black box

Top 10s – The 1980s

/ UK #1s blog / 5 Comments

We’ve left them far behind, but before we draw a line under the decade of synths and hairspray, lets rundown the Top 10 records of that era (according to my very scientific ‘Recap’ posts).

I’ve already done a Top 10 for the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Follow the links to see how they panned out.

For the eighties, there are six ‘Very Best’ records, and then four records that came so very close. Oh, and an honorary ‘best’ number one, for reasons that will become evident below. Just to be clear, I’m not retroactively ranking these tunes: these are the ones I picked as we meandered through the decade, even if some I look at now and wonder quite what I was thinking… And I’m restricted to one #1 per artist (the only act who could have had two are… I’ll reveal that later!)

‘Atomic’, by Blondie – #1 for 2 weeks in February-March 1980

We kick off with only the 4th chart-topper of the decade, and a punk-disco-new-wave-funk masterpiece. ‘Atomic’ came in the midst of Blondie’s run of five chart-toppers in just under two years – one of the best runs of number ones the charts has ever seen. Debbie Harry’s vocals (plus her rocking a bin-bag in the video), Clem Burke’s drumming, and Nigel Harrison’s bass playing combine to make something truly explosive (you can read my original post here.) And yet, I didn’t name it as a Very Best Chart-Topper, because Blondie already have one, and this record came along a few months later…

‘The Winner Takes it All’, by ABBA – #1 for 2 weeks in August 1980

What more needs to be written about one of the greatest pop songs of all time? Not much, to be honest, and I already wrote a lot about it here. Usually my ‘Very Best’ Awards are dished out in the heat of the moment (see the next song in this list as proof), but I knew ‘The Winner Takes It All’ would be one of them as soon as I started writing this blog.

‘My Camera Never Lies’, by Bucks Fizz – #1 for 1 week in April 1982

From two all-time classics, to Bucks Fizz’s forgotten final number one. I can still justify picking it, as this is very sophisticated pop, from a band most people only remember as one of Eurovision’s cheesiest winners (a category for which the competition is unimaginably fierce…) Read my reasons for doing so here. And yet, seriously, this is one of the ten best number ones of the eighties?? No Michael Jackson, no Madonna… but Bucks Fizz? To which I say, yes! Why the hell not?? (Though perhaps I should have chosen ‘The Land of Make Believe’ instead…)

‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’, by Bonnie Tyler – #1 for 2 weeks in March 1983

Turn around… The ’80s was very much the decade of ‘bigger is better’, and you don’t get much bigger or better than this power ballad. The first of the great eighties power ballads? That’s up for debate, but it’s certainly one of the very best. Tyler gives a performance of total commitment, unwilling to be eclipsed by the ridiculousness of the song, and yet she seems fully aware that she’s helming something quite ludicrous (other over-earnest balladeers, take note). I named this as runner-up, ahead of ‘Billie Jean’ no less, to the record below… Read my original post here.

‘Relax’, by Frankie Goes to Hollywood – #1 for 5 weeks in January-February 1984

The winner of my 3rd ’80s recap, Frankie and the boys tell us just what to do when we want to… you know what. Chaos ensues: controversy, bans, Mike Read in a tizz… Read all about it here. Meanwhile, in the video, Holly Johnson turns up straight from work to his local leather-bondage-piss bar for a night of wholesome fun. In a twist nobody could have predicted, banning the record turned it into one of the biggest-selling hits of the decade. Though the fact it’s a throbbing, pounding synth-pop banger probably also helped. At the time I asked whether it was a triumph of style of substance, and there may be some truth to that. But substance be damned: it’s just too iconic to have been left out!

‘You Spin Me Round’ Like a Record, by Dead or Alive – #1 for 2 weeks in March 1985

Another synth-pop banger was named as my 4th ‘Very Best’ eighties #1. Frankie Goes to Hollywood, alongside Boy George, and all the New Romantics (there was a lot of make-up around at the time), opened the door for gender-bending oddballs like Pete Burns to score hits. It’s not deep, or very thoughtful, but boy does it get you racing for the dancefloor. It was a sign of the Hi-NRG to come, and was the first hit record produced by Stock Aitken and Waterman (and it wouldn’t be an eighties rundown without them!) Read my original post here.

‘The Power of Love’, by Jennifer Rush – #1 for 5 weeks in October-November 1985

I’m a bit surprised that this makes the cut, but then again there probably is room for one more blockbuster power ballad. Runner-up to Dead or Alive above, ‘The Power of Love’ is a slow-building beast of a love song. (Read my original post here.) And the moody video makes no sense, but provides ample opportunity for Jennifer Rush to wander the streets of New York, showing off her spectacular earrings.

‘It’s a Sin’, by Pet Shop Boys – #1 for 3 weeks in June-July 1987

The final three songs hit a much dancier groove, as the beats per minute rose in the final years of the decade. First up is ‘It’s a Sin’, one of the best pop groups of the decade’s best songs. And yes, you can dance to it, but it’s also a scathing look back at Neil Tennant’s closeted childhood. Never has Catholic guilt sounded so catchy… Original post here. PSBs were the only act that could have featured twice on this list, with their cover of ‘Always on My Mind’ a runner-up in my next recap, which was won by…

‘Theme from S-Express’, by S’Express – #1 for 2 weeks in April-May 1988

Enjoy this trip… The final Very Best Chart-Topper of the 1980s… Uno, dos, tres, quatro…! From the first house #1, ‘Jack Your Body’ in early ’87, sample-heavy dance music had started to break through into the upper reaches of the charts. At first, I felt the random samples stitched together seemingly for novelty value rather than sonic pleasure sounded dated. But S’Express were the first act to really get it right, to prove that effective sampling could create something wonderful. Original post here.

‘Ride on Time’, by Black Box – #1 for 6 weeks in September-October 1989

Runner-up in my last ’80s recap, and sneaking in just a couple of months before the deadline, the last song in our countdown is what I called the first modern dance record in my original post. It’s still all samples, and not all of them obtained legally, but you’d be forgiven if you mistook it for an original club banger. Plus, it contains one of the great mondegreens (the lyrics are clearly ‘right on time’) that confused even Black Box themselves when it came to naming their biggest hit.

Honorary Inclusion

‘Stand by Me’, by Ben E. King – #1 for 3 weeks in February-March 1987

I couldn’t not find a place for one of the best pop songs ever recorded. Back in my 86-87 recap, I was torn between naming this outlier as the ‘Very Best’, and giving it to the much more contemporary ‘It’s a Sin’. The Pet Shop Boys won out, but I invented an honorary award so that Ben E. King could take his rightful place at top table. It didn’t even make the Top 20 on its original release in 1961, but was taken to the top of the charts through a combination of the classic movie and a Levi’s advert (Levi’s adverts being one of the less-likely providers of #1s at the time – this was the first of three…)

And so we can finally bid the 1980s adieu. Next up, I head on into 1992…

633. ‘Ride on Time’, by Black Box

/ UK #1s blog / 10 Comments

In which we meet the first modern dance record…?

Ride on Time, by Black Box (their 1st and only #1)

6 weeks, from 3rd September – 15th October 1989

I’m a child of the nineties, the decade in which the music we recognise today as ‘dance’ really came into being. There have been dance #1s popping up regularly throughout the second half of the 1980s but, as good as many of them have been (‘Theme from S-Express’ says ‘hello’), they have sounded quite dated – often chaotic mish-mashes of samples and sound effects.

‘Ride on Time’, however, is much less cluttered – just a beat, a few synth hooks, a classic piano riff – but all the more weighty for it. One of the song’s creators mentioned wanting to create a dance track with the power of a rock song. And then there are the vocals. Though I think describing them as just ‘vocals’ isn’t quite doing them justice. They are colossal, momentous… add whatever synonym for ‘very big’ you want. There aren’t many lines, and half of them are just woah-wa-wa-wa-oh, but not for nothing is this record classed under the sub-heading ‘diva house’. The singer does a great job. I hesitate in naming this ‘singer’, as there was a lot of controversy over who they actually were. The record originally used the vocals of a 1980 hit by Loleatta Holloway, called ‘Love Sensation’, which Black Box didn’t have the rights to. They then re-recorded the track with Heather Small, soon to become a star in her own right with M People.

To confuse matters further, the woman in the video and the record sleeve below is model Katrin Quinol, who had been brought in to mime on TV performances and the like. I’m not 100% sure which version I’ve been listening to – a search for ‘Ride on Time Heather Small’ on YouTube throws up nothing – but since Black Box finally bought the rights to ‘Love Sensation’ in 2018 I assume it’s Loleatta Holloway’s big lungs that are blasting my cobwebs away. Sadly she died in 2011, though she did eventually receive enough royalties from the song to, as she put it, buy herself a fur coat.

Every time an electronic dance number one comes along, I feel contractually obliged to mention that it isn’t my favourite genre. I’m guitars and drums all day long. But good dance, just like good rap and good reggae, can transcend my fussy tastes. Good is good, and ‘Ride on Time’ is pretty darn good. (I said a lot of the same stuff about Soul II Soul’s ‘Back to Life’ and, although the two songs have very different vibes, they are two sides of the same futuristic dance coin.) I’d go as far as to say that, in the right nightclub, in the right mood, ‘Ride on Time’ could be euphoric. And it also feels like a direct riposte to the cheap ‘n’ cheesy tat that it replaced at #1…

And as I said above, ‘Ride on Time’ feels much more streamlined and precise after previous years’ big dance hits. But that’s not the only reason, I don’t think, for it being a huge, game-changing hit. It also, cleverly, harks back to disco, with its big-voiced diva on lead vocals, giving a timeless sheen to its very modern sound. And also, we have to nod our heads to acts like Pet Shop Boys, and even Stock Aitken Waterman, for making pop music much more dance-oriented over the past couple of years. In the ‘60s and ‘70s ‘pop’ usually equalled ‘rock’ (think Merseybeat, and glam), while in the 80s ‘pop’ has shifted in a dancier direction. The 90s will see pop shift back to guitars, and then towards an R&B/hip-hop future.

Black Box were an Italian act, kicking off a trend for European DJs and dance acts scoring big hits across the Channel, often in the autumn after Brits had spent the summer on Mediterranean beaches. The Euro-house influences are clear, and very different from the American house we’ve met up to now. Clearer, classier… dare we give into stereotypes and say ‘chic’? My favourite aspect of the song is that the lyrics are clearly Because you’re right on time… But the Italian DJs’ English wasn’t great, and they misheard it as ‘Ride’. Which I think is cute (and much more memorable than the correct phrase).

And yet, for all my talk of game-changing modernity, the charts will do what they always do and completely disprove all my blethering with the next number one. Yes, that damn rabbit is back, next.