CHART ATTACK! #8: 11/16/85
Ah HA! I see you have returned. You cannot resist the CHART ATTACK!, can you? No. You cannot. I didn’t think so. You need to know exactly what was happening the week of November 16, 1985. I understand. I’m here for you.
10. Lay Your Hands On Me – Thompson Twins Amazon iTunes
9. Be Near Me – ABC Amazon iTunes
8. Never – Heart Amazon iTunes
7. Broken Wings – Mr. Mister Amazon iTunes
6. Separate Lives – Phil Collins and Marilyn Martin Amazon iTunes
5. Part-Time Lover – Stevie Wonder Amazon iTunes
4. Head Over Heels – Tears For Fears Amazon iTunes
3. Miami Vice Theme – Jan Hammer Amazon iTunes
2. You Belong To The City – Glenn Frey Amazon
1. We Built This City – Starship Amazon iTunes
10. Lay Your Hands On Me – Thompson Twins It’s not like the Thompson Twins were truly that big in America, despite the massive success of “Hold Me Now,” but they were nearing the end of their relevancy with “Lay Your Hands On Me.” I don’t know about you, but I’d be hard-pressed to really remember anything about this song other than the chorus. The opening of the song (similar to the bridge), musically, has little in common with the verses, which sound pretty much like both “Hold Me Now” and “Doctor! Doctor!” The song is pretty much forgettable from my point of view. One more hit after this (“King For A Day”), and that was it. Bassist Joe Leeway quit soon afterwards and became a hypnotherapist (?), leaving The Thompson Twins actually down to two.
9. Be Near Me – ABC (download) With its catchy chorus, “Be Near Me” marked ABC’s Top 10 debut on the US charts, although they had also had strong success with their first single “The Look Of Love,” thanks to strong exposure on MTV. Existing somewhere in the space between New Romantic and New Age, the band had already undergone dramatic personnel changes, including two members quitting and two members being added purely for dramatic and visual effects (neither could sing or play any instruments). A dance remix of the song was mainly responsible for the song reaching as high as #9.
8. Never – Heart Is it just me, or does it feel like we’ve covered “Never” before? Perhaps it’s because, as Carlos astutely mentioned in Chart Attack #1, the song was written by Holly Knight, who also wrote songs like “The Warrior,” “Love Is A Battlefield,” “Better Be Good To Me,” and a million more. “Never” was the second single from Heart’s self-titled LP in 1985, preceded by “What About Love.” Both songs were played constantly on MTV, and as a result, “Never” eventually reached #4 and became Heart’s highest-charting single at the time. It was also the first time Heart could boast to having two consecutive singles reach the Top Ten. They broke the record with their next hit, “These Dreams.”
“Never” was indicative of the general sound of Heart – the abandonment of their rock sound for radio-friendly pop – but it resulted in great success for the band. As much as I like “Never,” it pains me to hear that awful keyboard sound, especially in the song’s defining riff, which would sound just fine on a guitar.
7. Broken Wings – Mr. Mister I remember hearing “Broken Wings” when it was first released, and all I remember thinking is, “this guy whines too much.” I still feel the same way. Inspired by a book of the same name by Kahlil Gibran, “Broken Wings” began its ascent to the top of the charts while Mr. Mister opened for Don Henley, and hit #1 as they were the opening act for Tina Turner. As popular as this song has remained over the years, I’ve still felt it’s way inferior to their other #1 hit, “Kyrie.” It’s drenched in synthesizers, and again, the chorus is just whiny. But it seems to be one of those inescapable, enduring radio staples. I usually just switch the station.
6. Separate Lives – Phil Collins and Marilyn Martin As any Mellow Gold-loving wuss will tell you, “Separate Lives” isn’t a Phil Collins original. Nope, it’s written by our good buddy Stephen Bishop! Bish, as you’ll know from reading Scraps’ comment in Mellow Gold 6, had a bit part in Animal House as the guitarist who gets his acoustic smashed by John Belushi. On the set of the movie, Bishop met actress Karen Allen, and the two began a four-year relationship. When the relationship finally ended, Bishop wanted us all to know how he felt. And so he wrote “Separate Lives,” which was selected for inclusion on the White Nights soundtrack.
Recorded by Collins and Marilyn Martin, the song hit #1 two weeks after this one, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song. In a way, this was Bish’s second nomination (the first being, of course, for “It Might Be You”), but the first for which he could take writing credit. He lost, however, to another song from the same movie, “Say You, Say Me.” (I love Lionel Richie!)
There’s something to be said for the acoustic Bishop version. It’s relatively gentle. No synths. Just guitar. I like it. Here it is, from his album Blue Guitars (produced by Andrew Gold, y’all!) (Thanks, Jefito!)
Stephen Bishop – Separate Lives (bonus download)
5. Part-Time Lover – Stevie Wonder (download) Stevie’s later work tends to get automatically lumped in with dreck like “I Just Called To Say I Love You,” but it’s unfair to say that the man lost his touch altogether. Although he has yet to record an album as cohesive and powerful as his mid-70s output, he still has written some strong singles. “Part-Time Lover” is one of the good ones off of In Square Circle. (“Overjoyed” is another.) A strong bassline is the anchor for this track, and let me ask you – have you ever listened to the lyrics? For a long time, I just sang along with the chorus, and when I finally took a second to listen to to the words, I realized there’s actually a story there – one person cheating on another, then finding out that they’re being cheated on as well. I don’t know where I’m going with this. In any case, “Part-Time Lover” was the first track ever to reach #1 on four different charts: Pop, Dance/Disco, R&B and Adult Contemporary. I wasn’t sure if I was going to put this one up for download this week, but Mike insisted upon it. So blame him if you don’t like it.
4. Head Over Heels – Tears For Fears If you were to ask me now, my answer might be different, but as a kid, “Head Over Heels” was my favorite Tears For Fears song. Let’s face it: the other two major singles off of Songs From The Big Chair, “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” and “Shout” were frickin’ downers. (At the age of 8, I didn’t care that they were probably better musically.) Although this single was the only of the three not to hit #1, for me, it was the most enjoyable of the bunch. Plus, it had a great video, featuring a librarian, an Orthodox Jew, a keyboardist thinking he’s way more badass than he really is, a chimpanzee, and Roland Orzabal initially looking so tormented that he comes off as slightly retarded. The only problem is you keep expecting the librarian to let her hair down, or take off her clothes, or something, and she never does. Dammit.
[youtube]k5FUWRbixvI[/youtube]
3. Miami Vice Theme – Jan Hammer One of two instrumental television themes EVER to reach #1 (you can take a stab at the other one, but it’s a toughie), “Miami Vice Theme” was the creation of Czechoslovakian composer and multi-instrumentalist Jan Hammer, who had previously been a member of the successful Mahavishnu Orchestra in the mid-70s. Hammer was brought on board to score each episode of the show, and the Theme was the first track he played to creator Michael Mann. The song was a huge success, spending 12 weeks on the chart, earning two Grammy Awards, and eventually returning to the Billboard charts 11 years later – based on the success of the movie, “Miami Vice Theme” reached #7 on the Adult Contemporary chart in August 2006.
2. You Belong To The City – Glenn Frey It’s a Miami Vice week here at Chart Attack! The powerful combination of this song and Jan Hammer’s theme propelled the soundtrack to the top of the charts for almost three months, and up until this year, was the most successful TV soundtrack of all time. (Disney’s High School Musical now holds the record.) 1985 was a good year for Frey – also peaking #2 this year was “The Heat Is On,” from Beverly Hills Cop. Come to think of it, all of Frey’s top 10 hits were from 1985, and all were from soundtracks – “Smuggler’s Blues” also had a place on the Miami Vice soundtrack album.
1. We Built This City – Starship Honestly, I don’t know where to start. Let’s start with the ulcers Grace Slick must have had when she realized that this soul-sucking piece of dreck had just become the biggest hit any incarnation of her band had ever achieved. Yeah, let’s start there. And let’s continue by noting two of the four writers it took to compose this freaking song: Martin Page (“In The House Of Stone And Light”) and Bernie Taupin (“I Used To Write Good Songs”). Page wrote the music, Taupin wrote the lyrics, and presented it to Starship’s producers, Dennis Lambert and Peter Wolf (no, not THAT Peter Wolf), who did a few re-writes, and voila. This was Taupin’s first hit without Elton.; His second was later the next year, “These Dreams” by Heart, also a co-write with Page.
Really, I shouldn’t write anything else about “We Built This City.” It has an excellent Wikipedia page, and I suggest you read it. I specifically love the quote from Craig Marks, the editor of Blender: “It purports to be anti-commercial but reeks of ’80s corporate-rock commercialism. It’s a real reflection of what practically killed rock music in the ’80s.”
But there is something more to say. Specifically, there’s a line in this song that needs to be addressed. I have asked Michael, my bandmate and author of the excellent Down With Snark!, to write something on this matter, as he’s much more passionate about it than I am. So, without further ado, I present:
“Marconi Plays The Mamba”
OK, the reason that Jason has turned this portion of the weekly snarkfest over to me, is that long before the establishment of this blog, before Plagiarist, around the time Starship guitarist Craig Chaquico started releasing his indescribably lame acoustic jazz solo albums, I have been complaining about this song. More accurately, this line in particular:
“Marconi plays the Mamba. Listen to the radio.”
For my money, this is the second dumbest line of the 80s (trailing only “Now I’m walking again, to the beat of a drum, and I’m counting the steps to the door of your heart.” The Finns should not be allowed to skate by because of the relative high quality of their other material. That line SUCKS. I mean that line is “Girl You Know It’s True” level shitty. But I digress).
This line, more than any other, is evidence that when the irrestible lyrical force of Bernie Taupin collides with the immovable object of…the guy who wrote King of Wishful Thinking…well, it’s ugly.
Since the second part of the line is “listen to the radio” we can only assume that “Marconi” refers to Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi, who is usually credited with inventing the radio (truthfully he patented the radio, which is probably more important). So, the Italian inventor of the radio, who died in 1937, “plays the mamba.”
What does this mean? My best guess, at what they wanted it to mean, is that Marconi was playing “the mamba” on his new invention, the radio. This (vaguely) ties into (I guess) modern listeners of the radio “building this city” (by listening?) on rock and roll. So (maybe) they are trying (unsuccessfully) to make a (stupid, ill conceived) reference to the long and proud tradition of listening to music on the radio, which helps to…build cities.
You see where I’m going right? As every fan of Dancing With the Stars, Lou Bega (there have to be a few) or the Kill Bill movies is aware, the MAMBO, is a musical style/dance/something that could be played on the radio. Although MAMBA has over time, gained additional meanings and can now refer to either (1) the self ascribed nickname of LA Lakers shooting guard and aquitted rape suspect Kobe Bryant or (2) a fictional tall blonde assassin with lovely cheekbones, at the time Taupin/Page created their masterpiece, a Mamba was a snake.
You can’t play a snake on the radio. Mambo does not equal Mamba, and I don’t think they can get away with the old “creative mispronunciation for scansion/rhyming purposes” gambit here.
My point? Even if they got their nouns right, this is a stupid line. The fact that they misplaced a musical style with a posionous reptile and hoped no one would notice. What can one say?
(wild applause)
Brilliant. Thank you, Mike. While I suspect readers may take you to task for thinking that Crowded House is responsible for the absolute dumbest line in the ’80s (have you forgotten “Too Shy?” “You Spin Me Round?” “Kyrie elaison down the road that I must travel?” et al), you have once again proven why you should be writing Chart Attack!, not me. This seems like as good a place as any to end our analysis of such a terrible song.
And with that, we’ve reached the end of yet another CHART ATTACK! Enjoy the downloads, and as always, thanks for reading and posting. See you soon!
November 17th, 2006 at 10:50 am
Since he tried to throw me under the bus, let me state for the record, Jason LOVES Part Time Lover. He hates I Just Called To Say I Love You, but he LOVES Part Time Lover.As for who should be writing Chart Attack, considering I pumped out several hundred words on one stupid line and had to throw in a Crowded House dig while I was at it, I think everyone should be thankful that you are writing them. If I was writing them they would 10,000 words long.
November 17th, 2006 at 11:22 am
You can’t "out" me, mofo. I stated in Chart Attack #1 that I liked "Part-Time Lover." I don’t LOVE it – I think you’re thinking of Adam, maybe – but I do like it. The only reason I was unsure about offering it for download was when comparing it to the rest of the tracks on the Top 10. So there.
November 17th, 2006 at 1:46 pm
So what is the other instrumental television themes to reach #1? My guess is the Rockford Files theme.
November 17th, 2006 at 2:42 pm
Is the theme from "S.W.A.T." the other instrumental TV theme to reach #1?
November 17th, 2006 at 3:08 pm
Well done, Robert! You are correct! The question is: did you Google? I know I had to…
November 17th, 2006 at 4:52 pm
No, I didn’t. I remembered the "S.W.A.T." theme being in the Billboard Book of #1 Hits" that I bought back in 1988, so I figured it was probably a good guess.
November 17th, 2006 at 6:10 pm
Are Roland Orzabal and Ducky from Pretty In Pink separated at birth? Oh, and I’m not sure if you remember this or not, but "We Built This City" was released to radio stations with the DJ rap mentioning the largest city in a particular state. When I had to play this POS song back in the day, there was a San Francisco name drop in there. The Pointer Sister did a similar thing with "Fire" — except it was station call letters.
November 17th, 2006 at 9:23 pm
I believe the San Francisco name-drop was part of the original recording of “We Built This City.” And I believe Luther Vandross provides the da-da-da’s on “Part Time Lover.”
Boy, I remember this whole list. I was program director of a Top 40 station at the time, and we were hammering all of ’em relentlessly. If you’re still sick of ’em all these years later, it’s probably partly my fault.
November 17th, 2006 at 10:09 pm
I think JB’s right. The San Francisco part is on the version of the song that appears on Rhino-type compilations these days. I think San Fran was mentioned in the video too. As a ten-year-old, I assumed that’s where Starship was from.
November 18th, 2006 at 6:54 am
"We Built This City" is so awful it is impossible to enjoy ironically or nostalgically. It is a solid block of stinky cheese. It makes a whole generation shake their heads and wonder What Were We Thinking? It gives Winger and Stryper fans something to laugh at. It is the bottom.
Yet Holly Knight…. Holly Knight was nearly as bad. "Love Is a Battlefield" and "The Warrior" are a couple of the silliest Deep Metaphor songs ever. "Shooting out the walls of heartache, bang bang!" Augh. Thank god "Goodbye to You" seems to be the Scandal song to have survived. I was never a big Heart fan, but some of their early songs have punch. Hearing them descend to this level of schlock was sad, though I guess they ate better.
I loved the first Tears for Fears album, and boy was it a downer. "Mad World", "Pale Shelter", "Ideas as Opiates", "Suffer the Children", "Start of the Breakdown", "Watch Me Bleed"…. they were giving the early Cure a serious run for the Relentless Crushing Gloom crown. Believe it or not, Songs from the Big Chair was chipper by comparison, and I hated it, cos I was an idiot.
Was "The Look of Love" a bigger hit than "Poison Arrow"? I liked "The Look of Love" better — partly because of its goofy video — but "Poison Arrow" seemed much bigger at the time. I loved Martin Fry for his Bryan-Ferry-with-a-sense-of-humor routine.
November 18th, 2006 at 6:02 pm
I "never" thought about it, but you’re right — Never would have made perfect sense on guitar instead of synth. Maybe Stevie Ray Vaughan should do a guitar-based cover as he did with Superstition. He’s not dead, you know. That was too convenient to be real.Overjoyed is a classic ballad. Part Time Lover isn’t bad. I always thought Ian Stanley deserved some sort of MTV Video Award for his acting in the Head Over Heels video, which was terrific throughout. Blender named We Built This City #1 in the Awesomely Bad list or whatever it was — I couldn’t watch the whole thing on VH1 because I couldn’t take the grunting noise they used before and after each commercial. And in any case, Blender writing about that song is some astronomical event of negative forces colliding that simply can’t be safe.Elsewhere in that countdown, you’ll see this on Five for Fighting’s Superman — "But perhaps nothing shows how out of sorts America was than the ascendance of this turgid ballad by once-and-future-unknown John Ondrasik as this grieving nation’s unofficial anthem." Ondrasik is now writing about hockey for SI.com. So there.And in what way are the keyboard on Dancing on the Ceiling "Rick Wakeman-ish"?To be fair, they nailed Genesis’ Illegal Alien. My 3-year-old has a better grasp of expressing views on complex social issues than Phil Collins.
November 20th, 2006 at 7:18 am
[…] Yet another superb Chart Attack! over at Jason’s place. […]
November 20th, 2006 at 12:02 pm
We were playing the 80s version of singstar on the playstation the other weekend. When we realised what the lyrics for "We built this city" actually were we all looked at each other in disbelief. It’s so bad it’s good and then bad again.
November 20th, 2006 at 3:32 pm
A friend of my parents was on a flight in 1985 with Marilyn Martin. He didn’t know who she was — I don’t know if many people would have — but as they talked, she told him about a song she’d done with Phil Collins for a movie called "White Nights."
I had no idea "Separate Lives" was about Karen "Marion Ravenwood" Allen. Weird.
I think I liked "Part Time Lover" when I was in 4th grade, but now I prefer "Go Home" and "Overjoyed," especially the former.
"Head Over Heels" was in the Top 10 in November? I remember the video being on MTV in August. Or at least I think I do. It was my favorite of Tears for Fears’ hits that year.
Because sax solos in videos like "You Belong to the City" and what seemed like a predominance of sax solos in Top 40 songs in general in 1985 and ’86, several of my friends in fourth grade and I wanted to learn how to play sax when it came time to sign up for after-school band-instrument lessons. None of us ended up learning a thing.
Earlier this year I was in a sketch show that included auditions for a high school show choir. Their big production at the end of the show was a fifth-anniversary tribute to the heroes of 9/11, scored to "We Built This City." But you know what? I like the song now. I liked it in 4th grade, then I thought it sucked, and now I’ve made my peace with it. Sure, it’s cheese, but it’s fun cheese. "Sara" is a finer kind of cheese, but I have no problem with "We Built This City’s" individual American slices.
November 20th, 2006 at 4:52 pm
Just chiming in with a quick "these are great comments." I did know about the DJ thing in the middle of "We Built This City" but since it was mentioned on the Wiki page I referenced, I opted not to comment on it. I can only plagiarize so much of the Wikipedia at once, people. But yes, the original version does have the mention of the Golden Gate Bridge on it – apparently the song was inspired (for better or for worse) by KSAN-FM in SF.
And you go, Robert, with your defense of "We Built This City." I was listening to my 80s mix at the gym this morning, and when this song came on, I didn’t turn it off. I sang along, too. And I totally want to do it for the Acoustic ’80s gig.
November 20th, 2006 at 8:45 pm
I believe the personalized song everyone is thinking of (where they dubbed in hometown names for regional radio stations) is "The Heart Of Rock and Roll" by Huey Lewis and the News. Remember, he lists all kinds of major cities near the end of the song? Well they left just enough room for Huey to shout one more, and IT WAS YOUR CITY! How Cool…until you found out they just regionalized it for whatever section of the country the record was going to. Then it was just cheezy.
November 21st, 2006 at 12:06 pm
Wow… "Be Near Me". Suddenly I’m 14 years old, uncomfortably slow-dancing with a girl named Mandy at church youth camp. The ABC album How To Be A Zillionaire was in some ways the soundtrack to my early adolescence. How I ended up straight is beyond me.Just went and downloaded it from a certain grey-market Russian mp3 site. Good times. Thanks!
November 21st, 2006 at 1:38 pm
Can’t … stop … commenting! One last thing — I like that during the week of November 16, 1985, "you" belonged to the city that "we" built. The city? Miami.
November 21st, 2006 at 2:50 pm
I wish Holly Knight and Desmond Child and Glenn Ballard and Diane Warren would all form a super group of ghostwriters.
The Holly Knight Desmond Child Glenn Ballard Diane Warren Experience.
They could only play covers.
November 23rd, 2006 at 12:26 am
With Rick Rubin producing.
December 6th, 2006 at 11:39 pm
"Broken Wings" is the enduring classic here, always a guilty pleasure of mine. The middle section and the guitar fadeout are pure gold to me. "Kyrie" flat-out sucks, IMHO. Amazing how tastes differ.
March 2nd, 2007 at 6:23 am
[…] Well, when the charts give you lemons, you write lemonade. So pucker up, music lovers! 10. These Dreams – Heart As mentioned way back in Chart Attack #8, this was the third top-10 hit in a row off of Heart’s self-titled 1985 album. Yes, they gained their first #1 song with this cut (it would top the chart the week of March 22), but at what cost to their previously held “these chicks can rock!” semi-respectability? They had to give their souls over to the team of Martin Page and Bernie “this is my ‘Lost Weekend’ from Elton” Taupin, the team that helped give the world Starship’s “We Built This City” (insert dry heaves here). […]