4️⃣0️⃣ Years Ago Today

Top Billboard singles📻Week Ending March 21, 1981

If only the Top Ten could talk. We’ll, they do actually, and they reflect sales over sentiment. Emotionally, this is a sad bunch of early power pop efforts, a bonafide American standards, and a note of true tragedy that forty years on, still feels cruel and so meaningless. And it always will.

#1 and #3 you will find REO and Styx trying to be not only the same band, but these songs are almost indistinguishable from one another. Perhaps because they were on the charts simultaneously.

I thought I could get through #2 with no emotion, but forget that. John Lennon is gliding above us, singing as if he’s not going to be around to hear this on the radio. Fourteen weeks after his senseless murder, he has been on the chart ten weeks with this last love song to Yoko. And to add to the pull, he sounds happy and at peace.

So does Dolly Parton, with her instant classic about women in the workforce. At #4, it was her first #1 hit shortly after its release in November, 1980. The song still resonates and shows up in the strangest movies like Deadpool 2 (2018).

Mr. American Pie covers Roy Orbison’s “Crying” for some reason (probably to get us back to bummer songs after Dolly’s hit of Appalachian oxygen.) Blondie’s “Rapture” is truly historic: it was the first video with a rap lyric to be aired on MTV as well as the first #1 song to feature such lyrics.

Neil Diamond sings passionate regret to Lucie Arnaz on a clip from The Jazz Singer (1980) (now there’s an idea for a remake!). But even ABBA’s feelings are hurt. Eddie Rabbitt’s song comes from another era, and at 20 weeks on the charts he is realizing he will have to sing it forever.

Finally Barbara and Barry were never in love but they made beautiful music together. Gibb sings and spin the dials, Barbara shares the spotlight. The end result is kind of A Star Is Born with Saturday Night Fever.

March 1981 is about to leave like a jilted lamb.

This week TITLE–•–Artist (Label)-Weeks on Chart (Peak to Date)

1️⃣KEEP ON LOVING YOU –•– REO Speedwagon (Epic)-17 (1 week at #1) (1)

2️⃣WOMAN –•– John Lennon (Geffen)-10 (2)

3️⃣THE BEST OF TIMES –•– Styx (A&M)-9 (3)

4️⃣9 TO 5 –•– Dolly Parton (RCA)-17 (1)

5️⃣CRYING –•– Don McLean (Millennium)-9 (5)

6️⃣RAPTURE –•– Blondie (Chrysalis)-8 (6)

7️⃣HELLO AGAIN –•– Neil Diamond (Capitol)-8 (7)

8️⃣THE WINNER TAKES IT ALL –•– Abba (Atlantic)-18 (8)

9️⃣I LOVE A RAINY NIGHT –•– Eddie Rabbitt (Elektra)-20 (1)

🔟WHAT KIND OF FOOL –•– Barbra Streisand/Barry Gibb (Columbia)-8 (10)

Check put the videos and leave comments about what these songs meant to you, what worked, what didn’t, and how much better it would be to be hearing REO’s “Riding the Storm Out.”