Is this actually from '82? It was very big-budget and forward-looking if that's the case. It could easily have been shot at the end of '83. Yeah, and now that I think about it, I wonder how much the "Tina Turner effect" played into this success? After she rocketed to #1, I'm sure every label was looking at legacy R&B acts as a potential source for big hits, and allocated promotional resources accordingly. The Pointers had been in a bit of a career downturn after some major successes in the late '70s and early '80s. Somebody at RCA must have looked at the sales figures for Private Dancer and its singles and thought, "Hmmmm..." Channel 61 played this video incessantly. We noticed the Pointer bush at the time. Even though it's probably just an unfortunately-colored bikini bottom, I'm sure that contributed to the popularity of the video. Teenage boys got "so excited", too. (It looks to have been shot on film, not videotape. Maybe someday we'll get a 4K remaster...)
Missing You Not to be confused with Miss You, a Rolling Stones chart topper. I remember really not liking this song back in 1984; it sounded like the prototypical 80s snoozer, and I just couldn't see how it got to #1. Listening again (I probably haven't heard it in around 30 years), I don't really mind it all that much now. I don't think it's a patch on his two great hits with the Babys, but it's not terrible either. I'm still not sure it's #1 material, but far worse has topped the charts. And the Every Breath You Take rhythm really stands out to me now in a way it didn't back then. The video: As I mentioned before, I find it interesting that they chose a non-white actress to play his girlfriend here; color blind casting like that is STILL fairly rare. Other than that, it's a pretty generic rocker-has-model-girlfriend-why-can't-they-make-it-work story. I do find it funny when he's walking down the street singing, and the people on the sidewalk look at him like he has a screw loose. Would that more musicals had moments like that.
I was curious about this, so I looked on the internet. Apparently MTV did request an edited video later, removing that shot. But I also found this: "About a year later the Pointer Sisters were guests on Friday Night Videos and decided to address the controversy. June Pointer was not nude, and they slowed down the video to prove it. When she was in the tub, she was not nude, but wearing a bikini. The soap suds may have been covering things up, but she did not want to walk onto a set full of men in the nude. So in reality, the soap suds hid the fact that she was not nude. When she emerged from the bath, what you saw was the bikini bottom. The problem was the soap suds surrounding it gave it the appearance of being hair. And the quick editing did not give the viewer enough time to see what was really there. An accidental optical illusion. But for a while there we all thought that this woman was flashing us her private parts." I also found someone claiming you could see her nipple around 0:13 - 0:14. So she might not be off the hook yet!
Oh shucks lol There is a future #1 about two years down the line that has two "pause at this second and you see nipple" moments that were definitely there
John Waite - Missing You I knew this was a hit song, I just never realized it was a #1. It seemed like there were a lot of songs that sounded like this at the time. It's got that plodding bass and palm-muted guitar, but in a totally safe environment. It's safe and boring. Waite's voice is understandably the primary focus here and he sounds fine. The chorus is catchy and that constant background 'missing you' works too. It's an ok track and I'll listen when it comes on, but I certainly don't love it. It's just kind of wallpaper for me. video: there's a LOT of shading here. Sometimes it's hard to fully see everything that's going on. I like that the lead actress is Asian. I'm still unclear why she leaves in the beginning. I can see where the director was trying to make it arty and it obviously tells a story, but there's an averageness to the video that bothers me in a way. The performance footage that starts in the bridge is kind of ridiculous and doesn't work with the rest of the video. Maybe that's how Waite gets over this girl, he's got to rock out.
I'd might bite into the Tina theory if Excited wasn't the 4th single from the Break Out era and the album beat Private Dancer to the streets by six months. Richard Perry & the ladies were on record as basing the whole album on finding material as good as Thriller soundwise and wanting to go really deep in pulling singles. Oddly enough, the track inspired them to do this, Night Line, also demoed by Michael for Thriller but unreleased, was cut from later pressings of the album to make room for the remixed I'm So Excited. I think RCA just lucked into a good thing. Once Planet was shuttered and the girls wound up on Nipper, things would never be the same but I know that's jumping ahead...
I never noticed it until like yesterday. Amazing how something that obvious can just slide right by for decades...
I'd forgotten that "Automatic" and "Jump" had actually beat this into the Top 10 (and climbed higher, although I think "Excited" remains the best of the bunch..."Jump" is pretty close, tho...). On the flipside, that might have been another reason why MTV and radio DJ's gave Private Dancer and "What's Love Got To Do With It" a chance. If one veteran R&B act was having big hits, why not another? It hadn't occurred to me that Tina's comeback might have been powered somewhat by the success The Pointer Sisters were having in addition to the whole Thriller R&B boom, but it's certainly a possibility. Nothing succeeds in the music business like success... Why did Planet get shut down, anyhow? The label seemed to be doing really well. Don't mess with a good thing...
Break Out was a huge hit pre-Private Dancer with two of the four top ten hits having peaked pre-What's Love, but the "Private Dancer effect" definitely will come into play soon as two aging soul divas who were still scoring #1s on the r&b chart in 1983-1984 but hadn't had a pop top ten since the mid 70s will both be roaring back with MTV friendly makeovers, both culminating with another trip to #1 (one even topped the albums chart)
Up thread awhile back (was it Islands In The Stream?), we talked about how RCA changed label heads and seemingly all their roster essentially got the shaft due to losing money by 1985 or so. I could see where someone like Diana Ross had disappointed a bit since none of her RCA albums came near the success of "Diana", but Pointer Sisters were pretty much in their commercial prime coming off Break Out that I'm surprised how quickly it went downhill afterwards. Without getting too much into it, Contact was largely a satisfactory followup that I'm surprised didn't perform better, and the albums after that went into chart freefall.
That's a pretty catchy song, I like it better than any of the Tina Turner songs as well as the #1 we're discussing and its comparison track. I'm not saying why I decided to listen to it in the first place ...
This probably belongs in the Diana Ross thread, but her "Why Do Fools Fall In Love" album ranks as one of her best ever albums.
My uncle was a huge Pointer Sisters fan in the '80s, and Contact must have been his favorite. He played that thing constantly, well into the '90s. Around 1990 I helped him assemble a decent component system to replace his aging, ailing Mitsubishi rack system from circa '81, based around a beautiful Yamaha stereo amp, a mid-tier Sony CD player, some nice small Boston Acoustics bookshelf speakers, and a Yamaha Active Servo sub, back when subwoofers were still fairly exotic devices. I thought the system sounded phenomenal, better than some of the systems the dealer had configured selling for twice as much, plus it took little space and you could crank the hell out of it. He was on disability by that point and would spend hours in his bedroom every day with that stereo cranked, blasting Contact. I never particularly cared for the record, and tried streaming it off Spotify about a year ago. It's more than somewhat '80s annoying as far as I'm concerned - YMMV. I guess I might try to give it another spin soon, but I've gotta think the album we're currently discussing is the vastly superior of the pair, an observation which might account for their coming commercial falloff.
Break Out was the stronger album and it almost plays like a Greatest Hits compilation but I think Contact deserved to do better than it did. Break Out was still in the top 20 as late as May 1985 yet the followup released two months later couldn't go higher than #24? It should've at least gone top 15 and Dare Me should've gone top 5 imo.
Ollie & Jerry's Breakin'...There's No Stopping Us peaked at #9 back when Prince was #1. I'm not sure which is the actual music video since there are a few that have scenes from the movie, but I liked this one since it features some street break dancers. There are some pretty rad moves here, which is a lot of fun. I was definitely not coordinated enough to even attempt breakdancing during this time, but it was certainly the biggest fad I can remember. I remember being amazed at seeing these people do all these crazy spins looking like a bunch of funky robots.
What surprises me is that it took so long for I'm So Excited to become a hit. I remember it famously being used in National Lampoon's Vacation in 1983 It also would be "sung" in a much-mocked Saved By The Bell clip that pretty much was a test run for Elizabeth Berkeley's tour de force Razzie winning performance in Showgirls
Well, "I'm So Excited" had been a hit in late 1982 albeit a modest one. It squeaked into the lower reaches of the Top 40 for a brief period before falling out. I believe that timing was an issue. "I'm So Excited" didn't quite fit into the Top 40 landscape of the era. It sounds two years ahead of its time, which is probably why it took that long for it to hit. (The tie in with National Lampoon's Vacation, which would have been a fixture on premium cable channels by mid 1984, probably helped things along as well).
Ach, Saved by the Bell was nightmare fuel for me in the early 90s; I still have that rotten theme song burned into my brain. I was far too old to be in the prime audience; rather, it was on during my shift at the TV station, so I'm scarily aware of the characters and plot points of that terrible show. It did give me an extra appreciation of Show Girls when it came out in that I actually knew the actress before her descent into madness (not that it was a large descent, mind you, from Bell to Hell). Jesse must have been on something harder than pep pills to make that career choice.
I remember hearing "I'm So Excited" in late 1982. Among the several places I heard it --- AT40 must have been one such place, if it made the lower reaches then. By 1984 I was not listening to AT40 nor really formally listening to the radio -- but someone always had one on somewhere, so I was still hearing hit songs. And I remember starting to hear "I'm So Excited" again, an awful lot. I wasn't that big a fan to investigate at the time, but I do remember (a couple years later) noticing the rechart in a later copy of The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits.
I am getting to the point in time where I remember these songs, but don’t remember when they were hits or that they reached #1. I was listening to Alternative at the time, not Top 40. I try not to skip ahead, so I can be constantly surprised by what made it to the top.
