It’s the week of July 17, 1993, and apparently a very dire time for popular music.
In the #1 spot is ‘Weak,’ the tepid R&B song I featured three weeks ago when it was perched at #2.
And in the second slot is UB40’s take on the Elvis Presley classic ‘(I Can’t Help) Falling in Love with You,’ breaking my streak of 5,495 Songs of the Day without an appearance by the British reggae band. That’s a shame.
Throwing back to the week of July 16, 1983, we find The Police’s ‘Every Breath You Take’ in the #1 spot for the second straight week. As I featured that classic 14 years ago, I’m skipping it today to focus on that week’s #2 song.
In the second spot is the lone U.S. top ten hit by Guyanese-British artist Eddy Grant: ‘Electric Avenue.’ The reggae-tinged rock song spent five weeks at #2, held off from the top spot first by Irene Cara’s ‘Flashdance… What a Feeling‘ and then by the aforementioned ‘Every Breath You Take.’
The British New Wave duo Eurythmics has been eligible for Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inclusion since 2007, and were nominated once before in 2018 before making the cut in 2022.
Lead singer Annie Lennox and multi-instrumentalist/producer Dave Stewart co-wrote and recorded a string of innovative hits and released eight studio albums over a decade. They were truly an 80s band, debuting in 1981 and calling it quits in 1989 (they reunited ten years later for one more album).
Eminem was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility, becoming the sixth rapper to make it on his first ballot (Missy Elliott became the seventh, and first woman, a year later).
Once you have accepted that the functional definition of “rock & roll” refers not to a specific style of music popularized in the 1950s but rather all of the elements that led to and sprung from that music — and that the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame rightly celebrates musicians in such genres as jazz, soul, disco, R&B, pop, and rap — Eminem’s inclusion is a no-brainer.
Only the “rap isn’t rock” purists could begin to argue otherwise.
Seven performers were inducted into the 2022 class of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Alphabetically, the first of them was 80s New Wave sensation Duran Duran.
The English quintet was the best-selling band from the “Second British Invasion,” which found synth-driven pop acts delivering songs that would come to define the sound of 80s music. That sound was derided by many critics at the time, but has come to be much appreciated (and copied) in recent decades. They have been eligible for the Rock Hall since 2007 but went un-nominated until last year.
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