This Week In The 80’s: Passion Killer, You’re Too Much

This Week In The 80’s: Passion Killer, You’re Too Much

It’s summertime in 1983! School is out, the city pool is open and I spend most of the day on my bike with my friends either playing video games at the convenience stores or getting into some kind of trouble (the kind of trouble your parents never found out about). That summer, it wasn’t uncommon for me to be 5-6 miles (or further) away from my house during the day. We would just ride our bikes wherever we wanted to go and didn’t think about distance. Or permission. We spent the summer listening to MJ’s Thriller (two songs in the countdown this week) and Def Leppard’s Pyromania (“Photograph” is sitting at #17 this week) – both amazing albums – but the Top 40 chart this week is equally as amazing. As you can see from the playlist below, it’s chock full of songs that are considered 80’s classics.

The mall in my hometown is about a year away from opening so people are hanging out at places like the city pool, Shane’s Games (the local arcade), and Red Apple Bowling Alley, among other places. MTV isn’t quite everywhere yet so people are still mainly listening to the radio and this is the music that’s playing in those places. This is also the summer that Friday Night Videos starts up on NBC (as they tried to capitalize on the growing success of MTV). Below are what we would probably see in this week’s episode.

Also, this is the week that WarGames debuts in the theater. Return of the Jedi has already been in the theater for a couple of weeks and my friends and I ride our bikes to the theater MULTIPLE times over the next month to see both of these movies. Man, what a time to be alive, right? I didn’t know how lucky I was.

This Week In The 80’s is a weekly look at the Top 40 charts (and more) with Eric Vardeman. His Twitter handle is @ericvardeman.