Way Back Wednesday: The Top Music of February 26, 1983

This Week In 1983: February 26th

Patti Austin and James Ingram are holding strong at #1 with “Baby, Come To Me”. Toto and “Africa” fall fourteen spots to #19, Phil Collins drops twelve spots to 22 with “You Can’t Hurry Love” and Little River Band are seventeen spots down this week with “The Other Guy” at #28.

Debuting on the coutdown this week is one of my favorite (top three) bands from the 80’s, the band that made me want to play guitar – Night Ranger and they’re debut single “Don’t Tell Me You Love Me” show up at #40. Big jumps this week include Dexy’s Midnight Runner jumping into the top 40 this week. AThey land at #31 with “Come On Eileen”. The biggest jump this week is by Kenny Rogers and Sheena Easton and they jump twelve spots to #9 with “We’ve Got Tonight”. Sitting one spot below them at #10 is the one and only hit from Musical Youth “Pass The Dutchie”.

Song Story: “Pass The Dutchie” by Musical Youth

Musical Youth was a British Jamaican reggae band made up of five boys, all between the ages of 11 and 16, who all played their own instruments in their songs (in comaprison to other “boy” bands that came after them that played instruments but did very little, musically, on their records). The song, “Pass The Dutchie”, is a loose cover of the song “Pass The Kouchie” by The Mighty Diamonds. While the orginal songs is about the relational use of cannabis (“Kouchie” being a slang term for a cannabis pipe), the cover lyrics were changed to reference food (“Dutchie” being a cooking oven) and being hungry do to extreme poverty (a very real reality for the people of Kingston, Jamaica, at the time and today).

They became the first black act to get regular rotation on MTV when “Pass The Dutchie” was added to the mix, preceding Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” video by several weeks. The MTV attention helped break the song in the United States but their success was short lived. After a collaboration with Donna Summer the following year, the band broke up in 1985. Sadly, three of the members passed away prematurely (drugs, health and gun violence).

We’re two months into 1983. Let’s stop and look all the “iconic” songs (as I like to refer to them) that are on the charts right now:
Billie Jean
Do You Really Want To Hurt Me
Hungry Like The Wolf
Down Under
Africa
Separate Ways
Mr. Roboto
Sexual Healing
Maneater
Come On Eileen