The week of June 30, 1984, belonged to New Wave band Duran Duran, whose ‘The Reflex’ gave them their first #1 hit in the U.S. I would have guessed that honor belonged to ‘Hungry Like the Wolf,’ but that song peaked at #3 a couple of years earlier.
Fans have speculated about the meaning of ‘The Reflex’ since it was released, with popular theories suggesting it is about gambling, addiction, or ejaculation. Simon Le Bon has never clarified one way or the other.
The week of June 9, 1984, saw Cyndi Lauper atop the Billboard Hot 100 with ‘Time After Time,’ a song I have already featured on the blog.
Falling to #2 after owning the top spot the week before was Deniece Williams’ ‘Let’s Hear it for the Boy’ from the Footloose soundtrack. This was the fourth single from that soundtrack and the second to reach #1, following Kenny Loggins’ title track.
Throwing back to the week of May 19, 1984, we find Lionel Richie’s cheesy ballad ‘Hello,’ which topped the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks.
This was the second song from the hit album Can’t Slow Down to reach the top spot, following ‘All Night Long (All Night).’ The album’s three other singles all reached the top ten, on the way to making this one of the top-selling albums of the 80s.
Forty years ago today, Phil Collins’ power ballad ‘Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)’ reached #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 for the first of three weeks. The song was written for the Taylor Hackford film Against All Odds, and is probably the most memorable thing about it.
Collins was nominated for the Best Song Oscar for this song, the first of three career nominations. He would eventually win for his work on 2000’s animated Tarzan, but he lost this one to Stevie Wonder’s ‘I Just Called to Say I Love You.’
Footloose (1984) is one of the great soundtrack movies, a kind of film we were treated to far more often in the 80s. Think Top Gun, Flashdance, Dirty Dancing, and any number of John Hughes movies.
Six of this soundtrack’s nine songs reached Billboard’s Top 40, and three reached the top ten. Of those, two made it to #1 — Deniece Williams’ ‘Let’s Hear it for the Boy’ and the title track by Kenny Loggins, today’s featured Throwback Weekend song.
Meet Me In Montauk 