Don’s Top 10 From October 18, 1983

(#9 last week) How did I miss something called "pogo dancing" in the 80s? This song was a protest against nightclub bouncers preventing people from doing their pogo moves. LOL. Pogoing was different from disco dancing, because it was done individually instead of with partners and involved holding the torso rigid and thrashing about. The bouncers did not like pogoing so they would tell pogoers to stop or be kicked out of the club. This song was a call for freedom of expression. Not exactly "Blowin' In The Wind", huh?

(#17 last week) This second U.S. single from "Synchronicity" was written by Sting. The song was inspired by his then-recent separation from his first wife. He said, "I conjured up symbols of pain and related them to my soul. A black spot on the sun struck me as being a very painful image, and I felt that was my soul up there on there on the sun. It's just projecting your state into the world of symbolism, which is what poetry's all about, really".

(#8 last week) This one only peaked at #40 nationally pop, but #13 R&B, and top 10 here locally. Miss Lattisaw had a string of half a dozen ballad hits in the early 80s but then seemed to disappear. No, she has continued to perform, but exclusively in the gospel music field.

(#7 last week) Annie Lennox certainly stood out from the crowd, didn't she? Lennox's striking androgynous visual image, with close-cropped, orange-colored hair, & dressed in a man's suit brandishing a cane, immediately made her a household name. Her gender-bending image would be further explored in other Eurythmics videos such as "Love Is a Stranger" & "Who's That Girl?" As for the song, the original recording's main instrumentation featured a sequenced analog synthesizer riff, which Dave Stewart accidentally discovered in the studio when he played a bass track backwards.

(#6 last week) This #1 U.K. hit was partially a tribute to Marvin Gaye, written & recorded before his death a year later..The song has been sampled numerous times since, most notably on P.M. Dawn's 1991 #1 hit, "Set Adrift On Memory Bliss".

(#5 last week) Not only did two great singers come together for this beautiful love ballad, two great songwriters did as well: Gerry Goffin & Michael Masser. Goffin, of course, was the ex-husband of his former writing partner Carole King, & Masser had a long list of hits with others, too, for example writing "The Greatest Love Of All": With Linda Creed.

(#4 last week) The last hit for Rufus, it almost became a track on the #1 album of all time, Michael Jackson's "Thriller" (#1 this week). Quincy Jones (who had worked before with the band) asked the song's composer, Rufus keyboardist Hawk Wolinski, but he had promised Rufus producer Russ Titleman that it would be saved for Chaka Khan first.

(#2 last week) Billy recorded this intending for it to be an homage to both the 4 Seasons & the Motown Sound, but feels that, on its own as a single, it sounds more like a Tony Orlando & Dawn record. I guess that was a diss, but hey, I like Tony Orlando & Dawn records!  Great video, featuring Ed Sullivan impersonator Will Jordan (who had been doing Sullivan since the 1950s).

(#3 last night)1983's biggest hits locally, "Every Breath You Take" & "Billie Jean", would have been passed by this song for #1 of the year if its chart run had been all in 1983! But, alas for Lionel Richie, it carried over into 1984. The Caribbean/African lyrics in the song? Richie has admitted they were made-up phrases & words. Richie has described these portions of the song as a "wonderful joke," written when he discovered that he lacked the time to hire a translator to contribute the foreign language lyrics he wished to include in the song.

(#1 last week; 5th week at #1) This song not only brought Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler back to the charts, five years after "It's A Heartache", it returned the signature sound of producer Jim Steinman as well. Jim had been best known as Meat Loaf's partner on their mega-album "Bat Out Of Hell" in 1978. There is some dispute over whether Steinman had actually offered the song to Loaf first. Apparently, Meat's record company refused to pay Jim, so he then offered it to Bonnie. But she insists Steinman wrote it with her in mind.