What was the worst number one from 1982?
1982 was the year of the new wave tsunami, ET: The Extraterrestrial landing on Earth, and a slew of shit number ones.
That’s not an attempt to discredit the gems that did emerge from the span of the year, not limited to the likes of ‘Come on Eileen’ by Dexys Midnight Runners or ‘Town Called Malice’ by The Jam, but they were more like exceptions to the rule than the standard. I’ve got used to saying that the ‘80s was one of the best decades in music, but the number ones of 1982 may prove me wrong.
There’s far too much Bucks Fizz, for starters, with ‘The Land of Make Believe’ first topping the chart in January, followed by ‘My Camera Never Lies’ in April. Aside from them, there were also a couple of dud-like one-hit wonders, namely ‘I’ve Never Been to Me’ by Charlene and the year’s Christmas number one, ‘Save Your Love’ by Renée and Renato.
But even above all that giant wave of nothingness, there was one song that took the biscuit in terms of terrible chart toppers from the year of 1982, which is truly saying a lot, considering the calibre that they were contesting with here. Yet rather than being just another example of an artist having one hit song and being done, the worst offender was from a pair of seasoned professionals.
If it wasn’t already obvious, that was ‘Ebony and Ivory’, the tone-deaf duet between Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder that hit every wrong note possible. Sure, they had the best of intentions by coming together at the time of the South African apartheid to make a point about racial harmony, but it’s a legacy that everyone would rather forget.
What made ‘Ebony and Ivory’ the worst number one of 1982?
However, it does have to be said that the biggest fools in this situation were not necessarily just McCartney and Wonder, but also the British public, who sent the clanger of a tune to the top of the charts for an unforgivable three weeks between late April and early May of that year. Indeed, it was quite ironic that ‘A Little Peace’ by Nicole was the song to knock it off course, given that it was the precise thing everybody needed in that moment.
‘Ebony and Ivory’ has been lambasted enough times over the course of the past four decades, but there’s no harm in beating the dead horse once more. There’s a whole number of options for routes you can go down, but the soured legacy of the song is summed up best by the fact that it is roundly marked as the start of the end for McCartney and his artistic credibility.
It seemed Wings dodged a bullet, given that he originally wrote the song while still within their ranks in 1978. But always envisaging that a Black singer would perform it as a duet alongside him, reaching out to Wonder was seen as a desperate move. By the time that ‘Ebony and Ivory’ was released, Macca was mere months away from hitting 40, and it simply looked like a last-ditched attempt at relevance.
That’s without even getting into the muddy waters of the message, which, rather than promoting racial harmony, only proved to wildly oversimplify it. Granted, its disturbing echoes have done neither McCartney nor Wonder any great harm in the long run. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the sonic menace they wreaked on society.
