What song was number one for the longest in the 1980s?
During the rock ‘n’ roll revolution and the British invasion‘s early wave, singles were king. But a turning point arose as the 1970s arrived and some of music’s biggest names barely gave the holy 45″ a thought.
Embracing the album era, the expanded creative possibilities afforded by the long-player saw everybody from classic rock, prog, soul, and the emerging electronic works conjured in Germany commit themselves to firmly album-oriented projects. Pink Floyd were even releasing 24-minute songs.
Grand conceptual ambitions and eye-wateringly priced deluxe packaging began to fatigue a new generation of kids fed on a diet of glam. The ensuing punk and new wave brought back the essentiality of the single amid the upending flash that ran apace with far too much momentum to bother with albums as a carefully constructed artistic statement, as championed for the last ten years.
The 1970s era of the blockbuster album – a moment when the music industry threatened to trounce Hollywood as pop culture’s most lucrative venture – was carried over into the 1980s, albeit with less focus on the 1960s’ artistic ambitions for the LP. Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen, Dire Straits, AC/DC and Michael Jackson all enjoyed astronomical record sales, the latter’s Thriller widely considered the biggest-selling studio album of all time.
With the advent of MTV and the new promo push with every track, monster singles and albums got along just fine on the Billboard charts, while also heralding a confusing terrain for the pre-punk generation who often wandered into the 1980s like confused fish out of Woodstock’s water. It was a new age, but as ever, the singles that stayed the longest at the top spot may both surprise, yet seem obvious in equal measure.
Which song held the number one spot the longest in the 1980s?
Arriving on the British pop charts like a media-circus extravaganza as much as a new pop band, Liverpool’s Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s 1984 cold-war smash ‘Two Tribes’ spent a whopping nine weeks on the UK Singles Chart.
Strutting in with Trevor Horn’s bombastic production heft and helped in no small part by Godley & Creme’s irreverent tug-of-war video between US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Konstantin Chernenko to the track, ‘Two Tribes’ proved that comic nihilism in the face of potential nuclear war need not stand in the way of mammoth pop appeal.
However, the 1980s record was held Stateside. Written by Terry Shaddick and Steve Kipner – the latter behind future hits such as ‘These Words’ by Natasha Bedingfield and Christina Aguilera’s ‘Genie in a Bottle’ – the duo originally intended the song for a macho-driven performer.
Shopping the demo around to Rod Stewart and Tina Turner, it was British-Australian star and Grease icon Olivia Newton-John who eagerly nabbed the tape for her upcoming 11th album. Off the back of the film, she knew how well a romantic teen dream could sell.
Leading 1981’s Physical, its sexually-charged high-camp title track was Newton-John’s biggest hit yet, tying with Debby Boone’s ‘You Light Up My Life’ from 1977 with a straight ten weeks on the Billboard Hot 100. Dropped just as MTV had first launched, the glossy promo video for ‘Physical’ helped usher in the look for pop’s new decade.
“I think I’ve gone toon far. I think this song is going to be taken the wrong way. And I think we should not release it.” Those were the thoughts of Newton-John when panic set in that the prospective new single, with its raunchy video, might be banned in some countries. But in the end, she was persuaded that it was a liberating classic, and she pushed on with the release.“I surprised myself,” she told AXS TV. But this was the ‘80, after all. In the end, after fetching over two million in sales in the US alone, it pioneered a new wave of pop eroticism. “Compared to what’s on the radio now,” the Grease star concludes, “it’s more like a lullaby.”
