Musical Monday - Stars on 45 Medley by Stars on 45

#1 on the Billboard Hot 100: The week of June 20, 1981.

#1 on the Cash Box Top 100: June 20, 1981 through June 27, 1981.

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

In 1981, disco was in its last death throes, but it wasn't going to go down without taking some good music with it. Apparently, what the world needed was a mash-up of the intro to Shocking Blue's Venus followed by snippets from the Archies' Sugar, Sugar, and then bits of the Beatles' No Reply, I'll Be Back, Drive My Car, Do You Want to Know a Secret, We Can Work It Out, I Should Have Known Better, Nowhere Man, and You're Going to Lose That Girl, all set to a common disco beat. It is a hypnotically horrific travesty, and a crime of epic proportions against good music.

The really weird thing is that this sort of thing is sometimes done by comedy groups to show how similar many pop hits are. For example, the Axis of Awesome has a song they call Four Chord Songs in which they run through a bunch of pop hits that all use the same four chords. Similarly, a few years ago, comedian Rob Paravonian went on a famous rant about how all modern pop music was basically just a disguised version of Pachelbel's Canon in D. The difference is that those groups are doing the medley for laughs, while Stars on 45 was doing it because they thought it was somehow a worthwhile way to present this music.

It isn't. This medley offends me to my very core.

Previous Musical Monday: Being With You by Smokey Robinson

Subsequent Musical Monday: One Day in Your Life by Michael Jackson

Previous #1 on the Billboard Hot 100: Bette Davis Eyes by Kim Carnes

Subsequent #1 on the Billboard Hot 100: The One That You Love by Air Supply

Previous #1 on the Cash Box Top 100: Bette Davis Eyes by Kim Carnes

Subsequent #1 on the Cash Box Top 100: The One That You Love by Air Supply

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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