On which I write about the books I read, science, science fiction, fantasy, and anything else that I want to. Currently trying to read and comment upon every novel that has won the Hugo and International Fantasy awards.
#1 on the U.K. Chart: The week of December 1, 1984.
This is a song that I missed in the 1980s. I have basically no recollection of this song or this singer, which isn't entirely surprising, since he apparently only had success in Europe. That said, if I had first heard it in 1984 when it was released, I probably would have thought it was a hopelessly romantic, albeit super sappy song. On the other hand, first hearing it now, this song bothers me a bit. The lyrics - I should have known better/Than to lie to someone as beautiful as you - seem to imply that there is some level of plainness that makes lying to them acceptable. That sits wrong with me now in a way that it probably wouldn't have when I was a teenager. The implication just would not have occurred to me back then.
#1 on the Cash Box Top 100: The week of December 8, 1984.
#1 on the U.K. Chart: November 10, 1984 through November 24, 1984.
This is another post about Prince. To be clear, Chaka Khan was (and is) an overwhelmingly powerful force in the rhythm and blues world. By 1984 she had carved a career that marked her as not only one of the top female vocalists in the genre, but one of the top female vocalists period. Between 1978 and 1983, she had hit the top of the R&B charts three times, but had not had a top hit overall. Thus, it is notable that it wasn't until she covered a Prince song that she managed to top out not only the Cash Box Top 100, but the U.K. Chart as well. This marked the start of a trend of artists covering Prince songs (or Prince simply writing songs for other artists to record) that turned into big hits. Given his own ability to turn songs into hits during the decade, it is hard to overstate how influential Prince was on the shape of music in the 1980s.
This version of I Feel for You was the first big hit that paired a singer with a rapper, featuring Melle Mel on the recording. So, for anyone who doesn't like this practice, you have Chaka Khan to blame. This arrangement also led to the kind of odd result of Khan not actually singing until almost a minute into the song. As noted before, Khan was a dominant force as a vocalist, and she was acting as a solo artist for this song, which makes sidelining her for the first quarter of the song seem like an odd choice. I guess it was the right choice though, given the result.
All that said, I didn't really like this song all that much when it was released. I was aware of some of Chaka Khan's other output, including I'm Every Woman and her collaboration with Rufus in Tell Me Something Good, and I thought they were far superior to this song. I still do. Just as with Steve Wonder and I Just Called to Say I Love You, Chaka Khan's biggest hit was, in my estimation, far from her best song.
#1 on the Cash Box Top 100: November 10, 1984 through November 24, 1984.
#1 on the U.K. Chart: Never.
The first thing to know about this video is that it is not a real concert. I mean, it is actually Prince, and he is actually performing before an audience, but this was filmed for the movie Purple Rain. Consequently, the dedication and the brief story Prince tells about the writing of the song may or may not be entirely accurate. The movie Purple Rain seems autobiographical, but it is a kind of enhanced reality that only sometimes matches up to the reality of Prince's life as an emerging artist in Minneapolis. In any event, the important part of this is the song itself, which is pretty much the quintessential Prince song.
Throughout his career, prince adopted the color purple as his signature look, leaning heavily into the "royal" nature fo his name. It seems natural then, that his signature song would reference the color in the title. This song, although not his biggest hit, became the song most identified with him. In a bit of history probably only really of interest to me, Prince stated that the origin of the title of the song was a line from the America song Ventura Highway, which means Prince was influenced by styles of music that I didn't entirely expect - although given his incredibly eclectic artistic output, I suppose I should not have been surprised.
Over the years, there were more than a few poetically appropriate events that occurred in conjunction with this song - when he performed as the Super Bowl halftime act, it began raining when he performed it, with the falling drops highlighting the purple lights that lit up the stadium, giving the entire performance an eerie vibe. This was also the last song prince performed live before he died, which seems so fitting that if it had been written into a fictional narrative people would have thought it too on the nose to believe.
#1 on the Billboard Hot 100: November 3, 1984 through November 10, 1984.
#1 on the Cash Box Top 100: Never.
#1 on the U.K. Chart: Never.
Peppy and poppy, Caribbean Queen tells the story of a man who was just playing around but found himself falling hopelessly in love with a beautiful woman. In a mildly interesting twist, Caribbean Queen was renamed for a variety of worldwide markets, bearing titles such as European Queen and African Queen, which definitely recalibrates the song quite a bit. Ocean himself is British and was born in Trinidad, which makes the Caribbean tag for the song seem like the most authentic one, but the use of localized names is a kind of clever marketing trick.
I suppose the most notable thing about this song is that it pushed a black rhythm and blues pop star who wasn't named Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, or Prince into the forefront of the public eye. Not only that, it pushed a non-American rhythm and blues star into prominence, which was mildly unusual. This was just the first of Billy Ocean's hits, although none of the others were really quite as good as this one. In some ways, the closest comparison to Ocean would be Eddie Grant, but their styles and tones were quite different, with Grant having a harder more political edge to his music and Ocean offering more commercially-friendly fare.
#1 on the U.K. Chart: October 20, 1984 to November 3, 1984.
Wham! had a few top hits in the United States in the 1980s. The duo had a few more top hits in the U.K. This song reached number one in the U.K., and was only slightly less successful across the Atlantic. The thing about Wham! is that even though they are one of the iconic bands of the 1980s, they only released a total of two studio albums, and their heyday only lasted for about two years. Michael and Ridgeley somehow managed to help set the tone for the entire decade with a handful of songs and some fairly suspect dancing.
The weird thing about this song is that even though it is super-peppy and upbeat, the lyrics tell the story of a one-sided, almost abusive relationship. It seems odd to have a toe-tapping dance song that features lyrics about a narrator whose significant other apparently routinely cheats on them, but the narrator is so smitten that they always forgive their wayward partner. This is a strangely happy sounding tune with a dark core behind it. I suspect that few people who put this on for a turn at cutting the rug spent much time thinking about the words being sung at them. I kind of wonder if it would have mattered if they had.
#1 on the Billboard Hot 100: September 29, 1984 through October 6, 1984.
#1 on the Cash Box Top 100: September 29, 1984 through October 6, 1984.
#1 on the U.K. Chart: Never.
Let's Go Crazy was the third big hit from Prince's Purple Rain album, which he made to accompany the movie of the same name that he starred in. All of the footage from this video is drawn from that movie, including the somehwat hilarious attempts to make Prince's puppet-band Morris Day and the Time into credible rivals for Prince in the fictional dance club that made up the heart of the movie. The footage also features a lot of Apollonia, who played Prince's girlfriend playing a character that shared her name so Prince could manufacture another band to promote: Apollonia 6 (which had previously been named Vanity 6 before the singer Vanity left that group).
Even though this song was pretty much the third-most popular song from this album, falling behind When Doves Cry and Purple Rain, it is my personal favorite. In large part, my affection for the song stems from the fact that Prince flashes his guitar skills in the closing segment of the song - I don't know if the quote is accurate, but supposedly when someone asked Eric Clapton how it felt to be the best guitarist in the world he responded with "I don't know, you'll have to ask Prince". I can't really claim to be qualified to make an assessment as to who the top dog in the axe-wielding department is, but Prince is definitely up there and shows it off here.
#1 on the Billboard Hot 100: The week of September 22, 1984.
#1 on the Cash Box Top 100: September 15, 1984 through September 22, 1984.
#1 on the U.K. Chart: Never.
My most dominant memory of this song is the fact that my mother quoted it's chorus in some of her letters to me while I was away at school. At the time, I was at a boarding school in Virginia, while my parents lived in Lagos, Nigeria at the time. My mother was not happy about this arrangement, and I probably didn't make it any easier by being really terrible at writing letters in return. needless to say, she sent me many more letters than I sent her.
The thing about the song is that it is actually a break-up song about missing a lover who has left you while you pine for them to return to your side and desperately try to erase their memory, which makes my mother's use of it to express missing her son kind of weird. That said, as break-up songs go, this is one of the best ones ever made. Waite's lyrics express the combination of longing and self-deception that perfectly encapsulates the emotions of a bad break-up.
#1 on the Billboard Hot 100: October 20, 1984 through October 27, 1984.
#1 on the Cash Box Top 100: October 13, 1984 through November 3, 1984.
#1 on the U.K. Chart: September 8, 1984 through October 13, 1984.
If there is anything that demonstrates that success on the pop charts is mostly determined by the preferences of suburban moms, it is the fact that this song is Stevie Wonder's best-selling single. Wonder has had a long and prolific career, churning out musical masterpiece after musical masterpiece - Fingertips, Part II, Uptight (Everything's Alright), Superstition, Master Blaster (Jammin'), Sir Duke, and so many more. And yet, this milquetoast love ballad is the most successful song he ever wrote or recorded. To be clear, this isn't a bad song, it is just that compared to his greatest works, I Just Called to Say I Love You is just ordinary at best. It is, to be blunt, the epitome of Mom-pop.
This song was also on the soundtrack to The Woman in Red, which, once again, highlights the connection between pop music success and the movie industry. This song won an Academy Award as a result, although the movie - a mostly unfunny Gene Wilder vehicle featuring Kelly LeBrock and Gilda Radner - was simply not very good.
#1 on the Billboard Hot 100: September 1, 1984 through September 15, 1984.
#1 on the Cash Box Top 100: August 25, 1984 through September 8, 1984.
#1 on the U.K. Chart: Never.
Tina Turner reached the top of the charts for the first (and only) time at the age of 44. She had already lived an entire show business lifetime before this song came out - beginning in 1957 when she first started hitting the charts as part of the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. Her career had already peaked in the 1960s, petered out, and died before the end of the 1970s. By 1980, she was a former star. She was also estranged from Ike, who it turns out had been an abusive husband who had badly mistreated Tina for years. For most artists with Tina's career trajectory, the 1980s would have been an empty decade. She might have returned for the nostalgia circuit a decade or two later, but functionally, her career would have been over.
That's not what Tina did. Starting with the album Private Dancer, on which this song appears, she launched a second, even more successful career. Tina Turner was a bigger star after the age of 45 than she had ever been before the age of 45. Even though she was never able to fully replicate the success of What's Love Got to Do With It, she established herself as an act that could fill an arena for the rest of the 1980s and beyond. There were other artists who reivented themselves in the 1980s - Heart, David Bowie, even the Bee Gees - but none came from as far down as Tina did, and few reached similar heights.
#1 on the Billboard Hot 100: February 16, 1985 through March 2, 1985.
#1 on the Cash Box Top 100: February 16, 1985 through March 2, 1985.
#1 on the U.K. Chart: August 18, 1984 through September 1, 1984.
At the outset, I will admit that I didn't much like George Michael's music in the 1980s. I'll also go ahead and admit that I don't much like George Michael's music now. I can appreciate his talent, and the artistry, he just doesn't perform a style of music that appeals to me. That there is music that is immensely popular that I don't personally find particularly appealing should not be particularly surprising. I'd venture that pretty much everyone has some piece of popular culture that just doesn't appeal to them. George Michael (and Wham!) fall squarely into that category for me.
Disliking popular things other people like is perfectly okay. Being a dick about disliking popular things other people like is well, being a dick. I don't care for Michael's music, but if you like it, I hope you get a lot of joy from listening to this video.
One odd thing I noticed about this song is that it is often presented crediting George Michael as the artist. it is true that he sings the song, but it appeared on a Wham! album by Michael was a member of Wham!, so I wonder why the song is presented this way. This isn't universal - sometimes the song is presented crediting Wham! as the artist, which makes the mystery a little deeper. I don't know if this has any meaning, but it is quirky.
Previous Musical Monday:Ghostbusters by Ray Parker, Jr.
#1 on the Billboard Hot 100: August 11, 1984 through August 25, 1984.
#1 on the Cash Box Top 100: August 11, 1984 through August 18, 1984.
#1 on the U.K. Chart: Never.
Ghostbusters the movie was probably the first blockbuster comedy. Hit comedies always did reasonably well at the box office, but Ghostbusters pulled in nearly $300 million at the box office against a production budget of about $30 million, which was an entirely new level of success for the genre. For comparison, the most famous collaboration between Harold Ramis and Bill Murray prior to Ghostbusters was Stripes, which grossed $85 million at the box office - a profitable movie, but not nearly in the same stratosphere as Ghostbusters.
Ghostbusters the song was the main theme for the Ghostbusters movie. There is usually some synergy between the success of a movie and the success of a song, and in this case, the synergy worked to launch both to extreme success. This song was written well into the movie production process, after Reitman passed several clips of the movie along to Parker for him to use as inspiration. And this fact is where this story gets interesting.
When Reitman was filming Ghostbusters, he used the Huey Lewis song I Want a New Drug as placeholder music for some scenes, with the intent that it would be replaced by music tailored specifically to the movie before it was ready for release. These scenes ended up using Ray Parker's Ghostbusters song instead, which some people (including Lewis) noticed bore a lot of similarities to I Want a New Drug, resulting in a copyright lawsuit that was resolved via a confidential settlement agreement.
Since no one knows the details of the settlement, it is difficult to say whether Parker actually lifted Lewis' work, or if the songs were similar because they needed to fit the same scenes and thus necessarily shared a lot of tempo and pacing requirements in common. Either way, Ghostbusters was Parker's biggest hit.
#1 on the Billboard Hot 100: July 7, 1984 through August 4, 1984.
#1 on the Cash Box Top 100: July 14, 1984 through August 4, 1984.
#1 on the U.K. Chart: Never.
Prince's career can be divided into two parts. The first is everything that took place before the release of the Purple Rain album and movie of the same name. The second is everything that came after that. Before Purple Rain, Prince was a successful musician. After Purple Rain, Prince was an icon, launched into the company of the top tier performers in the world. I had been aware of Prince prior to Purple Rain, but he was the guy who had a couple of very successful almost novelty-ish songs like 1999 and Little Red Corvette. He was the sort of musician who could reliably turn out profitable albums and make a high-profile living with his music. After Purple Rain, Prince was the sort of performer who could sell out a giant arena in minutes. And When Doves Cry was the flagship song from Purple Rain.
In the early 1980s, I was kind of out of step with what was the dominant thrust of pop music. I wasn't much of a Michael Jackson fan, and I wasn't particularly enamored of the variety of acts trying to occupy the same post-disco dance friendly territory he had claimed. Although Prince was descended from the same musical heritage as Jackson and other similar artists, the Purple One took the musical style into an entirely different and refreshing direction. Where Jackson's performances were smooth and polished, with every note and movement refined to a high sheen, Prince's were raw and visceral, throbbing with barely contained sexual energy.
When Doves Cry is, in my estimation, one of Prince's best songs. Proving that he was one of the funkiest men around, he managed to produce this song, which is almost the epitome of funk, without a bass line, which is a pretty stunning accomplishment. The only thing I can say is that I, a decidedly non-funky teenager, was drawn into Prince's orbit by this song, which I distinctly remember dancing to with my girlfriend at the time and thinking the world couldn't get any better than that.
#1 on the Cash Box Top 100: June 30, 1984 through July 7, 1984.
#1 on the U.K. Chart: Never.
Dancing in the Dark is Springstein's most commercially successful song, reaching number one in more than one country and hitting the top ten in several more. The song also won Springstein a Grammy Award. Despite this, if I were making a list of Springstein's ten greatest songs, Dancing in the Dark would not be on it. Nor would it be on my list of his twenty greatest songs. Or even his thirty greatest songs. I suspect that I am not alone in this assessment. While Dancing in the Dark isn't a bad song, it just doesn't hit home the way Springstein's better songs do - I'd even rank several of the other songs on the Born in the U.S.A. album more highly than this one.
This fact seems to me to highlight one of the truths of pop music: The biggest hits scored by many artists are not their best songs. Dancing in the Dark was likely hugely successful because it has a danceable beat and lyrics that more or less don't get in the way of that (although they are kind of world-weary and mildly bitter). Unlike his better songs, Dancing in the Dark is mostly bland and inoffensive, providing what seems like a fun good time for the listener, a fact reflected in the happy and upbeat music video - although to be fair, Bruce's dancing in the video seems at times to be forced and awkward, as if he were trying to project a persona that doesn't quite fit him.
Now I'm going to go listen to The River and Downbound Train instead.
Previous Musical Monday:Two Tribes by Frankie Goes to Hollywood
#1 on the U.K. Chart: June 16, 1984 through August 11, 1984.
In the United States, Frankie Goes to Hollywood was basically a one hit wonder. In the U.K., they had multiple songs reach the top of the pop charts, including this one, which dominated the British pop charts for pretty much the entire summer of 1984. The thing is, while I can see why this song was not a big hit in the U.S., and why it might have resonated in other parts of the world, I am of the opinion that it is just not a very good song that happened to be attached to a fairly compelling music video.
The lyrics of the song are a pretty blunt assessment of the dangerous and potentially destructive rivalry that existed at the time between the United States and the U.S.S.R., taking some pretty sharp jabs at both sides, and Ronald Reagan in particular. Given the nature of American popular culture at the time, this probably served to limit the song's popularity in the U.S., an issue that obviously would not be a problem for U.K. audiences. The larger problem is that while the lyrics do have a handful of bitterly satirical turns, they descend into being annoyingly repetitive, matching the pounding but kind of boring music that backs them.
Where this song really shines is the music video that was made for it which depicts a no-holds barred grudge match between a Reagan caricature on one side and a Chernenko-like character on the other. The pair go back and forth taking shots at one another between grandstanding for the crowd of world leaders crowded around the ring. The members of Frankie Goes to Hollywood appear in the video as a sportscasting team broadcasting the match and offering color commentary. Although the video is just as blunt in its messaging as the lyrics of the song, somehow the satire works better visually than it does as lyrics.
The fact that the video elevates a kind of mundane song into an iconic cultural artifact is more or less the story of the 1980s. The rise of MTV, and as a result the rise of music videos, transformed the world of pop music, making the visual offering as important as (and sometimes more important than) the auditory portion of a pop song.
#1 on the Billboard Hot 100: June 9, 1984 through June 16, 1984.
#1 on the Cash Box Top 100: The week of June 9, 1984.
#1 on the U.K. Chart: Never.
Girls Just Wanna Have Fun was Lauper's first hit, and probably was her most comercially successful song, and was nominated for or won pretty much all of the awards, but the song I always associate with her is this one. The plaintive, melancholy mood of Time After Time is simply perfectly suited to Lauper's vocal delivery - when listening to the song it sounds like a confession taking place just before the singer breaks down in tears. The entire tenor of the song is both sad and hopeful at the same time.
Oddly, despite the fact that the lyrics of the song seem to suggest undying loyalty, the music video more or less shows a fractured relationship disintegrating into a final breakup. The overarching story is that Lauper's character is homesick and wants to return to her childhood home and care for her mother, but that's not incredibly well conveyed by the video (in fact, that portion completely escaped me until recently). But the sequences show Lauper's character and her seemingly contentious relationship with her boyfriend, played by Lauper's then real-life boyfriend and manager David Wolff. In the end, Lauper leaves Wolff behind, which is more or less what happened in real life, so the teras are not feigned.
#1 on the Billboard Hot 100: November 17, 1984 through December 1, 1984.
#1 on the Cash Box Top 100: November 24, 1984 through December 1, 1984.
#1 on the U.K. Chart: June 2, 1984 through June 9, 1984.
Peppy dance beat? Check.
Mostly meaningless lyrics? Check.
Goofy dance moves? Check.
Big, brightly colored clothes? Check. .
Ridiculously short shorts? Check.
Black light sequence? Check.
I am starting to think that between Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Duran Duran, Prince, and so on, 1984 may have been peak 1980s. Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go is pretty much a prime example of the music and music videos of the era. Peppy, poppy, with performers in shirts shouting slogans in big letters who are also wearing brightly colored fingerless gloves, and just generally over the top, the song and video are more or less symbolic of the era. As Deadpool says in the movie Deadpool, Wham! earned their exclamation point.
Jen at Crazy for Books restarted her weekly Book Blogger Hop to help book bloggers connect with one another, but then couldn't continue, so she handed the hosting responsibilities off to Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. The only requirements to participate in the Hop are to write and link a post answering the weekly question and then visit other blogs that are also participating to see if you like their blog and would like to follow them.
This week Billy asks: Does the cover of a book affect whether you are more willing to read it?
Not consciously, although I will reiterate something I have pointed out many times before: There is a wealth of research that establishes that humans are not aware of all of the factors that influence their decisions. People are biased in favor or or against certain things by factors that they do not recognize. Consequently, it is impossible to say for certain whether a book cover influences my desire to read a book, and I can only say that it doesn't usually consciously affect my decision-making.
I say this, because usually, by the time I get to a book, I have already determined I want to read it before seeing it. Generally, I choose books based upon who the author is, recommendations from sources I trust, and similar factors. By the time I actually get to a book, it has already gone through a process that led me to it in which the cover art was simply not a factor. That said, there is a reason that book publishers spend a fair amount of time, effort, and money on their art and design departments. If cover art didn't matter, they wouldn't bother.
All that said, when I have duplicate books that are in roughly equal condition, I almost always keep the one with the better cover and get rid of the other.
#1 on the Billboard Hot 100: May 26, 1984 through June 2, 1984.
#1 on the Cash Box Top 100: May 26, 1984 through June 2, 1984.
#1 on the U.K. Chart: Never.
There's not really a whole lot to say about Let's Hear It for the Boy. Like a lot of popular songs from the mid-1980s, it is basically an empty, almost meaningless song with a catchy hook and a danceable beat. The song appeared on the soundtrack for the movie Footloose, once again reinforcing the connection between filmed media and pop success, but other than that there is almost nothing memorable about it.
#1 on the Billboard Hot 100: June 23, 1984 through June 30, 1984.
#1 on the Cash Box Top 100: June 16, 1984 through June 23, 1984.
#1 on the U.K. Chart: May 5, 1984 through May 26. 1984.
The Reflex is one of those iconic 1980s era songs that is emblematic of the era, and also highlights one of the worst things about music from that time period. The song is catchy and danceable, like pretty much everything else that Duran Duran produced. It is also complete nonsense, like pretty much everything else Duran Duran produced. This is kind of a running theme with a lot of popular music on he U.S. music charts in the mid-1980s - it is often upbeat and fun, but it is empty and meaningless. Duran Duran generally, and The Reflex specifically, is more or less the poster child for this phenomenon.
Jen at Crazy for Books restarted her weekly Book Blogger Hop to help book bloggers connect with one another, but then couldn't continue, so she handed the hosting responsibilities off to Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. The only requirements to participate in the Hop are to write and link a post answering the weekly question and then visit other blogs that are also participating to see if you like their blog and would like to follow them.
This week Billy asks: What creative places do you keep books other than bookshelves?
Boxes. I have a lot of books stored in boxes, which I have stacked in several rooms in my dwelling. I also keep books in a storage area, on a shelf that is actually inaccessible at the moment. There are some books that I just keep in stacks on my desk, just waiting to be read.
#1 on the Billboard Hot 100: April 21, 1984 through May 5, 1984.
#1 on the Cash Box Top 100: April 21, 1984 through May 5, 1984.
#1 on the U.K. Chart: Never.
This is yet another song associated with a movie, in this case, the movie Against All Odds. Oddly, while most of the other movies that have appeared on this list have been considered fairly slight: Xanadu, Fame, and Flashdance are all regarded as pop culture fluff, and even the one with the most studio muscle behind it - Footloose - is kind of a goofy trashy movie, this movie was definitely intended to be taken seriously. It starred Jeff Bridges, a prominent actor who had already garnered two Academy Award nominations (and who would garner another one in the same year this movie was released for his performance in Starman). Appearing alongside Bridges was Rachel Ward, who was coming off of an award-winning performance in the critically acclaimed miniseries The Thorn Birds. Cast as the villain was James Woods, who had already had a notable career before he showed up in this movie. The movie was a remake, loosely based upon the 1947 film noir movie Out of the Past, considered one of the greatest examples of that genre. In a bit of stunt casting, the ingenue from Out of the Past was cast as Rachel Ward's mother.
Despite all of that, I suspect that far fewer people continue to watch this movie than watch Flashdance or Fame or any of the other movies that have thus far had musical hits on this list. Lots of people are familiar with Footloose, especially the final dance scene. Lots of people know routines from Flashdance, especially, once again, the final dance. A fair number of people are familiar with iconic scenes from Fame. But I figure very few people would be able to even give a rough synopsis of the plot to Against All Odds without looking it up first. That isn't to say that Against All Odds is a bad movie - it is well acted and has a fundamentally strong story. It just hasn't had the staying power in popular culture that the other "lesser" movies that had his songs associated with them have had.
Previous Musical Monday:Footloose by Kenny Loggins
Subsequent Musical Monday:The Reflex by Duran Duran
Previous #1 on the Billboard Hot 100:Footloose by Kenny Loggins
Subsequent #1 on the Billboard Hot 100:Hello by Lionel Richie
Previous #1 on the Cash Box Top 100:Footloose by Kenny Loggins
Subsequent #1 on the Cash Box Top 100:Hello by Lionel Richie
Jen at Crazy for Books restarted her weekly Book Blogger Hop to help book bloggers connect with one another, but then couldn't continue, so she handed the hosting responsibilities off to Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. The only requirements to participate in the Hop are to write and link a post answering the weekly question and then visit other blogs that are also participating to see if you like their blog and would like to follow them.
This week Billy asks: What books have you read/reviewed that you think are hidden gems, although they haven't found a big audience so far?
I have to say my top hidden gem would be Baba Ali and the Clockwork Djinn by Day al-Mohammed and Danielle Ackley-McPhail. It is a steampunk fantasy set in the Middle-East that is imbued with interesting characters, clockwork creatures, and magical flavor. I also have to raise the entire Unidentified Funny Objects series edited by Alex Shvartsman. The series is up to eight volumes now, and each one of them is full of short works of funny science fiction.
#1 on the Billboard Hot 100: March 31, 1984 through April 14, 1984.
#1 on the Cash Box Top 100: March 31, 1984 through April 14, 1984.
#1 on the U.K. Chart: Never.
Throughout this series, I've commented on how much interaction there is between large studio movies and the music charts, and Footloose is another example of this phenomenon. As the title track to the movie of the same name, Footloose followed in the footsteps of Flashdance and Fame, which were also early 1980s era movies about kids and dancing. A generous person might put Xanadu into that same category, but Xanadu seems to have been an artifact of an earlier roller-disco-oriented era.
The big difference between Footloose and its spiritual predecessors Flashdance and Fame is that it was following the success of the earlier movies (and songs), and the studio seems to have put a lot more resources into this movie. Whereas the first two movies featured mostly little known or even unknown actors, and their music was performed by mostly unknown singers, Footloose featured veteran actors John Lithgow and Dianne Wiest in significant roles. Kevin Bacon was an up-and-coming actor coming off an award-winning performance in Forty Deuce and critical acclaim in Diner. Lori Singer was coming off of a two year run as a cast regular in the television adaptation of Fame. In short, this cast was full of actors who had much more substantial resumes than those who populated Flashdance or Fame.
The song itself was also sung by someone with a bigger resume than the earlier movies. Kenny Loggins spent the first half of the 1970s as half of the hit making duo Loggins and Messina, charting top twenty Billboard hits like Your Momma Don't Dance and Thinking of You. Picking him to write and perform the theme song for the movie wasn't quite like selecting a first round draft pick to do the job, but he was still an industry veteran with an extensive resume. It is also notable that the movie soundtrack also included songs by Bonnie Tyler, Sammy Hagar, and a duet by Mike Reno of Loverboy and Anne Wilson of Heart. The movie producers weren't leaving anything to chance with this one.
In the end, this all worked out. Footloose grossed eighty million dollars at the box office against a production budget of eight million. Bacon went on to appear in dozens of movies. This song was nominated for an Academy Award, and Loggins continued to push out hits, including one other notable movie theme song later in the 1980s.
Jen at Crazy for Books restarted her weekly Book Blogger Hop to help book bloggers connect with one another, but then couldn't continue, so she handed the hosting responsibilities off to Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. The only requirements to participate in the Hop are to write and link a post answering the weekly question and then visit other blogs that are also participating to see if you like their blog and would like to follow them.
This week Billy asks: What percentage (roughly) of the books you read do you write blog post reviews for?
I usually end up reviewing most of the books I read, with a couple of notable exceptions. This might seem like an odd thing to say, given the dearth of reviews I have posted over the last year, but the reality is that I haven't read very many reviewable books over the last year. One might think, given that the global pandemic has kept most everyone home a lot more than they otherwise would be, that I would have lots of time for reading. The problem is that other commitments have grown to occupy most of my time. I somehow got talked into running two different RPG campaigns, and that time commitment, along with retaining my full-time job (which has been converted to full-time telework) and wrangling a three-year-old, has basically driven most reading time out of my schedule.
This has also driven what reading I do into areas that I don't normally review. I have read a lot of RPG books over the last year. I don't generally review those. I have read a lot of books aimed at two to three year old kids. I never review those. Reviewing those types of books is perfectly legitimate, but I just don't really have a lot of interest in doing that. Reviewing gaming books inevitably ends up just being mostly a review of the game they are associated with, and in general if I am playing a game, I enjoy it, which would make reviews of the associated sourcebooks kind of repetitive, and reviewing kids books would mostly end up being an assessment of whether the childhood memories of the books are justified or if the books have been visited by the suck fairy in the interim.
I do have a handful of books sitting waiting to be reviewed. I read them, and I just haven't written up reviews for them. I'll get to them soon. Of course, I've been saying that for several months for some of them. But I will. Really. I promise.
The direct answer the the question is simply this: I review most of the books I read. Except when I don't.
