Musical Monday - Theme from the Greatest American Hero by Joey Scarbury

#1 on the Billboard Hot 100: Never.

#1 on the Cash Box Top 100: The week of August 8, 1981.

#1 on the U.K. Chart: Never.

Popular music is so profoundly affected by popular culture that the theme song of an early 1980s comedy about a high school teacher gifted a supersuit by mysterious aliens could reach the top of the charts. The song itself is fairly ordinary - it sounds like hundreds of other early 1980s style soft-rock songs, but because it was attached to a weekly television series, it got a lot of airplay, and apparently stuck in people's heads.

I have to admit that in 1981, I loved this series, or rather, I loved the idea of the series and what little of the series I saw. Because I spent the early 1980s mostly out of the United States in countries without access to current American television, my memories of most television of that era are confined to the ten months or so my family lived in Virginia while my father took language training before going overseas and then the once a year month-long trips back to the U.S. that we would take annually.

The end result is that I probably only saw a handful of episodes of the show, but I have fond memories of it anyway, although I can't really tell if it is because the show was actually worth watching or if my recollection is more the result of watching the show while on vacation and intertwining memories about it with memories of visiting my grandparents and having potato chips, actual milk, and Dairy Queen available. Maybe I should find a DVD set of the series and see if it still holds up at all.

Previous Musical Monday: Behind the Green Door by Shakin' Stevens

Subsequent Musical Monday: Endless Love by Lionel Richie and Diana Ross

Previous #1 on the Cash Box Top 100: Elvira by the Oak Ridge Boys

Subsequent #1 on the Cash Box Top 100: Endless Love by Lionel Richie and Diana Ross

List of #1 Singles from the Billboard Hot 100 for 1980-1989
List of #1 Singles from the Cash Box Top 100 for 1980-1989
List of #1 Singles on the U.K. Chart for 1980-1989

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