Skip to content
Jason Maloney reviews
V o l u m e # 2 7 Chart Date: August 3rd 1985 Online Date: 6th August 2004
Simply the Best
The rapid ascent of Into The Groove reduced the reign of outgoing #1 There Must Be An Angel by Eurythmics to just a solitary week. Those 7 days were to be the only ones David A Stewart and Annie Lennox ever spent at the summit of the UK Top 40. The second single from Be Yourself Tonight, it had moved #37-10-3-1 on its way to the top but remains one of the least-remembered #1s by virtue of being overshadowed first by the Live Aid concert itself and then the extraordinary effects on album sales it had for some who performed that day.
For the recently-rehabilitated Tina Turner, the album chart had been where the majority of her huge success took place; 1984’s back-from-the-wilderness Private Dancer was in the process of clocking up more than 150 weeks on the UK listings, but only two of its six singles had made the Top 10. The last of that sextet, I Can’t Stand The Rain, had fallen short of the Top 40 in March. However, We Don’t Need Another Hero – soaring another 8 places to #3 a week after a climb of 27 from its entry position of #38 – was a brand enw recording, taken from the third Mad Max film Beyond Thunderdome in which Ms. Bullock had a significant role. Her other release from the soundtrack – One Of The Living – would only manage a #55 peak later in the year.
Brothers In Arms
Prior to Live Aid, Dire Straits were pretty popular. In May 1985 they had played a record 20 nights at Wembley Arena, and the Brothers In Arms album debuted at #1 in the UK during the same month. After Live Aid, they became popular on a scale seldom seen either before or since. Brothers In Arms went on to spend 2 years in the Top 10 alone, and their back-catalogue releases chalked up several hundred weeks between them. Singles-wise, they were prone to the occasional biggie – Sultans Of Swing (#7, 1978), Romeo & Juliet (#8, 1980) and Private Investigations (#2, 1982), and Money For Nothing duly added itself to that list by hitting the Top 10 during August 1985.
Aided by an eye-catching, if now rather dated and crude, animated video, the single also featured Sting on back-up vocals. His “Don’t Stand So Close To Me” hookline on The Police’s 1980 chart-topper had been appropriated by the emerging Music Television channel MTV as “I Want My MTV”, and now it was payback time; the latter phrase formed the intro to Money For Nothing, which moved #15-8 on the Top 40 of 19 years ago.
Gunning for the Top 10, Billy Idol‘s resurrected White Wedding shot up from #18 to #11. Dating from 1982, the track was the first of several reissue hits for the former Generation X frontman between 1985 and 1989. An American breakthrough had proved easier than cracking the UK chart, and it wasn’t until 1984’s Eyes Without A Face made #18 in Britain that Idol’s career got underway on this side of the Atlantic. A mini-album entitled Vital Idol subsequently appeared in September 1985, while the title song from 1983’s Rebel Yell album later emulated the Top 10 exploits of White Wedding upon re-release.
A trio of newcomers to the chart arrived immediately outside the top half of the 40. Bruce Springsteen‘s Glory Days was the highest entry at #21, the fourth single from Born In The USA debuting as the third (a Double A-side featuring I’m On Fire and the album’s title cut) continued its run in the Top 20 by falling from #12 to #19. The unlikely pairing of UB40 and Chrissie Hynde (of Pretenders fame) teamed up for a reggae-lite cover of I Got You Babe, going straight in at #22 on their way to the very top a month later when it dethroned Into The Groove.
One of 1984’s chart sensations, with no fewer than five Top 20 hit singles and two Platinum albums, Nik Kershaw‘s star was sadly about to wane. Don Quixote – new at #23 – proved to be his last notable UK single, with its #27 follow-up When A Heart Beats providing the final Top 40 entry for Kershaw as a recording artist although he wrote and produced Chesney Hawkes‘ 1991 #1 The One And Only, and later guested on Les Rhythmes Digitales‘ classy synth-pop Sometimes, making No.56 in August 1999.
Other entries included Prince & The Revolution at #33 with Raspberry Beret, Phil Collins in at #38 with Take Me Home and Go West‘s third single Goodbye Girl at #39. Not content with having records at #1 and #12, Madonna claimed a hat-trick of hits on the chart of August 3rd 1985 when her debut hit Holiday re-entered at #32. Shades of the previous summer, when Frankie Goes To Hollywood‘s Relax rebounded back up the chart to join their incumbent #1 Two Tribes, soon materialised when Holiday subsequently leapt 27 places to #5 before completing a one-two of her own.
Page Content copyright © Jason Maloney, 2004.
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.