Stream a list like this or just…look at it. Take in the hit songs from the year when you were the age that your children are now to understand something deep and wordless about their inner lives. About music and the inner life in general. This is eleven years old for me:
Top Songs of 1980, from Bob Borst’s Home of Pop Culture and Web Development
Deborah Harry, Lipps, Inc.’s “Funkytown”. When these songs were on the radio—and they were all the time—I’m sure I acted like “This is silly”. This is gooey. Kim Carnes? “Bette Davis Eyes” 1?? They were silly. They sound even sillier now, in fact, our aural standards being what they are, the state of recording and producing being now what it is. They can sound a little tinny. Innocent, but not in a good way.
But they didn’t then! Just seeing these song titles and remembering what music was doing to me then, how exciting and lush and limitless and powerful it was. It’s so funny, because this particular magic circuit was completed by some shit little clock radio in my room. But I would weep about these songs! I would fling myself on the bed. I would karate kick my full-length mirror to the opening riff of J Geils band’s 1982 hit “Centerfold”, to the B-section of Billy Joel’s 1980’s “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me.”
As you get older you can get sort of walled off from your own experience and the experiences of others, maybe especially your kids. Like you know better, or feel more. For me, Olivia Newton John and Captain Tennille are great teachers, their songs instruments of empathy.
1 | Blondie | Call Me |
2 | Pink Floyd | Another Brick In The Wall |
3 | Olivia Newton-John | Magic |
4 | Michael Jackson | Rock With You |
5 | Captain and Tennille | Do That To Me One More Time |
6 | Queen | Crazy Little Thing Called Love |
7 | Paul McCartney | Coming Up |
8 | Lipps, Inc. | Funkytown |
9 | Billy Joel | It’s Still Rock And Roll To Me |
10 | Bette Midler | The Rose |
11 | Rupert Holmes | Escape (The Pina Colada Song) |
12 | Gary Numan | Cars |
Notes:
- I’m ranging around a bit in the years now, to 1982, when I was thirteen, which is maybe a different thing, and maybe a very different thing, using the little arrow buttons in the pop chart site above ↩