MTV’s Top 100 of 1985, a look back (Part 4)
As bad as the last set of videos was for new-and-upcoming acts, this section is even worse. Over half of the 10 videos here are from artists who first established themselves in the 1970s or 1960s. There are only two new artists in this section, and neither ever scored another hit.
But even some of the more “classic” acts don’t fair all that well here, with some terrible tracks that signaled the beginning of the end of their careers. There’s more than one (bad) swan song here. With so many prominent artists of decades past churning out some of the crap you see in this section, it’s no wonder that hair metal would begin to take over the charts in just a few months. It was time for a change.
Our number 69 (nice) artist certainly knew that.
MTV’s Top 100 of 1985, a look back (Part 3)
As we head into the 70s of the countdown, we hit a crossroads of artists new and old. Half of these tracks are by artists who were well into their second, or in some cases even third, decade of making music, while the other half are hit singles by young up-and-comers. Time has been a friend to most of the songs on here, even the terrible ones are remembered (unfortunately). But time was not nearly as kind to most of the new acts here. Of the debut artists appearing in this set of videos, only one managed to maintain any kind of substantial mainstream success as the years went on.
It’s a shame too, because all of the songs here by then-new artists are fantastic. Certainly better than the two showing by one of the kings of shit-ass AOR bullshit that make their appearances here as well.
The Bigot Doug TenNapel and his friend Mike Nelson
Like most of humanity, I’m spending more time indoors these days, watching more movies, playing more games, reading more, and so on. Yay pandemic.
Recently, I started checking out some Rifftrax commentaries that are available on Amazon. For those who aren’t aware, Rifftrax is a show of sorts that offers humorous commentary tracks for bad movies, done by Kevin Murphy, Scott Corbett, and Mike Nelson, all of Mystery Science Theater 3000 fame.
I started to watch the Birdemic one. It opened with a slightly racist joke about Korean drivers, but I shrugged it off. But it got me wondering about Mike Nelson. Mike is a conservative Christian who votes republican exclusively. While he’s a private guy who doesn’t give interviews about his politics very often, he has mentioned this in the past. I was curious to see if he had any takes on the recent events (COVID, George Floyd, Black Lives Matter…choose one, it’s been a hell of a year). I scoped out Twitter, but he doesn’t seem to have a Twitter.
He does have a podcast though.
*heaviest breath of my life*
He has a podcast with the bigot Doug TenNapel. Continue reading
MTV’s Top 100 of 1985, a look back (Part 2)
Continuing my look at MTV’s Top 100 Countdown of 1985 with numbers 89-80 (part 1 can be found here). This set of ten brings up some huge swings in quality and staying power, with some all-time classics by legendary artists and songs that have been absolutely (and rightfully….and thankfully) lost to the sands of time. This section of the list is also one of many that shows how much power artists from the 1970s still had on MTV. It wasn’t all day-glo and hairspray. You could be a boring white dude in his 40s who was good at playing an instrument and still score a massive hit.
Or Rod Stewart.
MTV’s Top 100 of 1985, a look back (Part 1)
Like most of the world, I’ve been spending a lot of time indoors lately, absorbing as many distractions as possible from this hellscape that we call 2020.
Early on in the pandemic, an incredibly kind soul uploaded a metric crapton of vintage MTV clips to the Internet Archive. This repository has been an absolute godsend for me right now. With the present world in shambles and the future not looking that much better, I’ve not ashamed to say that I’ve used this collection of vintage VHS rips to dive headfirst into the past, soaking up as much audio/video content from my childhood years as possible. All for that fleeting dopamine fix that is rose-tinted nostalgia.
For me, the crown jewel of the entire collection is the 1985 Top 100 countdown, which is included in its entirety, complete with commercials, VJ breaks and news bits. It’s a wonderful time capsule that serves as an amazing document to that incredibly important year in music. While not all scenes and styles are present on the countdown this year (MTV was getting more diverse, but they still weren’t showing a lot of hip-hop, nor anything particularly intense like punk rock either), the list does feel like a perfect microcosm of what was really popular that year, the big guns, the stuff that left an impact.
And Billy Ocean, but we’ll get to him.
While there are more than a few totally forgotten songs on this list, the overwhelming majority of them are legit classics now. So many timeless numbers are here. Since MTV’s countdowns from other years in the decade are not as easy to find, it’s hard to compare them to this list, but I have to imagine that this one stands out for just the sheer number of songs that you still hear on the radio today. 1985 really was a banger of a year for pop music.
And since I have nothing better to do for the foreseeable future, I decided to write about every single one of them. The good, the great, the well-remembered, the terrible, and the utterly forgotten. Doing so, I noticed some patterns and trends of the era that are forgotten now (70s rockers really did well in the 80s, seriously), and was also reminded that some stereotypes of the decade are stereotypes for a reason (so much hairspray, my god, and hair metal hadn’t even really taken hold yet).
I hope that in reading this, memories of what you were doing when you first heard these songs are jogged loose, and bring a smile to you in these times where it seems like smiles are hard to come by.
But let’s kick things off with a nice, long, cry.