We’re looking at the Top 40 chart in 10-year spurts. The beginning of a new decade is famously part of a doldrums in pop music — typically rectified a few years later, and rarely represented by enduring records in gold libraries down the road. But is that really the case?
Well, so far it is, based on our look at 1960 and 1970 — the first “zero years” of the rock era.
In January 1960, pop music was under siege from a payola investigation. Some teen idols had turned MOR-ish in search of respectability; other similar acts were still rockin’, but innocuously. Country’s story songs were making inroads with a young audience. Death songs and novelties abounded.
In January 1970, Top 40 was still trying to figure out how to deal with the emergence of Album Rock as a genre and as a format competitor. Top 40’s response to the Woodstock Generation involved doubling down on bubblegum pop, but also the creation of what became ‘70s soft rock: more earnest in intent than bubblegum and not nearly as fun.
Ten years later, even as disco’s peak years at Top 40 are ending, that format finds itself under the sway of both ‘70s soft rock and Album Oriented Radio — the biggest acts are often those that come from both camps: Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Supertramp. Disco’s peak and the commercial inroads of punk and new wave had given us a particularly good and varied summer in 1979. So how did we get to … ?
- KC & Sunshine Band, “Please Don’t Go”
- Rupert Holmes, “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)”
- Michael Jackson, “Rock With You”
- Stevie Wonder, “Send One Your Love”
- Captain & Tennille, “Do That to Me One More Time”
Nothing says yacht rock more than the Captain & Tennille and “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” on the radio at the same time. Nothing typifies the state of the business in the post-Saturday Night Fever/Grease recession-era music biz of the early ’80s than Rupert Holmes hitting No. 1 just in time for Infinity Records to go out of business (although he continued on MCA) after little more than a year. Nothing typifies the mushiness of the era more than four ballads in the top five.
Even fall ’79 was promising, beginning with a flurry of power pop and new wave hits — “Cruel to Be Kind,” “Driver’s Seat,” “Pop Muzik” — made possible by “I Want You to Want Me,” “My Sharona,” “Heart of Glass” and “One Way or Another.” “New Wave” fans don’t claim the Knack or Cheap Trick now, and even then, the designations were inconsistent. Robert Palmer’s “Bad Case of Loving You” was never considered new wave, but songwriter Moon Martin’s subsequent soundalike semi-hit, “Rolene,” was. It was, in any event, a brief blast of excitement. So how did it dissipate so quickly?
The “disco backlash,” given national prominence by Chicago’s disco demolition, is one explanation, but it would take the better part of a year to take hold and would do so inconsistently. In fall ’79, Kool & the Gang’s “Ladies Night” is still a hit and “Too Hot” is on the way. Michael Jackson is on the second of four hits from Off the Wall. “Funkytown” is a hit at the last vestiges of the disco radio format in the fall and will still go to No. 1 in the spring. Much of the rock that pops up at Top 40 radio remains disco-influenced — beginning with “Another Brick in the Wall (Part II),” whose first three notes are stolen from “Boogie Nights.”
The rock and pop acts that dabbled in disco will move on and have hits again, some soon (Barbra Streisand, Paul McCartney, Rod Stewart), some eventually (Kiss, Cher). R&B seems to be what’s getting punished, but Smokey Robinson is having his first real hit in a decade with “Cruisin’,” and Ray Goodman & Brown’s “Special Lady” is just hitting pop radio. The truly revolutionary record of the moment is “Rapper’s Delight,” released in September. It will scrape into the top 40 based on sales and acknowledgment by a relative handful of top 40 stations.
“Rapper’s Delight,” which took the industry by surprise, came out within a few days of two more closely watched singles. “Heartache Tonight” by the Eagles was a perfectly acceptable radio record, but not “Hotel California.” “Tusk,” as described in a new memoir by producer/engineer Ken Caillat, was Lindsay Buckingham’s angst-ridden attempt to acknowledge punk and new wave while the rest of Fleetwood Mac tried to make a soft-rock follow-up to Rumours. Radio dealt with “Tusk” quickly, then moved on to the soft rock “Sara.” Buckingham’s other tracks — this article takes its name from his “Not That Funny” — were only album cuts. Many, not surprisingly, sound pretty good now.
Even if topping Rumours and “Hotel California” was an unrealistic expectation, the failure to do so was one of the things that left pop/rock feeling deflated in late ‘79/early ’80. Ironically, for all the angst it caused Buckingham, many of his mellow rock and corporate rock counterparts would also acknowledge new wave throughout the next year. “Any Way You Want It” is pretty clearly Journey being inspired by Cheap Trick. It’s far less ambitious than “Tusk,” but it’s still one of a few jolts of needed energy in 1980.
What’s also happening in fall ’79 is the decline of AM music radio. Legendary Top 40s such as CKLW Detroit and WFIL Philadelphia are really Adult Contemporary stations by fall ’79, but they’re still reporting to the Top 40 charts, and when the hits are already by Kenny Loggins, Anne Murray, and the Little River Band, nobody quite notices the uncool change right away. Numerous heritage AMs segue to AC around this time, often with the spectacularly uninspiring slogan, “We’ve grown up … together,” something listeners don’t quite want to be reminded of either.
As for the FM Top 40 stations that do exist, they’re being upstaged by AOR radio at its most influential, sending many of them to AC as well, or in some cases AOR with jingles. Even on AM, such stations as WLS Chicago and CHUM Toronto segue to “Rock 40” — before that format has a name — over a six-month period. Many of those stations continue to report to the Top 40 chart as well. What AC, Rock 40, and the true Top 40s can agree on is “yacht rock” — AC music by acts with rock-radio credentials. And that explains the doldrums that ensue in fall ‘79/winter ’80.
Like any other chart period, 1980 is punctuated by “but what about?” songs. “Call Me” by Blondie is on the way this month, but so are the debuts from Air Supply and Christopher Cross. “Upside Down” and “I’m Coming Out” by Diana Ross will push through later this year, but there’s a lot of great funk and disco (Zapp, Gap Band, and terrific one-shots like Young & Co.) that gets nowhere near Top 40 radio. Fortunately, many of the Disco FMs that tried to copy WKTU New York in less hospitable markets are now becoming the first “Urban Contemporary” FMs, giving the R&B format its first serious FM representation in many markets.
The difference between what makes it to Top 40 radio in 1980 (Robbie Dupree, “Hot Rod Hearts”) and what almost gets there (Split Enz, “I Got You”) is pretty significant. In America, new wave goes back to being very hit or miss until the launch of MTV and the breakthrough of “Don’t You Want Me” and “Tainted Love.” (“Whip It” gets through; “Message in a Bottle” does not.) In Canada and the UK, Top 40 radio is far more inspiring. In the UK, you can hear a lot of the disco and R&B that doesn’t cross over here, but even Canada makes a pop hit of “Rapper’s Delight.” If Top 40 had delivered on its best of everything promise, 1980 would be anything but the doldrums year it became.
Next Week: January 1990 or “The Year of the Pig.”
WFIL all but acknowledged it’s slide to AC with a series of unspectacular soft, male voiced top-of-the-hour ID’s, except for the one that said, “Contemporary music for CONSENTING adults. WFIL, Philadelphia.” That’s pretty much when they jumped the shark. That, and a bit later on with AM Stereo, when they started to signify songs being played in stereo with a “ding” at the start of the song.
I always wonder what would have happened if a lot of the heritage Top 40 AM’s that had co-owned FM’s had slid over to FM while they were still somewhat successful on AM. Even if it meant simulcasting some dayparts and using separate-but-similar programming in others to satisfy the FCC’s simulcast limits. Something like WPRO AM/FM Providence had done back around ’74 or so. Many of them may have been able to continue as CHR’s and still be in the format.
I came back to Central N.J., where WFIL had been my main daytime Top 40 station, after a few years, in early 1977. At that point, the evolution had already begun, a few years ahead of many of their peers. They went from one of the best Top 40s ever to being unlistenable, at least to a 14-year-old.
What stands out to me is the quality level of artists. Look at the rest of the January 5 chart. Almost every single act in the top 30 had what could be described as a successful career at least to some degree. Most doldrum periods, say the early 90s or right before the Britney/Backstreet boom, tend to feature many more artists of the 1-3 hit wonder variety.
One wonders about the alternate history if CKLW had been allowed to transition their CHR format to FM. They sort-of got approval from the CRTC around 1982, but the rugged was pulled at the last moment when it was decreed the new 94 Fox FM would only be allowed 4 hours a day, with the rest of the broadcast day having to remain Big Band.
The Big 8 had gone more or less A/C starting in 1976, trying 3-song segues for awhile and eventually DIck Purtan to breathe some life into the station again. Pat Holiday made a last ditch kamikaze effort to revive The Big 8 as a full-on CHR in the early 80s but it was too late.