DISQUS

skip · 1 year ago

great stuff!!

r · 1 year ago

That's a nice run of tunes. I always like Benson's "Never Give up on a Good Thing." It's worth mentioning that apparently there was some copyright controversy over the Spice Girls' "Never Give up on the Good Times," a nice tune as well. Loving the new SuperBlog format.

rwcass · 1 year ago

I like "Never Give Up" too, and "Love x Love" is a great Quincy Jones production from the "Give Me the Night" album.

r · 1 year ago

"Inside Love" is a Kashif production, a pretty cool dude too.

Mike · 1 year ago

"if I was going to spend that much money on something I’d have ponied up an extra hundred and bought Oran “Juice” Jones’s $3,700 lynx coat."

That's a Hall of Fame line. I laughed for like a minute straight!

I wondered about the comparison between the chorus of the Benson song and the chorus of the Spice Girls song. Didn't realize anyone else even noticed!!

steed · 1 year ago

Excellent. I have to admit, I laughed when I wrote it.

scrumble · 1 year ago

"so the Bee Gees definitely stayed on the radar for the whole decade" True, but also not: Those early '80s albums were in the "shipped gold returned platinum" hall of fame ... no one wanted their falsettos, except the Gibb sound was still around via "Islands in the Stream" and Dionne Warwick's "Heartbreaker". E.S.P. was a big Eurohit but sank like a stone in the U.S. "One" redeemed their standing before the '80s were out.

Adrian Belew was one of numerous examples (especially around the 1990 zone) of critically acclaimed artists that had plenty of fans who grew up to work at record companies. This was clearly someone's idea of how to make him some money--his answer to Frank Zappa's "Valley Girl".

With the likes of Regina Belle and George Benson it seemed that a top 5 urban hit (think it was actually called the "black" chart then) would usually provide enough steam to get a #50 or 60 Hot 100 one.

JonCummings · 1 year ago

Well, you can rag on the Bee Gees all you want, but "You Win Again" is stone-cold awesome. This is the second week in a row it's appeared on Popdose; I say we find a way to put it on the site every week for a year. Maybe it'll become a hit this time (if we can get Timbaland to remix it and Jay-Z to put a rap in the break).

steed · 1 year ago

I had to get that Living Eyes LP from Japan - seems to be the only place that really liked it. I think there was a CD release of it over there.

Jon - you might be on to something here.

jefito · 1 year ago

Agreed, Jon -- I love that song, and that album, and always have. I still have fond memories of leafing through a year-end issue of Mojo or Q in the late '80s and seeing that they'd given "You Win Again" the "Best Drums" award. Oh, those cheeky Brits.

MatthewBolin · 1 year ago

I concur with the previous posts. "You Win Again" is a tremendous, tremendous song. Actually, I was so smitten with it that it was one of first songs I downloaded from p2p in my life.

Bit of trivia: Not only was it a smash hit in Europe, but the Brothers Gibb knew that it was so good that they tried giving it a deserved second chance on the U.S. charts by re-releasing it after "One" peaked in the Top 10 here. No dice.

drcastrato · 1 year ago

randy bell song cuts off after 24 seconds. sounds promising though!

steed · 1 year ago

I just got it to work fine via stream and download for me - so you might want to try it again now.

pop music fan · 1 year ago

Information on Randy Bell:

Randy Bell was from Colorado. He was marketed to the 'teenybopper' audience , and was featured in magazines like 'Teen Beat'. However, his music didn't fit with the image they were marketing so stardom never came. His only hit was "Don't Do Me".

steed · 1 year ago

Very nice. That's one paragraph more than I knew before. Thanks!

CC · 1 year ago

I haven't heard most of these songs before but I'm liking them.

steed · 1 year ago

Cool. Cool!

JohnHughes · 1 year ago

Beau Coup were huge in Cleveland for a half-second there in the '80s - not only was "Sweet Rachel" on constant radio rotation, but an earlier single, the third-rate Journey rip "Born & Raised on Rock & Roll" is forever burned on my brain.

Sadly.

My hmphs · 1 year ago

First time I've heard "Sweet Rachel" - It's really kind of catchy, in a John Parr-like way.

Rob · 1 year ago

I have to admit that I've been looking for "Oh Daddy" all over the net for a while. Now, I can't remember why. It's definitely a lesser effort from Belew, though you can hear how Mr. Byrne influenced him greatly during the "Remain in Light" tour. Maybe it's one of those songs I liked because of the video, which was pretty cool if I recall. I can't believe that's the way I assessed music back then … but maybe I wasn't alone.

Retro_Remixes · 1 year ago

I love Pat Benatar and think both of those songs should have been much bigger hits. Pat continued to make great music even after she stopped being a mainstream hit-making machine. She's still recording, actually.

The only thing by the Belle Stars that I ever paid attention to was Iko Iko so I wasn't sure if they ever had another hit. They were just a bit too much of a watered down version of The Go-Go's, Bangles & Bananarama for me.

LiamK · 1 year ago

I was curious as to how a song reached #80 without having any physical copies available (I'm more familiar with the UK charts which are entirely sales based).

turns out the song got playlisted by a number of LA stations, but was virtually never played, however this was enough to get it on the chart. weird

steed · 1 year ago

You talking Shamus here? Yes, that's the deal - Shamus took it to LA and it was played for a bit - but the DJ that was really championing it went on vacation and it never got played again. Shamus was so pissed about it - that he never printed more than just his original 10. That's the story I know.

Markos · 8 months ago

Hi from Greece!
Can you please send me the Randy Bell mp3 via e-mail?
The links don't work.
Thanks!
M.