The big songs my graduation year were “Civilization” and “Stone Cold Dead In The Market”.
We were very PC back then.
At The Drive In and The Mars Volta were popular among the men in my high school. Outside of my high school, I doubt anyone had ever heard of them.
According to this site (which appears to take its data from Billboard), the top 10 songs of 1990 were:
- Hold On, Wilson Phillips
- It Must Have Been Love, Roxette
- Nothing Compares 2 U, Sinead O’Connor
- Poison, Bell Biv Devoe
- Vogue, Madonna
- Vision Of Love, Mariah Carey
- Another Day In Paradise, Phil Collins
- Hold On, En Vogue
- Cradle Of Love, Billy Idol
- Blaze Of Glory, Jon Bon Jovi
Sinead and Billy Idol were OK, but nothing else from the top 10 is really representative of my taste.
Of the entire top 100, these were the only songs that I remember with some degree of fondness:
- Enjoy The Silence, Depeche Mode
- Epic, Faith No More
- Love Shack, B-52’s
And that’s about it.
I was listening to the same stuff that Dante and his friends were (please don’t call it emo!!!), so hardly any of the songs I liked ever broke the Top 40 (or in this case, even the Top 100).
The top 10 songs of 1988 were, apparently:
- Never Gonna Give You Up - Rick Astley (I’ll be damned)
- Look Away - Chicago
- I Live For You - Natalie Cole
- Man in the Mirror - Michael Jackson
- Fast Car - Tracy Chapman
- A Groovy Kind of Love - Phil Collins
- Together Forver - Rick Astley (I’ll be damned, again)
- I’ll Alway Love You - Taylor Dane
- Hands to Heaven - Breathe
- Don’t Worry Be Happy - Bobby McFerrin
BTW, I distincly remember hearing “The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades,” by Timbuk 3, on the way home from school on my last day of high school. Kind of poetic, in a way, since I hated high school and was thrilled to not have to go there any more.
Can’t remember the titles—
Queen
Commodores
Eagles
BeeGees
Parliament
“We’re the class forever great–the mighty class of '78!”
1988
- “Need You Tonight,” INXS
- “Look Away,” Chicago
- “Roll With It,” Steve Winwood
- “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” Poison
- “Got My Mind Set On You,” George Harrison
- “So Emotional,” Whitney Houston
- “Seasons Change,” Expose
- “Baby I Love Your Way/Freebird Medley,” Will to Power
- “Could’ve Been,” Tiffany
-
"Never Gonna Give You Up," Rick Astley
Damn! we got rick-rolled!
Top ten songs of my graduation year, 1980:
- Call Me, Blondie
- Another Brick In The Wall, Pink Floyd
- Magic, Olivia Newton-John
- Rock With You, Michael Jackson
- Do That To Me One More Time, Captain and Tennille
- Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Queen
- Coming Up, Paul McCartney
- Funkytown, Lipps, Inc.
- It’s Still Rock And Roll To Me, Billy Joel
- The Rose, Bette Midler
What a list!
Ed
From that same site that Götterfunken mentioned -
- My Sharona, The Knack
- Bad Girls, Donna Summer
- Le Freak, Chic
- Da Ya Think I’m Sexy, Rod Stewart
- Reunited, Peaches and Herb
- I Will Survive, Gloria Gaynor
- Hot Stuff, Donna Summer
- Y.M.C.A., Village People
- Ring My Bell, Anita Ward
- Sad Eyes, Robert John
But here’s the thing - that might have been on the radio, I don’t know. Growing up in Brandon in the 1970s, we had two C+W stations, a local muzak FM station, a top 40 station from Winnipeg called CKY, and CBC AM. Harder to get were CBC FM and CITI FM from Winnipeg, which played AOR for a while before it turned into an all-ACDC station. (The FM reception from Winnipeg was intermittent.)
If you weren’t into any of those, and my friends and I weren’t, you were left collecting albums. The local shops were pretty dismal (top 40 only; no, we won’t order anything in.), and so most of our vinyl was bought in Winnipeg on occasional visits. What Music Was Popular when I Graduated High School is a totally weird, skewed list that was hugely dependent on what had passed our way at the time.
Our most popular albums of 1979, garnered lovingly from my memory, were -
King Crimson - In the Court of the Crimson King (1969)
Little Feat - Waiting for Columbus (1978)
Frank Zappa - Sheik Yerbouti (1979)
Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here (1975)
FM - Black Noise (1977)
Gentle Giant - Playing the Fool (1977)
Weather Report - Mr. Gone (1978)
Nash the Slash - Bedside Companion (1978)
Stanley Clarke - School Days (1976)
Mahavishnu Orchestra - Birds of Fire (1973)
The interesting thing (to me) is that even though these albums were not all released in 1979, they were all either the most recent albums we could find of bands we were already into, or brand new discoveries for us. I don’t remember which of us first came up with the King Crimson album, but I do remember us all describing it as this obscure, one-off project from the band Greg Lake was in before ELP. Then we found out about all the other stuff that Fripp had done - we’d just been in this weird little geo-temporal bubble where this band had completely passed us by.
It’s fascinating to look back on that period now, when if I can name a band and an album, I can pretty much get it within 24 hours. In those days, I had to wait a couple of months until the next trip into the CITY (going from the farm into Brandon was going into town, but you could hear the block capitals when someone was going into Winnipeg) to scour the record shops to look for new or different recordings that might be interesting, (Hmm, Brand X - Morrocan Roll) or might be total crap (I wish I could remember the name of an album by somebody or other, Colin something, maybe; but he had talked all these fabulous progressive rockers into being on his album, but it was just dreck!) - you never knew until you got it home. It was truly a time when your musical tastes defined your personality and your circle of friends, because it all took so much effort to acquire.
That song was big when I was starting college in 1986. I remember being overcome by pre-eng calculus and thinking how I needed to take off the shades and turn on the headlights. 
Strangely, “Shades” placed at #19 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts in 1986, but didn’t makei t to the overall Top 100 for 1986.
The official top 10 in 1986 was:
- That’s What Friends Are For, Dionne Warwick, Elton John, and Gladys Knight
- Say You, Say Me, Lionel Richie
- I Miss You, Klymaxx
- On My Own , Patti Labelle and Michael McDonald
- Broken Wings, Mr. Mister
- How Will I Know, Whitney Houston
- Party All The Time, Eddie Murphy
- Burning Heart, Survivor
- Kyrie, Mr. Mister
- Addicted To Love, Robert Palmer
Personally, I’d lop the first four right off, as well as about half of the others.
June 7 1980:
- Funky Town - Lipps Inc.
- Don’t Fall in Love with a Dreamer - Kim Carnes and Kenny Rogers
- Coming Up - Paul McCartney
- Biggest Part of Me - Ambrosia
- Call Me - Blondie
- The Rose - Bette Middler
- Cars - Gary Numan
- Against the Wind - Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band
- Little Jeannie - Elton John
- It’s Still Rock & Roll to Me - Billy Joel
I guess I like about half of what was popular at the time.
I got this link in email a few minutes ago and thought I’d have a better chance of finding it again if I stuck it here.
Enjoy – if you haven’t already.
Well, the music that topped the charts in 1979 was NOT necessarily the music that was popular at my high school.
Suffice it to say that, at my school, anybody listening to the Bee Gees’ “Too Much Heaven” or Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” (smash #1 hits both!) was going to get mocked mercilessly!
The stuff I remember being popular at my school were the budding New Wave bands (Blondie, Devo, the Cars). Though some of us still clung to the art-rock dinosaurs who were rapidly running out of ideas.
And while nobody much liked Meat Loaf, you could NOT escape from “Paradise by the Dashboard Light”!
No kidding. Lots of ballady stuff. I didn’t remember it being that bad. My choices:
- Crocodile Rock, Elton John
- Will It Go Round In Circles, Billy Preston
- You’re So Vain, Carly Simon
- Frankenstein, Edgar Winter Group
- We’re An American Band, Grand Funk Railroad
- Right Place, Wrong Time, Dr. John
- Superstition, Stevie Wonder
- Loves Me Like A Rock, Paul Simon
- Stuck In The Middle With You, Stealers Wheel
- Shambala, Three Dog Night
- Long Train Running, Doobie Brothers
- Midnight Train To Georgia, Gladys Knight and The Pips
- Smoke On The Water , Deep Purple
- The Cover Of Rolling Stone, Dr. Hook and The Medicine Show
- Your Mama Don’t Dance, Loggins and Messina
- Feelin’ Stronger Every Day, Chicago
- The Cisco Kid, War
- Reelin’ In The Years, Steely Dan
- Hocus Pocus, Focus
- Do It Again, Steely Dan
- Rockin’ Pneumonia And The Boogie Woogie Flu, Johnny Rivers
- Ramblin’ Man, Allman Brothers
- Angie, Rolling Stones
- Money, Pink Floyd
- Free Ride, Edgar Winter Group
1974 and all I remember that the popular music was universally awful! Here is the top 10 from Billboard’s top 100 for 1974. Please do not make me listen to a single one of these again.
Really, if I hear Seasons In the Sun again… I cannot be held responsible for what happens next.
- The Way We Were, Barbra Streisand
- Seasons In The Sun, Terry Jacks
- Love’s Theme, Love Unlimited Orchestra
- Come And Get Your Love, Redbone
- Dancing Machine, Jackson 5
- The Loco-Motion, Grand Funk Railroad
- TSOP, MFSB
- The Streak, Ray Stevens
- Bennie And The Jets, Elton John
- One Hell Of A Woman, Mac Davis
Aww, Loco-Motion wasn’t so bad. The rest, however …