130 - Rio - Duran Duran
Nick Rhodes dropped a load of metal bars onto the strings of a grand piano and recorded it. He then reversed the tape and stuck it on the start of this song which gave it that weird metallic 'sshhllooooop' sound before John Taylor gives the performance of his life on the bass. To my knowledge, this was the song that catapulted Duran into the stratosphere, more because of the video than anything else I think. It epitomised the movement at the time. Gone were the ruffles of the New Romantics and in came the suits - not sure if Duran were first but Spandau were also very suity around this time. Robert Palmer of course was the king of the suit; not sure if it was this that made him collaborate with Andy and John in the Power Station after Duran's mid-80s demise? Rio was an energetic cacophony of saxophones, guitar riffs, bass mayhem and odd synthesizer noises. Rio was also one of the greatest albums of all time and this was the perfect kickstart.
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| You sure this is the only seat left on the boat? |
129 - Straight up - Paula Abdul
Paula wanted you to tell her whether you wanted to love her forever or whether she'd been caught in a hit and run. It's a sad state when you can't distinguish events in your love life from a road traffic accident but that's another story. There were rumours at the time that Paula didn't sing her own stuff but have you heard her voice? Of course she did. She was a choreographer before releasing this song but the planets aligned and this landed her a singing career. Thankfully, she suited this song perfectly which had everything that was great about the charts in 1989. To think, her mother laughed until she cried when she heard the demo of this song, so bad was it; she then threw it in the bin. Paula retrieved it and convinced her record company to let her record it. The rest, as they say, is geography.
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| Paula is a shadow of her former self |
128 - The sun always shines on TV - A-ha
After 'that' video, A-ha had to come up with a way to follow it and not pale into the one hit wonder wilderness. Take on me was such an amazing single, it was either, 'here's a group who can bang out hit after hit, Abba-style', or 'here's a band who happened on a great single and then ran out of ideas'. 'The sun always shines' cemented the image of the band and guaranteed a second album. Morten out front, smouldering with his sonically pleasing chirps, Magne twiddling his synths and Pal driving the rhythm with guitar, all blended to take you on a pop journey which feels a lot like being on one of those rubber rings, being propelled down a water slide being smashed in the face by bags of grated cheese as you go. By the time Morten sings the final 'to meeeeeeee' and you hear that last bass note on the piano, you're so exhausted, you need to go for a sit down and some therapy.
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| Ahh, Mr. Bond. I have been waiting for you. |
127 - Baby Jane - Rod Stewart
I might be wrong but this wasn't a Rod style song at all. Not since 'Do ya think I'm sexy' (for the record, no - no I don't), had Rod had such a big hit - it went all the way to number 1 in fact. I'm not a big fan of the Tina Turner look-a-like, although I did like Maggie May, so it was a surprise to me that I liked this song so much. I think it has a lot to do with the synthesizer at the beginning and the flange on the vocals in the chorus. I just loved the technology in music at the time and it was another mid-80s song to have a saxophone solo. I'm guessing there wasn't a single Sax player in the 80s who was out of work.
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| I said where have you hidden my hairspray? Ey? Where? |
126 - Push it - Salt 'n Pepa
This was actually a b-side to the group's 1987 song Tramp - released in its own right in 1988. The bass line at the start is the hook, two different synth bass sounds from different keyboards played together for the depth and a third and fourth lead saw from different keyboards over the top managing to mask the largely average rapping made the song a catchy little number. There was a nod to the Kinks in there too with 'you really got me going so I don't know what I'm doing', which was nice. Timbaland sampled this song for one of my other favourite songs of all time 'The way I are' which came out in 2007-ish.
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| Salt 'n Pepa about to enter the intra-rap-group gymnastics contest 1988 |
125 - Train of Thought - A-ha
Another entry from A-ha's first album here (the 4th to be released from that album in fact). They went back to the pencil sketch video for this even though the concept was now a bit done as Take on Me had been played to death everywhere. The lyrics were based on guitarist Pal's favourite existentialist poets - the song being all about going to work and coming home again, seeing strangers everywhere and seeing nothing but the black and white emptiness of carrying out methodical tasks for eight hours a day to make someone else's dreams come true. Quite bleak but the driving bass and 'train like' rhythm managed to lift the mood to the level of a pop song that was rather enjoyable.
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| Morton wasn't well in this video. Here he is looking rather drawn. |
124 - Seven Seas - Echo and the Bunnymen
Ian McCulloch singing like no other here. It's a mystery how this masterpiece only reached number 16. The lyrics are masterful, the guitars delightfully clangy and the chime bars are very christmassy and so out of place they come back round the circle and just nudge back into place. Kissing tortoises (pronounced incorrectly of course) and burning witches, it all you could ever want in a 3 minute pop song and more. Wonderful.
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| We are smiling. This is us in a brilliant mood. |
I loved Madness. I loved their attitude and their bravery, or was that just a lack of will to conform? Their songs stood out from the crowd so much, you didn't even have to ask 'Is this Madness?'. However, they began to mature as they neared their first break up. Their songs took on more serious matters in a more moribund tone but I loved that. There's a B-side called 'Maybe in another life' and it's glorious but so full of regret and sadness, it saps your soul right out of your body. One better day is based on that phrase, 'he's seen better days' and when I hear it I always picture an elderly woman sitting on a bench at the bus stop outside Kwik Save with a few bags of shopping. It's quite sad really but the chorus is very Abba with the same motif as Dancing Queen and Suggs actually sounds like a serious pop singer for once. Not in-keeping with their previous work at all, which is probably why it didn't make a large dent in the chart. I got the feeling they weren't on the best of terms with their record company at the time either as they were forced to release 'The Sweetest Girl', a cover of a Scritti Politti song which included the line 'the maddest group in all the world, how could they do this to to me?' - that sounded like a veiled dig to me.
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| Some of Madness looking a bit stressed by a canal, as usual |
122 - I don't wanna talk about it - Everything but the girl
There was a moment in the summer of 1988 when I was so in love with music, I would just listen to the radio from the moment I came home from school until about 2 in the morning when I fell asleep (with the radio still on). There were so many brilliant songs in the charts that I couldn't believe it could get any better. I remember four songs in particular which were all in the top 20 at the time, three of which will be in the top 20 of this list (when we eventually get there) and this one makes up the quartet. I don't wanna talk about it was a cover of a song written back in 1971 and I'd never heard the Rod Stewart cover version before Everything but the girl brought their version out. I wasn't used to an acoustic guitar driven song at that time; I'm struggling to think of one that doesn't use chords in fact in an 80s song. I'd started writing songs in 1989 having just acquired a keyboard with an 8 track memory and I longed to have someone like Tracey Thorn to sing my tunes. I still do in fact.
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| 99... 100... coming ready or not |
121 -Word up - Cameo
Some people have no sense of sentiment or sanctity. Especially Scottish band 'Gun', Mel B or Little Mix!? A song like this needs to be in a museum, protected by armed guards and the only person allowed to touch it is Larry Blackmon, but only if he's wearing those special gloves that snooker referees wear. Nobody should be allowed to go near this song. That synth snare, that bass line, those weird backing vocals and yelps at the end, Larry's voice, the saw solo in the middle, the spaghetti western whistle - everything. Admittedly, most Cameo songs which followed this number 3 hit sounded more or less the same without reaching the majesty of this absolute classic.
That's it for this installment but if you fancy a 'laugh' then you could always buy my book 'The Worst Pop Lyrics in the World Ever' off of Amazon here : https://www.amazon.co.uk/Worst-Pop-Lyrics-World-Ever/dp/1530279186/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1545671900&sr=1-12
