What song held the number one spot the longest in 1986?
In the mid 1980s, culture heads must have been truly shocked how much things had changed in just a short space of time.
At the end of 1969, art was being celebrated in a muddy field, just outside of New York in a town called Woodstock. There, music fans wandered around barefoot, embracing the rugged sentiment of hippie lifestyle and actively revolting against commercialism.
Of course, everything has to evolve, but I don’t think fans of that free-thinking era would have expected it to change so drastically in the space of a decade or so. Because by the mid ‘80s, the humility of late ‘60s art had been swapped for unrelenting futurism. Cinema was as ambitious as it had ever been before, with mammoth big screen action movies taking over the world and technology was driving that, with the first ever laptop being invented by IBM.
Together, this forged a landscape where a burgeoning era of electronic music could thrive. Within this emergence of technology was the popularisation of affordable synthesisers, as well as iconic drum machines like the Roland TR-808 and TR-909. These instruments platformed new genres, like acid house, techno and the early makings of hip-hop, drastically changing the musical landscape from what it was before.
We all know, believing in the death of guitar music is folly, but in the 1980s, that theory manifested itself with all of the innovation that was happening at the time. But ultimately, as history has always shown, the areas of outright artistic innovation existed outside of the charts. These musicians who were pushing the boundaries of what was sonically possible, were doing it in the dingy independent venues of society’s fringes, where they would create music that would eventually be adopted by pop icons.
So soon after the kids of the underground hip-hop and electro clubs were using synthesisers and 808s, the charts were packed with songs adopting the same approach. A-ha’s ‘Take On Me’ or The Pet Shop Boys’ ‘West End Girls’ were perhaps two of the most popular examples from the mid-1980s, with the latter being of the biggest hits of 1986.
So was the longest-standing number one of 1986, a similar song?
In the UK, the simple answer is yes. The song that held the top spot for the longest time that year was, ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way’ by The Communards, which ended up topping the chart for four weeks.
But in the United States, the story was slightly different. Despite all of the musical innovation taking place around them, fans still pledged their faith in iconic artists of the previous decade who were delivering songs that fit a more conventional songwriting mould.
The charity single, ‘That’s What Friends Are For’ by Dionne Warwick, featuring Elton John, Gladys Knight, and Stevie Wonder ended up being the longest standing number one in the US, staying there for a total of four weeks. Moreover, its success raised approximately $3 million for the American Foundation for AIDS Research, which was a crucial movement in the 1980s given the HIV crisis that was taking a hold of the world in that ever changing decade.
