US #1s of 1988

Nope ... it seems they re-recorded and re-released it in 1988 (I actually didn't know that these versions were recorded years apart). But re-recordings aren't uncommon -- I still don't understand how it ended up being a lot more popular the second time around.

(I don't even remember it hitting #1 that year ... this is a strange gap in my memory that I can't explain!)

TTD or GNR.

According to the Billboard Book of Number One Hits, a programming director in Phoenix started replaying the song in the summer of 1988 when he and two of his staffers decided the song should've been a bigger hit. Other stations started doing the same, and it snowballed.

(that was re "Red Red Wine," sorry)

"Father Figure" and "Sweet Child o' Mine" feel like movies or 50-mile drives: you start out in one place, and you end up getting dropped off far off five minutes later.

I would've thought "Fast Car" made it to No. 1, but I guess it's a top-tenner.

Whereas "Wild Wild West" is like driving around the county dump unable to find the exit.

I don't get why everyone loves these singles and hated on the 1984 list, the songs of which to my mind were 1000000 times better. But that's because I'm older and was more interested in graduating college and getting a job. For me 1988 was all driving around in various vans listening to various hip-hop tapes.

I went with "Father Figure", because it confused the hell out of me in 1988 and now I'm nostalgic for that feeling, for how weird it is when pop makes you feel things you've never felt before and have no words for.

'84?

2000 was better then both

had 2 b there, young bro (lol I think I was 8 or so, but I still hit 23 on the clicker for MTV whenever mom was out of earshot)

haha i had to stealthily watch mtv and the box (a vastly superior music vid channel, if you guys aren't familiar) too. i remember being like 11 and seeing britney in "oops i did it again" and being like whoa whata going on down there :p

I went with "Father Figure", because it confused the hell out of me in 1988 and now I'm nostalgic for that feeling, for how weird it is when pop makes you feel things you've never felt before and have no words for

That sounds good - explain further please (unless it's sleazy)

explain further please (unless it's sleazy)

haha i had to stealthily watch mtv and the box (a vastly superior music vid channel, if you guys aren't familiar) too.

I wouldn't know "Thuggish Ruggish Bone" note for note if it weren't for The Box.

It's not sleazy as far as I can tell. In "Father Figure" the topic is an impossible task: to become someone else's father! To do "anything you had in mind": anything! And it's not clear that these are demands made by the one being loved: the narrator just wants to give them, out of love. To want to give impossible things: what desire, what love! In early adolescence I struggled to understand what it would be like to love that way. What I was writing about earlier was a nostalgia for that struggle to understand love, particularly love of this kind.

If Guns & Roses wins this thing, I'm gonna be so mad.

But they're gonna do it anyway, aren't they?

I'll have to listen to this George Michael track. I don't remember it, honestly.

it is a song about holding tiny hands

this was the year I first started paying concerted attention to pop

Ha, me too. GnR seems best right now though I like "The Flame".

Poor Winwood. He was out of it for like a decade, then did this very polished, overproduced "comeback"
album with top people like Nile muthafuckin Rogers. The songs were about as good as anything else he'd done, really, and they charted well but have not held up. That is not a cool record to like, I suppose partly because of the dated sounds and because it was aimed solidly at the Top 40. As if Blind Faith etc. were a purely artistic enterprise. But I remember digging his sad, vague voice and burbly PPG synth sounds.

"Roll With It" is an especially problematic track - it is exactly the kind of retro-soul pastiche (horns! standup bass! lots of tambourine! ethnic people for added authenticity!) that is all over the place just now, but because of its cultural moment it's shelved under Dad Rock or some such.

(But, that said, "Need you Tonight" and "Wishing Well" are far better songs than "Roll With It".)

It's kind've hard to believe that "Two Hearts" came out after "Groovy Kind of Love."

It's hard to believe how (briefly) big Steve Winwood was (the album also hit #1). The singles from this era are innocuous, though. I prefer "Valerie" and the 1986-era stuff.

but because of its cultural moment it's shelved under Dad Rock or some such.

More because he was 40 when it came out, I'd think.

wow I like so many of these songs

fuck the Whitney songs and "Kokomo", tho

Looking back at the list I realize that 1988 was the last year in which I listened to the radio.

Yeah, this was when I transitioned from solely listening to top-40/whatever records my brother brought home to whatever albums were on the college and dance charts in the back of Rolling Stone and Spin.

"Roll With It" is a fucking jam, and it was probably my favorite of these songs that I was actually aware of at the time. I was 6 years old in '88, and the songs I definitely heard back then were mainly Winwood, Billy Ocean, George Harrison, the Escape Club, and 2 of the Jacko songs.

I have "Got My Mind Set On You" to thank for serving as my Beatles gateway drug.

Whitney's "So Emotional" is the least emotional song of all time.

http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z128/ericzieg/rickslash.jpg?t=1225478145

I was an artist-in-residence at a state university this past fall, and two of the freshmen (likely born in '90) dressed for Halloween as Slash and Rick.

'88 TOP 40 LIVES ON.

i was so hopin that was a scan from a actuall '88 picture

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Voted for "Need You Tonight" because a) to me it's the best of INXS -- the kind of easy-going menace presented here never surfaced in the more straightforward "New Sensation" or the oddly peppy given its title "Devil Inside" and b) I associated it with beginning to listen to good old WHFS 99.1 in Wash, DC and breaking out of the classic rock cocoon I'd lived in up to that point -- hearing it in my car and suddenly GETTING THE POINT that rock music could do something more than lie around being classic. Of course it then became a huge hit and was on the regular radio stations too, but I stuck with HFS.

Strongly considered "Wishing Well" and GnR here too. Can't hear the Billy Ocean as anything but a joke and considered voting for "Wild Wild West" before I realized I was thinking of "Don't Look Down" by Go West.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

!

fuckin' ILM and its goddamn rickrolling obsession.

who was the bright boy who gave "Where Do Broken Hearts Go?" one vote.

Hah, I am also curious about the "Kokomo" fan.

ARUBA JAMAICA OOOOH I WANNA TAKE YA

J0hn D., amirite?

Haha I probably would've voted for "Never Gonna Give You Up" if I hadn't voted GNR. But what a not-very-good winner.

George Harrison, "Got My Mind Set on You" - 0 votes. This makes me sad. I feel like this was in a lot of peoples' top 5 choices, and yet..

Eh, "Need You Tonight" probably would be my #2 after TTD. It's kind of a boring, telling pick, but I have no problem with it.

for a minute I thought it was Kool Moe Dee "Wild Wild West" which was one of my fave songs at the time

Tiffany, "Could've Been"
Expose, "Seasons Change"
Debbie Gibson, "Foolish Beat"

^^^ LOL, middle school dance

Aside from the rickroll, I agree with the top 3, in order, an ILXPoll first for me.

But see, the Rick Astley song is genuinely better than most of these tracks.

missed this poll, but 88 was a great year innit

(would have voted for inxs)

poison (but I've never heard the will to power)