Hey faithful readers! This is the first list actually created at the end of the given year. All of the previous Top Tens were created in the last few years. So now you’ll REALLY be getting my favorite songs at the time they were released! Some will be embarrassing, others will be representative of what popular culture deemed “a hit” or “cool” or whatever other “hip” words apply at those times and others may be in a world of their own (like me!)
Here’s my Top Ten of 1979:
1. Don’t Cry Out Loud – Melissa Manchester
2. Take Me Home – Cher
3. Hot Stuff – Donna Summer
4. One Way or Another – Blondie
5. Lotta Love – Nicolette Larson
6. Does Your Mother Know – ABBA
7. Tragedy – Bee Gees
8. Daytime Nighttime Suffering – Paul McCartney & Wings
9. Main Event/Fight – Barbra Streisand
10. Pretty Girls – Melissa Manchester
Looking back on it now, given the upsurge in friends I developed in Palatine by ’79 it’s a bit curious to me even today why a dramatic song like Don’t Cry Out Loud turned out to be my number one song of the year. But then, it is Melissa Manchester! Anything she did at the time, especially a big hit like this one, was destined for Top Ten status. Manchester belts this one like no one else. It is, to this day, one of my all-time favorite vocal performances. (I was quite sore at Dionne Warwick for winning the Grammy over Melissa for her own ballad of the year, I Know I’ll Never Love This Way Again. That should have been Melissa’s!) The song became a Top Ten hit and I was once again thrilled that one of my favorite songs and artists was getting so much attention.
Yet, the lyrics kind of bugged me! I mean, “Don’t cry out loud, just keep it inside and learn how to hide your feelings…” Even at the age of 16 I knew better: Express your feelings! I was becoming quite interested in psychology at this time and these words seemed to contradict what I was hearing. Years later I started reinterpreting the lyrics: perhaps she is saying these words in a sarcastic or self-deprecating way as if to say, DON’T do what I did! DON’T hide your feelings!” Perhaps… Let’s make one thing clear though: Melissa didn’t write the lyrics: It was penned by Peter Allen and Carole Bayer Sager. The latter had co-written several songs with Melissa on her early albums, so I was a big fan of her writing. (Melissa generally wrote the music.) Regardless of the confusing lyrics, the song builds to an amazing and emotional crescendo. It’s hard not to feel the intensity with the high drama associated with the production. And, of course, there was that vocal performance. Somehow, once again, a female artist knew how to tap into my emotional reservoir. Even though I didn’t quite get the lyrics, something about that performance, and the fact that it was becoming one of Manchester’s biggest hits, made this my song of the year.
Really listening to the lyrics today suggests that the feelings being expressed were much more complex than perhaps I had given them credit for at the time. And, in fact, the lyrics probably really did reflect my own state. In my early Palatine years, I didn’t go around regularly expressing my loneliness, sadness, or any of the angry emotions I felt at my peers for not including me in their worlds. I did keep it inside, for the most part, until I started developing my new friendships during that second year of high school. Of course, the really pitiful moment I recall with this song was on New Year’s Eve. I was alone in my bedroom, listening to one of the local station’s countdowns of the top songs of 1979 when the clock struck midnight. The number one song was played, My Sharona by The Knack, and then the countdown was over. I don’t remember where Don’t Cry Out Loud fell on that station’s list but it wasn’t number one, like it was for me. So, I called WYEN, a small station in Des Plaines, Illinois that billed itself as “Request Radio” and I asked the guy who answered to play Melissa’s hit. I didn’t offer any explanation and he didn’t ask for one. Around 12:30 AM, Don’t Cry Out Loud was played. I often wonder what that person on the other end of the line thought about a 16-year-old male voice requesting such a somber tune in the wee hours of 1980. What he didn’t know was that it was MY Number One song and it meant the world to me to hear it that night.
I only found out as I began writing this that there is actually a book about the station available on Amazon: The Wyen Experience by Stew Cohen.
The truth was, 1979 was turning into a pretty good year for me socially. I spent a lot of my time with my friends John J., Eric, John D., and Willy. We spent a lot of time talking about Saturday Night Live and listening to music. I also got them to engage in one of my favorite childhood activities: “singing” songs on tape. We’d record some of the biggest hits of the day, including my Top Ten favorites such as Crazy on You, If I Can’t Have You, Don’t Cry Out Loud, and One Way or Another. We weren’t rehearsed or anything close to good but we had a lot fun doing it. We were all into music and had fairly similar tastes. John J. introduced me to a lot music from the 1960s that his mother had on vinyl. This allowed me to look at groups like Jefferson Airplane in a whole new light. Still I loved then current pop music best.
ABBA released their Voulez Vous album that year which contained the fun, adolescent pop song, Does Your Mother Know. For years ABBA refused to tour in the U.S. until they had a number one song. When Dancing Queen hit the mark a couple of years earlier, they said they’d wait until they had a second number one. That never actually happened. Somehow they agreed to tour behind their new album though, which John D., Willy, and I really loved. When it was announced that ABBA was coming to do their only Chicago concert ever at the Auditorium Theater, we immediately bought tickets. Sitting about six balconies up, we experienced ABBA in all its glory. Here’s video from that tour.
This was also the year that the Bee Gees toured behind their Saturday Night Fever follow-up, Spirits Having Flown. One of the album’s singles, Tragedy, easily became my favorite song of theirs. It’s big, dramatic, and underscored with a pulsating beat. The Bee Gees opened with the song when I saw them in concert in ’79 with my brother Jeff, my mom, and I believe one or two of my male friends.
The disco beat was everywhere that year - at least until My Sharona came around along with local DJ Steve Dahl’s Disco Demolition at Comiskey Park. This changed everything about pop music. Before that though, everyone was releasing disco records. Cher returned to the Top Ten with her big dance hit Take Me Home. To me, this was quintessential Cher – full of desire and sensuality.
Barbra Streisand landed her first dance hit with The Main Event/Fight from her film that year, The Main Event. Streisand tackled disco with gusto and some of the longest notes I’d ever heard on this track. It was great fun and full of energy. Even Melissa Manchester released the song Pretty Girls as a follow-up to Don’t Cry Out Loud. It also featured a driving beat and some interesting lyrics such as, “Femme fatale is all he needs to measure his heroic deeds.” It wasn’t a huge hit but it was an irresistible track and I loved getting my mouth around the words.
Nicolette Larson turned a mellow Neil Young song, Lotta Love, into a smash hit with its own high energy production and dance arrangement. It was another big and dramatic pop/dance hit. Paul McCartney and Wings released the single Goodnight Tonight that year which was also a disco-tinged song. For some reason, I did something I rarely did at the time and began playing the flipside. Daytime Nighttime Suffering was the song and I instantly fell for its beat, production, lyrics, and vocal harmonies. I remember thinking I was pretty cool at the time for including a B-side in my Top Ten that year!
Donna Summer though was THE disco queen at the time. Hot Stuff was her “rock” song that instantly became my favorite of all her songs. The song combined the best of disco and rock. It was the first release from her mega-popular two disc Bad Girls album, another one that John D., Willy, and I were totally into in ’79. The song was hot and very sexy.
Desire was running strong as were the hormones, although I was still unclear what that meant. I was asked to my high school’s turnabout dance by a girl named Ruth. I went on the awkward date with her as my parents met hers. We danced the slow dances together but I just wasn’t interested enough in her to even give her a kiss. Later she’d date other boys who would turn out to be gay.
One of the other groups that were making major inroads into the pop scene was Blondie, led by Deborah Harry. With a background in punk and new wave, it was interesting that their first big hit was the “disco” record Heart of Glass which went to number one on Billboard. The song came from their album Parallel Lines which soon became a personal favorite. Another track had a major significance for me though and that was One Way or Another.
During my sophomore year of high school, I was convinced that one of my possible career interests was astronomy. I even became a member of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific! Their magazines were incredibly technical. I never understood what they were talking about so I felt I needed some education on the subject. Palatine High School had an astronomy class but in order to take it one had to first have a year of physical science. Most science courses held little interest for me (I earned a “D” in Freshman biology) but this one was a means to an end. One day the teacher made a comment about getting something done “one way or another.” Down the row from me, a boy named Mauro sang the words to Blondie’s song out loud and got a big laugh. I was sold on Mauro immediately. He was nice looking and very laid back. We became lab partners and were equally inept at most of what we were required to do. Mauro made spilling liquid solutions a good time, not a tragedy.
Soon Mauro and I were spending time together outside of school. This mostly involved him coming to my house or my going to his house to listen to records. Years later Mauro would remind me that whenever he came to my house, I always put on Blondie’s Parallel Lines. I thought it was a cool new wave/pop album. Mauro was the king of punk and new wave. He was one of the first people I knew to get a spikey haircut. He was also into The Cars and The Police, both of which stood in contrast to the disco music that was flooding the airwaves. We’d dance around his family room playing air guitar to some of their best early recordings. Mauro was cool and liberating. He didn’t care what people thought. He reveled in his family’s Italian heritage. (Mauro was born in Italy.) I wanted to be with him as much as possible. His approach to life would have a major impact on me from that time forward.
Links to my Top Ten of 1979:
Other songs I REALLY like from 1979:
I Know a Heartache When I See One - Jennifer Warnes, Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough - Michael Jackson, Lost in Music - Sister Sledge, The Logical Song - Supertramp, Voulez Vous - ABBA, Angeleyes - ABBA, What A Fool Believes - The Doobie Brothers, It’s All I Can Do - The Cars, Breakfast in America - Supertramp, Deeper Than the Night - Olivia Newton-John, Let’s Go - The Cars, He’s the Greatest Dancer - Sister Sledge, Dream Police - Cheap Trick, Hanging on the Telephone - Blondie
What would be in your Top Ten of 1979?
Up Next…1980…“Next phase, new wave, dance craze, anyways…”
I was totally into the disco scene. Not just the music but actually going out and shaking it up at different clubs. I wasn’t very good at hooking up (which was part of the lure as Cher so eloquently expresses in Take Me Home), but I did enjoy the excitement of the dancing and flirting. Good times. My Top 10 from that year would include the aforementioned Take Me Home as well as Don’t Cry Out Loud. Lotta Love is one of my all-time favorites. In fact, at a Top 10 of All Time party I once went to, it was my #1.
The rest would be (in no order)
What a Fool Believes-Doobie Brothers
Boogie Wonderland-Earth Wind & Fire and The
Emotions
September-Earth Wind & Fire
Strange Way-Firefall
Sunset People-Donna Summer
Come To Me-France Jolie
Voulez-Vous-ABBA
In 1979, my taste started moving off the 'Top 10 Countdown'. My older brothers probably had something to do with the shift. If you recall, and per WLUP (The Loop), disco sucked (and blew up Comiskey Park)
Songs from 1979 that always take me back:
Electric Light Orchestra - Shine A Little Love
The Knack - My Sharona (honorable mention to Good Girls Don't)
Supertramp - Take The Long Way Home
Boomtown Rats - I Don't Like Mondays
Robert Palmer - Bad Case Of Loving You
Rickie Lee Jones . Chuck E.'s In Love