#88 - Everybody Have Fun Tonight

Artist: Wang Chung
Album: Mosaic

Video: From YouTube.

 

Billboard Hot 100 Peak: 2

MTV Top 20 Peak: 2

MTV Top 20 Weeks: 9

 

Everybody Wang Chung Tonight!  Turning the band name into a verb and slamming it into the chorus was a genius move.  Through this association of ideas, Wang Chung became synonymous with having fun.  Just ask Dr. Frasier Crane!

I have to admit that this was not one of my favorites.  In fact, I found it profoundly annoying.  Nevertheless, this song became a legitimate pop culture phenomenon for about 15 minutes.  People still reference the song ironically today.

This was the peak of Wang Chung’s popularity.  After this song peaked at #2, the Mosaic album spawned two more top 40 singles.  Following that, the band was basically done.

As far as the countdown ranking, “Everybody Have Fun Tonight” got hosed in a manner similar to other end of year entries.  For comparison purposes, the video had an identical top 20 countdown lifespan to the Kenny Loggins hit “Danger Zone”.  Both peaked at #2 and spent nine weeks on the chart.  However, while Wang Chung languishes here at #88, the Loggins video ranks about 80 spots higher.  I guess that’s what being the anthem for a summer blockbuster and all-time classic film will do.

The video was notable in many ways.  Here are five:

1) It’s the only video I know of that was banned for fear that it would cause epileptic seizures.  Watching the extreme rapid motion is certainly not conducive to good health.
2) The entire video takes place in what seems to be a deep wooden box, shot from basically the same diagonal position.  The video is bookended with the box empty, a stark contrast from the mad vibrations of excited Wang-Chungers.
3) Throughout this madness, the wooden facial expression of lead singer Jack Hues never changes.  If he is not having fun tonight, then how can everybody?
4) The video was directed by Godley & Crème.  That’s right, these guys!
5) It can’t be overstated – epileptic seizures!!!  One should not have to worry about such a thing while watching a music video.


 

Rumors (Unranked)

Artist: Timex Social Club
Album: Vicious Rumors

Video: From YouTube.

 

Billboard Hot 100 Peak: 8

MTV Top 20 Peak: did not chart

MTV Top 20 Weeks: 0

Let's take a little detour from the list and pay tribute to a jam that took the radio by storm in 1986.  I was not aware that this song even had a video.  I believe the Timex Social Club was a bit too, er, ethnic for MTV.

But any comprehensive discussion of music in 1986 must include "Rumors".  Its popularity is rooted in its universal appeal, as every living soul has been impacted by the phenomenon of rumors.  While listening to this tale over the backdrop of the infectious grooves of the Timex Social Club, each of us may harken back to our own specific memories of wild speculations, half-truths, or even outright lies.  The rumors that you imagine may be quite different from those that occur to me.  But the result in both cases is the same.  All these rumors have permanently altered our sense of reality.

The song is kind of a rap-pop hybrid, combining a toe-tapping beat with striking imagery.  We discover the personality traits of the jealous people who start rumors, along with vivid pictures of the tales they tell.  Although the lyrics are humorous, there is a fundamental darkness to the story.  The singer is clearly distressed about his exposure to such falsehoods, and displays a hopelessness that the condition will ever end.  Still, he maintains enough of a positive outlook to propose creative solutions to the problem, including passing legislation that would cause those who spread rumors to be murdered.

It's an impressive effort that led to Timex Social Club's first brush with national notoriety.  The success of "Rumors" led to their selection as the opening act for Run-DMC's "Raising Hell" tour.  A different incarnation of the group would go on to much greater fame as Club Nouveau, scoring a #1 smash hit covering the Bill Withers classic "Lean On Me".

I know for a fact that I never saw the video linked above, until finding it for this post.  I just so happened to find five awesome things about it.

1) The first three seconds.  Check out the woman's hand that picks up the phone to start spreading those nasty rumors.  Impossibly long, snake-like fingers topped off by blood-red fingernails, coated in a mesh half-glove.  It sets the tone for the weird, stylized animation to come.
2) Disembodied mouths yapping with huge red lips, seguing into broken hearts and multi-colored snakes. 
3) A conga line of females dressed in alternating red/blue tops and bottoms, each spreading a rumor to the next.
4) A flashing neon sign announcing the chorus.  Always a helpful feature, it avoids confusion.
5) The imaginary congressman, clearly disapproving of the spreading of rumors, brandishing a firearm to punish the guilty.  He looks like the late Ossie Davis.

#89 - Stuck With You

Artist: Huey Lewis & The News
Album: Fore!

Video: From DailyMotion.

 

Billboard Hot 100 Peak: 1

MTV Top 20 Peak: 1

MTV Top 20 Weeks: 8

 

Huey Lewis & The News simply dominated the pop charts in the mid-80's, and 1986 was truly the peak.  "Stuck With You" was the first single from the wildly successful Fore! album, which spawned five top ten singles.  The album title had multiple meanings; in addition to continuing their "Sports" theme (the title of their previous album) with a golf term, it was their fourth album.  4.  Four.  Fore!  Outstanding.

Before "Stuck With You" was released in the summer of 1986, it had been a little over a year since the band's last new single, "The Power Of Love".  So fans were hungry for a new offering, and this song did not disappoint.  A catchy ditty featuring classic harmonies, and lyrically exploring the universal theme of enduring long-term relationships.

Now...about this ranking.  It's truly a crime to see this video way down at #89.  Never mind, that it reached #1 on the weekly countdown, one of only 32 songs to do so in 1986.  The video also had longevity on the weekly chart, staying there for eight weeks.  To put that in perspective, five other videos reached #1 on the top 20 countdown in 1986 and stayed there for eight weeks.  All five made the top 40 in the year-end countdown, and one ranked #11.  "Stuck With You" should be at least 60, maybe 70 spots higher.  It's easily the most egregious error in the 1986 top 100.

And MTV knew they blew it.  In 1987, they had a "Top 100 videos of All-Time" show, ranking all videos dating back to MTV's birth in 1981.  "Stuck With You" ranked #15.  You tell me how it makes sense that a video can be the 15th greatest of all time, and be only the 89th best video in a given year.  The answer is that it makes no sense.  Zero sense.  Ah, but such is the twisted logic of MTV rankings.

The video was filmed in the Bahamas and was filled with entertaining moments.  Per tradition, here we recognize five of them:

1) A befuddled Huey Lewis navigates a formal party where he is confronted by a mélange of odd characters.  Notably, a laughing butler with a fuzzy bowtie who greets him in several different languages, concluding by drawling “you look marvelous”; the bearded Reginald Bixby, who opines about the difficulty of following up the “Sports” album with another success; and the gold-medallion wearing Freddy Baumstein of Atlanta, who claims to have been his former golf partner, and exclaims “Fore!” thus foreshadowing (“fore”-shadowing?) the new album’s title.
2) Huey’s courtship of the female lead, who later married Pierce Bronson in real life.  She is a beautiful woman dressed in an elaborate all-white gown.  He invites her for a ride on “my yacht”, which turns out to me a canoe with the moniker “Myott”.  They row for awhile but eventually the canoe capsizes, and after a narrow escape from a shark they are washed up on an island and covered in seaweed.  It is clear that he is “happy to be stuck with her”.
3) “The News” and their antics attempting to rescue the happy couple, including scuba diving in full tuxedos (while smoking a cigarette no less!)  They also get some golf in, while Huey has a mishap on a coconut tree.
4) The band finally arrives at “Murray's Last Conch Luau”, a colorful party with elaborate costumes, beautiful girls in bikinis, and even a limbo contest.  Too many crazy characters to mention at this event.
5) The happy couple is finally rescued and arrives at the luau.  The madness ends with the band playing their instruments underwater, and Huey sitting back and relaxing in Myott as his sweetheart does all the rowing.

#90 - Jumpin' Jack Flash

Artist: Aretha Franklin

Album: Jumpin' Jack Flash Soundtrack

Video: From DailyMotion.

 

Billboard Hot 100 Peak: 21

MTV Top 20 Peak: 19

MTV Top 20 Weeks: 2

"Jumpin' Jack Flash" was a huge hit for the Rolling Stones in 1968, and it became one of their signature tunes.  Aretha Franklin is the queen of soul music and one of the greatest female vocalists of all-time.  But somehow the two in combination were not that great.  Even with Keith Richards and Ron Wood playing guitar, the feeling elicited from this production is little more than a shoulder shrug.

Aretha had a boatload of #1 R&B singles in the late 60's and early 70's.  While her commercial success declined a bit in the following years, she had a comeback album in 1985 which although I didn't enjoy, did produce three top 20 singles.  Because I came of age listening to efforts like this, it took me that much longer to come around to her genius.  Late 60's Aretha is the best ("Respect", "Chain of Fools", etc.)

This remake was released in tandem with a Whoopi Goldberg film of the same name.  A spy film or some such nonsense.  It was Penny Marshall's directorial debut.  I've never seen it and I don't think you could pay me to watch the trailer.  I just don't care.

I'm going to start categorizing videos in terms of the fairness of their ranking in MTV's Top 100.  For example, this video was ranked #90.  Did it deserve to be?  It entered the weekly top 20 countdown in late October at the #20 spot, rose to #19 the next week, and then disappeared from the countdown entirely.  Considering that 160 different videos ranked higher than #19 during 1986, and 150 different videos spent more than 2 weeks in the top 20, #90 does seem a bit high.  Maybe the superstar power was too great for MTV to resist, but clearly this video is OVERRATED.  I have tagged it as such.

Speaking of the video, it does include some entertaining moments.  Five in particular come to mind:

1) Whoopi Goldberg urgently racing into a cab and admonishing the driver to go, only to find that the driver is Jim Belushi, who is pointing a shotgun directly at her head.  Goldberg screams.  I’m guessing that’s a scene from the film.
2) Whoopi Goldberg clocking Belushi with a frying pan and escaping the cab.  She just happened to have a frying pan?
3) As Whoopi Goldberg is chased she finds refuge in a recording studio where Keith Richards just happens to be.  She impersonates one of Aretha Franklin’s backup singers, thereby gaining entry to the stage and the sound recording as well.
4) The song performed in the video is “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”.  I suppose that factoid isn’t all that surprising.
5) Keith Richards is hilarious to watch, just doing Keith Richards sorts of things.

#91 - It's Only Love

Add caption

Artist: Bryan Adams & Tina Turner

Album: Reckless

Video: From Wat.tv.

 

Billboard Hot 100 Peak: 15

MTV Top 20 Peak: 6

MTV Top 20 Weeks: 2

That's right, Wat.tv, a French video sharing site.  I've reviewed over 100 videos between this and the 1985 blog, and this was by far the most elusive.  Just about everything else can be found on YouTube or DailyMotion.  What I found may not exactly be the official MTV video, but it's pretty darn close to the way I remember it.

This was a true collaboration between Bryan Adams and Tina Turner.  The video is from Turner's Private Dancer concert tour, and the track is from Adams' Reckless album.  It's the sixth single from Reckless and also the sixth top 15 hit.  Amazing that the album was released in 1984 and was still generating hits in 1986.

Reckless was among the first albums that I bought as a teenager (actually, cassette tapes), but I never felt that "It's Only Love" measured up to the other classic tunes.  Still, it has a certain ass-kicking quality.  The opening hard-driving guitar riff, followed by a joyous yell, leads into four minutes of good time rock 'n' roll.  It holds up today.

In terms of chart performance, it's hard to tell where the video belongs.  It appeared on the very first top 20 countdown of the year, on January 17, 1986, in the #6 spot.  The next week it fell to #14 and then tumbled off the chart forever.  The two-week run is significantly shorter than many other videos that missed the top 100.  But, there was a three week break between the last top 20 countdown of 1985 and the first of 1986, and "It's Only Love" may have had more appearances had there not been a break.  So that has to factor in as well.  As the years pass, it is likely that the debate will never be settled. 

But that remains for historians to ponder.  More importantly, 5 awesome things about the video:

1) The video won the MTV Video Music Award for Best Stage Performance in a Video for 1986.  Among the videos it beat out were Dire Straits' "Money For Nothing" and Robert Palmer's "Addicted To Love".
2) Great chemistry between these two.  They get up in each other's faces and perform with wild enthusiasm and reckless abandon.  (See what I did there?)
3) Live concert footage is usually pretty awesome.
4) Tina Turner's jean jacket and short skirt combo.  A classic look.
5) The fact that this video actually exists online.  Took me forever to find it.

#92 - So You Want To Be A Rock 'n' Roll Star

Artist: Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

Album: Pack Up The Plantation: Live!

Video: From YouTube.

 

Billboard Hot 100 Peak: did not chart

MTV Top 20 Peak: 12

MTV Top 20 Weeks: 3

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers' 1985 concert tour was so successful that it led to their first live album, "Pack Up The Plantation: Live!"  (The exclamation point is part of the title.)  The tour and album birthed this video, which I recall being played incessantly on MTV in 1986.

As I've said before, it took me a long time to come around to Tom Petty.  In my view, the weakest period of his career was occurring just as I was starting to come of age as a music fan.  But since he's produced such a strong body of work besides this period, Tom and I are cool.

"So You Want To Be A Rock 'n' Roll Star" was originally a Byrds song in 1967, where it peaked at #29 as a single.  The Petty cover version was not released as a single, making it one of only two videos in the 1986 MTV Top 100 video countdown that did not appear on the Billboard charts.

The video entered the MTV weekly countdown at #18 on January 17, 1986, and held that position the following week.  In its third week, the video vaulted six spots up the chart to #12, and seemed to be poised for a top 10 run.  However, the following week it disappeared from the charts completely, never to return, just as it has disappeared from our collective consciousness.

I suppose we can name five things about this video.

1) It is an unedited live performance video from the "Southern Accents" tour.  No additional scenes or parallel storyline, pretty boring.
2) The concert took place at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles, California, on August 7, 1985.  I have been to the Wiltern Theater.
3) Tom Petty's shirt is patterned with planets and moons, and atoms I think.  Saturn is one of the planets.
4) There is a guy with a mullet playing a horn.
5) There is a girl playing a tambourine.  She appears to be a redhead, hard to tell as she appears mostly in silhouette.

That is all.

#93 - Nobody's Fool

Artist: Cinderella

Album: Night Songs

Video: From YouTube.

 

Billboard Hot 100 Peak: 13

MTV Top 20 Peak: 2

MTV Top 20 Weeks: 11

1986 saw heavy metal moving into the mainstream, epitomized by Bon Jovi's wildly successful "Slippery When Wet" album.  The opening band for that tour was a new band called Cinderella, who went on to become one of the iconic hair bands of the era.

Cinderella's breakout hit was "Nobody's Fool", the most successful of their handful of top 40 singles in the late 80's.  People enjoyed the song because it's a stirring, nuanced power ballad, a tale of personal redemption that slowly builds up to an explosive climax.  Or maybe it was because of all the amazing hair.  Either way, it seriously rocks.

The #93 ranking is a gyp, the result of the same timing problem that afflicted “The Way It Is” and “Hip To Be Square”, which unjustly missed the top 100 altogether.  “Nobody’s Fool” debuted on the top 20 weekly countdown in November 1986, and by the time it peaked at #2 it was already 1987.  This circumstance led to the video’s appearance in the 1987 top 100 countdown at #67, making it the rare video to be featured in two consecutive year-end top 100 charts.

Whatever, “Nobody’s Fool” still got hosed.  Consider this: in 1986, only eighteen videos reached #2 or higher on the weekly top 20 show and stayed on the countdown for eleven weeks or more.  All but two finished in the top 40 for the end of the year.  “Silent Running” suffered from a late 1985 debut and a 1986 peak, finishing at #92 in the 1985 top 100 countdown, but at least that video was rewarded by a #27 ranking in 1986's top 100 videos of all-time countdown.  "Nobody's Fool" deserved to be easily 50 or 60 spots higher.

The video is the second of a trilogy from the "Night Songs" album.  Can we find five awesome things about it?  Of course we can.

1) There is a real Cinderella theme, like from the fairy tale.
2) Playing the role of the "evil stepsisters" are two groupies in matching pink polka dot skirts, sunglasses, necklaces, purses, and (eventually) clocks on their heads.
3) The stepsisters are driving a ridiculous Volkswagen bug which is also pink polka dotted.
4) The girl playing the Cinderella role watches the band play, all the while nervously looking at the clock which is fast approaching midnight.  She seemingly transforms into another entity and ultimately encounters lead singer Tom Keifer within a throng of adoring fans.  While Keifer appears to have a faint glimmer of recognition, it is left to our imagination whether or not the glass slipper fits.
5) Hair.  Quite simply, epic hair.
 

#94 - Spies Like Us

Artist: Paul McCartney

Album: Spies Like Us Soundtrack

Video: From YouTube.

 

Billboard Hot 100 Peak: 7

MTV Top 20 Peak: 1

MTV Top 20 Weeks: 5

The dark side of becoming a music fan in 1985 was that it took years to learn that Paul McCartney was one of the most amazing musicians of all-time.  In 1986, all I knew was that he was the guy who sang "Spies Like Us".  And I was not impressed, because the song is nonsense.  Particularly when contrasted with Sir Paul’s brilliant body of work. 

"Spies Like Us" is the title song to the movie of the same name.  The movie stars Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase, who were hilarious years before on Saturday Night Live, and then later in "Blues Brothers" and "Caddyshack", respectively.  It’s sad that the collaboration of these three world-class entertainers was wasted in this movie and song.

I will admit, I didn’t see the movie.  I don’t need to.  I have formed my opinion based on the song and the video.  Besides, Rotten Tomatoes agrees with me on the movie…35% on the Tomatometer.

However, many disagreed with my opinion on the video in early 1986, as it reached #1 on the MTV weekly countdown in January.  The video spent less time on the top 20 chart than any other that reached #1 in 1986.  The short chart run is partially due to timing, as the video debuted at #7 on the first countdown of the year on January 17 after the countdown took a three week break.

The five best things about this video:

1) It ends with an homage to the Beatles’ famous Abbey Road album cover. 
2) Aykroyd, Chase and McCartney all wear disguises, but Paul’s ridiculously heavy mustache and eyebrows are the best, especially combined with the old “pulling off the face mask” gag.
3) General nutty Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd antics.  Dodging gunfire in a tar pit is unique.
4) A bunch of snow scenes.  Looks cold.
5) Only someone as cool as Paul McCartney can pull off that ludicrous sweatshirt (a purple, green and pink stripey getup).


 

#95 - Everything In My Heart

Artist: Corey Hart

Album: Boy In The Box

Video: From YouTube.

 

Billboard Hot 100 Peak: 30

MTV Top 20 Peak: 5

MTV Top 20 Weeks: 4

When this video was on MTV, it made absolutely no impression on me.  It wasn’t so much that I disliked it, but rather a near complete absence of any reaction.  That is also how it strikes me today.  However, it should be noted that this song did very well in Canada.

I prefer to focus on the great things Corey Hart did, like one of the 80’s true great songs, Never Surrender.  I was also impressed when he re-invented himself as a major league baseball player. 

"Everything In My Heart" had a unique tenure on the weekly countdown.  After rocketing from #17 to #9 to #5 in its first three weeks, it seemed that the video was poised to claim the top spot.  But the next week it sunk to #11, and the following week it was off the countdown entirely.

Stevie Nicks' "Talk To Me" video had a parallel life on the countdown, peaking at #5 after three weeks and then tumbling down and out.  It didn’t make the top 100.  I wish it had, in place of this video.

There are five things about this video.  I wouldn’t say they are awesome, so let’s just call them five things:

1) Sitting with head down and elbows on knees is his patented move.  The “Never Surrender” video starts the exact same way.
2) Also like in “Never Surrender”, he does a lot sulking through the streets.
3) Corey Hart is a master of staring intensely into the camera while thrusting his head forward in a rhythmic fashion.
4) Whole lot of fist pumping action on stage.
5) The crowd seems way more enthused than they ought to be.
 

Digging Your Scene (Unranked)

Artist: The Blow Monkeys

Album: Animal Magic

Video: From Vimeo.  (That's right, Vimeo!)

 

Billboard Hot 100 Peak: 14

MTV Top 20 Peak: did not chart

MTV Top 20 Weeks: 0

If your only experience of 1986 music was watching every single MTV weekly top 20 countdown, followed by the top 100 countdown on New Year's Eve, then you would never be aware that this song existed.  That is just wrong.

For you see, the Blow Monkeys were a British New Wave group that released over a dozen singles during the 80's.  After their 1990 breakup they reformed in 2007 and released another four albums.  But we wouldn't care about any of that if not for "Digging Your Scene", a classic from the opening notes with its bright, up-tempo beat and nuanced harmonies.  But as the song ignited the airwaves and climbed the pop charts, all the while accompanied by an amazing video, MTV couldn't be bothered to acknowledge it with a ranking of any kind. 

Look, in all honesty they probably got it right.  The single didn't make the top ten and plenty of other great songs missed the countdown (although a lot of junk made it as you will see).  Still, it's a personal fave and since I’m the one with a blog devoted exclusively to 1986 music videos, “Digging Your Scene" gets its due here. 

I always thought this song was easy breezy, the perfect tune to see performed live in a dinner theater lounge.  But reading deeper into the lyrics it turns out to be a dark exploration of shame, loneliness and the terrors of HIV.  Who knew?

But we're not going to let that bring us down!  Because a song this awesome deserves an equally awesome video, and it has one.  The five coolest things about it, in chronological order:

1) All that amazing stuff on the stage.  That gold glittery curtain, my god.  The fake plants.
2) Tipsy couples involved in all sorts of hi-jinks, sipping elaborate fruity drinks and blowing paper party horns.
3) The lounge staff getting into the act at several key moments.  First, the bartender supplies lead singer Dr. Robert with his guitar with a nifty forward pass at 1:30.  Then, during the bridge, the same bartender and a bored waitress join the band for a dance routine…and still return to work in time to fill drink orders!
4) An epic food fight.  If you’re keeping score, and why wouldn’t you be, the action starts at 3:24 with a patron flinging a lime at the stage, where the drummer deftly catches it in his mouth.  The drummer counters by flipping a drumstick with deadly accuracy directly into the fruity cocktail of said patron’s date.  As the nervous bartender looks on, the first guy hurls the tiny drink umbrella onto the stage, where it blooms into full flower as Dr. Robert’s parasol.  You can’t make this stuff up.
5) The club owner slamming a wad of bills into Dr. Robert’s hand as he departs.