Musical Monday - Centerfold by the J. Geils Band

#1 on the Billboard Hot 100: February 6, 1982 through March 13, 1982.

#1 on the Cash Box Top 100: January 30, 1982 through March 6, 1982.

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

When you get right down to it, Centerfold is a pretty sleazy song. It tells the story of a boy's high school crush who he discovers has posed in a magazine that is not named, but through context simply has to be Playboy. He is crushed by this discovery, but all is not lost, he decides that it would be great if she would drive the two of them to a motel so they could have sex, an offer that seems both self-serving and kind of creepy. Seriously, how slimier could this line be? "Hey babe, I saw you naked in Playboy, why don't we go to a cheap motel and you can give me a private show?"

That said, the video for this song is remarkably tame. Sure, there are women dancing in sweaters, bras, and other lingerie, but the focus is only kind of vaguely sexual. The dances themselves are not really all that suggestive, the focus of the camera isn't solely on the women as sexual objects, and so on. One can compare the framing of the women in this video to the framing of the women in Def Leppard's Photograph or Van Halen's Hot for Teacher to get a feel for the difference in tone that I am referring to. Maybe it was just that 1982 was a more innocent time for videos than 1983 and beyond. Maybe the band decided that a less sexually explicit tone was needed for the video to contrast with the very sexual nature of the song. I don't know the reason for it, but the difference is notable.

Finally, I will note that during the 1980s there was a persistent rumor that one of the women who appear in this video was Martha Quinn, who would become famous as one of the original VeeJays on MTV. This rumor was false, and the woman who was identified as being her only kinda sorta looks like Quinn if you squint and look at her from the exact right angle, and even then not really. The urban legend of "Quinn in the Centerfold video" was still firmly entrenched in the mind of college students throughout the decade.

Previous Musical Monday: Oh Julie by Shakin' Stevens

Subsequent Musical Monday: Computer Love/The Model by Kraftwerk

Previous #1 on the Billboard Hot 100: I Can't Go for That (No Can Do) by Hall and Oates

Subsequent #1 on the Billboard Hot 100: I Love Rock 'n Roll by Joan Jett

Previous #1 on the Cash Box Top 100: I Can't Go for That (No Can Do) by Hall and Oates

Subsequent #1 on the Cash Box Top 100: Open Arms by Journey

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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