Music ads for 1981 releases

Album Ad #75

The Secret Policeman's Other Ball (1982)

Top Singles of April 14, 1984

Let's take a look at what was topping the various single charts on April 14, 1984.

	Billboard	CashBox	Radio & Records
1	"Footloose" Kenny Loggins	"Footloose" Kenny Loggins	"Against All Odds" Phil Collins
2	"Against All Odds" Phil Collins	"Against All Odds" Phil Collins	"Footloose" Kenny Loggins
3	"Somebody's Watching Me" Rockwell	"Somebody's Watching Me" Rockwell	"Hello" Lionel Richie
4	"Hello" Lionel Richie	"Eat It" Weird Al Yankovic	"Hold Me Now" Thompson Twins
5	"Automatic" Pointer Sisters	"Here Comes the Rain Again" Eurythmics	"Miss Me Blind" Culture Club
6	"Miss Me Blind" Culture Club	"Jump" Van Halen	"Love Somebody" Rick Springfield
7	"Here Comes the Rain Again" Eurythmics	"Hold Me Now" Thompson Twins	"You Might Think" The Cars
8	"Hold Me Now" Thompson Twins	"Automatic" Pointer Sisters	"Adult Education" Daryl Hall & John Oates
9	"Adult Education" Daryl Hall & John Oates	"Miss Me Blind" Culture Club	"They Don't Know" Tracy Ullman
10	"Jump" Van Halen	"Hello" Lionel Richie	"Here Comes the Rain Again" Eurythmics

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Exclusive MFD meta-analysis of the above charts:

1. "Footloose" (29 points)
2. "Against All Odds" (28 pts)
3. (tie) "Somebody's Watching Me" (16 pts)
3. (tie) "Hello" (16 pts)
5. "Hold Me Now" (14 pts)
6. "Miss Me Blind" (13 pts)
7. "Here Comes the Rain Again" (11 pts)
8. "Automatic" (9 pts)
9. "Eat It" (7 pts)
10. "Jump" (6 pts)
11. (tie) "Adult Education" (5 pts)
11. (tie) "Love Somebody" (5 pts)
13. "You Might Think" (4 pts)
14. "They Don't Know" (2 pts)

Smash Hits Album Ratings - 1981 [part 1 of 2]

Smash Hits was a British teen music magazine that was issued fortnightly. On a scale of 1-10, here's how the magazine's reviewers rated albums released in the first half of 1981. Hope you find something new that you missed back in '81.

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January 8 issue
Rocky Sharpe & The Replays	Rock-It to Mars	6
Dollar	The Paris Collection	6
Jermaine Jackson	Jermaine	6
Showaddywaddy	Bright Lights	5
Black Slate	Amigo	5
Queen	Flash Gordon	2
The Clash	Sandinista!	5½
Linton Kwesi Johnson	LKJ in Dub	7

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January 22 issue
Boomtown Rats	Mondo Bondo	7½
Elvis Costello	Trust	9
The Runaways	Flaming Schoolgirls	2
Steve Winwood	Arc of a Diver	5
UFO	The Wild, the Willing, and the Innocent	5
Basement 5	1965-1980	6
Gen X	Kiss Me Deadly	2
Mtume	In Search of the Rainbow Seekers	8
Rose Royce	Golden Touch	6

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February 5 issue
Sheena Easton	Take My Time	7
Pearl Harbour	Don't Follow Me, I'm Lost Too	6
Phil Collins	Face Value	5
Heatwave	Candles	8
The Stranglers	The Meninblack	6
Mike Batt	Waves	3
Splodgenessabounds	Splodgenessabounds	3
Styx	Paradise Theatre	2
The dB's	Stands for Decibels	8

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February 19 issue
UK Subs	Diminished Responsibility	2
The Barracudas	Drop Out with The Barracudas	5½
Moon Martin	Street Fever	6
Jets	Jets	5
Nash the Slash	Children of the Night	4
Walkie Talkies	Surveillance	6
Joe Sample	Voices in the Rain	7
The Boys	Boys Only	6½
The Selecter	Celebrate the Bullet	5½
Nine Below Zero	Don't Point Your Finger	5

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March 5 issue
Sister Sledge	All American Girls	6
Stray Cats	Stray Cats	5
Rainbow	Difficult to Cure	7
Gang of Four	Solid Gold	7½
Eric Clapton	Another Ticket	3
Marvin Gaye	In Our Lifetime	7½
Todd Rundgren	Healing	6
Brian Briggs	Brian Damage	7
Defunkt	Defunkt	8½
Spandau Ballet	Journeys to Glory	7

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March 19 issue
New Musik	Anywhere	6½
Russ Ballard	Into the Fire	3
James Brown	Rapp Payback	6½
Detroit Spinners	Labour of Love	6
The Spizzles	Spikey Dream	6
Tata Vega	Giving All My Love	4
Shona Laing	Tied to the Tracks	3
The Vapors	Magnets	4
Wilko Johnson	Ice on the Motorway	4
Linx	Intuition	8

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April 2 issue
The Shakin' Pyramids	Skin 'Em Up	5
Rico	That Man is Forward	8
Change	Miracles	5
Landscape	From the Tea Rooms of Mars to the Hell Holes of Uranus	8
Chas'N'Dave	Mustn't Grumble	4
Slade	We'll Bring the House Down	6
The Who	Face Dances	4
British Electronic Foundation	Music for Stowaways	9
Diana Ross	To Love Again	6
Status Quo	Never Too Late	7

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April 16 issue
Dave Edmunds	Twangin	7½
Incognito	Jazz Funk	8
Public Image, Ltd.	Flowers of Romance	8
Stiff Little Fingers	Go for It	7
The Cure	Faith	7
Whitesnake	Come An' Get It	4½
The Jags	No Tie Like a Present	4
Cockney Rejects	Greatest Hits, Vol 3	11
Roger Taylor	Roger Taylor's Fun in Space	3
B.A. Robertson	Bully for You	6

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April 30 issue
Gillan	Future Shock	4
Girlschool	Hit and Run	5
Tenpole Tudor	The Swords of a Thousand Men	7
REO Speedwagon	Hi Infidelity	4
The Keys	The Keys Album	5
Quincy Jones	The Dude	7½
Sharon Redd	Sharon Redd	8
Snips	La Rocca	6
The Isley Brothers	Grand Slam	5
The Scars	Author! Author!	8

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May 14 issue
The Undertones	Positive Touch	9
Holly and The Italians	The Right to be Italian	4
The Plastics	Welcome Back	7½
Split Enz	Waiata	7
The Lambrettas	Ambience	7
The Tubes	The Completion Backward Principle	4
Ruts DC	Animal Now	8
Albania	Are You All Mine	7
Kraftwerk	Computer World	4
The Beat	Wha'ppen?	7
Squeeze	East Side Story	9
The Cramps	Psychedelic Jungle	8
The Searchers	Play for Today	5

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May 28 issue
Original Mirrors	Heart-twango and Raw-beat	7
Richard Strange	The Phenomenal Rise of Richard Strange	6½
Joe Walsh	There Goes the Neighborhood	5
Shakatak	Drivin' Hard	7
Grace Jones	Nightclubbing	8
Bill Nelson	Quit Dreaming and Get on the Beam	8
Classic Nouveaux	Night People	6
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers	Hard Promises	7
Wild Horses	Stand Your Ground	4
The Psychedelic Furs	Talk, Talk, Talk	8
Sparks	Whomp That Sucker	6
Positive Noise	Heart of Darkness	5
Toyah	Anthem	3

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June 11 issue
Elton John	The Fox	5
Echo and The Bunnymen	Heaven Up Here	9
Doll by Doll	Doll by Doll	8
Jean-Michel Jarre	Magnetic Fields	7
UB40	Present Arms	7½
Ken Lockie	The Impossible	6
Phil Seymour	Phil Seymour	4
Black Uhuru	Red	7½
Eddy Grant	Can't Get Enough	9

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June 25 issue
Killing Joke	What's This For	7½
Third World	Rock the World	5
TV Smith's Explorers	The Last Words of the Great Explorer	5
Duran Duran	Duran Duran	4
Magazine	Magic, Murder, and the Weather	7
Siouxsie and The Banshees	Juju	5
Thompson Twins	A Product of...	6
Peter Tosh	Wanted Dread & Alive	4
Yoko Ono	Season of Glass	3
Modern Eon	Fiction Tales	8
Barbara Dickson	You Know It's Me	4

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h/t to Brian McCloskey over at Like Punk Never Happened

CD Longbox #22

Phil Collins - No Jacket Required (1985)

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Exclusive photo courtesy of Dirk Digglinator of the Hambonian Archives.

For more information on the brief life of the CD longbox, go visit The Legend of the Longbox.

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1984 - The Golden Age of Soundtracks?

This post follows up a previous post that posed the same question for 1985.  In 1984, 20 singles reached the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100. Of those 20, seven came directly from movie soundtracks.  That's 35%, slightly higher than the 33% of 1985 (9 of 27).

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		"Footloose" Kenny Loggins #1 for three weeks, Mar 31 - Apr 14  from the movie Footloose
"Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now)" Phil Collins #1 for three weeks, Apr 21 - May 5 from the movie Against All Odds
		"Let's Hear It For The Boy" Deniece Williams #1 for two weeks, May 26 - June 2 from the movie Footloose
"When Doves Cry" Prince #1 for five weeks, July 7 - Aug 4 from the movie Purple Rain.
		"Ghostbusters" Ray Parker, Jr. #1 for three weeks, August 11-25 from the movie Ghostbusters
"Let's Go Crazy" Prince and the Revolution #1 for two weeks, Sept 29 - Oct 6 from the movie Purple Rain
		"I Just Called To Say I Love You" Stevie Wonder #1 for three weeks, Oct 13 - 27 from the movie The Woman in Red

As far as the number of weeks that a soundtrack single topped the Billboard chart, 1984, with twenty-one weeks, easily bests 1985's fourteen weeks. Looking at those numbers, 1984 wins in terms of quantity, but I'm going to give the subjective edge to 1985 in terms of quality. 

Of these 7, my favorites are "Footloose" and "Let's Go Crazy".  I've never seen Against All Odds or The Woman in Red, but I watch Footloose fairly regularly - "I thought this was a party. LET'S DAAAANCE!"

Other soundtrack hits from 1984 that didn't make the top spot include:

• "I Can Dream About You" by Dan Hartman from Streets of Fire  (peaked at #6)
• "Twist of Fate" by Olivia Newton-John from Two of a Kind (#5)
• "Almost Paradise" by Mike Reno & Ann Wilson from Footloose (#7)
• "Breakin'... There's No Stopping Us" by Ollie & Jerry from Breakin' (#9)
• "Dancing in the Sheets" by Shalamar from Footloose (#17)
• "On the Dark Side" by John Cafferty & The Beaver Brown Band from Eddie & The Cruisers (#7)

The winner of the Oscar for Best Original Song at the 57th Academy Awards was "I Just Called To Say I Love You."

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1985 - The Golden Age of Soundtracks?

In 1985, 27 singles reached the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100. Of those 27, one-third came directly from movie or TV soundtracks.  That's 9 soundtrack singles and there's not even any Kenny Loggins on this list!!

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		"Crazy for You" Madonna #1 for one week, May 11  from the movie Vision Quest
"Don't You (Forget About Me)" Simple Minds #1 for one week, May 18 from the movie The Breakfast Club
		"Heaven" Bryan Adams #1 for two weeks, June 22-29 from the movie A Night in Heaven
"A View to a Kill" Duran Duran #1 for two weeks, July 13-20 from the movie A View to a Kill.
		"The Power of Love" Huey Lewis & the News #1 for two weeks, August 24-31 from the movie Back to the Future
"St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion)" John Parr #1 for two weeks, September 7-14 from the movie St. Elmo's Fire
		"Miami Vice Theme" Jan Hammer #1 for one week, November 9 from the TV series Miami Vice
"Separate Lives" Phil Collins and Marilyn Martin #1 for one week, November 30 from the movie White Nights
		"Say You, Say Me" Lionel Richie #1 for four weeks, December 21, 1985 - January 11, 1986 from the movie White Nights

Interesting that the cover for the "Say You, Say Me" single states that it is the title song from White Nights.  Wha?  Wouldn't the title song be titled "White Nights"?  There I go nitpicking again.  Regardless of the song title, "Say You, Say Me" won the Oscar for Best Original Song at the 58th Academy Awards.

For the record, I don't like all of these, just the ones by Madonna, Simple Minds, Huey Lewis, and Jan Hammer.  I've never seen Vision Quest, A Night In Heaven, or White Nights.  Should I bother?

Other soundtrack hits from 1985 that didn't make the top spot include:

• "You Belong to the City" by Glenn Frey from Miami Vice  (peaked at #2)
• "The Heat is On" by Glenn Frey (#2), "Axel F" by Harold Faltermeyer (#3), and "Neutron Dance" by The Pointer Sisters (#6) from Beverly Hills Cop. 
• "When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going" by Billy Ocean from The Jewel of the Nile (#2)
• "We Don't Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)" by Tina Turner from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (#2)
• "Rhythm of the Night" by DeBarge from The Last Dragon (#3)
• "No More Lonely Nights" by Paul McCartney from Give My Regards to Broad Street (#6)
• "Spies Like Us" by Paul McCartney from Spies Like Us (#7)
• "The Goonies 'R' Good Enough" by Cyndi Lauper from The Goonies (#10)
• "Love Theme from St. Elmo's Fire" by David Foster from St. Elmo's Fire (#15)
• "To Live and Die in L.A." by Wang Chung from To Live and Die in L.A. (#41)
• "Into the Groove" by Madonna from Desperately Seeking Susan (surprisingly never released as a single)

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