1984
There are some years which seem like fantastic years for music, or movies, or sports. One such year was 1984 wrt popular music across all genres. I was reminded of 1984 when reading an older #ttt post by @wongi where she had shared a beautiful song from that year.
So here goes my #ThreeTuneTuesday delayed version for this week. There are so many good songs to choose from and I am just going to go for a crazy mix :)
#TTT or #ThreeTuneTuesday is a fantastic idea by @ablaze which has some rewards too, so do hop over to his #TTT post to read more about that.
For this list I tried to stick to the Billboard Top List for that year.
Top song of the year
If I am honest I am so obsessed with the song "Purple Rain" by Prince that I kinda let this song go under the radar for me. It was my wife who brought it to my notice cause she loved it so much. And I do love it now. It does feel stylistically very typical to Prince even more than Purple Rain.
The song I am talking about is "When Doves Cry" Love the song, love the 'bold for it's time' video, and the instrumentation. Interesting tidbit I found on the internet is that supposedly he did not use bass for the original song as he felt it was sounding too common.
Here's the video and the song.
Been Murdering this song for close to 3 decades
The next song is from one of my favorite vocalist George Michael and the song he release in 1984 was "Careless Whisper" My favorite George Michael song is "Faith" and "Freedom!90" is a close second. But when it comes to singing them out loud my favorite is Careless Whisper which I prefer to Last Christmas.
It is a very beautiful song lyrically, speaking of cheating, regrets, and karma. However when I heard it for the first time I did not quite get all of that. I was probably just entered in secondary what would be middle school in US. What captured me instead was the musicality of the song, and the duet between his voice and the saxophone. Such a wonderful voice! Over time learnt the lyrics and sang it everywhere, though with my voice the right word would not be singing, murdering the song might be the right description. This knowledge has not made me stop singing along much to my wife's chagrin :)
Check out the video. I just realized while writing here that the videos are focused completely on the sensuality and crowd pull of the main artist.
Break the Rules Y'all
There are so many out of the pocket songs one could discuss, like "Karma Chameleon" for example, or "Say Say Say". But if I am true to myself the most impactful song from the list of 1984 that I was looking at has to be "Footloose"
What a great movie, what a fantastic song. It captures the entire movie, the entire need to dance, the entire aspiration for freedom. Thanks to catching on a bit later to western music, I ended up hearing this song as part of the soundtrack while watching the movie. Wow, I can still feel the goosebumps when I think about hearing the song for the first time. Such a simple yet beautiful rendition by Kenny Loggins. Such a fantastic performance by Kevin Bacon. And such a driving rhythm, tailor made for line dancing. This song never fails to make my soul soar!
I do like the redone movie, as well as the song covered by Blake Shelton. But it does not give me the feeling that this original does. Hope you are tapping your feet by now :)
Bonus for the prima donna
This track charted towards the end of the year and then ended up on top for many weeks. When I read it in the list I had to put it there, but cause it was charting only for a few months in 1984 it had most of it's "staying at top" phase in 1985. Since it is a bonus here I will not spend too much time with the discussion about it, but it was fantastic song, and while the lyrics might seem tame by today's standards; at the time it might have been in some hot water. I loved the song, I loved Madonna, I loved the picturization with its typical 80s style and colors. It did not stay on top of my list as "Papa Don't Preach" won that prize in my heart. But this song was a major reason to love Madonna and search through her discography for more hit songs.
- All the videos are embedded and linked directly to their source videos on the corresponding artists accounts on YouTube.