Every Billboard #1 Mainstream Rock hit discussion thread (1981 - present)

Maybe. Record collectors and musicians have a high regard for the Bs. Especially the ones only on the 45.

 

I have really enjoyed reading this thread, you are a great writer and I look forward to reading and contributing more to this thread. This is my era, I graduated high school in 1984 and I am very familiar with all the songs so far. It has been a while since I have heard the Joe Walsh song and I can remember listening to I'm Burning For You on the jukebox at my local arcade. Good times and great memories!

 

Aww, thank you so very much. I hope you'll continue to enjoy this.

 

"I Can't Stand It" I am not a Clapton fan, I know some singles, and the only album he's been involved with I have heard is Slowhand.
I do like this song. Nice organ most especially. I remember this getting some airplay. I really like the breakdown sections before the false ending.

"You Better You Bet" Once again, The Who are not a band I've ever got into. That being said, Empty Glass is my favorite record of 1980. I've never heard Face Dances, but "You Better You Bet" is one of my favorite singles from The Who. As a 13 year old at the time, I loved it, and I still do.

"The Waiting" Most wouldn't consider Petty a singles artist rather than an album artist, but he could produce 3 and a half minutes of butter. This is a great song. So tight.

"A Life of Illusion" sounds somewhat familiar, but my cousin had this cassette, so maybe that's why. I don't know if I ever heard it on the radio. I love, love, love mariachi & the horns are terrific. This is a really groovy track.

"The Voice" Moody Blues are not my jam in the least; I haven't heard this track since '81. They are tolerable listen every 40 years, I guess. Of the maybe 5 songs of theirs I've heard this may be the best. The lyrics are pretty lame. No, I lied, I can't get through this. It's pretty awful.

"Urgent" might be my favorite Foreigner song. Then again, after this record, I pretty much hated their boring music. Lou Gramm sure can sing though. Yes, The sax is awesome, but the guitar is also pretty sweet. Great song.

"Burnin' For You" is a great song. It's a super singalong. I only know a few of their songs, and I like them all.

 

Urgent : The first Foreigner song that registered with me. (I only heard the earlier hits a few years later.) A great mix of rock , dance and r&b. Junior Walker's solo is the high point.... even if it was heavily spliced together from various takes.


Burnin' For You : I don't recall hearing this much on the radio at the time but the video got a decent amount of airplay on a show that aired on our local cable access channel at the time. A slice of pop rock perfection that should have gone top 10.

 

The Rolling Stones, Start Me Up
Written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards
Produced by The Glimmer Twins (Mick Jagger and Keith Richards)
Label: Rolling Stones
Issued September 5, 1981; 13 weeks at #1



It's hardly a surprise that the only time a song topped the rock chart for at least ten weeks in the entire 1980s was for a song by The Rolling Stones. Songs would stay at #1 much longer more frequently in subsequent decades, but for now, let's talk about 1981's Tattoo You and its lead single Start Me Up.
With the Rolling Stones being the music legends they are, there is a large wealth of information on their work. I found a web page with a bunch of quotes from various band members, engineers, producers and the like talking about Start Me Up, which I recommend checking out just so I don't have to fill this post with seemingly endless quotes. What I can tell you here is that for multiple reasons, it was difficult to arrange recording sessions for the album that would follow up 1980's Emotional Rescue. So Tattoo You was primarily composed of what were essentially outtakes from previous recording sessions with varying amounts of stuff added depending on how finished they already were.
Just to give a few examples, the basic track for Start Me Up was recorded in the sessions for 1978's Some Girls, having begun life as a reggae-rock track called "Never Stop." No Use in Crying (the B-side to Start Me Up) was from the Emotional Rescue sessions. Hang Fire was worked on in the recording sessions for both Some Girls and Emotional Rescue. Mind you, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote and produced the song themselves, in addition to releasing it on their own label, so they were heavily involved in all that work. Fortunately, the work paid off.
Tattoo You would be the last of eight consecutive Rolling Stones albums to top the Billboard 200 album chart. Hang Fire debuted at #10 on Top Tracks and peaked at #2 before it was even officially released as a single. But more relevantly, Start Me Up peaked at #2 on the Hot 100 and remains one of the band's most enduring hits. It's not a particularly complex song or even one that pushes the band out of their comfort zone - every third Rolling Stones song is about a woman who's being a tease - but that's true of most to all of the band's best material. Though I wouldn't blame anyone for saying Start Me Up is overplayed, it's too much fun regardless for it not to hold up.
Meanwhile, I suspect that Tattoo You as a whole is an uncommon choice for the best Rolling Stones; the second half has a few boring moments, like the two songs before Waiting on a Friend. Despite that, Tattoo You is still really good.

 

Sneaky dirty words.

 

Rich Cohen, in his book The Sun, The Moon And The Rolling Stones, opined that Tattoo You was the last "real" Rolling Stones album. (Some Girls, in his opinion, was their last "good" one.)

"Start Me Up" continues to be played on both oldies stations and classic rock stations to this day.

 

Glad to get in on the ground floor on one of these threads.

The Waiting. I’m certainly in the minority here but I think the song and album are relatively mediocre representations of his career. More the tracks on Damn are better.

A Life Of Illusion. Never heard this before. It was... pleasant. Nothing that would make me run out and buy the album immediately, but I wouldn’t turn it off if it came on the radio either.

The Voice. The equivalent of, say, a track of Yes’ 90125 to me. Radically different from their “classic” period but stands tall next to or above most everything in their catalog. I love it.

Urgent. Peak Foreigner. One of their best singles of all time. It still holds up today.

Burnin’ For You. In the early ‘90’s while in college, I thought Blue Oyster Cult was a one hit wonder with this one not being the hit. I loved “Reaper” so much that I borrowed a hits cassette from a friend for like a semester, playing nothing but this one track from it. When I finally returned the cassette to my friend, he played it while I was hanging out, as he missed it because I had it for so long. On come “Burnin’ For You” and I said “Oh I know this one! I love it”! So of course I end up borrowing it again for like another whole semester. Actually, come to think of it, I’m not sure I ever returned it! We’re still good friends so I’m going to see if I have it and drop it on him 30 years later if I still do.

Start Me Up. Meh. My taste in the Rolling Stones runs VERY contrary to most. I’m just not a huge fan of their “build a song around a Keith riff” writing. In fact I mentioned in a different thread today the songs Lomé “Brown Sugar” and “JJF” are amongst my LEAST favorite of their songs. “Start Me Up” is better than those two, but I can think of dozens of Stones songs that I like better.

 

Love 'Start Me Up'. One of the best #1 rock songs of the 80s, in my humblest of opinions.

 

"Start Me Up" as quoted before

yeah, a hard meh.

 

A/N: I'm going to start including how many weeks each song had spent on the chart by the time they hit #1. Given that we're fairly early into this thread, here's how long each of the previous #1 hits took (with the exception of Eric Clapton's I Can't Stand It since that song debuted at #1).

• The Who, You Better You Bet - 3 weeks
• Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, The Waiting - 2 weeks
• Joe Walsh, A Life of Illusion - 6 weeks
• The Moody Blues, The Voice - 4 weeks
• Foreigner, Urgent - 2 weeks
• Blue Öyster Cult, Burnin' For You - 8 weeks
  
• The Rolling Stones, Start Me Up - 3 weeks

Now that we're caught up...

Foreigner, Waiting for a Girl Like You
Written by Mick Jones and Lou Gramm
Produced by Mick Jones and Robert John "Mutt" Lange
Label: Atlantic
Issued December 5, 1981; 1 week at #1
^3 weeks



Foreigner was the first act to have more than one #1 hit on the rock chart. Since this second #1 hit was from the same album as their previous one, and I've already talked about the full album, that makes my job easier because it means I have less to write.
As with Urgent, Thomas Dolby played synthesizers on Waiting for a Girl Like You; more specifically, he played the song's memorable descending synth melody. He must've been a lucky charm because the song peaked at #2 on the Hot 100, higher than Urgent. Well, maybe not THAT lucky. Waiting for a Girl Like You is arguably the biggest Hot 100 hit to peak at #2, spending a record ten weeks there without topping the chart. However, it was still #19 on 1982's Year-End Hot 100, which is certainly better than Urgent being at #37 on 1981's Year-End. In turn, Urgent placed higher in 1981 than the inaugural #1 rock hit, Eric Clapton's I Can't Stand It (#67). Also, 4 topped the Billboard 200 for ten weeks. So I guess Foreigner was doing alright.
Quick author's note: I've been using this website Songfacts for research, and they've conveniently had a bunch of interviews with people in some of the bands I've covered so far. They've spoken with Mick Jones, Lou Gramm, and even Thomas Dolby on Waiting for a Girl Like You, and I recommend reading those interviews. For now, though, I'd like to focus on Lou Gramm's thoughts.
Waiting for a Girl Like You is not a song with a complex subject matter. The singer finally met a woman who ticks all his boxes. Not exactly 2112, but it's a topic the band covers quite well. Lou Gramm consistently sang with passion on all the band's biggest and best-known hits, and this relatively slow-paced track is no exception. But according to Gramm's autobiography, 2013's Juke Box Hero: My Five Decades in Rock 'n' Roll, there was something about Waiting for a Girl Like You that set it apart. While Gramm was recording his vocals, a "gorgeous, dark-haired woman" appeared in the control room. Inspired by her presence, he "gave it [his] all for about 45 minutes." Then the woman left, and he never learned who she was. Gramm clarified in the above-linked interview that the story was mildly embellished. While the woman did come into the studio and never came forward to identify herself since, he had by that point already met the woman he'd been waiting for - his first wife. Still, if anything from those 45 minutes made it into the final cut, I'd like to thank that beautiful mystery woman.
Waiting for a Girl Like You is another good song, its slower pace providing an interesting contrast with Urgent. Funnily enough, despite the slow love ballad being notably out of place with the rest of the band's hits up to that point, it was for a time their biggest hit. The B-side I'm Gonna Win is more in line with their previous hits. Its selection as the B-side essentially made Waiting for a Girl Like You a reverse Urgent: slow A-side, faster-paced B-side.
But the success of Waiting for a Girl Like You undoubtedly had some gears turning. We'll come back to that.

 

Waiting for A Girl Like You is also the 110th biggest hit of all time, according to Tanooki's GOAT Top 3000 list: Pastebin.com - Potentially offensive content ahead!

Which is odd, because I feel like this song isn't Foreigner's most well-known song. I'd argue, at least, that Jukebox Hero, Cold As Ice, and that...other...ballad...are more iconic.

 

Here's wishing a happy birthday to the late, great Tom Petty!

 

I much prefer the 45 edit of "Waiting For A Girl Like You," meself . . .

But in terms of "regular" charts, only one had it at #1: Radio & Records. We know Billboard had it at #2 on their Hot 100 forever - but it also stalled at #2 on Cash Box' and Record World's (in their last months of existence) charts. (The culprit in all three cases was Olivia Newton-John's "Physical" - which ironically was stuck at #2 on R&R's chart.)

 

I was over Foreigner by with 4. I still bought it, but didn't listen to it a lot. These days, I like it much better than I did as a kid. I saw Lou Gramm in Toronto summer of 1987, I think. A friend wanted to go, and I, less than stoked, tagged along. It was further evidence that Lou Gramm has some of the best rock & roll voices in the late 70s & early 80s.
I quite like "Waiting for a Girl Like You" now. It's a really nice soft pop song, well constructed and produced.
The live video linked is pretty stinky-poo though.

 

The Police, Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
Written by Sting
Produced by Hugh Padgham and The Police (Sting, Stewart Copeland, Andy Summers)
Label: A&M
Issued December 12, 1981; 2 weeks at #1
^12 weeks



This song peaked at #3 on the Hot 100; humorously, the #2 spot was taken by the last song we discussed, Foreigner's Waiting for a Girl Like You. Small world.
So anyway, The Police. The legendary British band fronted by singer-songwriter Gordon "Sting" Sumner scored their first of three #1 rock hits with Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic, the second* single from 1981's Ghost in the Machine. We'll get to that asterisk later, but first, strap in. The story behind the song is quite a lengthy one.
Sting, drummer Stewart Copeland and guitarist Andy Summers met when all three were in a short-lived band called Strontium 90. And I mean really short-lived, as in "Wikipedia says they formed and disbanded in the same year" short-lived. Sting had written the song the year prior, and you can find a demo from the Strontium 90 days of the song in its original acoustic guitar ballad form. When Sting dusted it off The Police, there was some disagreement between the band members on the arrangement, an extension of the infighting going on at the time. Session keyboardist Jean Roussel was brought in for the piano and keyboard parts, which didn't sit right with Andy Summers:

But now we'll discuss my thoughts. I'll start with this quote from Copeland about the chorus:

I bring it up because the chorus was always what brought the song down for me. Sting rhymes "magic" with the only other commonly used word that rhymes with magic, and he also rhymes "on" with "on." Not exactly the level of writing you expect from a former English teacher. For that reason, I think the song is just okay. The music is a lot of fun, though. It's so much fun that most people probably don't realize how sad the song gets. The chorus makes it sound like this guy is in love and on top of the world, which the verses make clear is absolutely not the case. Oh, he's in love, sure, but not with a girl who loves him back. Heck, I don't think she even knows he exists.
The first verse is about how he always gets too nervous to tell her how he feels. The second verse illustrates how she doesn't care for him. Then the third verse goes like this:

Yeesh... wait, hold on. When he says in the chorus that everything she does turns him on, does that apply to her ignoring him? Eww, if he gets off on that, then that's even worse. I hope Every Breath You Take isn't about him.
As for the rest of Ghost in the Machine, it peaked at #2 on the Billboard 200 and is now considered a classic. The album's third and fourth singles - Spirits in the Material World and Secret Journey - peaked respectively at #7 and #31 on the rock chart. Invisible Sun didn't chart at all because it wasn't released as a single in the US. It was the lead single in the UK and Ireland while Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic was the lead single most everywhere else. I guess I can see why that call was made. Invisible Sun was about people in countries plagued by war and poverty. While the Eighties were full of songs like that, it wasn't a charity single, so few people outside the UK would've cared.
Regardless, Ghost in the Machine is a good album. I understand why Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic was a hit and why it still gets radio play, but it's not even my favorite track off its parent album.

 

I remember this one from my Lego Rock Band days...ah, the memories...

Also, The Police are the kings of making songs that sound cute and lovestruck, but the lyrics are actually really depressing and/or creepy.

 

So they're the kings of pain?

 

Take my like and get out.

 

I'll do one of those.

 

Got a lot to get caught up on, so these are gonna be quick quick hits.

I Can't Stand It
Yes, a solid track. Still kind of an indicator of an artist coming to a decline, but he hadn't lost it yet.

Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
I had little tolerance for The Police at the time, but this one didn't make me leap for the change station button. Nothing really special here, just a lively, cute sentiment that isn't so cloying as to be annoying.

You Better You Bet
A great Who single, but still a distant second for me behind Another Tricky Day.

The Waiting
I could never tolerate this one with Petty at his most whiny nasal.

Life of Illusion
After my comment on Petty, it may come as a surprise that I really like this one, given the nasal timbre of Walsh's voice. All I can say is that Petty is so serious that, to my ears, his nasality comes across as whiny and miserable while Walsh's delivery is more lighthearted which helps transcend his nasality.

The Voice
Yeah, I miss Mike Pinder. But truth br told, Patrick Moraz keyboards breathed a little new life into the Moodies. Great song intro! Actually, maybe the best single of the year. Justin's lead vocals are magnificent, John's backup vocals strong, and John also drops his best bass line since

 

Got a lot to get caught up on, so these are gonna be quick quick hits.

I Can't Stand It
Yes, a solid track. Still kind of an indicator of an artist coming to a decline, but he hadn't lost it yet.

You Better You Bet
A great Who single, but still a distant second for me behind Another Tricky Day.

The Waiting
I could never tolerate this one with Petty at his most whiny nasal.

Life of Illusion
After my comment on Petty, it may come as a surprise that I really like this one, given the nasal timbre of Walsh's voice. All I can say is that Petty is so serious that, to my ears, his nasality comes across as whiny and miserable while Walsh's delivery is more lighthearted which helps transcend his nasality.

The Voice
Yeah, I miss Mike Pinder. But truth br told, Patrick Moraz keyboards breathed a little new life into the Moodies. Great song intro! Actually, maybe the best single of the year. Justin's lead vocals are magnificent, John's backup vocals strong, and John also drops his best bass line since "I'm Just a Singer in a Rock And Roll Band."

Urgent
A once serious rock band begins their decline into commercial banality. Not really bad, and much worse was to come, but you can see it starting here.

Burning For You
Rightfully BOC's biggest hit since the Reaper. Cool chords, tasteful shred in the solo, and a killer groove. A hard rock masterpiece with pop appeal.

Start Me Up
Classic Stones riffing and a lyric only Jagger could deliver with a straight face. This was my first ever live concert and they nailed it. Fond memories.

Waiting For a Girl Like You
Remember when I said much worse was coming? Well, here it is. The fifth level of commercial ballad hell.

Every Little Thing She Does is Magic
I had little tolerance for the Police, but this one didn't have me lunging for the change station button. Nothing great here, just a lively little bit with a cute sentiment that isn't so cloying as to be annoying.

 

The Police | "Every Little Thing..."
For my ears, The Police never released a bad single.