LET THE MUSIC PLAY
THE STORY OF 1983
IN 1983 THE CHARTS WERE ALIVE WITH SOME OF THE MOST EFFERVESCENT POP EVER PRODUCED. CLASSIC POP REMEMBERS A TRULY VINTAGE YEAR FOR MUSIC…
MATTHEW LINDSAY
It was already on the record shelves as 1982 drew to a close. Quietly, confidently, stealthily biding its time. Then, in the first few weeks of ’83, Thriller pounced, unleashing Billie Jean. The Girl Is Mine had been a respectable No.8 hit, but it was with the second single that Thriller, 1983’s biggest-selling album, truly arrived. A transatlantic No.1, Billie Jean was followed by Beat It, Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ and the title track. Jackson also hit No.2 with Paul McCartney duet, Say Say Say, one of the year’s many – Roberta Flack and Peabo Bryson, Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers and Will Powers with Carly Simon. Thriller was both reflector and game-changer. Eddie Van Halen’s Beat It guitar solo a sign of the hyper-mingling times, crossed style and racial barriers (Shalamar’s Top 10 Dead Giveaway and Prince’s Little Red Corvette were more soul-funk with squall). But Thriller’s promos forced America’s MTV to confront its racial bias – also something Bowie would point out to them that year.
A Thriller-dominated ’83 sent Black artists mixed messages. Lionel Richie’s All Night Long and Can’t Slow Down were smash successes, New Edition’s Candy Girl reached No.1 and Shalamar’s The Look got a No.7 placing and 10/10 from Smash Hits. But Brit-funk, the sound to rival synth-pop in ’81, struggled. Post-Linx, David Grant went Top 10 with Watching You Watching Me, but Imagination’s success dwindled, as did Junior’s. David Joseph’s superior, modern disco-funk, strewn with strobe-lit synths, reached No.13 with You Can’t Hide, but Let’s Live It Up stalled at 26 and Be A Star scraped to 81. Meanwhile, Diana Ross’ Pieces Of Ice shared Beat It’s rock edge and video director Bob Giraldi, but not its success. With 1999 peaking at 25, Prince would have to wait another year to truly break the UK. Donna Summer enjoyed modest success while the year-old It’s Raining Men by The Weather Girls soared to No.2.
STRIKE UP THE BANDS
Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Culture Club and Wham! were all huge in 83. Duran’s thunderous Is There Something I Should Know? topped the charts, so did November’s Seven And The Ragged Tiger, a pan-global recording from sun-soaked Montserrat, the French Riviera and Sydney. They had clout too – Nick Rhodes secured a Kajagoogoo deal with a previously unimpressed EMI (he co-produced No.1 Too Shy with Colin Thurston). Fronted by the two-tone-mulleted Limahl, the teen sensation was reviled by New Order, Spandau’s Gary Kemp and Depeche Mode (Too Shy was ‘slime’). By the year’s end Limahl had been ousted, and gone solo with Only For Love. September’s Top 10, Big Apple, saw Kajagoogoo bassist Nick Beggs become vocalist, his earrings now chandelier-sized, seemingly to compensate for Limahl’s absence. In ’83 pop was a bitchy, precarious business.
Like Duran, Spandau’s ’83 sound was made largely in a far-off, exotic place, the Bahamas’ Compass Point. The band’s blue-eyed-soul-dominated imperial peak, True, a top-seller like its title track, the beatific slow dance enjoying a four-week reign as temperatures soared that summer. “Melody was key,” said Gary Kemp. “Romance was back,” declared Tony Hadley. In a year when the nation’s favourite TV dustman Eddie Yates married Marion on Coronation Street (“the most important thing ever” – Boy George) who could argue? Follow-up Gold was an Olympian ode to self-belief; the essence of the adrenalised, aspirational 80s, like another No.2, Irene Cara’s Flashdance.