One person’s view: “This one is a great balance of being incredibly boring, yet also over-the-top in the ways it’s bad. The singing here never meshes together and completely fails for whatever type of grand emotion it tries to suggest.” – LampSoup @ Reddit
The public’s view: 2.00 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 1993 & 1994
In an earlier entry, I explained the Zapoleon Cycle of popular music. A key feature of the cycle is a “doldrums” period that recurs at intervals of roughly once every ten years. Many pop radio stations suffer very low ratings during these times as their music selections grow stale and dull. In the doldrums of the early 1980s, the airwaves – and the Hot 100 chart – were taken over by soft rock. There was great suffering across the land, but it was nothing compared to the calamity that would occur a decade later. The doldrums of the early 1990s permanently damaged the radio industry and nearly destroyed the top 40 format forever.
This format – which was now known as “current hits radio” or “CHR” to industry insiders – had suffered a decline in popularity between 1988 and 1992 due to the overabundance of poor quality songs like the ones recently covered on this blog. The obvious rebound strategy for CHR stations should have been to focus on their historic strength: playing the best songs from across the most popular genres. A Pearl Jam tune could be followed by Alan Jackson and then Salt-n-Pepa, with Liz Phair and Dr. Dre after the commercial break. No more time for second-tier material like “How Do You Talk to an Angel”! But a recession had hit the radio business hard, leaving even some of the highest-rated FM outlets saddled with debt and overly fearful of alienating advertisers and corporate overlords. Many stations timidly did the opposite of what was needed, airing only the blandest lite pop while completely ignoring all of the trends that defined the era: alternative rock, grunge rock, gangsta rap, and country line dancing. There was now a massive disconnect between the music that people were buying at the record stores and the songs that top 40 stations were playing. For radio, it was not a winning formula.
Within a couple of years, hundreds of CHR stations had been mismanaged to the brink of oblivion. Some now seemed to be deliberately trying to shed listeners, presumably for tax reasons. The words “mix” and “variety” took on a bizarrely negative connotation, as they began to be used in slogans by the stations that were playing the least diverse selection of music. This was the most doldrumy doldrums ever, and “All for Love” was the #1 hit that exemplified it more than any other.
On paper, “All for Love” had a lot going for it: the gruff charisma of Bryan Adams, the intellectual superiority of Sting, and the bold pre-geriatric sexuality of Rod Stewart. As usual with these types of collaborations, however, it failed to live up to the reputations of the big names that were attached. The result was more of a nostalgia event than a real song. We were supposed to be excited that these men who had each made great music in the past were now combining their distinctive voices on the same record. It was like a small-scale model of “We Are the World”, but with more yelling. Despite sounding like a charity single, however, this endeavor had no philanthropic purpose. Three people who were already richer than God chose to inflict this on the world just to add a few more pounds or loonies to their bank balances.
In normal times, this record was something that radio stations might have aired once or twice as a novelty before casting it aside with a groan and a laugh. It wound up in heavy rotation only because CHR broadcasters in 1994 had ceased caring whether anyone was still tuning in. Indeed, one commenter on Tom Breihan’s Stereogum column said that he remembered “All for Love” playing on the radio at his office. He and his coworkers then unanimously agreed to permanently change the station so that they would never have to hear it again.
But at least “All for Love” was well-suited for its use in Disney’s film version of The Three Musketeers. It incorporated a variation of the Musketeers’ slogan into its title and chorus. It featured three singers who probably imagine themselves as musketeers, even though none of them has ever expressed any particular disdain for Cardinal Richelieu. Most importantly, it played over the closing credits, ensuring that the audience left the theater quickly so that staff had more time to clean up spilled drinks, gum, and bodily fluids. It’s too bad that “All for Love” also served as the closing theme for many formerly great radio stations.
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