Throwing back to the week of June 4, 1983, we find Irene Cara on top of the Billboard Hot 100 with her soundtrack smash ‘Flashdance… What a Feeling.’
Watching clips from Adrian Lyne’s Flashdance, I’m reminded of the crush I had on lead actress Jennifer Beals at the time. I assume I caught up with the film on video, because I don’t think I saw the R-rated film in theaters as an 11-year-old.
Today we throw back 40 years to the week of May 14, 1983, when a song called ‘Beat It’ by little-known pop singer Michael Jackson topped the Billboard Hot 100.
I was surprised to see I hadn’t featured ‘Beat It’ on the blog through 5,432 Songs of the Day. The closest I’ve come is a Random Weekend feature of ‘Beat It 2008,’ a bonus track on the 25th anniversary re-release of Thriller that remixed the song and added vocals by Fergie. Exhibit A of why Throwback Weekends are already better than Random Weekends.
It’s week two of Throwback Weekends, and rather than go into all the parameters again I’ll just dive in to the music (you can read the guidelines for these weekends on last week’s post if you’d like).
Today we’re throwing back to the week of April 23, 1983, when English pop band Dexys Midnight Runners topped the Billboard Hot 100 with ‘Come On Eileen.’ This is a classic one-hit wonder in the States, though the band had a decent number of hits in their home country.
