1984: The Year In Top 40 Hits (Week 30: July 28, 1984)
Corey Hart, Jefferson Starship, Huey Lewis, The Style Council and…Eurythmics go Caribbean for some reason
Note: If you’re new here, you might want to read an introduction to this series to get caught up on what we’re doing. Glad you could make it.)
In the summer of 1984, I was flicking through the import bins at the Sound Warehouse on 50th Avenue in Lubbock, Texas, when I found a copy of a two-year-old album called Rip It Up by a band called Orange Juice. I had heard of them through passing mentions in magazines like Star Hits and Now Sounds — it seemed a delightfully absurd band name — but I didn’t really know what they were supposed to sound like. Still, something about the sleeve looked promising — cool, but not fashionable. When I got it home, I fully admit I wasn’t sure what to make of it at first. The songs were cool and catchy — especially the title track, which had a wonderfully farty synth-bass hook running through all five hypnotic minutes — but the singer’s voice sounded so peculiar that it wasn’t until the third or fourth time I played the album that night that I was sure I liked it.
