Started from the Bottom: Week of 7/11/1987
The bottom of the Hot 100 the week I was born featured some former big smashes, a few forgotten tunes and one scary puppet head.
Like most music enthusiasts, I love the Billboard charts - and like most music writers, I am constantly trying to think of different ways to look at and talk about pop music. In that spirit, I present a regular feature called Started from the Bottom, where I take a look at a random Hot 100 chart's lowest 10 entries. Are they classic hits on the way down? Future favorites just starting their run? Forgotten fun that never reached the highest heights? Come and take a look with me!
Hot 100 date: July 11, 1987
At the top: Heart's thunderous power ballad "Alone" spends its first of three weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100, usurping Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)." Two songs in this top 10 will ring the bell in August: Bob Seger's Beverly Hills Cop II single "Shakedown" and U2's soaring "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"; at No. 9, Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam's "Head to Toe" had already reached the peak. The rest is killer fare for its time: Kenny G, The System and Crowded House. (Also, two days before this chart was dated and printed...I was born.)
The audience in this fake live video - who is never heard - is painfully anemic. A big-haired man's synth is going wild and there's a guy with an eyepatch, and they just seem...too chill.
- Steve Winwood, "The Finer Things" (previously peaked at No. 8)
It's wild to consider that this was the other Top 10 hit from 1986's Back in the High Life, after the totally crushing No. 1 smash "Higher Love." (It was not the gentle title track, which I love a lot more.) I like when Steve's synth burbles the way it does on "While You See a Chance," but the chorus feels like forced pep. Winwood - who, it's worth noting, was 39 years old and essentially about to close his second decade as a rock chart force, which doesn't happen quite the same way today - would enjoy some unforced pep with another Top 10 later this year, when a remix of "Valerie" for a greatest hits compilation helped that song find a greater audience.
This was the fifth Top 5 off True Blue, which is probably a comparatively underrated album. (As an LP, Like a Virgin might be her least of the '80s, compared to the lesser-praised debut and this as well as the tremendous Like a Prayer.)
- Madonna, "La Isla Bonita" (previously peaked at No. 4)
This was one of those Madonna hits that was everywhere on Lite FM when I was a kid, close to a decade since the release of True Blue in 1986. The whole thing is kitschy - Madge steals Latina valor! - but the song is pretty undeniable. I love the busy bass line underneath.
The black and white aesthetic of Into the Fire didn't work for me the way Reckless does. Also, a URL watermark? C'mon, Bry.
- Bryan Adams, "Heat of the Night" (previously peaked at No. 6)
You might be forgiven for not remembering the album Bryan Adams released after 1984's Reckless, a terrific record. Into the Fire can't hang quite as well, but lead single "Heat of the Night" (co-written with longtime songwriting partner Jim Vallance) has some juice, thanks in part to Mickey Curry's monster drums and that vocal lift on the chorus.
Why yes, dawg, that is American Idol judge Randy Jackson playing bass, as he does on most of the Raised on Radio album (but not this one, which is also one of the few tracks on that LP with drummer Steve Smith, who kept time on most of the Perry-fronted albums).
- Journey, "Why Can't This Night Go On Forever" (previously peaked at No. 60)
The final Journey single for nearly a decade before the band's initial disintegration tries to catch the "Faithfully" vibe with limited success until the last third of the song, when Neal Schon lets his guitar rip and Steve Perry - who's had a different vocal attack through most of Raised on Radio - reminds us why he's one of the voices of rock and roll, crazy patterned tuxedo jackets be damned.
The wildest thing about the first Ana album is it was co-written and co-produced by Frank Wildhorn, known for co-writing Whitney Houston's "Where Do Broken Hearts Go" as well as the deathless, divisive musical Jekyll & Hyde
- Ana, "Shy Boys" (chart debut)
Somewhere between Janet Jackson's Control and the freestyle pop of Exposé (whose "Point of No Return" was in the Top 10 this same week), there was Ana, a Cuban-born singer making largely anonymous dance pop. This is as high as Ana would ever get; a second album, featuring writing and production by New Kids on the Block impresario Maurice Starr and Debbie Gibson failed to make a dent, and she later started singing in Spanish under the just-as-difficult-to-Google "Mia."
It's honestly impressive how much mileage the music industry got out of breaking down Prince-style tracks years after he switched things up, and still managed to sound fresh. This is no Jam & Lewis, but it still rips.
- Jody Watley, "Looking for a New Love" (previously peaked at No. 2)
Its previous chart position aside, I don't think it's unfair saying this is the best of this bunch. The ex-Shalamar singer's voice is well suited to this Minneapolis freestyle cut produced by a pair of Prince's pals (André Cymone, a childhood friend and part of The Artist's first live band, and David Z, the brother of Revolution drummer Bobby Z). Whenever something happens on the track, like that "BUHHH-nuh nuh-nuhnuhnuhhhhh" keyboard riff, it's pretty great.
The ultimate sign of being done with this album promo: a video with no band!
- Chicago, "Niagara Falls" (chart debut)
The sticker shock of its new singer having worn off - Jason Scheff, son of Elvis Presley bassist Jerry Scheff, replacing Peter Cetera on vocals and bass - this final single from Chicago 18 was a peppier version of what power ballads "Will You Still Love Me?" (a Top 5 hit and stone classic) and "If She Would Have Been Faithful..." (its Top 20 follow-up) already brought to the table. Jimmy Pankow makes a pleasant cameo on trombone and longtime secret weapon Bill Champlin (who served as a counterpoint to Scheff on nearly all the album's singles) adds some wonderful vocals, but Chicago was already looking toward the next project, and this only got as high as No. 91.
Brothers Dan Gilroy (vocals) and Ed Gilroy (guitar) really loved themselves some hats.
- Breakfast Club, "Kiss and Tell" (chart debut)
Already boasting a big hit (the addictive Top 10 "Right on Track") and a killer backstory (the band had been pounding the pavement since the early '80s, with a then-unknown Madonna as drummer; her replacement, Stephen Bray, was a frequent collaborator of the Queen of Pop), Breakfast Club attempted to make it a double with "Kiss and Tell." This mid-tempo groove with dreamy chorus vocals would make it to No. 48 on the Hot 100, and that was essentially it for the band.
It's kind of a marvel that the rest of the band showed up for this video; Lindsey plays (and sings - I'd know that varispeed "uh" anywhere) nearly everything.
- Fleetwood Mac, "Big Love" (previously peaked at No. 5)
Many of the best '80s Fleetwood Mac songs sound like Lindsey Buckingham having a nervous breakdown in a studio, and this is no different. The best songs on Tango in the Night were almost entirely the late, great Christine McVie's ("Little Lies," "Everywhere," "Mystified"), but L.B. got to cook here with his pile of hair, while Stevie Nicks - trying badly to kick a coke habit - sashays like a NPC version of Stevie Nicks.
Aretha Franklin, "Rock-a-Lott" (previously peaked at No. 82)
Though it can't quite hold a candle to the big hit off The Queen of Soul's 1986 album Aretha (the godlike, chart-topping George Michael duet "I Knew You Were Waiting (for Me)"), the soon-to-drop-off-the-charts "Rock-a-Lott" is a deft groove from Ree's most consistent collaborator of the decade: soul-pop icon Narada Michael Walden, who co-wrote and produced. Of course, all of that kind of takes a backseat to the video, which looks like Claymation in the thumbnail but is really some sort of devilish puppetry that makes "Land of Confusion" look tame. (Would you believe me if I told you it wasn't the scariest fake head version of a musical icon in the last 12 months?) That would be enough on its own, but then you get cameo after wait, was that just...? cameo: Rodney Dangerfield! Tony Bennett! Whodini doing the Ghanian coffin dance? Fucking Luke Skywalker?! Who directed this, Stefon?