And now we find ourselves in '82. (The disco hot spots hold no charm for you.)
This is the point at which this chart finally starts to look like what I’d define as “80s music”, and it’s the first one in a long time where I haven’t had to go above #40 - eliminating the number-ones from the Top 40 still leaves us with 28 songs on the list.
Now things are moving to become 80’s and the seventies sound is fading for the most part. I feel Soft Cell may win but I won’t vote for it. The Motels, George Benson, or Tommy Tutone are being singled out for voting. Some others I like such as DazzBand, Foreigner and etc but not to vote.
It’s funny how some years I have to hold my nose to pick something and some years are an embarrassment of riches and I wish I could vote three or four times.
I don’t think I’ve picked a cover version before in any of these polls, but I am now. Tainted Love is my clear favourite of the ones I know here. Soft Cell were a great band, and a big influence on my future musical taste. I still remember the look on my mum’s face when I brought home their album Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret (I’d have been 13 at the time)
If the poll question was, "What was the most “1982” song of 1982, Rosanna might have gotten my vote, but got to go with the very influential Tainted Love. Just thinking of Rosanna sends me right back to being 8 years old being driven around northeast Wisconsin in the back seat of my parents’ 1979 Cutlass Supreme (AM radio only).
This is the first one of your polls where it was actually difficult to make a choice. 1982 had a LOT of songs that I still like to this day. Went with John Cougar (as we called him then) when I voted, but there are about six more on the list that I wish I had chosen.
There are several I went back and forth between before I made my pick. When I did I kindda expected to be picking one that would get only a few votes. What a surprise to find I voted for the leader, “Tainted Love”.
Several worthy contenders here. I ended up going with the fun, bouncy “We Got the Beat” by the Go-Go’s. The Cars would probably have been my second choice. Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love” is, of course, an 80s classic, and even Toto’s “Rosanna” was somewhat in contention, with that Jeff Porcaro half-time shuffle with a Bo Diddley beat kick drum sending many a drummer into the woodshed to figure that out. One of rock’s most famous drum grooves.
I listened to some of the songs I don’t know/remember. The Toto song, I actually have heard before, and it’s a decent song. But the video is so amazingly, err, of its time.