Musical Monday - 99 Luftballoons by Nena

#1 on the Billboard Hot 100: Never.

#1 on the Cash Box Top 100: The week of March 10, 1984.

#1 on the U.K. Chart: March 3, 1984 through March 17, 1984.

In 1984, Germany was still divided, and Berlin was still split by a wall. The world was held in the grip of a cold war between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. who essentially kept the world more or less constantly on the brink of nuclear annihilation. Nena's song imagines that a misunderstanding - a red balloon floating over the Berlin Wall is mistaken for a UFOs, leading to a sequence of events that ratchets cross-border tensions up and results in an nuclear exchange. At the end of the song, the narrator walks through the ruined wasteland that the world has become and says that ninety-nine years of war have left no possibility for anyone to be the victor. The English language translation is slightly different, but fundamentally tells the same story.

It shouldn't be surprising that a band from West Germany, a nation situated on the literal front lines of this worldwide conflict, would come up with an antiwar song. What makes this song chilling in retrospect is that in 1983, a false alarm in the Soviet early-warning system indicated that five nuclear missiles had been launched at the country. It was only the clear thinking of Soviet lieutenant colonel Stanislav Petrov that prevented the U.S.S.R. from launching a retaliatory strike and kicking off what would have almost certainly been an apocalyptic nuclear exchange. Though no one outside of Soviet missile command knew about this until decades later, the fact that this song recounts a scenario disturbingly similar to an event that almost destroyed the world is somewhat terrifying.

Previous Musical Monday: Jump by Van Halen

Subsequent Musical Monday: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun by Cyndi Lauper

Previous #1 on the Cash Box Top 100: Jump by Van Halen

Subsequent #1 on the Cash Box Top 100: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun by Cyndi Lauper

Previous #1 on the U.K. Chart: Relax by Frankie Goes to Hollywood

Subsequent #1 on the U.K. Chart: Hello by Lionel Richie

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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Musical Monday - Jump by Van Halen

#1 on the Billboard Hot 100: February 25, 1984 through March 24, 1984.

#1 on the Cash Box Top 100: February 25, 1984 through March 3, 1984.

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

Jump was the first Van Halen song I ever heard. It was probably the first song by a "metal" band that I ever heard. I was, after all, in junior high school when it was released, and hadn't heard much music other than what was on the radio stations near where I lived - and when I was in junior high, I lived in Kinshasa, Zaire and later in Lagos, Nigeria.

Because this was the first song by Van Halen I ever heard, this sound seemed natural for the band. It was only later that I found out there were long-time fans of the band who were outraged by this song and the album it appearaed on becasue the band's exetensive use of synthesizers. Eddie Van Halen playing a keyboard instead of a guitar was seen as almost blasphemous. That said, this is Van Halen's most commercially successful song, and probably their signature song. With due respect to "traditional" Van Halen fans, this is Van Halen's sound, and is more like their later output than anything that went before it. Bands evolve and change - usually not quite as switfly or dramatically as Van Halen did with Jump - but it is almost inevitable that it will happen.

Previous Musical Monday: Owner of a Lonely Heart by Yes

Subsequent Musical Monday: 99 Luftballoons by Nena

Previous #1 on the Billboard Hot 100: Karma Chameleon by Culture Club

Subsequent #1 on the Billboard Hot 100: Footloose by Kenny Loggins

Previous #1 on the Cash Box Top 100: Karma Chameleon by Culture Club

Subsequent #1 on the Cash Box Top 100: 99 Luftballoons by Nena

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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Musical Monday - Owner of a Lonely Heart by Yes

#1 on the Billboard Hot 100: January 24, 1984 through January 28, 1984.

#1 on the Cash Box Top 100: January 21, 1984 through January 29, 1984.

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

Owner of a Lonely Heart is arguably the most successful song ever released by one of my favorite bands. It is also one of my least favorite Yes songs. I don't actively dislike it, but if you asked me if I wanted to listen to some Yes, I'd be hoping we were going to listen to Roundabout, or Changes, or Hold On, or Starship Troopers, or I've Seen All Good People, or Leave It, or, well you get the idea. Just about every other song in the Yes catalog is more interesting and more enjoyable than this one.

The problem with Owner of a Lonely Heart is that it is such a very generic pop song. It is basically just a guitar riff with attached lyrics and not much else. The music video desperately tries to make this more interesting, first with an odd interlude where four of the five band members turn into animals, and then a strange Kafkaesque sequence involving a man being hauled off by mysterious authority figures while simultaneously having disturbing hallucination, but none of this really matches with the music or the lyrics - in large part because the music is bland and the lyrics are mostly nonsense.

I guess my real complaint here is that this, the most commercially successful Yes song, is really not very "Yes", and I prefer Yes to actually sound like themselves.

Previous Musical Monday: Relax by Frankie Goes to Hollywood

Subsequent Musical Monday: Jump by Van Halen

Previous #1 on the Billboard Hot 100: Say Say Say by Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson

Subsequent #1 on the Billboard Hot 100: Karma Chameleon by Culture Club

Previous #1 on the Cash Box Top 100: Union of the Snake by Duran Duran

Subsequent #1 on the Cash Box Top 100: Karma Chameleon by Culture Club

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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Musical Monday - Relax by Frankie Goes to Hollywood

#1 on the Billboard Hot 100: Never.

#1 on the Cash Box Top 100: Never.

#1 on the U.K. Chart: January 28, 1984 through February 25, 1984.

It is difficult to explain just how big, albeit short-lived, a cultural phenomenon Frankie Goes to Hollywood was in early 1984. I lived through it, and it is difficult for me to comprehend. There was about a four to six month period when Frankie Goes to Hollywood was everywhere, mostly based on the strength of this song. White t-shirts with giant black letters declaring "Frankie Say Relax" were the fashion statement of the year. You couldn't turn around without finding another Frankie Goes to Hollywood reference. This moderately obscure group of Liverpudlians simply took the pop culture world by storm, and didn't let go for months.

The extent to which the pop culture world took this song to its heart is somewhat surprising. As I have pointed out before, the death of the disco era was in large part a reaction to that music's "urban" connection, where "urban" is more or less a code word for "black" and "gay". In that light, the cultural rise of a song that is an almost explicit paean to gay sex that was accompanied by a music video that made sure to provide text for anyone who didn't get that subtext, is notable. Frankie Goes to Hollywood didn't try to hide any of this. Relax is a song that is openly, unashamedly, unabashedly gay. The music video is so homoerotic that it could almost be mistaken for a parody if one didn't know the band members were serious.

That said, Frankie Goes to Hollywood had to create an entirely different, much less overtly sexual video in order to get any airplay on MTV, so it is pretty clear that homophobia was still alive and well in the pop culture landscape of the U.S. at that time.

Previous Musical Monday: Pipes of Peace by Paul McCartney

Subsequent Musical Monday: Owner of a Lonely Heart by Yes

Previous #1 on the U.K. Chart: Pipes of Peace by Paul McCartney

Subsequent #1 on the U.K. Chart: 99 Luftballoons by Nena

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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