song was stymied a top slot in Canada (by "Major Tom" & the next US #1) peaking at #2.
     
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  9. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    Yeah, I mentioned the videos earlier, but we are jumping far ahead, as "Leave It' was the second chart single from the album. Not #1, but it was a single.

    I immediately liked "Leave It" because it is R&B. Probably why Slug man doesn't like it as much. :D
     
  10. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    "Leave It" was my favorite single from 90125. The vocals are amazing. I'm not usually a huge fan of Anderson's strained voice, but the band chorused like that is amazing. I don't know if it was just multitracked or if they assembled the vocal arrangement presumably on the Synclavier - it feels like some parts of the arrangement could just have been sung but others might have been assembled using the sampler - but either way it's an amazing arrangement.

    The Synclavier by the way was way more sophisticated than the Fairlight CMI. I think the Fairlight was still stuck with 8-bit samples at sub-CD sample rates, although perhaps the new 16-bit model had arrived by this point. The Synclavier was I think always 16-bit, had up to a 50kHz sample rate (it would later be extended up to 100kHz), and much, much better analog stages. Unlike the original Fairlight, it was largely sonically transparent, and could provide a much more realistic (and surreal) experience. Its heyday was circa '85-'88 or so, making this a very early application of the device's sampling abilities, assuming that's what they used here (it doesn't sound like the Fairlight, which has a distinctive gauzy sound, at least the earlier unit).
     
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  11. Hoover Factory

    Hoover Factory Old Dude Who Knows Things

    Location:
    Spokane, WA
    I was not a fan of Yes and have never been a fan of Progressive Rock. I could go the rest of my life without hearing stuff like “Roundabout.” But, I do like “Owner of a Lonely Heart” - it has a nice fusion of “classic rock” and 1980s production. Pretty amazing that they finally had a number 1 single after almost 15 years, when their best days seemed to be behind them.
     
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  12. ronm

    ronm audiofreak

    Location:
    southern colo.
    I guess I just didn't get the video
    No resemblance to the song at all.Allthough I didn't care for OOALH I did very much like what was probably their last charting hit "Love Will Find Away" from '87.
     
  13. Nipper

    Nipper His Master's Voice

    Location:
    Wisconsin
    This is probably my peak year for pop music in my teens. A funny thing I've noticed: starting in 1965 and running through 1991, every odd-numbered year is better musically for me than the even-numbered years surrounding it. My peak years for classic rock are 1971 & 1969. My peak years for pop/rock as a teenager are 1983 & 1981.

    The very best #1 records of 1983:

    "Every Breath You Take" - The song of Summer '83.

    "Down Under" - MTV assured that the music industry was not business as usual by the mid-80s.

    "Come On Eileen" - Infectious. Fun. (n.b. I play music over the PA system when I announce baseball games, mostly 60s - 80s pop/rock. I actually got a request - from a friend - to not play this song last year. Must still get played a lot by others! :p)

    "Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)" - Annie Lennox is one of my favorite female singers. A great pop record.

    "Let's Dance" - Put on your red shoes and dance the blues.

    "Islands In The Stream" - If the Bee Gees had also recorded this song around '83 (and had a decent video to promote it), I wonder if it would also have hit #1, 'cause I love when they sing it as well as Kenny & Dolly.

    "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" - I'm a Jim Steinman fan. And Rory Dodd, who sings the counterpoint "turn around". And the E Street Band - Roy Bittan and Max Weinberg play piano and drums on this record. And Rick Derringer on guitar! Epic.

    Still great #1s:

    "Africa" - Lyrics not penned by Bob Dylan, but it's a catchy-as-hell tune. Not all songs need genius lyrics.

    "Beat It" - Another #1 hit by Toto; great guitar (lead & bass) from Steve Lukather. And some other guy on the solo.

    "Billie Jean" - So many of these songs have iconic videos.

    "Flashdance... What A Feeling" - I'd place some other strong top ten hits above this, but it's obvious why it was very popular.

    "All Night Long (All Night)" - Just lots of fun.

    Good:

    "Tell Her About It" - A good song, but there are several better ones from this 7x platinum album.

    "Say Say Say" - I liked it better at the time, but I still enjoy playing it.

    "Maneater" - A good #1, even though Hall & Oates have had many better.

    OK:

    "Baby, Come To Me" - I never totally got the General Hospital stuff. All the people I knew who watched soaps watched Days Of Our Lives - including all the guys on my dorm floor in the mid-80s. Since that's when I was there eating lunch, I ended up watching quite a bit of it for two years. And this record never came close to being the #1 song on the radio stations I listened to - top ten at best.

    Meh:

    "Maniac" - Not bad, but I have no desire to ever play it.


    For other 'songs that should have been #1', there are many this year that deserved the top spot. My top pick is "Overkill" by Men At Work. Sure, it had stiff competition, but I think it should have reached the summit for at least a week or two before "Flashdance". It's one of my top ten pop records of the 80s. In addition, "Dirty Laundry" by Don Henley, "Sexual Healing" by Marvin Gaye, ""Shame On The Moon" by Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band, "Do You Really Want To Hurt Me" by Culture Club, "Hungry Like The Wolf" by Duran Duran, "Jeopardy" by The Greg Kihn Band, "Electric Avenue" by Eddy Grant, "The Safety Dance" by Men Without Hats, "Uptown Girl" by Billy Joel, and "Say It Isn't So" by Hall & Oates all deserved the top spot for at least a week.

    Also worthy of mention that peaked in 1983 are: "You Can't Hurry Love" - Phil Collins (#10), "Love In Store" - Fleetwood Mac, "Allentown" - Billy Joel (#17), "Shock The Monkey" - Peter Gabriel (#29), "You Got Lucky" - Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers (#20), "Change Of Heart" - Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers (#21), "I've Got A Rock 'n' Roll Heart" - Eric Clapton (#18), "I Know There's Something Going On" - Frida (#13), "Twilight Zone" - Golden Earring (#10), "Back On The Chain Gang" - The Pretenders (#5), "Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)" - Journey (#8 for six weeks!), "Mr. Roboto" - Styx (#3) :shh:, "Der Kommissar" - After The Fire (#5), "She Blinded Me With Science" - Thomas Dolby (#5), "Little Red Corvette" - Prince (#6), "White Wedding" - Billy Idol (#36), "Faithfully" - Journey (#12), "Always Something There To Remind Me" - Naked Eyes (#8), "Time (Clock Of The Heart)" - Culture Club (#2), "Wishing (If I Had A Photograph Of You)" - A Flock Of Seagulls (#26), "Family Man" - Hall & Oates (#6), "She's A Beauty" - The Tubes (#10), "I'm Still Standing" - Elton John (#12), "Baby Jane" - Rod Stewart (#14), "Too Shy" - Kajagoogoo (#5), "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" - Michael Jackson (#5), "Come Dancing" - The Kinks (#6), "1999" - Prince (#12), "Our House" - Madness (#7), "Saved By Zero" - The Fixx (#20), "China Girl" - David Bowie (#10), "Stand Back" - Stevie Nicks (#5), "Lawyers In Love" - Jackson Browne (#13), "She Works Hard For The Money" - Donna Summer (#3), "Don't Cry" - Asia (#10), "Puttin' On The Ritz" - Taco (#4), "Sitting At The Wheel" - The Moody Blues (#29), "Big Log" - Robert Plant (#20), "Burning Down The House" - Talking Heads (#9), "Love Is A Stranger" - Eurythmics (#23), "King Of Pain" - The Police (#3), "Modern Love" - David Bowie (#14), "Tender Is The Night" - Jackson Browne (#25), "Love Is A Battlefield" - Pat Benatar (#5), "Undercover Of The Night" - The Rolling Stones (#9), "Church Of The Poison Mind" - Culture Club (#10), "Crumblin' Down" - John Mellencamp (#9), "Cum On Feel The Noize" - Quiet Riot (#5), "Major Tom (Coming Home) - Peter Schilling (#14), and this gem that I can't believe missed the Top 40 given the success of their previous comeback album - "Blue World" - The Moody Blues (#62). I could have listed another two dozen favorites easily.

    The best non-#1 records:
    "Overkill"
    "Dirty Laundry"
    "Big Log"
    "China Girl"
    "Burning Down The House"

    Lots of great #5 hits and top ten in general!

    Welcome to "The 80s"!
     
    Last edited: May 23, 2020
  14. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    I don't think we've mentioned "King Of Pain", or else I missed it. Is it a "hat" or a "cat" stuck in the tree? We argued about that for ages. A wonderful moody tune, it definitely pointed in the direction of where Sting would be heading in his subsequent solo career. Hardcore rockers were probably disappointed, but I didn't mind.

    "Love Is A Stranger" might actually be the best song on the Sweet Dreams album - it's certainly one of my favorite singles of the '80s, and the video is fantastic as well. MTV famously made Lennox produce her birth certificate because they thought she was actually a man. For a supposedly subversive cultural force, MTV were always ridiculously prudish.

    The video is actually a great, low-budget glimpse at the London aesthetic circa '82 - '83 - you see hints of punk, the New Romantics and even sophistipop in it. Eurythmics were masters of making something look glamorous while simultaneously condemning it.



    And nobody could stare down a camera better than Annie Lennox.

    There was a fantastic remix of "Love Is A Stranger" - "The Obsession Mix" - that came out around the time of their Greatest Hits release in '91. I don't normally care for radical reinterpretations, preferring well-executed extended mixes, but this one is absolutely sublime and is one of my favorite remixes ever. Languid and hypnotic, it's the polar opposite 0f the pulsing original, and gives real insight into the original vocal mix as well by deconstructing it in spots. Check it out at the link above.
     
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  15. Nipper

    Nipper His Master's Voice

    Location:
    Wisconsin
    I like to picture a Cat in the Hat stuck in a tree.
     
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  16. pablo fanques

    pablo fanques Somebody's Bad Handwroter In Memoriam

    Location:
    Poughkeepsie, NY
    Great to see all the love for "Love Is A Stranger" here. Even then I knew it was something special despite not being the hit that "Sweet Dreams" was. "Who's That Girl" is another one that stayed with me. Time to go on a Eurythmics binge I'm thinking
     
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  17. Hoover Factory

    Hoover Factory Old Dude Who Knows Things

    Location:
    Spokane, WA
    As some of my favorite bands were fading away, I was discovering new bands. One of my favorite singles from 1983 was “The Cutter” by Echo and the Bunnymen. It reached the Top 10 in the UK and was frequently played on US alternative radio stations. Echo & the Bunnymen would become one of my favorite alternative bands.

    I still have no idea what the song is about.

     
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  18. The Slug Man

    The Slug Man Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Carolina
    The only possible explanation. :D
     
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  19. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    Well, I don't know that, but it's a good guess since you've stated in the past that you were never a big fan of R&B. I think that's probably because you are an 80s child, and most of the 80s weren't exactly about R&B. We discussed this.:D The "mainstream" crowd missed R&B in the early 80s, and a lot of people ignore it's return in in the late 80s, or don't like how it was blended with hip-hop.
     
  20. AppleBonker

    AppleBonker Forum Resident

    Location:
    Seattle
    Love is a Stranger. I don't think I've heard that one in thirty five years and had completely forgotten it even existed. In fact, I only recall seeing it a few times on MTV even at the time. But I instantly remembered it when I started watching it. Wild how that works. Good track!
     
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  21. AppleBonker

    AppleBonker Forum Resident

    Location:
    Seattle
    Owner of a Lonely Heart

    When I was at summer camp in the late seventies, one of the counselors in my cabin had a bunch of rock albums that he played all the time. That's how I first heard the Beatles "blue album". Another record he spun a lot was Yes' Going For the One, one of their proggy works. When I got back home, I immediately asked my parents to buy that Beatles album. But I never pursued Yes or prog rock. I had made my choice, back when I was eleven, and it shaped my listening thereafter.

    Since then, I have heard Yes here and there, but to be honest never embraced their seventies heyday whatsoever. So when they emerged, reimagined, in 1984, I was certainly not going to fault them for moving on from endless solos and half-baked science fiction conceits.

    But to be honest, I didn't really care for their new direction, either. I neither liked nor hated Owner of a Lonely Heart. I didn't think there was anything innovative or special about it. It was just there, on the radio, taking up too much air time that could have been saved for a song I liked better.

    It wasn't until Leave It that I worked up enough interest in them to actively dislike them. And soon after that, they were gone again. So it goes.
     
  22. Cheevyjames

    Cheevyjames Forum Resident

    Location:
    Graham, NC
    Yes - Owner of a Lonely Heart

    The intro to this song always throws me off. It starts out and it's this big riff (with thin production, but still) and then when the other instruments kick in the song suddenly goes super weak. After that the song settles in and I guess I get used to the weaker sound. Why have this powerful & distorted riff to start the song only to abandon it? I still don't get the inclusion of all the weird sound effects here. They're memorable (because they're annoying) and make it weird in some small way, but they serve no purpose. Maybe it's all just strange musical punctuation? Most of the song is only one riff, just with some slight arranging changes between the verse and chorus. The song gets significantly better when the change happens after the second chorus. That's a cool bit and then there's the total wtf breakdown before Trevor Rabin's cool solo. I hate that breakdown. The part following the solo, the little palm-muted bit with the chorused bass fill from Chris Squire, is cool. I like that a lot. The ending is good too, with Anderson yelping his seemingly improvised words. Overall...well, first off this is a weird song. It's catchy, I'll give it that. It's not catchy in a good way, though. The weird aspects stick in my head, but I really don't like them. The numerous weird punctuations are more of a "what are they trying to do?" than something I enjoy hearing and that percussion/screaming breakdown is godawful. All that said, the rest of the song is enjoyable and I'm happy to sit through the song for those two really cool bits. It took me a long time to appreciate Yes because for the longest time this and the other popular 80s tracks were all that I knew. Roundabout and Heart of the Sunrise could not be any more different from Owner of a Lonely Heart. When I bought Classic Yes in the mid-90s, I purposely bought a compilation that DIDN'T have this song on there. I hated this song for a long time, but I've come around to most of it now.


    video thoughts:

    They look like a bunch of dorks. Prog guys are naturally dorks (I am one, I can judge), but maybe don't throw it out there so easily? WHAT IS THAT CRAZY INTERLUDE? I've never seen this video before now and this is insanity. Why would you completely stop the momentum of the song. WTF just happened? Am I high? Did the song just restart in the video to something completely different? So after a minute the song moves from a performance video to a story video. I guess they're trying to be arty. At least I don't have to look at the band anymore (since they've turned into the animals and insects). Ah crap they're on the roof with the dude. LOL he jumps off the building to avoid being around Yes! What a terrible video.
     
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  23. Bruce M.

    Bruce M. Forum Resident

    Location:
    Hilo, HI, USA
    Like some others, I was not a Yes fan and was mildly surprised when they reemerged with Owner of a Lonely Heart. It's one of a long line of early/mid-'80s songs I was pretty indifferent to -- didn't mind it if it came on the radio, but not anything I would ever seek out.
     
  24. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    I was listening to "Owner" earlier today, and one thing that really hit me is how much blues is in the track. I've never thought of Yes as being particularly blues-influenced - that was always Zep's wheelhouse - but it's all over "Owner". It's a really bizarre hybrid with the song's edgy hard rock and proggy pop leanings. And then there are the synth pop elements. Kind of a testament to the talent of the band and of producer Trevor Horn that the disparate elements were wrapped together tightly enough to top the US pop charts.

    It's also something of a preview of songs of the current era, which often seem to be more collections of hooks than coherent melodies. Although "Owner" doesn't exactly ramble either, repeating a set number of patterns over and over again. I just remember being blown away by the creativity of the thing, the way I'd been by the best work of The Beatles during the heights of my Beatles obsession. Such a change from the drab, tedious post-disco period on the pop charts. What a difference a year makes.
     
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  25. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    If you go back to their 70s albums, you'll hear a lot pf blues influence. That's why I gravitated to them from the first time I heard "Your Move/I've Seen All Good People" when I was nine years old.
     
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