45 REVELATIONS

If singles are your prime musical consideration, as they are mine, 1985 was a good year for them. In fact, if you’re considering only hit singles, as I try to do when I’m not raving about obscure British imports, flexidiscs you can find only inside fanzines with circulations under 29, and independent releases from New Zealand, 1985 was a real good year.

April 1, 1986

KEN BARNES

Archive Issues 1986 April 1986

The CREEM Archive presents the magazine as originally created. Digital text has been scanned from its original print format and may contain formatting quirks and inconsistencies.

45 REVELATIONS

KEN BARNES

Using the Contemporary Hit Radio (Top 40) chart as a context, since it is the best context for singles (even though it rules out a ton of the Black/Urban and Country radio hits I went for this year), Artist of the Year honors would be fought over by four performers: Bryan Adams, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, and Phil Collins. And that’s not a bad group.

Springsteen was working on his fifth Top 20 hit of the year, "My Hometown,” as 1985 closed, and his range was truly impressive—from the nostalgic bluster with a hollow heart of "Glory Days” to the folky intensity of "I’m On Fire,” which sounded like nothing else on the radio. Collins’s four hits comprised three #1’s and a #2, and while there was a cloying effect, "Sussudio” was an effective white funker that won Black/Urban radio respect and "One More Night” was kind of pretty.

Adams rolled out six hits in ’85, and while none was a suitable subject for a graduate thesis, they were skillfully, crafted, energetically performed, and most important sounded great on the air. Madonna scored six hits of her own (not counting Jellybean’s modestly pleasant "Sidewalk Talk,” which she wrote and sings on), and if you’ve been reading this column at all since its CREEM debut, you know that’s just fine with me. Five of her hits went Top 5 (the other one, "Into The Groove,” missed by one poiht, largely because it was available on 12-inch only and had entered the Top 40 before it was even available on record).

Actually, I was kind of concerned about Madonna after enduring the tail end of "Like A Virgin’”s run at the start of the year (and growing quite tired of it); suffering through "Material Girl,” easily her most irritating effort; and putting up with the rather bland and thin balladeering of "Crazy For You.” But she wrapped up the year in great form with three exuberant, joyful records. However tarnished her visual image, on record Madonna projects a kind of giddy innocence that sets up an attractive paradox with her sometimes-steamy lyrics: "Dress You Up,” with its delicate bells and winsome melody, sounds like a fashion show for the Cabbage Patch set; on "Angel” she sounds unable to believe her good fortune; and "Into The Groove” is the most ecstatic celebration of the year—irresistible is one of my over-used adjectives, but this is the record it was made for.

And that’s just the Big Four. What’s not to like about a year which saw pop breakthroughs for the likes of Katrina & The Waves, Paul Young, Teena Marie, and (to a limited extent) Kate Bush; that brought comebacks for John Fogerty, Aretha Franklin, Dire Straits, and at year’s end, of all people, James Brown. (You had to wonder if James would ever have another hit on Black radio, let alone CHR.) Warhorses like Don Henley and Qlenn Frey made the best records careers ("Boys Of Summer” and "Smuggler’s Blues”), Kool & The \9R Gang stayed fresh, Heart hit new heights with the niftily-modernsounding "Never," and Rick James had two Top 10 hits, even if Eddie Murphy and the Mary Jane Qirls got the billing. The Commodores and Diana Ross hit with tasteful tributes to Marvin Gaye, and I especially liked the former group saluting Jackie Wilson as well. And records with a cause ("We Are The World,” "Do They Know It’s Christmas,” "Dancing In The Street”) served their charitable purposes well, even if the best of them ("Sun City”) didn’t hit the Top 40.

The overall sound of singles on the radio was interesting.-ln the course of my real job (the one that brings in money) I had occasion to analyze the year’s hits by musical style, and I was surprised. For one thing, I had no idea that over 40 percent of the top pop hits (Top 15 or better) were R&B/dance/ funk records (whether by black artists or whites working the same territory). That’s actually no real change from 1984, but five years ago the percentage was only 25 percent—a revolutionary change.

Rock—the straightforward, mainstream variety that critics (especially the British brand) hate and American music fans adore—is also making a comeback on CHR: 19 percent of the hits this year compared to just 9 percent in 1980. The other 40 percent is made up of ballads (including the new substratum of "power ballads,” ballads with noisy guitar breaks and power chords which many hard rock groups have found indispensable in cracking pop radio) and pop (a catch-all category including synth/pop— modern upbeat pop without a dance/R&B emphasis, A-Ha as opposed to Frankie Goes To Hollywood—and straight or traditional pop, Billy Joel and suchlike), both of which have declined in the last half-decade. (Ballads, however, seem to be on the rise again, an ominous sign for radio’s future vitality.)

Even though I am, by general acclamation, the rock world’s most pollyannaish commentator, I can’t say it was a great year all around. It’s frustrating to see hundreds of records I like immensely get the cold shoulder from radio. (I still can’t get over Rosanne Cash not crossing over out of country.) The PMRC rock lyrics furor was distasteful, especially the industry’s rather squalid cave-in. There are still a good number of otherwise rational people who believe video is an art form, or that it breaks hit records. And a lot of the British synth/funk records that inflated the dance music quotient of this year’s Top 15 hits to 40 percent-plus are becoming awfully tiresome and making the entire format sound depressingly disjointed.

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But it was a fine year for singles nonetheless, as confirmed by one of my surefire indicators. When I started pulling this column together, my first idea (after I got past the initial stage, which invariably involves staring blankly at a similarly empty piece of paper for upward of three hours) was to compile my Top 85 records of ’85, the same format I used last year. But after a half hour of jotting down faves, I had over 120 without even gettihg into the independent/foreign material that didn’t show up on the charts. It was then that I decided a general review would be more humane.

I did, however, throw together a haphazard personal Top 20 of sorts. (If I did it again now, three days later, I’d change most of the positions and probably about half the records, so take it with a pillar of salt.) Here goes:

1. “Don’t Come Around Here No More”— Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

2. “I Don’t Know Why You Don’t Want Me”—Rosanne Cash

3. “Into The Groove”—Madonna

4. ‘Closer To the Heart”—Clannad

5. “Cloudbusting”—Kate Bush

6. “Rebels”—Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

7. “I Fell In Love Again Last Night”— Forester Sisters

8. “Black Kisses (Never Make You Blue)”—Curtie & The Boombox

9. “Why Not Me”—The Judds

10. “This Time”—INXS

11. “New Millionaires”—Latin Quarter

12. “Driver 8”—R.E.M.