“There’ll Be Sad Songs (To Make You Cry)” by Billy Ocean (1986)

One person’s view:  “Certainly a strong contender for the title of most lackluster Billboard #1 of the ‘80s.” – thx4noting @ Rate Your Music

The public’s view:  2.36 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 1986 that did not involve Peter Cetera  

Billy Ocean occupies a strange space in the history of 1980s pop music.  He had five songs that reached #1 or #2 on the Hot 100 – more than Huey Lewis and Bruce Springsteen combined – yet few people would name him as one of the decade’s big stars.  When he is remembered, it’s for his up-tempo R&B-ish/dance-ish records like “Caribbean Queen” and the impudently bossy “Get Outta My Dreams, Get into My Car”.  His hit ballads, on the other hand, have not withstood the test of time.  Those songs are out of our dreams, they got into a stranger’s car, and now they’re on a milk carton.

The SiriusXM ‘80s channel plays a random “lost” hit at about quarter ‘til each hour.  I can usually identify this obscure song from the first few notes – unless it’s a slice of Billy Ocean soft rock that comes tinkling through the speakers.  All of his ballads sound the same to me.  Is that “Love Is Forever”?  Or “The Colour of Love”?  Or “There’ll Be Sad Songs”?  I never know until he gets to the chorus.

But other than having similar melodies and identical production parameters, there’s nothing that’s really wrong with Billy Ocean’s slower songs.  They have a mature sound to them and are never cheesy, because he saves the embarrassing lyrics for his up-tempo hits.  He usually focuses on the nature of love rather than just fawning over a woman, which I can appreciate after listening to a lot of Lionel Richie for the last entry.  And I didn’t think I’d get a chance to use the word “mellifluous” on this blog, but it’s a good description of Ocean’s voice.  His singing is smoother than the side of Mr. T’s head.  Nonetheless, these records always seemed like they should be confined to my parents’ soft rock radio stations.  They didn’t quite fit with Madonna and Bon Jovi on American Top 40.

Aside from “There’ll Be Sad Songs”, the year 1986 saw at least seven or eight other unmemorable ballads in the #1 spot on the Hot 100.  My guess is that “Separate Lives” had inoculated listeners somewhat and allowed this type of music to proliferate.  (After you’ve survived a case of smallpox, the mumps doesn’t seem so bad.)  “There’ll Be Sad Songs” is no worse than, say, “On My Own” or “Sara”, but its reputation suffers from Billy Ocean’s saturation of pop radio with so many records that were hard to distinguish from one another.  I won’t say that his lite rock songs were too much of a good thing, but they were probably too much of an adequate thing.

“Say You, Say Me” by Lionel Richie (1985)

One critic’s view:  “I like [the bridge].  This demented little part wakes the song up.  ‘Say You, Say Me’ is still a bad song, but it’s at least bad in some interesting ways.” – Tom Breihan @ Stereogum

The public’s view:  2.51 / 5.00, the fourth-worst #1 hit of 1985

I was not a Lionel Richie fan in the 1980s, but his songs never antagonized me in the way that “Separate Lives” did.  Richie was just an omnipresent and inevitable fact of life, extremely overplayed but completely harmless.  Based on the truckloads of trophies that he hauled home from every awards ceremony, I assumed that his music was beyond reproach and that it was my fault if I didn’t fully appreciate it.  In researching this project, however, I have learned that critics and listeners are not universally fond of his legacy.  And thus “Say You, Say Me” earns a spot in our museum of bad #1 hits.

“Say You, Say Me” is not the most poorly regarded of Richie’s #1s.  That would be “Truly”, whose Rate Your Music score is so low that it beats “Ebony and Ivory” as the worst chart-topper of 1982.  However, “Truly” is merely an ordinary, boring love ballad that is almost interchangeable with several other songs that Richie has written.  “Say You, Say Me” stands apart from the rest of his oeuvre, both lyrically and musically and in both positive and negative ways.  Its main selling point is an unusual up-tempo bridge that sounds like it was transplanted from a different song.  For a brief moment, Richie defies all of the rules of the adult contemporary genre.  Clive Davis probably called the police when he heard this on the radio the first time.

The lyrics of “Say You, Say Me” are cryptic, but Richie had already written another chart-topping single that left everyone bewildered:  “Three Times a Lady”.  What did he mean by that title, anyway?  As a kid, that song made no sense to me but I didn’t feel I could question it.  It reminded me of my religion lessons about the mysterious Holy Trinity consisting of God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Surprisingly, no one ever reworked Richie’s song into a Christian version called “Three Times a Deity”.  Amy Grant left some money on the table there.

Some fans knew that Richie had based “Three Times a Lady” on his dad’s emotional tribute to Lionel’s mom:  she was a great wife, mother, and friend.  But looking for similar meaning in “Say You, Say Me” is as futile as analyzing “I Am the Walrus”.  People have tried and have been driven mad.  The song contains a few lines about friendship and self-worth that are nice on their own, but there’s no cohesive message other than that Lionel can now buy a fourth yacht.  He had an awesome dream, indeed.

I find most of Richie’s songs to be uninspired (except for the touching origin of “Three Times a Lady”), but at least they are competently assembled.  “Say You, Say Me” is the complete opposite.  It’s as if Lionel’s head was suddenly bursting with ideas other than just telling a woman how great she is for the 17th time, and he tried to jam those unrelated thoughts into one song as quickly as he could.  It’s a blend of creativity and sloppiness from a man who isn’t usually known for either.

“Separate Lives” by Phil Collins & Marilyn Martin (1985)

One person’s view:  “‘Separate Lives’ isn’t a heartbreaking song about moving apart from one’s former lover:  it’s a song about wallowing in self-pity and martyrdom all while blaming others for one’s problems.  Awful, awful, awful, awful, awful.” – dagwood525 @ Rate Your Music

The public’s view:  2.29 / 5.00, the third-worst #1 hit of 1985

Because of all the attention devoted to “We Built This City” and “We Are the World” in the music press, most young people probably assume that those two records were always considered the worst #1 hits of the mid 1980s.  However, that’s a revisionist view that became fashionable only long after the fact.  Those of us who were alive at the time remember a far less listenable song that topped the Hot 100 in the same year as those other two.

You know how sometimes a song you dislike will start up, and you will – through either laziness or inattention – allow it to play to completion while you miss something better on a different station?  No one ever had that problem with “Separate Lives”.  The track begins with a 45-second near-spoken intro by Phil Collins before most of the instruments kick in.  This dull-as-dirt monologue serves as a powerful warning that the next few minutes are not going to be a pleasant experience.  I haven’t unearthed the data to prove this, but I am sure there was a spike in dislocated shoulders in the autumn of ‘85 from people frantically reaching toward their radio tuning dials whenever this came on.

After the dreaded intro is over, “Separate Lives” starts to have a melody for a moment before meandering off into blandness.  Its lyrics tell a gloomy tale of the animosity surrounding a bitter break-up, and Collins has a grimness in his voice that fits the material well.  Without the star power and momentum that he had in 1985, there is no way this depressing record gets anywhere near #1.

Marilyn Martin is a top-notch singer, and I like her solo hit “Night Moves”.  On “Separate Lives”, she meshes with Collins about as well as a porcupine and a waterbed.  Many of her lines consist of repeating whatever Phil just said, but with an overly dramatic warble.  Could you imagine your spouse constantly mimicking you like this?  “Honey, are we running low on toilet paper?”  “Toilet pay-ay-ay-ay-per!”  No wonder this couple split up.

Anyone who can relate to “Separate Lives” is going to be turned off by it.  I guess the song is intended for people who are in the middle of a divorce, but it isn’t the type of diversion that will brighten their moods.  It’s as if Stephen Bishop wrote it to intentionally make everyone miserable.  It even made Phil Collins feel bad.  When his second marriage was on the rocks due to his philandering, his estranged wife would sometimes stand in the aisle and glare icily at him while he performed it at his concerts.  Hey Phil, why not pull it from the set list?  Replace it with a random Genesis track like “Jesus He Knows Me”.  No one will be upset.

Despite all that I’ve just written, there is one cultural relic from the fall of 1985 that was more unbearable than the “Separate Lives” single.  I am, of course, referring to the “Separate Lives” video.  It features all the fun of the song, plus slow-moving scenes from the White Nights movie added at the beginning and end.  The only thing missing from this multi-sensory entertainment experience is Gregory Hines and Mikhail Baryshnikov coming to your house and kicking you in the gonads whenever the video is on.  I bet this would have happened too if they’d had the budget.

OK, I feel better now that I got this off my chest after almost 40 years.  I’m glad I never have to think about White Nights again.  On to the next bad #1 hit.  Wait, what the hell?  Another song from White Nights??

“We Built This City” by Starship (1985)

One critic’s view:  “It purports to be anti-commercial but reeks of ‘80s corporate-rock commercialism.  It’s a real reflection of what practically killed rock music in the ‘80s.” – Craig Marks @ Blender, as quoted in USA Today

The public’s view:  2.05 / 5.00, the second-worst #1 hit of 1985

With so many articles, books, and doctoral dissertations written about why “We Built This City” is the worst thing that has happened since the Visigoths sacked Rome, there is little I can add to the discussion.  I will keep this post brief.

Is “We Built This City” really that awful?  No, not compared to so many of the other hits that have been featured here, but it does have a fundamental incongruity at its core.  The song was conceived as a protest against greedy corporations that were buying out popular venues and ruining the live music scene in Los Angeles.  This was an amazing germ of a song idea, but too many people got involved in the writing and production.  The track was reworked into something so corporate that it should have featured a calculator solo by Grace Slick’s stockbroker.  Meanwhile, it kept enough of the original theme – and a few nonsense lyrics – to come across as hypocritical.  The last thing that critics want to hear in a rock song is hypocrisy.

I can’t think of any other hits that followed a similar tortuous path from inception to hypocrisy, so I’ll make up an example of what this was like.  Imagine that a third songwriter had barged in on Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson while they were working on “We Are the World”.  Let’s call this fictional person “Bryan Adams”.  Now suppose that after Lionel finishes writing two heart-rending verses about the famine in Africa, “Bryan” adds a powerful chorus urging everyone to go to Sizzler, gorge themselves on the all-you-can-eat buffet, and leave a pile of wasted food on their plate when they’re done.  Also, in a nod to Michael’s pet snake, he inserts the line “Balboa played the boa.”  And then – despite some initial misgivings – the all-star celebrity choir sings these lyrics with sincerity and conviction.  Bruce Springsteen screams “Eat at Sizzler!”, and it becomes one of the iconic moments of the decade.

Now we have a charity fundraising single with the same problems as “We Built This City”.  Actually, I think this would be pretty cool.

“We Are the World” by USA for Africa (1985)

One person’s view:  “Every copy of this single ever made should be ritually burned.” – rushomancy @ Rate Your Music

The public’s view:  1.83 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 1983 through 1985

After exiting the doldrums, pop music and the Hot 100 had a couple of magnificent years in 1983 and 1984.  For a moment it looked like I would be permanently out of fodder for this blog.  However, there comes a time when we heed a certain call to skewer yet another song.

“We Are the World” presents me with the same type of conundrum as “Everything Is Beautiful”.  It’s one of the most well-intentioned chart-toppers ever, and I don’t have any kind of personal beef with it.  However, the retrospective reviews of it are horrendous.  If I don’t write at least a brief post about it, I can’t call my blog “The Bad #1 Hits”.

The complaints about “We Are the World” could fill a room the size of the egos that were famously checked at the door at the recording session.  The project is derided as a performative bit of “hey look at me” do-goodism which accomplished nothing that couldn’t have been achieved by less irksome means – like having each person in attendance write a check for $1 million.  The lyrics are simplistic and focus on the do-gooders rather than the people who need help.  The vocalists all sound like parodies of themselves.  The tune drags on for nearly twice as long as necessary, turning a plea for money into an especially aggravating plea for money.

All of this is essentially true.  However, it’s hard to imagine a lofty endeavor like this turning out much better than it did.  Put yourself in Lionel Richie’s shoes:  you have a very limited time to write a song that must become a multimillion-selling anthem.  Worse still, you have to work on it with Michael Jackson at his house, and he has a pet boa constrictor that doesn’t always stay in its cage.  You’d get one verse written, hear a noise behind you, and then have to take a break to change into a clean pair of trousers.  I’ll give Lionel credit just for finishing the song under these circumstances.

The real problem with “We Are the World” and its sibling “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” is that they led to a period in which rock stars thought they could solve any worry with a sing-along.  This was especially the case in the U.K., where charity anthems became a frequent occurrence.  If you stubbed your toe on the streets of Ipswich, there would soon be thirty people gathered in a studio to call attention to your plight.

In the U.S., the main legacy of “We Are the World” was the even more ambitious project Hands Across America.  This event was like if the Underpants Gnomes from South Park got into the charitable fundraising business.  Step 1:  Ask millions of people to form a human chain stretching from New York to L.A.  Step 2:  ???  Step 3:  Hunger and poverty have been eradicated.

By some measures, Hands Across America was a huge success.  None of the participants got run over by a car or a train, nobody got struck by lightning, and there weren’t any fistfights over who had to hold hands with that kid who was picking his nose outside of Albuquerque.  However, by this time the charity craze was about over.  Today, whenever you hear anyone mention raising money to fight world hunger, it brings back memories of other fads of that era like Cabbage Patch dolls, shoulder pads, and Dynasty.  People sure did some weird things back in the ‘80s.

“Ebony and Ivory” by Paul McCartney & Stevie Wonder (1982)

One person’s view:  “An important lesson I learned as a kid, watching the video for this awful awfulness, was that people you love, or simply admire, always let you down.” – blackmore4 @ Rate Your Music

The public’s view:  2.40 / 5.00, the second-worst #1 hit of 1982  

Paul McCartney isn’t known for his protest songs.  He’s just not the type of person who gets angry enough to write or sing them effectively.  Even when he focuses on animal rights and vegetarianism, causes that he cares passionately about, he usually winds up with something like “Meat Free Monday”.  That song leaves me with the impression that I could take a bite out of a live calf right in front of him, and he’d be fine with it as long as it’s on a different day of the week.

Let’s look at a few of his efforts at angry music.  There’s “Big Boys Bickering”, in which he literally cusses about politicians but doesn’t specify who he is mad at or why.  There’s “Give Ireland Back to the Irish”, which may be his most potent and direct political song but not one that he followed up with any notable action.  Many people expected him to join the I.R.A. or assassinate a member of the Royal Family after that, and he never did.  One time he made a song called “Angry” that had some angry lyrics, but he sounded like he was having too much fun on it to really be upset.  Let’s face it:  Paul McCartney is not Rage Against the Machine.  He’s more like the Machine.

So, it’s no surprise that “Ebony and Ivory” is one of the least angry songs about racism ever written.  It’s so blasé about the issue that the apartheid government of South Africa didn’t bother banning it until Stevie Wonder antagonized them over something else a couple of years later.

With that in mind, I’m going to judge “Ebony and Ivory” on its musical merits rather than all of the social progress that didn’t happen after it was released.  It’s a cute but repetitive song with one of those unintentionally hilarious videos that were so common in 1982.  It deserved to hit #8 on the Hot 100 and get some moderate airplay for a couple months.  It did not deserve to spend 7 weeks at #1 and be heard every 15 minutes on the radio in every godforsaken family station wagon that was driving 13 hours to Myrtle Beach that summer.  And yes, I speak from having lived this trauma.

But the legacy of “Ebony and Ivory” is more damaging than just a ruined road trip.  It set the stage for the primary duet formula of the 1980s:  1) Get two superstars together, often two people who have much less chemistry with each other than what we heard from Paul and Stevie.  2) Have them record material that is far inferior to anything that either of them would have come up with on his own.  3) Watch it soar up the charts before anyone gets the chance to say, “You know, that really wasn’t such a great idea.”

I’ll cite a particularly egregious example of this type of pairing.  In 1984, I began hearing excited talk on the radio and on MTV that Michael Jackson and Mick Jagger had worked on a song together.  My brother and I tuned in as one of the local radio stations premiered the highly awaited track.  After listening to four and a half minutes of a repetitive guitar riff and the most amateurish rhymes imaginable, both of us spontaneously burst into laughter.  “State of Shock” was the least amount of effort anyone had put into a record all year, and yet we knew it was going gold.

“Ebony and Ivory” is not as bad as many of these later duets.  But in a year that saw major successes by the J. Geils Band, Joan Jett, John Cougar Mellencamp, Men at Work, and the Go-Go’s, there was no need for a trite bit of adult contemporary to become the biggest song of the summer.

“The One That You Love” by Air Supply (1981)

One person’s view:  “The music is uninteresting at its best, but usually it’s actually bad or annoying.” – ListyGuy @ Rate Your Music (reviewing the The One That You Love LP)

The public’s view:  2.12 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 1981

Radio programming expert Guy Zapoleon theorizes that pop music radio (and, by extension, the Hot 100 chart) is locked into a never-ending cycle that repeats itself roughly once every ten years.  There’s a boom period in which everyone and their uncle is listening to top 40 radio, and everybody knows and tolerates the songs that are topping the charts.  After a while, the music industry starts pushing the genre boundaries and stations are forced to play more divisive records that many people dislike.  Ratings begin to fall.  Eventually, some pop stations splinter off into other formats while the remaining ones lapse into a conservative, defensive posture.  This leads to a period known as a “doldrums” in which top 40 radio is dominated by dull ballads and older, overplayed records, while only a few newer tracks are able to break onto the airwaves.  Eventually there is some kind of stimulus, perhaps a new source of competition, that forces radio stations to snap out of their trance.

Although the Zapoleon Cycle had not yet been discovered, it is clear in hindsight that the storm clouds were gathering in 1979.  That was the year that one of my local pop music stations, in a fit of comically bad timing, switched to an all-disco format.  This station had been the American Top 40 affiliate, and now there was no way for me to hear Casey Kasem.  Two new broadcasters arrived soon afterwards, but they failed to fill the gap.  They played a freshly invented format that was marketed under various names:  “adult contemporary”, “soft rock”, “lite rock”, and “auditory torture”.  My parents bought into the hype and I was made to hear these new FM stations often.  Meanwhile, the remaining top 40 outlet desperately tried to retain older listeners by playing the same wimpy songs as these upstarts.  By the time 1981 arrived, listening to the radio was as much fun as being stuck behind someone going 50 m.p.h. in the passing lane on the freeway.  We were in the depths of a doldrums.

You could make a strong case for Christopher Cross as the poster boy for the doldrums, but he at least had some critical acclaim and Grammy-winning gravitas.  Lionel Richie probably made more money off of the crisis than anyone else, but he hadn’t yet completely squandered the R&B credibility that he had earned from the Commodores.  In my opinion, no act symbolizes the 1980s doldrums more than Air Supply.  The success of Air Supply depended entirely on the soft rock dominance of the radio dial.  The band’s record sales soared along with that dynamic in 1980, and then collapsed when stations revitalized their playlists in 1983 and 1984 after realizing that they were losing out to MTV.

Although the group is forever linked to that dark era, I don’t think that Air Supply is nearly as bad as the history books say.  Their songs usually had a strong melody and a decent hook which made them more palatable than the truly sleepy ballads that were so pervasive in the early 1980s.  (I’d rather hear literally any Air Supply record than Kenny Rogers singing “Lady”.)  Air Supply mixed things up by using two lead singers, and unlike most bands with multiple lead singers the members weren’t constantly threatening to punch each other in the face.  Admittedly, they followed a formula:  start with the word “love” and then string related stuff around it.  If there is an Air Supply song about a topic other than love, I’ve never heard it.  But they were masters of this formula, and they didn’t attempt a half-assed pivot to some other genre when the adult contemporary gravy train dried up.  I respect them.  That being said, “The One That You Love” reached #1 only through the capriciousness of the chart gods.

“The One That You Love” was composed by guitarist and co-lead singer Graham Russell before outside writers commandeered most of the band’s output.  The song features some inelegant lyrics about a couple that is on the verge of splitting up.  “We have the right, you know,” is probably the most political statement that Air Supply has ever made, but we never learn which right they are referring to.  Freedom of the press?  Indictment by grand jury?  And when Russell comes in on the bridge, he sings his one and only line in an absurdly high voice that doesn’t fit with anything else.  I think he’s supposed to represent a supernatural presence who warns the other singer that time has run out to convince his woman to stay.  Maybe she invoked her right to a speedy trial and is getting the hell out of the song.

As muddled as it is, it’s no surprise that Rate Your Music users have given “The One That You Love” the lowest rating of any of Air Supply’s major hits.  Yet Russell also wrote two of Air Supply’s very best songs:  “Lost in Love” and “All Out of Love”.  (Did I mention that these guys really liked singing about love?)  Either of these would have represented the band honorably in the pantheon of #1 singles, but both fell just short of that chart position.  I especially like “Lost in Love”, though I cringe at some aspects of the production.  Were those whooshing noises added deliberately, or did someone keep flushing the toilet in the studio while the band was working?

We’re now up to the point at which music videos play a role in how we remember each #1 hit.  At 1:22 of “The One That You Love” there is a slow motion scene of singer Russell Hitchcock watching a woman go down a playground slide.  If you could sum up the 1980s doldrums with one ridiculous visual, this would be it.  Air Supply has complained that MTV never played their videos, but maybe the network did them a favor on this one.