The Way It Is (Unranked)

Artist: Bruce Hornsby & The Range
Album: The Way It Is
Video: From YouTube.

The first single ever released by Bruce Hornsby & The Range was a protest song against social injustice.  They could just as easily have been protesting their lack of inclusion in MTV's Top 100 countdown of 1986.  Plain and simple, they got screwed.

On December 13, 1986, "The Way It Is" reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.  The previous evening, the video ascended to #1 on the MTV Top 20 Video Countdown, in the midst of a ten week run on that chart.  It was one of only twenty songs to reach the top of the MTV countdown and spend at least ten weeks in the top 20.  But it did not crack the top 100 for the year.  Ex-squeeze me?  A baking powder?

The easiest explanation is the late December peak.  You can imagine that the list had to be just about ready for broadcast at that time, and maybe MTV was just too lazy to update it.  Or they forgot, or whatever.  It didn't prevent the Bangles "Walk Like An Egyptian" from snagging the #55 spot on the year-end countdown.  That song didn't hit #1 on the Billboard chart until December 20, 1986.

But in general, it's not uncommon for late December hits to get the shaft on the year-end countdown.  Madonna's "Like A Virgin" and Lionel Richie's "Say You, Say Me" spent the last two weeks of 1984 and 1985, respectively, at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and those songs checked in way down at #91 and #90 on the year-end list.  Respectively.  But not respectfully.

And it's a lowdown dirty shame, because "The Way It Is" deserved a better fate.  Hornsby delivers some terrific moments on the piano, and the video is pretty cool with some nice aerial shots of the band on a big open stage.  The close-ups on Hornsby's fingers during his piano solo are also quite nifty.  And the song has aged well, having been heavily sampled by other artists, most notably Tupac Shakur in "Changes".

As a postscript, MTV apparently realized its error in the 1986 countdown.  When they broadcast a "Top 100 Videos of All-Time" countdown in early 1987, guess what video came in at #80.  There is still a lot of social injustice in the world, but maybe it's not always true that "some things never change".  Or something like that.