Sheena Easton - "Modern Girl"

(Debuted May 9, 1981, Peaked #18, 18 Weeks on the Chart)

"Modern Girl" had two different chart histories. In the U.K., it was Sheena Easton's first single and was issued as she was set to appear on the BBC program The Big Time. The show eventually helped push the single (as well as her followup single "9 to 5") into the Top 5. In the U.S., it was the followup single, as "9 to 5" -- retitled "Morning Train (9 to 5)" in the states to avoid confusion with Dolly Parton's hit -- was Easton's first Stateside hit.

"Modern Girl" is something of an updated version of a feminist anthem like "I Am Woman." This time, however, she's not saying she's as good or can do anything better; instead, she's living life on her own terms and doing her own thing. If she wants to just sit around her house after a long day at work and watching TV, that's okay. It's exactly what men have been doing for years.

Devo - "Working in the Coal Mine"

(Debuted September 5, 1981, Peaked #43, 12 Weeks on the Chart)

"Working in the Coal Mine" has been recorded several times since 1966, when it was first performed by Lee Dorsey. That version went to #8 on the pop chart and is undoubtedly the best-known version of the song. When Devo recorded it in 1981, it was kept off the LP New Traditionalists by their record label, so leader Mark Mothersbaugh let it be included on the soundtrack of the animated film Heavy Metal, where it was part of the final segment "Taarna." Interestingly, it would be the only charting single from the soundtrack, despite the presence of several big-name artists.

The song was written by Allen Toussaint, a New Orleans native who'd been writing, recording and producing since the 1950s. His influence has long been felt in the music business, even if it hadn't been overt. "Working in the Coal Mine" appeared shortly after he had done a two-year hitch in the Army, which might have helped inspire the song. There weren't that many coal mines to be found in the Mississippi delta area where he grew up.

Devo's version of the song is a radical reworking that strips the New Orleans-flavored rhythm and reworks it to fit the group's brand of post-modern electronic wizardry. They were able to bring what had been a familiar song into a new decade and put their own unique stamp on a relatively "old" standard.

Extra - Whitney Houston - "All At Once"

This really isn't news now, but Whitney Houston passed away last weekend. As one of the biggest acts of the 1980s, she scored seven #1 pop singles (consecutively) and a pair of #1 LPs before the decade was over. She also scored three #1 R&B hits, seven #1 adult contemporary singles and three #1 dance hits on the Billboard charts.
Just like what happened when Michael Jackson died, the news tilted pretty heavily towards the negative aspects of her life. Here at 80s Music Mayhem, we prefer to simply focus on the music and let an artist's body of work speak to their life. Whitney leaves behind a family who misses her dearly, and fans who debate her place in music history. She was already featured in this blog last summer, in a post that spotlighted her debut single, a duet with Teddy Pendergrass that is much more poignant now that both of them have left us far too soon.

While Whitney was running her string of seven straight #1 singles, today's featured song showed up on MOR-leaning and R&B radio stations during the Summer of 1986 but was never officially released as a single and didn't make the Billboard chart as a result. I never understood why, as "All At Once" is probably one of her best performances on an album that features many of them. It was written by Jeffrey Osbourne, with producer Michael Masser handling the arrangement; however, Whitney takes the words and makes them her own. And now that her voice has been silenced, the performance has taken on an entirely different (and bittersweet) meaning.

For more on Whitney's career that doesn't focus on the negative aspects, check out JB's post from The Hits Keep On Coming or this post from Any Major Dude With Half a Heart that has a number of tunes by other artists that were later performed by Whitney (reverse "covers," if you will).

Tom Johnston - "Savannah Nights"

(Not Available on iTunes)

(Debuted November 17, 1979, Peaked #34, 11 Weeks on the Chart)

After being sidelined from The Doobie Brothers due to some medical issues, Tom Johnston was ready to get out and record again. He had become very ill in 1975 and was only able to contribute sporadically to the group's albums before leaving in 1977. He recorded his first solo album Everything You've Heard is True in 1979, and "Savannah Nights" was his first single.

While it came out late in 1979, it was shortly after the disco backlash. Yet here was one of the Doobie Brothers -- one who wasn't part of "What a Fool Believes," for Pete's sake -- doing a record that may not have been totally disco but certainly had a dance groove in it. There may have been a guitar solo in the record, but the clavinet laying down a funky groove wasn't fooling anybody.

Despite having a dance beat, the video was part of the rotation that played on MTV during its first day of programming in 1981. It's not exactly what the channel would be remembered for playing; they used anything they had during those first few months on the air.

Boz Scaggs - "Look What You've Done to Me"

(Debuted August 23, 1980, Peaked #14, 17 Weeks on the Chart)

The film Urban Cowboy is one of my guilty pleasures. It's one of those movies where I'll watch it if I find it on TV no matter how deep into the story it's gotten. The soundtrack was a runaway success on the pop charts as well, sending six hit singles and helping to kick-start a country music trend that brought some of Nashville's hitmakers onto the pop charts for a few years. That said, the "Countrypolitan" style was well in effect by 1980 and two of those hits aren't really what would have been counted as "country" music by any stretch of the imagination at the time. One of those hits was Joe Walsh's "All Night Long" and the other was Box Scaggs' "Look What You've Done to Me."

According to legend, the song was written and hastily recorded in one night to provide a musical backdrop to a scene that was going to be filmed the next day. The scene featured Bud (John Travolta's character) taking up with another woman for the evening to get back at his on-again/off-again wife Sissy (played by Debra Winger).

Urban Cowboy's music was coordinated by Irving Azoff, who had been managing The Eagles. For "Look What You've Done to Me," his superstar clients were put to use as backup musicians. For the version used below, the members of The Eagles provide the backing music as well as the backing vocals; in the movie and on the soundtrack, the song features female backup singers instead.

Kenny Rogers - "Coward of the County"

(Debuted November 17, 1979, Peaked #3, 18 Weeks on the Chart)

Some critics like to ridicule country music because of its sometimes predicable subject matter: songs about the simple life, "God and mama" songs, even songs about getting drunk and committing adultery. Well, here's a song that had a prison death, a triple rape and three guys getting the stuffing beat out of them in a barroom. Somehow, a song with such implicit sex and gratuitous violence in it still managed to hit #3 and become a crossover hit without corrupting the impressionable youth of America, nor was it even brought up a few years later when the PMRC took their crusade about what they deemed "filthy" song lyrics to Capitol Hill.

Perhaps I oversimplify the song. The triple rape is implied (though it's hard to think of much else, given the lyrics), the barroom beatdown is casually mentioned, and Kenny Rogers really doesn't say what made Tommy's father die in prison but it was likely an execution. However, even though he rambles his way through the song, the story has some rather dark elements in it. And none of that could stop it from becoming a huge hit, thanks to Rogers being at his peak of popularity at the time.

In addition to reaching #3 on the pop chart, "Coward of the County" was the first new #1 single of the new decade on Billboard's country chart. It also hit #1 in the U.K. in February '80, which makes the last U.S. country single to date to reach the top there.

Rupert Holmes - "Answering Machine"

(Debuted May 3, 1980, Peaked #32, 10 Weeks on the Chart)

Today is Valentine's Day, so here's a song that is twist on the usual love song using a conversation that played out over a pair of answering machines. Since there was a 30-second recording time on the tapes used in those days, that limitation was incorporated into the lyrics for a comical effect.

It's odd that Rupert Holmes is sometimes pegged as a One-Hit wonder for the #1 single "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)," because that ignores the fact that he scored two more Top 40 hits after that from the same LP, Partners in Crime.  All three singles were noted for their humorous take on life and love (though the #1 hit was a little too much for some listeners). In a perfect world, he'd have gathered more hits after "Answering Machine," but it would be his last appearance as a singer in the Top 40.

Pat Benatar - "You Better Run"

(Debuted July 26, 1980, Peaked #42, 11 Weeks on the Chart)

When MTV began life on August 1, 1981, the first video they played was The Buggles' prophetic "Video Killed the Radio Star." Since that was a hit in 1979, it falls outside of the time frame to be included in this blog. The second video shown by the fledgling network was Pat Benatar's "You Better Run," a song that had peaked outside the Top 40 the previous summer.

"You Better Run" was a track from Benatar's best-selling LP Crimes of Passion. Although her next album Precious Time would become her only #1 album, it's worth pointing out that Crimes of Passion was kept at #2 behind John Lennon's Double Fantasy; were it not for the actions of Mark David Chapman, it would have likely topped the LP chart. While the songs on the set had an odd flow (for instance, "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" was followed by the anti-child abuse "Hell is For Children"), it was a great guitar-driven album in a sea of synthesized pop.

While many of us who grew up in the 1980s associate the song with Benatar, "You Better Run" was an early song by The Young Rascals that had been originally released in 1966. It was written by group members Felix Cavaliere and Eddie Brigatti and ironically featured keyboards, which didn't fit with Benatar's image at the time she recorded it. However, her rendition helped establish her as a sassy, hard-edged performer and the video's inclusion in MTV's early days cemented her image even without getting the song into the Top 40.

10,000 Maniacs - "Trouble Me"

(Debuted June 17, 1989, Peaked #44, 12 Weeks on the chart)

By 1989, I had stopped listening to Top 40 radio for the most part. That summer I was 16 and about to start my senior year of high school, and found the constant dance beat and the repetition of the same 15-20 songs to be too grating. So, I played around with my radio dial and watched shows like 120 Minutes and Post Modern when I watched MTV. As a result, there are several songs from that era of my life that are very familiar to me that weren't Top 40 hits, including this one from 10,000 Maniacs.

I featured another song by 10,000 Maniacs in this blog back in July, but "Trouble Me" was a little different from their previous hit because it wasn't trying to expose some type of social problem. Instead, Natalie Merchant's vocal was saying, "talk to me." Whether the subject is good or bad, there's nothing that can't be discussed. It's a piece of advice that I should have listened to a little more closely, since there are people from that time who are no longer around that I would love to get the chance to speak with today.

Soul II Soul - "Back To Life"

(Debuted September 23, 1989, Peaked #4, 27 Weeks on the chart)

As the 1980s came to a close, R&B acts from England were often able to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the home-grown acts from the United States. Many fans might not think of British artists as big R&B acts, but it should be pointed out that much of the excitement that marked the British Invasion of the 1960s was the fact that the music was heavily influenced by R&B music. Even after that, the Northern Soul movement was big during the 1960s and '70s and remained ingrained in the minds of fans for years afterward. By the late 1980s, there were British R&B fans who were much more knowledgeable about the style than many American fans.

Soul II Soul was a London-based combo that consisted of the DJ Jazzie B and a revolving roster of musicians (notably Caron Wheeler, whose vocals grace "Back To Life" as well as the earlier hit "Keep On Movin'"). Their biggest American pop hit was "Back To Life," which went to #4 on the pop chart and topped the R&B chart. It was also #1 for four weeks in their native U.K. It was a new twist on the R&B style, as well as a tip of the hat to the past.