Mr. Plow's Top 100 Songs of the 80's

Here's an attempt to foster discussion about something most of us care a lot about: '80's music. Most of us spent either our middle or high school years (& college too) listening to the radio, and these songs make up the soundtrack to what some consider the best years of our lives.

This isn't a true 'Best Songs of the 80's' list. I had to limit my scope by including only those songs that hit the top 40. I also constructed this list by making smaller top 10 lists by year & then compiling them together. So this is more of a list of the 10 best singles from each year put together. As such, henious years (like 85 and 89) are overrepresented while more triumphant years (like 80, 83, and 87) are shorted.

I'm going to roll this out ten at a time so as not to overwhelm discussion. Here's #100-91:

[?=#100]"Nobody's Fool" - Cinderella 1987
Along with "Welcome To The Jungle", this has to be one of the heaviest metal songs to hit the top 20. Dark & menacing, this song fit Tom Keifer's unique voice perfectly. After Night Songs, Cinderella turned to a more blues-based, early-Stones style.
[yt=Nobody's Fool]MCOrtJMQmVs[/YT][/?]

[?=#99]"Don't Worry, Be Happy" - Bobby McFerrin 1988
Talk about switching gears. The song that, for a month or so, had everyone asking "Who the fuck is Bobby McFerrin?" And then later asking "Remember that funny song with Robin Williams in the video? Who did that?" One of 2 #1 hits from the Cocktail soundtrack (the other being "Kokomo"), this song won Grammys for Song and Record of the Year for 1988.
[yt=Don't Worry Be Happy]d-diB65scQU[/yt][/?]

[?=#98]"Sara" - Starship 1986
God, I hate Starship. I mean really hate them. They took a great band (Jefferson Airplane), turned it into an ok band (Jefferson Starship), then ran that right into the ground & pissed on the wreckage. After Kantner left in 84, they should've been put out of our misery because nobody wants to see Marty Balin's replacement and the dessicated corpse of Grace Slick on stage every night. But do you know why I really hate Starship? Because in between making two of the worst song of the [-]80's[/-]All-Time (We Built This City & Nothing Gonna Stop Us Now), they made this, which is a pretty good song. Maybe I just have fond memories of the video (with Rebecca De Mornay - when she was still hot). Catchy as hell, though.
[yt=Sara]uQLcIG11lxc[/YT][/?]

[?=#97]"Sea Of Love" - The Honeydrippers 1985
The first of 6 covers to appear on this list, this one arose from Robert Plant's desire to do more R&B. He enlisted the help of guitarists Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck & Nile Rogers (Not that you can tell from this track), and an ep was born. IMHO, the definitive version of this song (although Tom Waits' versoin from his Orphans set is close). The video is below - avert your eyes to avoid the glare of mullets & banana-hammocks run amok.
[yt=Sea Of Love]_9-026ZCKR8[/YT][/?]

[?=#96]"Cult Of Personality" - Living Colour 1989
". . . And during the few moments that we have left, . . . We want to talk right down to earth in a language that everybody here can easily understand." Man, this fuckin' rocks. Real black metal; not death metal but hard rock by black musicians. And they didn't pussy around doing some Winger-shit either. Saw these guys opening for the Stones on the Steel Wheels tour later in '89 & they tore it up. Girl I took to the show didn't even like them, but on the way out said "Man, those black guys can rock!" First of 2 LC songs on the list.
[yt=Cult Of Personality]7xxgRUyzgs0[/yt][/?]

[?=#95]"Sowing The Seeds Of Love" - Tears For Fears 1989
"Beatlesque" is a word that comes to mind when listening to Tears For Fears' (or Tears For Queers as my homophobic inlaw calls them) 1989 hit. A step away from the pop direction of 85's Big Chair hits, The Seeds Of Love album wasn't as successful as expected. This song peaked at #2 and was their last Top 10 hit.
[yt=Sowing The Seeds Of Love]dbvxALFWvHs[/yt][/?]

[?=#94]"Total Eclipse Of the Heart" - Bonnie Tyler 1983
Ever wonder what Jim Steinman did between Bat Out Of Hell albums? Well, he made a solo record (Bad For Good), songs from which would go on to be on Bats II and III, and he produced an album with Bonnie Tyler (Faster Than the Speed Of Night) for which he also wrote 2 songs, the title track and this #1 hit from 1983. This song is filled with everything awesome about Jim Steinman, opening piano to voice, building into a wall of guitars & sound, repetitive lyrics that go on forever with over-the-top bombastic imagery. All of which suited Bonnie Tyler so much that she worked with him again for the Footloose Soundtrack.
Song Won't Embed
[yt=Some Funny Shit Here]ovEDhFfgdOo[/yt][/?]

[?=#93]"Train In Vain (Stand By Me)" - The Clash 1980
Most people think that this was meant to be a hidden track on The Clash's landmark 1979 album London Calling, but really they just decided at thte last minute to include it (the album sleeves ahd already been printed. Good thing they did; this was The Clash's first Top 40 hit in the US. Rolling Stone lists this as the 292nd greatest song of all time, but don't hold that aginast it.
[yt=Train In vain]ALeWMi4Sjzk[/yt][/?]

[?=#92]"Super Freak" - Rick James 1981
Funk all-but died in the 80's. Most of it turned into that electronic Midnigh-Star-sounding shit or watered-down Kool & the Gang pop. One man kept the Funk flag flying high (and I mean High; "Super Freak includes a drug reference - "Room 714") in the 80's - Rick Fucking James. Although not his biggest hit (that woudl be "You & I"), it remains his signature song, covered & sampled numerous times. If you hear the song playing, and someone near you wants to rap "Can't Touch This" after the familiar bass line, bunch them in the face.
[yt=Super Freak]QYHxGBH6o4M[/yt][/?]

[?=#91]"Borderline" - Madonna 1984
Madonna's first (of 17 straight) Top 10 hit starts out with an irresistable keyboard hook and some fairly emotive singing (first time I heard this song, I thought the singer was black). Still one of my favorite Madonna songs. Actually one of the very few that I can even tolerate. And she's pretty hot in the below video, before she got all skanky.
[yt=Borderline]PrHXvQRTa5M[/yt][/?]

That's it for now. More to come. Discuss amongst yourselves...

Ok, I'm with you so far.

Looking forward to this. I'm not a huge fan of everything on there but I love a lot of it and don't absolutely hate anything.

Tears for Fears and The Clash I can see. I'm not a huge fan of Buttrock(ala Cinderella), how about a substitution, say, Megadeth?

Train in Vain? Not even close to the best song on London Calling.
Who decides on what will be released as a single? Sure isn't me.

Superfreak? Don't think so.....Mary Jane blows it away. Get a clue, people.

Don't make me come down and DJ a radio station - things could get scary!

These are Top 40 singles, not album cuts.

I know...but who decides which songs (of the dozen or so songs on an album) get released as a "single?" It seems that the song they choose as a "hit single" is never the best one on the album. I honestly can't think of too many examples that contradict this.

I'm listening.

I object to the methodology described here. Albeit the source i use only has the top 100 in a year so i suppose it's theoretically possible that I might like #105 in one year better than #60 in a different year and i wouldn't catch that.

Still, if I were doing this I'd pick all the songs i liked in the top 100 of any year and then edit down as necessary.

We'll do these one-at-a-time, as groups of ten slow my work down a bit.

[?=#90]"I Ran" - A Flock Of Seagulls 1982
Music in late 81 was stuck in a rut, a corporate-rock/pussrock/country-lite-pop rut. Disco had died a flaming death a few years earlier. Punk tried to fill the void but wasn't accessible enough for the masses. A few acts tried to take punk's energy & sugar-coat it enough to get on the radio, but they either couldn't sustain any success (The Knack) or were too experimental to gain a foothold on radio (Talking Heads) or morphed so much that the punk roots were unrecognizable anymore and imploded (Blondie). Eventually, a few bands were able to mix that energy with pop sensibilities and started a radio movement that made the current corporate-rock and wuss-rock and country-lite-pop music seem stale and lame.
"I Ran", by A Flock Of Seagulls, was not one of those songs (They'll be a couple of them later in the list). It is, a pretty good example of everything that was good (and bad) about New Wave music in 82-83. It had irresitible guitar hooks, cool synths, and a simple beat that even dorky white kids could dance to. It also featured androgenous guys in puffy shirts and ridiculous hair-dos (hence "Flock of Seagulls" hair). Forget the shirts and hair and lame video where you can see the camera rig in the tin foil background, and let the music take you back to a time when music seemed fresh, before the 'industry' fucked it all up again.
[yt=I Ran]BJ7NVjZ-Eyg[/yt]
Sorry, YouTube fuckers won't let me embed the actual video [/?]

Oh I DO! I'm just aware of how much time I'd waste if i started lol. Kudos to you for the effort.

[?=#89]"Our House" - Madness 1983
By Summer 1983, New Wave was running a full head of steam, blissfully unaware that a bully named "Kenny Rogers/Dolly Parton" was readying a nut-punch that it would never recover from. Before we were hit with that late-November double-dose of dull, radio programmers were unafraid of new (to us, the US) and different music, from metal to blues to synth-pop to ska. The latter of these is where we meet our #89 song, "Our House" by British ska-pop band Madness. Madness had been around (At least in Europe) since the late 70's, and had gradually softened their sound (as most niche-bands will do to gain a wider audience). The result was The Rise And The Fall, which many feel is their best work, and which contains their only US hit, "Our House." Shortly after, they broke up due to 'creative differences', as most niche bands who gradually soften their sounds to get wider audiences will do.
Not ground breaking or earth shattering, but infectious with a bass line that you can't get out of your head, this song still gets play today, both on the radio and as used in numerous commercials.

[yt=Our House]4p4RWBCEFRo[/yt][/?]

[?=#88]"Jungle Love" - The Time 1985
[yt=You don't know "Jungle Love?" That shit is the mad notes. Written by God herself and sent down to the greatest band in the world: The mother-fucking Time.]TaoJZ0wADIQ[/yt]
"Jungle Love" is, IMHO, the best funk song of the 80's (Super Freak is a close 2nd). From what I understand, The Time (Prince proteges) were tired of his weird rules & shit (no drinking/partying on the road), so their temporary break-up after the success of Ice Cream Castles and the Purple Rain film to do solo projects wasn't a big surprise. It was a real shame, though, 'cause music (and Funk music in general) really suffered in the late '80's).

[yt=Jungle Love]FflxnqzxDnw[/yt][/?]

What source are you using for the charts?

This is the one I have bookmarked

http://longboredsurfer.com/charts/1989.php

Billboard Magazine. I have a spreadsheet that lists every song to hit the Hot 100 (or variation) through 2004. Not that I care about anything that's hit the charts since say, 2000...

[?=#87]"Pour Some Sugar On Me" - Def Leppard 1988
Some songs plumb the depths of one's soul. Some songs rage against injustice. Some songs cause the listener to examine their lives in relation to others. This song talks about fucking. That's it. No greater wisdom to impart, just fucking. But you gotta love the great craft that went into making a song with no better message than 'Let's fuck.' Crunchy guitar riffs and lyrics that require miltiple listens to even begin to understand combine to implant this song into your brain. Click on the youtube link & try to get it out of your head; you can't. And that's the genius of this song.
Not the Lep's best song (that's coming later), but they acknowledge that it was the most important and has become their signature song. The Hysteria album was floundering on the shelves until they released this track. Afterwards, it went on to hit #1 and sell an additional 9 million copies.

[yt=Pour Some Sugar On Me (UK Version)]iVxiHC9AJQw[/yt][/?]

[?=#86]"I Guess That's Why They call It The Blues" - Elton John 1984
The early 80's were not kind to Sir Elton. In the first 4 years of th 80's, he had just 1 top 10 hit (1980's "Little Jeannie"). In an attempt to get back to the top of the charts, he got the old band (his old touring band, that is) back together and made up with Bernie to create his 1983 comeback album Too Low For Zero, which contains our #86 song as well as the awesome rocker "I'm Still Standing." IGTWTCITB hit #4 in early 1984, aided by a sweet, blusey piano intro and some killer harmonica work by Stevie Wonder and has become his most enduring song of the decade. And the comeback attempt worked as well, as he hit the top 10 another 5 times in the 80's.
[yt=I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues]h6KYAVn8ons[/yt][/?]

This was the required follow-up ballad to the hit "Shake Me" complete with corny lyrics and hair-sprayed angst. To be fair it's a successful formula that's worked for decades for many a genre.

The Cocktail soundtrack is full of lighthearted fun, worthy background music for any road trip.

Starship was indeed awful, "Sara" is a prime example.








I'll add more later.

I don't think I could come up with 100 80's songs I even liked.

Not even if I counted entire albums.

[?=#85]"You Shook Me All Night Long" - AC/DC 1980
If you are a guy, and your balls have dropped, you probably like AC/DC. I don't mean that you love them, have all their shit, and follow them around on tour like the Grateful Dead, but you like what you've heard from them. There's also a good chance that if you're one of said guys born between 1960 and say 1975, you probably have, or at one time owned a copy of Back In Black. It is a guy's album. Some women dig AC/DC, and they're cool as hell, but for the most part, AC/DC is a guy's band. And that's because AC/DC is straight-up, no frills, asskicking hard rock; big guitars, driving beats, and lyrics that don't beat around the bush (they make Aerosmith lyrics look suble & clever).

So guys, crank it up and rock out. And ladies, just sit back and silently make fun of our caveman music. But watch out, your heads may also be nodding and your fists pumping before it's finished playing.
[yt=You Shook Me All Night Long]Bomv-6CJSfM[/yt][/?]

"You Shook Me..." is the anti-Emo anthem!

this thread has me, no surprise, wasting time looking at charts and reminiscing and playing videos and, on occasions, checking some curiosity on Wikipedia.

the frustrating thing in trying to make a list is knowing of some song that was a chart single but didn't make the top 100 for the year - and that there's no easy to use resource for the individual weekly top 40 lists.

(Damn If I'm going through that over-busy circus on the billboard site - i want nice clean charts)

what years would you like?

I was going through the 80's lists (the yearly top 100) to kind of compare my results with yours or any others that might turn up here.

So any year in the 80's I'd like to know all the songs which appeared in the top 40 anytime during the year.

But that's a TON of info (520 top 40 lists - over 20,000 listings)

See attached

[?=#84]"Easy Lover" - Phil Collins & Philip Bailey 1985
It's easy to pile on Phil Collins. Genesis purists compare him (unfairly) to Peter Gabriel and then get pissed that the band didn't really take off commercially until Collins took over. South Park fans are pissed he won the Best Original Song Oscar for that Tarzan song over "Blame Canada." Women probably don't like him for divorcing his wife via fax in the 90's. What you can't deny is that Collins had the Midas touch in the 1980's - 17 Top 10 hits, both solo, as a duet, and with Genesis, in the decade.
This song, from Bailey's Chinese Wall (also produced by Collins), spent 2 weeks at #2 in early 1985, kept from the top spot by Foreigner's treacly "I Wanna Know What Love Is." It isn't about heady subjects like homelessness or watching a stranger kill somebody, it's just a lot of fun.

[yt=Easy Lover]fdWK7O49oQI&[/yt][/?]

[?=#83]"I Didn't Mean To Turn You On" - Robert Palmer 1986
Robert Palmer was classy as hell. He was also a master of covering other peoples songs, (If you haven't heard his versions of the following songs, look them up) including: Early In The Morning, You Are In My System, Doctor Doctor (Bad Case Of Loving You), Mercy Mercy Me/I Want You, Tell Me I'm Not Dreaming, Get It On (with The Power Station), and I'll Be Your Baby Tonight (with UB40), as well as our #83 song.
Originally a hit for Cherelle (#79 in 1984), Palmer took this cover to #2 in 1986. The video brought back the 'Palmer girls' from the Addicted To Love video.

[yt=I Didn't Mean To Turn You On]2YO0WyOGHjU[/yt][/?]


[?=#82]"Love Song" - The Cure 1989
What would it take for the Godfathers of Goth, The Cure, to have a top 10 hit in the US? Apparently, love. The band had flirted with chart success with their previous double-album Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, charting singles "Hot Hot Hot", "Why Can't I Be You", and the Top 40 hit "Just Like Heaven" in early 1988. In between recording their follow-up album Disintegration and battling "Mecha-Streisand", Cure leader Robert Smith wrote this as a wedding present for his then-fiance Mary.
Uncharacteristically sweet, and a the same time a little creepy, this song peaked at #2 in the fall of 1989.

[yt=Lovesong]OpAYt-LzNWA[/yt][/?]

[?=#81]"Kiss" - Prince and the Revolution 1986
Prince is a world-class douche (just look at the youtube video below - we couldn't play the actual video because he sued youtube to get his stuff removed). "Kiss" was originally just a demo (1 verse & chorus) that Prince gave to the band Mazarati. They took the demo, stripped it down & basically created what we know of today as "Kiss." Prince liked it so much that he took it back from them, added a guitar solo & released it as his own. At least he credited Mazarati with background vocals, only because he was too lazy to rerecord them.
That said, "Kiss" is easily one of my top 5 favorite Prince songs ever.

[yt=Kiss - Fair Use]d0e7cNqeHrI[/yt][/?]

Robert Palmer - totally cool

What has nine arms, and sucks?