Way Back Wednesday: The Top Music of March 11, 1983

This Week In 1983: March 11th

Michael Jackson still sits on top of the chart for the second of seven weeks. There isn’t a whole lot of movement on the chart this week. The biggest drop is “You and I” from Eddie Rabbit and Crystal Gayle. It falls fifteen spots to #22. Last week’s feature song from Musical Youth falls thirteen spots to #23.

Moving up the charts, Greg Kihn Band jumps up 7 spots with “Jeopardy” and Pat Benetar (who totally got the shaft this year in the Hall of Fame voting…but I digress) jumps eight spots to 29 with “Little Too Late”. One of my favorites, “On The Loose” by Saga, peaks at #26 this week.

Song Story: “On The Loose” by Saga

I was just telling someone this past weekend that I have a list of about a half a dozen 80’s favorites that are either little known or totally obscure. Atop that list? Saga and “On the Loose”. The first time I saw this video I fell in LOVE with this song. No idea why. It might be the combination of the strong guitars mixed with keyboards in just the right way or it might have been lead singer Michael Sadler’s outfit. The muscle tee with the Japanese writing, the parachute pants with the knee pads. Man. I wanted that outfit bad. I actually found the shirt (close enough) at a place call The Merry-Go-Round but my gestapo parents wouldn’t let me purchase it. I convinced one of the first cover bands I was in to learn the song and it was legitimately my favorite song to play even though we couldn’t totally put it off.

This was the biggest hit for the Canadian band. The music video was one of the first concept clips by a non-European band (combining performance footage with a vague storyline about a man escaping from some kind of facility). The band really had little interest in creating a video for the song but their management convinced them to do so. MTV had just launched in 1981 a few months before the album came out. At the time, MTV had very little to choose so the video earned quality air time on the channel.