MTV’s Top 100 of 1985, a look back (Part 7)

The next section of the MTV’s Top 100 of 1985 might be the best. There are a couple stinkers here (including one that’s absolutely horrendous) but they’re more than outshined by the bangers, the classics, the timeless tunes that have held up better than most of the songs that have preceded them on this list. We were in the big leagues already, but now we’re reaching the all-star game. Nearly every song from this point on is on a “Best of the 80s” playlist or CD somewhere.

There’s also a song by The Firm but hey they can’t all be winners.

39. Bryan Adams – “Somebody”

It blows my mind that this song somehow charted higher than “Heaven,” which we saw back at number 51. Like so many other major hits on this list, “Somebody” was a song that I completely forgot. Does everyone else feel the same way? If you asked me name as many Bryan Adams songs as I could, I would drop that shitty Three Musketeers song before this one would come to mind.

But why is that? This song is great. It’s not deep. It’s not meaningful. It’s not even entirely original. But as a peppy poppy get on your feet arena rock love jam, it gets the job done. I said many times on this list that I usually don’t like performance videos. I feel that they’re not the best use of the medium, but it works for “Somebody.” It’s a love song, but it’s not a love song you sing to one person. It’s a song you sing to 10,000 people.

 

38. Bryan Adams – “Summer Of ’69”

But wait, there’s more! Adam’s last appearance on the countdown for the year is probably his most iconic. Like “Somebody” before it, “Summer of ’69” is an arena rock jam. But it tries for a bit more than just the shallow “damn you hot” sentiment of “Somebody.”

Songs like these make me say that Bryan Adams was Canada’s answer to Bruce Springsteen. Like “Glory Days,” it’s an ode to simpler times, bittersweet nostalgia over missed opportunities and the way things were, the way things should’ve been, and the way thing’s could’ve been. Of course, it lacks the subtlety and nuance of “Glory Days” as well as the bittersweet aura that makes that song so happy and so sad. Adams is painting with broader strokes here.  That makes the song a little less deep and a little less meaningful. However, it also makes it a hell of a lot of fun to pump your fist and rock out to. It’s a fair trade.

 

37. U.S.A. For Africa – “We Are The World”

As a kid, I thought that this was the coolest video ever. All my favorite singers together! And they were singing for a good cause. At least, that’s what I was told. At the time I really didn’t understand how a bunch of people singing together would help people in Africa. I just thought it was neat that Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, and Cyndi Lauper were all together on the same track.

Lots of people talk shit about this song, and for different reasons. If you want to argue that it’s not a very good track, I’m with you. Reading about it now, I see that a lot of critics of the time didn’t like it. I see their point. There’s not much to it, the song is like 80% chorus.

But it seems that just as many people hate it, “Do They Know It’s Christmas”, Live Aid, and the entire 80s celebrity charity scene because they think that it was nothing more than a collection of glorified vanity projects designed to make people feel good while doing as little as possible to facilitate meaningful change that addressed the root causes of problems such as famine and inequality.

Okay, well good for you. What the fuck have you done lately?

Most of the articles, blogs and whiny Twitter posts I’ve read that attack things like “We Are The World” offer, in turn, squat shit for people in need. The truth is that the average person can’t do that much to help people in other countries, or even their own. The average American isn’t that far away from being said person in need. So if buying a mediocre charity single makes them feel like their participating in some sort of change, raises awareness of a problem, and actually does send some money towards the people who need help, I sure as hell ain’t gonna complain about it.

The song still isn’t that good though.

 

36. Phil Collins – “Don’t Lose My Number”

Goddamn this video is amazing. It’s Phil playing to his strengths, and knows that Phil is a goofy lweirdo who never should’ve found success as a popstar but somehow did. I mean, look at him. In an era of clean cut pop stars (Huey Lewis, Robert Palmer, Bryan Adams) he made even them look rough around the edges and dangerous. Phil Collins is a little bald dweeb. He knows he’s a little bald dweeb. And his best videos played into the fact that he knew he was a little bald dweeb.

This video is a bit all over the place, spoofing not only other music videos, but films as well. The film parodies are a little pointless, but the digs at other music videos are downright hilarious. Phil Collins aping David Lee Roth is comedy gold, and Phil’s take at copying the somber tone of “Every Breath You Take,” for a song as gloriously stupid as this, is also great. Phil was so great at not taking himself seriously, that it probably helped to deflate any criticism against him at the time. Call his songs superfluous and light and he’d be right there with you in agreement. This song isn’t just superfluous, it’s literally meaningless. The lyrics literally mean nothing. Phil apparently improved most of them. That checks out. They sound like nothing. Glorious, wonderful, amazing nothing. I could eat this nothing all day.

 

35: Corey Hart – “Never Surrender”

Ah, Corey Hart. Everyone’s third favorite Corey. Canada’s answer to Bryan Adams. A Rorschach test of a pop star. He’s a 1980s Canadian male version of Katy Perry. He’s whatever you the song calls for him to be. In “Sunglasses At Night” he’s a (cute) tough guy. A (cute) dangerous man who wears his sunglasses at night because he’s after you and doesn’t want you to know. He’s the (cute) bad boy that mama warned you about. In “Never Surrender” he’s your (cute) dependable friend whose there for you as you struggle with depression and the anxiety of being a teenager in this confusing go-go 80s world. Don’t give up, Corey is here in his leather jacket and too tight blue jeans to be a (cute) shoulder to cry on.

If there’s a Canadian rip-off of Rocky out there, this is used in the montage.

I love this song by the way it’s great.

 

34. Tears For Fears – “Head Over Heels”

This song is a classic, isn’t it? When was it assigned classic status? Was it because of Donnie Darko, or did everyone always know that this song was goddamn incredible?

Tears For Fears were a weird pop band. If it wasn’t for Phil Collins, they’d be the least rock star looking rock stars on the list. These dudes look like they’re about to sell you an Alligator shirt, not belt out goth-tinged synthpop break-up songs.

In the three videos they have on this list, they look the dorkiest in this one, probably because the video around it is just as dorky. There’s a fucking monkey for Christ’s sake. One of the dude’s is in a getup that would get him kicked out of Revenge Of The Nerds for being too nerdy. The keyboardist looks like the love child of Joey and Jesse from Full House. And then what the hell is up with that last shot? Was the whole video a flashback or something? A dream sequence?

The 80s. Don’t ask questions.

 

33. John Fogerty – “The Old Man Down The Road”

Of the three single from Fogery’s comeback smash Centerfield, this is the best. “Rock and Roll Girls” is vaguely gross tries to hard to sound like a song from the 60s, while the album’s title track is just the worst kind of boomer bullshit pandering imaginable.

“The Old Man Down The Road,” on the other hand, has all the qualities that made great CCR songs sound great (so much so that he was sued for sounding too much like CCR – he won). It has that timeless factor that the best CCR songs have. It’s slightly weird but still accessible. It has a good groove. Fogerty’s whelp is one step away from a full-on yodel but it fits. The video is great too, fantastic use of a faux-one take shot that follows a wire through several different vignettes until you arrive at its destination to realize that it’s plugged into Fogerty’s guitar and he’s just ROCKING OUT in the middle of the road.

Wait is John Fogerty the titular Old Man? Damn I just got that.

 

32: The Firm – “Radioactive”

The Firm are so forgotten that if someone made a list of the most forgotten bands of the 80s, they would forget to put The Firm on there. No one has thought about The Firm since 1986, including everyone in the band. I’ve thought more about The Firm in these past five minutes than Jimmy Page has thought about them in 35 years.

This was Jimmy Page’s follow-up to Led Zeppelin! And Paul Rodgers of Bad Company was with him! Paul Rodgers is a good singer and an underrated songwriter. Page is obviously one of the greatest guitar players of all time. They should’ve been able to put something of note together.

But nope, they went the route of Asia and the equally forgotten supergroup GTR, and they stifled all their creative impulses and virtuoso abilities to instead create the blandest, most radio friendly pop rock that 1985 had to offer. The only thing that makes this song stand out in the least is Jimmy’s guitar, but that’s not a good thing. That dissonant riff makes it sound like he traded his horsehair violin bow for horseshit. Ugh. As far as the video, another bland performance piece that isn’t even worth mention aside from the fact that the bass player looks like the bastard cousin of the dude from Flock Of Seagulls.

The Firm would release another album. Literally no one has ever heard or bought it and you cannot convince me otherwise.

 

31. Foreigner – “I Want To Know What Love Is”

I love how ambitious this video is. It’s so ambitious that it has THREE interwoven narratives. There’s the footage of the band in the studio, struggling to put the song together. There’s shadowy footage of an impossibly attractive woman looking sad whilst posing in front of Venetian blinds. And then there are seemingly countless slow-motion shows of various African-American people living various working class lives.

But then it all comes together! The unrelated people are actually part of a choir, and they meet Foreigner to sing the chorus on this song, and they’re all singing it to the pretty girl who was all sad in Venetian blinds shadows.

And then she hugs him, because even with a full church choir and all the emotion that dead-eyed Lou Gramm could muster, this is such a sexless love ballad that the strongest emotional response it can trigger is chaste hug you’d give your grandmother.

 

30. Eric Clapton – “Forever Man”

Yet another formerly great 70s rock icon showing up on the list. “Forever Man” is no one’s favorite Clapton song, but it’s catchy, strikes a good balance between the blues and more commercial 80s rock, and has a halfway decent guitar solo. And its certainly better than the contribution on this list by his fellow former Yardbird. Another horribly boring performance video though, Clapton is so lifeless here that he’s upstaged by his coat.

This was Clapton dipping his toe in the 80s sound, he’d dive right in with his next album, and save his career, drop probably his best solo song of the decade, and never be worth a damn ever again.