Musical Monday - Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic by the Police

#1 on the Billboard Hot 100: Never.

#1 on the Cash Box Top 100: Never.

#1 on the U.K. Chart: The week of November 14, 1981.

This was the first Police song I ever heard, and I loved it.

My family moved to what was then called Zaire in the early 1980s (and is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), and my contact with American pop culture became rather sporadic over the next couple of years. So when my uncle sent us a mix tape that he had titled Africa Anyone? it got played over and over again. I took the tape to represent American pop music as a whole, but what it really represented was the music my uncle's friends at Murray State University liked.

One of the songs on that tape was this one. This was my favorite song on the tape, and I remember listening to it on my Walkman, rewinding it, and then playing it again, over and over again. I remember listening to it in the library in my grandparent's basement in Alexandria. This was one of the first songs that I recall gravitating towards that neither of my parents particularly cared for. This was, in a sense, the beginning of my own taste in music independent of my parents.

I still love this song. It wasn't nearly as commercially successful as the songs that dominated the U.S. charts in the latter half of 1981 like Endless Love, Arthur's Theme, and Physical, but I think it is a better piece of music, and holds up better than most of those others do.

Previous Musical Monday: Private Eyes by Hall and Oates

Subsequent Musical Monday: Physical by Olivia Newton-John

Previous #1 on the U.K. Chart: It's My Party by Dave Stewart and Barbara Gaskin

Subsequent #1 on the U.K. Chart: Under Pressure by David Bowie and Queen

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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