This Week In 1983: The Top Music of September 30, 1983
This week’s big movers include Lionel Richie moving into the Top 40 with “All Night Long” as does David Bowie’s latest single “Modern Love” and Bryan Adams with “This Time”. Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton’s crossover single, “Islands In The Stream”, moves into the Top 10 (on it’s way to #1) and Prince is moving up the charts with “Delirious”.
Both The Eurythmics and Jackson Brown drop ten spots while Donna Summers drops six spots. Billy Joel drops from the top spot to make way for Bonnie Tyler to move into the #1 spot for a four week run with “Total Eclipse of The Heart”. It’s also our featured song of the week this week.
Song Story: “Total Eclipse of The Heart” by Bonnie Tyler
The song was written by Jim Steinman who, coincidentally, wrote this week’s #4 song “Making Love Out of Nothing at All” by Air Supply. Both songs were originally presented to Meatloaf (who I can totally hear singing either song) for inclusion on his Midnight at the Lost and Found album. Meatloaf’s record company refused to pay Steinman what he asked so they turned down the songs which subsequently went to Tyler and Air Supply. When asked about these two songs, Meatloaf has said that he’s most mad about losing “Total Eclipse..”.
The recording features members of The E Street Band and Rick Derringer (of “Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo” fame). Tyler has said repeatedly that it’s the hardest song she’s ever had to sing and that’s what makes it her favorite song (I’m sure selling six million copies of the song didn’t hurt either). The video was directed by Russell Mulcahy who had a hand in a large number of early 80’s videos (Duran Duran, Elton John, Fleetwood Mac, Rod Stewart just to name a few). The video, like so many at the time, was helped tremendously by heavy play on MTV.
It’s still the weirdest video I’ve ever seen. 🙂
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