Best #1 single of the year retrospective: 1980

Cafe Society
61

I’m a Billy Joel fan, but I’ll admit that he went through a big piece of his mid-career where his stuff is overly pretentious.

He won me over with The Stranger, which has lively, genuinely fun, pop songs (“Movin’ Out” and “Only the Good Die Young”), his ballads are thoughtful yet straightforward and unpretentious (“Just the Way You Are” and “Always a Woman”), and you get one song, “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant,” that is both. And then I went back and found he’d done some really great songs before that.

Then he lost me right back again with 52nd Street and Glass Houses, where the ballads, at least IMHO, are pretentious (“Honesty”) and the up-tempo stuff includes stuff like “Big Shot” and “Sleeping with the Television On” that I really don’t need to hear again. Not to mention the overly la-de-dah “Don’t Ask Me Why.” Someone close to him needed to hear that song and say, “Get over yourself, Billy.”

But then by the mid-80s his good songs start outweighing the crap again, and he concluded his career with River of Dreams, which is easily his best work.

But that’s the way it is with a lot of artists: a bunch of good songs, and a bunch of crap, but we remember and judge them on the good songs and forget the crap, unless of course they keep on playing the crap songs on ‘classic rock’ for the next few decades.

62

I assume that you, like me, consider “And So It Goes” to be among the good stuff. (It’s actually my favorite song of his.)

63

Interesting. I was the first to comment on Billy Joel, but suspect this discussion would’ve come up regardless. He does generate a lot of back-and-forth, doesn’t he?

I’ve always thought he was a good craftsman whose output was not to my taste. I try to leave it at that, and not get into why he’s not to my taste.

I am an Elton John guy, pulling away - his music just works for me so much better. But it’s not like a choice is required…

As for Michael Jackson and not picking Starting Something - yeah, he must be acknowledged, but I am assuming 1984 and Beat It will be the one. Having said that, 1984 may be one of the toughest years, but I haven’t looked ahead yet, so I don’t know which songs I am thinking of were blocked out by the monster hits and didn’t make it to #1…

64

Put me in the “generally loathe” camp for Billy. I like exactly four of his songs:

• She Has a Way (simple, unaffected ballad with very good chord changes)

• You May Be Right (disposable new wave pastiche, but somehow I like it)

• Uptown Girl (which of course, wouldn’t exist without the great template he built it on, but I’ll give him credit for doing so faithfully and respectfully)

• The Longest Time (with a caveat…a good song that would work if done by a genuine doo-wop group, but it suffers in its performance due to Joel’s usual pretentiousness of delivery)

Everything else is either a non-entity at best, or more commonly a source of nausea for me. I think the musical theater analogy is a good one, as I hate most Broadway show tunes once you get past the 1930s.

Beyond this, there’s something just…repellent about Billy Joel generally that I can quite put my finger on.

65

Another “I just can’t do it” year.

I do think “Magic” is a good song with interesting accompaniment. I liked “Sailing” the first few times, but it hasn’t worn well.

I love the first two Pink Floyd albums tremendously, but they could have stopped after them and I would have been happy. Queen rockabilly is OK, but it bothers me that those who like it are generally uninterested in where it came from. Same with Queen funk. Neither of these is bad, but neither excites me enough to vote for them.

And as much as I love John Lennon and am keenly aware of what happened next, that sentimentality isn’t enough to make me push the button for his song. Not bad at all, but not earthshaking either.

Bottom line…none of these songs inflames any passion within me. The best of them are just “there”…the worst I’ll just keep quiet about.

66

Obviously your call, but from a guitar playing standpoint, Brian May does a great job on both Queen songs that charted. Man, can he play and has just a great tone. I think he actually used a Tele on Crazy Little Thing, hard to believe…

67

Never been much of a Pink Floyd fan and Brick in the Wall wasn’t one of my favorites. I like Queen, but neither of those two songs did much for me at the time. Apparently I’m in the minority in actually liking Billy Joel, but not this song.

So that leaves Blondie, by dint of being about the only song on this list that made it to my iPod.

The next several lists will be interesting because it’s when I gradually stopped listening to top 40 music in exchange for acoustic folk and college alternative. So it’ll be fun finding out when I no longer recognize any of the #1 songs (or at least when none of them resonate for me). Probably towards the end of the decade, I reckon.

68

This year might be the toughest for me to choose. Unlike most (okay, every) years in the Seventies, I don’t hate any of these songs (even the Captain and Tennille song is, um, tolerable).

On the other hand, none of these really grab me, either. New Wave was in full swing at this time, but the only representative of that genre here is “Call Me”, which is - a song. Of the two Queen songs, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” is just a gimmick, and “Another One Bites The Dust” has a great bass line, but, other than that, is just another song. I never liked anything off of Double Fantasy (and "Starting Over only topped the charts due to tragedy, not merit), and the only Billy Joel song I like from this whole era is “Allentown”.

Of the remainder, I only see three worthy contenders:
Third place goes to “Escape”, largely because I think Rupert Holmes is criminally underrated as a songwriter. I loved “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”, so this song, although just okay, gets the #3 spot as a reward.

Second place goes to “Another Brick In The Wall”, but that’s mostly to honor the fact that more than anything, the year belonged to the album “The Wall”. Great album - and yet, “Another Brick” could be the weakest track on it. Additionally, it’s among the most overplayed songs of the classic rock era (perhaps only exceeded by another Pink Floyd song, “Money”) and I can’t vote for a song that I’m now sick of.

My top choice surprised the heck out of me. At the time, I despised disco; but with the benefit of age I see that no other songs this year were as successful at what they were made to do as “Funkytown”, and only “Another One Bites The Dust” can match it groove for groove. So, why not Lipps, Inc.?

69

Yes, I’ll always give Brian May credit for coming up with an approach to guitar that had few precedents (Randy California, maybe?), and also for not forgetting the roots of where it all came from.

In the end, though, as always, it all has to be in the greater service of the song as a whole. I don’t dislike either of the Queen songs here…they just don’t excite me all that much.

Particularly in the first case, when I can go to countless examples of genuine rockabilly. I’ll choose them over a pastiche, however sincere and well-intended it may be.

70

But you’re not comparing “Crazy Little Thing” to “countless examples of rockabilly”, you’re only being asked to compare it to the other songs on the list.

This is why the endless stream of “there were better, non-#1 songs released this year” objections is so irritating. For the purposes of these threads, those songs don’t matter.

71

If I was “only being asked to compare it to the other songs on the list,” all I would have to do is cast my vote in the poll and make no comments whatsoever in the thread.

We’re having a discussion about music here — why each of us finds a given song worthy, and another unworthy. Those reasons can be many and varied.

If you want to put forth a compelling argument for why it would be best for all of us that we severely restrict that discussion to a very narrow range of comments that won’t personally irritate you, please do.

Or, you could just stop reading a post at the first sign of irritation.

72

Seems Pink Floyd will win the Gold Medal, and Queen will take silver for 1980.

73

Jeez, you don’t like it when people say, “this was a crappy year,” and now you don’t like it when they say it wasn’t a crappy year, but the good songs didn’t make #1.

Your increasingly tiresome objections are hereby duly noted.

74

Some of my favorite albums of all time!

Glass Houses, The Wall, The Game, Off the Wall, Double Fantasy.

I’d have to say “Another one Bites the Dust Takes” The other songs are good but not even the best songs on their respective albums.

75

I voted in the 1981 poll before coming here, but I’m picking the same some: “Starting Over.”