What was the first number one of the 1980s?
The evolution of the decades is a fascinating thing. Looking back in hindsight, culture changing feels like a wheel rolling, carrying us from the twee early 1960s rock and roll, into the more psychedelic stuff when the drugs got heavier, into punk when the drugs started to get dark. But then, in a lot of ways, the 1980s feel like a wall that everything crashed into.
Through the ‘60s and ‘70s, things made sense. The aesthetics and styles don’t change all that radically, as even the subcultures like punk and the beginnings of metal and heavier rock feel to fit. But then, the 1980s were something different as the glam rock of before became more pristine, MTV popped up to make everything glossier, and suddenly, it was all neon and leg-warmers.
In certain sections, things stayed the same, or at least tried to as rock and roll tried to hold on. But even Mick Jagger’s style changed with the era, and David Bowie wiped off the makeup to settle into the suit-wearing commercial hit of ‘Let’s Dance’.
The Sex Pistols had already broken up, and the old CBGB crowd had packed up and left, leaving the venue to fall into disarray with a new thrasher crowd. Soon, pop would replace rock as the leading genre, and everything would be about the might of the music video.
But as midnight struck, turning 1979 to 1980, no one knew that. No one ever notices things change as they’re changing, instead it happens slowly and almost invisibility as culture comes at us day by day, song by song, rather than in big important chapters that announce their own arrive.
However, looking back, the first-ever songs to top the charts in the new decade feel like clues.
What was the first number one of the 1980s?
In the UK, the last ever number one in the 1970s was Pink Floyd’s ‘Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)’. It’s punky, it’s punchy, it’s politically charged to end a decade of unsettlement. It’s perfectly representative of the 1970s as an era of evolution for rock music, as the epic progressive rock band wrapped it up.
Then, in January of 1980, The Pretenders bagged the first number one of the new decade with what is arguably their poppiest song, ‘Brass In Pocket’. Led by a hyper-optimistic guitar line, Chrissie Hynde is crooning about getting the attention of the one she desires. By now, it’s a karaoke classic, even a classic track to be heard in commercials, as it’s so widely beloved.
A perfect transition song from the rock and roll era before, into something slicker and poppier, The Pretenders bridged that gap. In the US, though, they went all in on pop immediately as KC and the Sunshine Band stole the first number one of the 1980s with ‘Please Don’t Go’, another big, maximalist track from the funk unit. But some of the funk and disco elements are polished away here as they lean into the balladic energy for a crowd pleaser, and another track that seems to signal a cultural transition.
