Jason’s Jukebox Volume 8

Jason Maloney reviews

JASON’S JUKEBOX
V o l u m e # 0 8 Chart Date: Week Ending 9th March 1985 Online Date: 9th March 2004

Dead or Alive:
Evolution – The Hits The Top 40 of 19 years ago was a hive of activity with no fewer than five singles experiencing double-figure climbs, all of them within the Top 20. The new #1, however, had been around for a while; Dead Or Alive‘s You Spin Me Round appeared on the surface to have wasted little time in reaching the summit – having entered at #40 before moving #19-#5-#2-#1 – but the track had been released way back in October 1984 and already spent no less than 10 weeks between #41 and #75 prior to scraping into the main chart during the traditional New Year shakeup. It was the first of seven UK chart-toppers for the Stock-Aitken-Waterman production team, but the sole #1 for Dead Or Alive who subsequently failed to manage another Top 10 hit.

As one singles dynasty began to establish itself, another was entering its final throes. Benny Anderson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, better known as one half of ABBA, had penned a series of #1s between 1974 and 1981 for their band, but the last time they were at the top as writers was in league with lyricist Tim Rice on I Know Him So Well. Taken from the musical Chess, the Elaine Page & Barbara Dickson single had spent four weeks at #1 before making way for Dead Or Alive.

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King: Love and Pride The first release by the Commodores without former lead singer Lionel Richie was proving an unexpected smash. Nightshift, an evocative and atmospheric tribute to a number of Motown legends, now stood at #3 having climbed another 3 places. Unfortunately it would also prove to be their last brush with the UK Top 40; the follow-up Animal Instinct was a clunky uptempo workout which duly bombed out at #74 and no further hits were forthcoming.

There were five re-issues among this week’s hits; the highest-placed was a 1985-style makeover for Kiss Me by Stephen “Tintin” Duffy, up 18 to #4 on only its second week on the chart. A flop first time around in 1983, the new version gave the track a contemporay Art Of Noise-style feel and the result was the first of two sizeable hits for Duffy in 1985 and the biggest success of his whole career. The other re-releases were King‘s Love & Pride (a #2 smash now down to #8), Bruce Springsteen‘s Dancing In The Dark (falling to #9, its original #28 peak in 1984 having been bettered by 24 places) and a remixed version of ZZ Top‘s Legs up 10 to #16 some 12 months after reaching #8 in America.

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Prince and the Revolution:
Purple Rain 1985 would end up Madonna‘s year in terms of singles. It began with her second major hit Like A Virgin, which peaked at #3 in December 1984, hanging around throughout January and February (selling half a million copies in the process) and ended with a seventh hit of the year (Dress You Up) in the Top 10. The follow-up to Like A Virgin, the Cyndi Lauper-sounding Material Girl, soared from #24 to #5 on its way to the Top 3 to become her biggest single to date, although that first #1 wasn’t far away.

Prince wasn’t having too bad a time of it, either. His autobiographical album/film Purple Rain had provided his real UK breakthrough and made him a bona fide superstar in the US in 1984, and the project was still churning out the hits almost a year later. The album’s opening two songs, Let’s Go Crazy and Take Me With U, were paired for the last single from Purple Rain in Britain but released separately Stateside at very different times – the former hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in September 1984 while the latter was only a modest hit at around the same time the UK double-A side was charting. Let’s Go Crazy/Take Me With U moved up 2 more places to its peak of #7 on the chart of March 9th 1985 while another AA-sided entry, a re-release of two minor pre-Purple Rain UK hits – 1999 and Little Red Corvette – which had made #2 in January, was still on the Top 40 at #28.

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Don Henley:
Building The Perfect Beast The week’s biggest mover was the 23-place climb from #34 to #11 by The Last Kiss, a comeback single from 70s heartthrob David Cassidy. Much was made of the presence of George Michael on backing vocals, and the Wham! man’s general patronage of the onetime Partridge Family star. The Last Kiss eventually reached #6, but the accompanying album Romance failed to yield another hit and Cassidy’s second coming was shortlived.

By far the best single on the chart, and indeed of 1985 overall, was Don Henley‘s magnificent The Boys Of Summer (DVDfever Dom adds: And you haven’t lived until you’ve heard the same album’s “Sunset Grill”). The US Top 5 hit inched up 1 place to #12, its highest position both on this initial chart soujourn and also when re-issued 13 years later. Henley has still to enjoy solo UK Top 40 success with any other track; his only other entry being the 1992 duet with rock chick Patty Smyth (not to be confused with iconic punk figure Patti Smith) on Sometimes Love Just Ain’t Enough which reached #22.

More oustanding AOR came in the shape of Run To You (the debut hit for Bryan Adams) dropping 6 places from its high of #11, and Foreigner‘s erstwhile #1 I Want To Know What Love Is (down to #30 on its 12th week). Daryl Hall & John Oates, officially the biggest duo in US Chart history, were making an all-too-rare UK chart appearance with Method Of Modern Love (up 8 to #25). Their previous two singles Say It Isn’t So and Out Of Touch, both American #1s, had missed the Top 40 in this country. Method Of Modern Love rather perversely only made #5 across the Atlantic.

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The Best of Go West A song written by Daryl Hall in the 1970s would give Paul Young his last major UK hit single and his only US chart-topper. Everytime You Go Away was a new entry this week at #26. Just ahead was another future US #1, Easy Lover by the two Phillips – Bailey and Collins – in at #20. The track, featured on Bailey’s solo album Chinese Wall but not on Collins’ mega-selling No Jacket Required, would also top the UK chart two weeks later and remain there for a month. The Genesis vocalist/drummer was also at #33 courtesy of outgoing hit Sussudio, one of his umpteen US #1s but only a #12 success in the UK.

Michael Jackson didn’t have any solo hits in 1985, but his elder brother Jermaine kept the family name in the UK charts with his Do What You Do leaping 21 places to #18. Meanwhile Mick Jagger, the man who teamed up with The Jackson clan for State Of Shock (a one-off Top 20 single in 1984) was launching a sporadic solo career away from the Rolling Stones. However, Just Another Night – the first single from his album She’s The Boss – found the going extremely tough, rising just 3 places to #32 despite an avalanche of publicity.

New arrivals included Go West at #31 with We Close Our Eyes (backed by a superb Godley & Creme video, it would go on to reach #5), seminal Britsoul outfit Loose Ends at #37 with the classic Hangin’ On A String, and Prince protege Sheila E. at #39 with The Belle Of St Mark. Her debut single, The Glamourous Life had inexplicably failed to emulate its US Top 40 status on this side of the pond in late 1984, and the next one – A Love Bizarre (#11 in the US early in 1986) – suffered the same fate.

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