The Music of My Life – 1981

Welcome back to The Music of My Life, where I feature ten songs from each year of my life.  In most cases, the ten songs I choose will be ones I like personally (unless I explain otherwise). The songs will be selected from Billboard’s Year-end Hot 100 Chart, Acclaimed Music, and will all be released in the featured year.

In 1981 there were two things that influenced me musically. First of all, I discovered American Top 40 with Casey Kasem. My dad had it the radio on one day while he was washing the cars and doing yard work. It was my first exposure to a countdown show. As a matter of fact, as I looked over the list of possible songs for my list, there were plenty of songs that I remember hearing for the first time on AT40. Some of those that are not on my list are: Start Me Up, Centerfold, Waiting for a Girl Like You, Elvira, Bette Davis Eyes, Hearts, Physical, and so many others!

The second thing that not only influenced me musically, but everyone else in the country, was the birth of MTV in August of 1981. This changed the way people listened to music. Some of those 80’s music videos are forever etched in my mind. I loved the creativity of many of those videos. In many cases, the videos helped with the popularity of songs and how much airplay they got on the radio. Perhaps you’ll remember the videos from some of the songs on my list?

Here we go ….

My dad played guitar in a wedding band for many years. Often, my brother and I would have to go to band practice with him. It was there that I recall being introduced to some of the current songs. One of them was Just The Two of Us by Grover Washington Jr. and Bill Withers. I can remember the distinct mystical sounding keyboard part at the beginning from my dad’s band and being wowed at how it sounded exactly like the record.

Grover Washington, Jr. wrote this with his musical partner Bill Salter before Withers added to the lyrics. It was produced by Ralph MacDonald, a percussionist who played on many of Washington’s tracks. MacDonald was friends with Withers and made the connection. Bill said in an interview with songfacts:

“I’m a little snobbish about words, so they sent me this song and said, ‘We want to do this with Grover, would you consider singing it?’ I said, ‘Yeah, if you’ll let me go in and try to dress these words up a little bit.’ Everybody that knows me is kind of used to me that way. I probably threw in the stuff like the crystal raindrops. The ‘Just The Two Of Us’ thing was already written. It was trying to put a tuxedo on it. I didn’t like what was said leading up to ‘Just The Two Of Us.'”

The song reached number 2 on the charts, but never made it to number 1. It was kept from that spot by Sheena Easton’s Morning Train (9 to 5) and Kim Carnes’ Bette Davis Eyes. The song did win a Grammy award for Best R&B Song. It would be Grover Washington Jr’s only Top 40 hit.

Just The Two of Us

I’ve told this story before, but it is why the next song is here. I remember my dad throwing the 45 of The Breakup Song on the turntable and playing the intro over and over. He’d pick on his guitar and work out that intro over a matter of minutes. Once I heard him play it note for note, I was in awe of him.

The Greg Kihn Band had been around for some time. Their album Rockihnroll was their sixth studio album. It celebrates the quality of breakup songs in rock’s earlier times, as the narrator laments both his recent breakup and the fact that they don’t write good breakup songs anymore. The song is perhaps best known by the hook, “They Don’t Write ‘Em Like That Anymore.”

The Breakup Song

I have always loved the Commodores, with and without Lionel Richie.  Lady (You Bring Me Up) was released as the lead single from their album In The Pocket, their last with Lionel Richie in the group. Lionel didn’t write the song, Commodores’ trumpet player William King did. He wrote it with his wife, Shirley, and Harold Hudson, a member of the Commodores’ backing group, The Mean Machine.

In 1981, sexually suggestive songs like “Physical” and “Girls on Film” caused a bit of controversy. Naturally, some disc jockeys poked fun by warning listeners that this was another song with sexually suggestive lyrics: “Lady, you bring me up when I’m down.” In truth, the song is simply a song about a man whose woman gets him through life’s difficult times. It went to #8 on the Hot 100 chart.

Lady

It wasn’t until years later that I found out that Juice Newton wasn’t the first one to sing Queen of Hearts. It was actually written by Hank DeVito of Emmylou Harris’ band and first recorded in 1979 by rocker Dave Edmunds. His version was big in the UK and Ireland, but didn’t go far anywhere else.

Juice Newton had the biggest success with “Queen of Hearts” after it appeared on her 1981 album, Juice. In September 1981, Newton’s version peaked at #2 on the US charts, having shifted over one million copies. It almost didn’t happen, though. Juice remembers, “I did [‘Queen of Hearts’] live for about a year…Then I brought it to [producer] Richard Landis when we started the Juice album. He wasn’t convinced at that point that it was a breakout song but I told him I think this is a real cool song … so we cut it”.

In 1982, the song was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance. Dave Edmunds told Creem Newton stole his composition: “She did pinch my arrangement, note for note, but I’m not angry with that.”

Queen of Hearts

Before Foreigner recorded this album 4, two members of the group left, trimming the band from six members to four. This, along with the fact that it was their fourth album, explains the title. My favorite cut on the album has a Motown connection.

Future Mr. Shania Twain, Mutt Lange, produced the album. Lange wanted to hear every music idea guitarist Mick Jones had recorded on tape, no matter how embarrassing. One of these ideas was the opening riff for what would become “Urgent”. “I had the riff starting out,” Jones recalled. “And I said, ‘That’s like an experimental instrumental thing that I’m working on.’ He said, ‘No, it isn’t anymore – let’s take that one, because that’s got a lot of potential.’ There wasn’t even a song with it.”

The group wanted a “Junior Walker-style” sax solo for this record. When they took a break from recording, one of the members read in New York newspaper The Village Voice that Walker was performing that night mere blocks from the recording studio. Walker accepted their offer to play, and the recording of the sax solo was swift and without a hitch.

Urgent

ELO’s TIME is a concept album about a time traveler who visits the year 2095. This song takes place on his return trip in 1981. He is inspired, and now knows that everything he needs he can find back home. “Hold On Tight” was the first single from the album.

By this time, the band was credited as ELO, downplaying the orchestra because they had recently jettisoned their string section. The lead instrument on “Hold On Tight” is piano played by group leader Jeff Lynne, who wrote the song. Billboard called it an “affectionate tip-of-the-hat to ’50s rock ‘n’ roll” that was inspired by the piano playing of Jerry Lee Lewis. That sound is probably why I love this song so much, as well as the uplifting message.

There was an elaborate (for its time) video was made of this song. Wikipedia states that this was the most expensive music video ever made (at the time). Directed by Mike Mansfield, it’s a sendup of sci-fi movie trailers from the 1940, which often blared words on the screen in huge font (AMAZING!, BREATH-TAKING!). Their violinist, Mik Kaminski, had left the group by this time but shows up in the video miming guitar.

The song topped out at number 2 on the Billboard Top Tracks chart.

Hold On Tight

Who can deny a great cover song? Am I right? (I’m talking to you Randy! LOL)

Yep, one of the biggest 80’s hits is actually a cover of a song first recorded in 1964. Ed Cobb of the Four Preps composed the song, and it was first recorded by Gloria Jones. (Fun Fact: Glen Campbell was a studio musician and played guitar on that version!) Her version was actually the B-side of her single, “My Bad Boy’s Comin’ Home.”

In 1973, British club DJ Richard Searling purchased a copy of the almost decade-old single while on a trip to the United States. The track’s Motown-influenced sound (featuring a fast tempo, horns, electric rhythm guitar and female backing vocals) fit in perfectly with the music favored by those involved in the UK’s Northern soul club scene of the early 1970s.

In the book 1000 UK #1 Hits by Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh, Soft Cell’s Marc Almond called this song “A mixture of cold electronics with an over-passionate, over-exuberant, slightly out of key vocal.” Almond recalls, “Dave (Ball) introduced me to the record and I loved it so much and we wanted an interesting song for a encore number in our show. Dave loved northern soul and it was a novelty to have an electronic synthesizer band doing a soul song. When we signed with our record company, they wanted to record it. They told us to put bass, guitar and drums on it as they said it was too odd. They put it out anyway and the next thing it was gathering radio play and then it was #1. I was fascinated that it was originally by Gloria Jones, the girlfriend of Marc Bolan and I’d always been a T-Rex fan.”

Marc Almond’s vocal is the first take he recorded. That take was actually a run-through so they could tweak the settings, but it had just the right emotion, so that was the one they used. Obviously it was the right take because even Gloria Jones liked it. She said that she considers the Soft Cell version to be the best one. “I loved the emotion in his voice,” she said. “Their version was far better than mine.”

Tainted Love

Here is another song with a Dave Edmunds connection. Tempted was the second single off Squeeze’s East Side Story album. It was written by Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook. Chris wrote the lyric while the band was taking a taxi to Heathrow Airport. The descriptions of the city and airport sights are interspersed with the narrator’s ruminations on a relationship that is failing, or has failed, due to his own infidelities. As he recalled,

The original story behind “Tempted” is we’re going on another American tour. I got on a taxi and I started writing down what I saw lyrically. I don’t know the course of time of how long it took, but then I gave Glenn the lyrics and then Glenn put the music to it. It’s an extraordinary song. It’s one of the most played songs that we have in our catalog.

Unlike most other Squeeze songs, which are sung usually by Tilbrook or Difford, the song’s lead vocal is sung by newly recruited keyboardist Paul Carrack. According to Carrack, this was the result of a suggestion by co-producer Elvis Costello:

They’d actually recorded a version of that song before I was on board. Dave Edmunds produced it, and it was completely different. The song was in the can, and we were recording the other songs from East Side Story when we had some downtime and played ‘Tempted’ but in that slow, soulful, Motown groove. Elvis Costello, who was producing, ran in and said, ‘Let’s put this down on tape!’ So, we did, and Elvis said ‘Paul, you should sing it.’

I had never heard the song before, but in 1994, I was driving a lot for my job and this would come on Planet 96.3. I have always loved the opening line of this song, “I bought a toothbrush, some toothpaste, a flannel for my face” I can’t imagine it without the slow bluesy feel.

Tempted

Loverboy’s first single from their Get Lucky album didn’t really burn up the charts, however, years later it would be linked forever to a classic Saturday Night Live sketch.

Working for the Weekend originated when guitarist Paul Dean was out walking one Wednesday afternoon, looking for inspiration in his songwriting. He noticed that much of the area was deserted, as most people were at work. “So I’m out on the beach and wondering, ‘Where is everybody? Well, I guess they’re all waiting for the weekend,'” he later said. Mike Reno, the band’s vocalist, suggested they change the title to “Working for the Weekend”. According to Dean, he first began writing the song in a hotel room following a Montreal concert. At the time, the band were still playing bars to little response from patrons. After completing the song, they used it to open one set, and Dean recalled that “the dance floor was packed”.

The video had a life of it’s own on MTV.  Loverboy lead singer Mike Reno tells about the filming of this video: “We would play the song over and over again, and we’d bounce around like we normally did. Here’s what I thought was kind of interesting: The director would say, ‘OK, we’re going to shoot another song, now go get changed.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘You have to put on a whole new outfit, and we’re going to change the lighting a bit.’ But it was the same stage! So basically, we just had to get some other clothes, fix your hair, take a break, and then jump back on stage and do the same thing over and over again. I really felt like I was being abused a bit, but that’s the nature of the beast.”

On October 27, 1990, Patrick Swayze hosted Saturday Night Live. It was on that show that the famous Chippendale’s Audition sketch debuted. It featured Chris Farley and Swayze auditioning for the final spot in the Chippendale line up. Their audition was done to this song.

Working for the Weekend

“Shake It Up,” was the title track of The Cars’ fourth album. It is hard not to want to dance when you hear it. Some call it a “tailor-made party song.”

It was written by Cars’ frontman Ric Ocasek. It really is an odd song for Ric in that it’s very straightforward, simply encouraging us all to get on the dance floor and boogie like nobody’s watching. Ocasek’s songs were generally far more enigmatic. Years later, Ocasek dismissed the song’s lyrics, saying, “I’m not proud of the lyrics to ‘Shake It Up.'”

This song has some throwback elements, like the “ooo ooo ooo” backing vocals and references to a “quirky jerk” and “night cats” – lingo that was hep in the ’60s when songs about dancing were in vogue. At the same time, “Shake It Up” as a futuristic sound, with synthesizers and drum machines that were part of the new wave.

It was released as the lead single from the album. “Shake It Up” was a big American hit for The Cars, getting them into the Top 10 for the first time as the song reached #4. The song was such a departure from what fans expected that some accused the band of “selling out.” The band, however, insisted they were simply progressing and growing (one point in their defense: they continued to live in Boston instead of relocating to New York or Los Angeles). The jabs came mostly from the UK, where the band got lots of positive press early on but faced the wrath of a finicky press when they released this song about dancing.

Fun Fact: Guitarist Elliot Easton said he wanted his solo to sound like “two guys trading off”. He first plays a Fender Telecaster, in a style skewing country, then midway through the solo switches to a Gibson guitar for a heavier rock sound.

Shake It Up

Finally, a song that has yet another Michigan connection. When Styx was preparing their tenth album, Paradise Theater, guitarist Tommy Shaw, says he was asked to write one more song for the album, which followed the theme of a concert hall rising to prominence and then crumbling. Shaw liked the concept, but was having trouble writing songs that fit. So he just wrote one that didn’t follow the theme – “Too Much Time On My Hands.”

Shaw had a long drive to and from the recording studio, and on one trip, the bassline popped into his head: “dun-dun dun-dun dun-dun-dun-dun.” When he arrived, he quickly had the band record what was in his head so he wouldn’t lose it. He found himself calling out chord changes as they played, which laid the groundwork for the track.

When it came to the lyrics, he drew inspiration from a real bar in Niles, Michigan, where he was living. “I think officially it was called Mark’s Tavern, but everybody called it Mark’s Bar. It was the local watering hole. The drinks were good, and the drinks were cheap. You could go in there with 20 bucks and be a hero, you know – buying rounds of drinks. And you’d always run into somebody you knew in there. That was the basis of the song.”

The song was released in the spring of 1981 and reached its US chart of #9 in May. In August, MTV went on the air, which gave the song new life, since the video was one of the few the network had available from an American rock band, and they played constantly.

Too Much Time On My Hands

Looking back over the list of songs released in 1981, there are so many worth mentioning. Did I miss one of yours?

As I start looking at each year and jotting songs, I have gone from 2 pages to 3 pages of songs to chose from. These 80’s years are probably going to be the toughest to narrow down for me.

Next week, we’ll jump into 1982 and see what 12 year old Keith was liking ….

Thanks for reading!

(Most info was gathered using sources like Wiki, songfacts.com, and artist websites)