You know what I've never done before on my blog? Ranked my favorite 80s songs. This is ridiculous, considering I once ranked my top songs of all time (which has shifted slightly in the past fourteen years), when really, my wheelhouse is and always will be 80s music. Before you get your undies in a bunch over my choices, no, I don't think these are the definitive songs of the decade. They are merely my favorites. I'm not going to apologize for its pop slant, so you can miss me with your "but you didn't use the B side of this obscure, depressing British band's limited-release from the winter solstice of 1982 and therefore you're basic" arguments too. I was a child in the 80s, so everything was basically summer vacation, snow days and Christmas, and these songs were the soundtrack to that awesomeness and I can't look at them cynically as a result. Don't expect me to ever look at them that way...except I've Never Been to Me. That song can eff right off.
ANYWAY. Before this starts getting too defensive, I give you - with a hat tip to my beloved American Top 40 minus the Long Distance Dedications and general Casey Kasem charm - my No. 40-30.
40. New York, New York, Frank Sinatra - Yes, the Sinatra version was released in 1980 and since it got to No. 32, it's actually been featured in a legit American Top 40 countdown (Casey Kasem and the music of Old Blue Eyes is the crossover you never knew you needed -- if you're a Yankees fan obsessed with 80s music, anyway). It is, for obvious Yankee Stadium-related reasons, very close to my heart and I would not make ANY top 40 list without it.
39. Take My Heart, Kool and the Gang - The day I closed on my condo -- which did not come easy, complete with getting laid off five days before my closing but getting saved by my old job taking me back. I probably would've lost the condo otherwise, and given that I'd been close with another unit that fell through near the finish line a few months earlier, I was, well...edgy -- I walked home from the lawyer's office very carefully over sheets of ice and through pelting sleet, got home to my rental where the heat wasn't working, and cranked this up by Jersey City's finest production, Kool and the Gang.
38. Caught Up In You, .38 Special - This song just radiates joy.
37. Endless Summer Nights, Richard Marx - You're like "Oh god, spare me the cheese, KB," and I'm all "Screw you, this is AWESOME."
36. Let's Groove, Earth Wind and Fire - I don't trust people who don't like EWF. Tonya and I had the pleasure of seeing them in concert a couple of years ago and they are STILL incredible. This song is the very definition of delightful and if you don't even merely tap your foot or bop your head to it (I prefer chair dancing, TBH), I think you might be missing a soul.
35. One Step Up, Bruce Springsteen - I've never been divorced or on the verge of it, but this song makes me feel like I have. In a good way! If there can be a good way via empathy!
34. Save a Prayer, Duran Duran
1980s child KB: This song is boring.
21st century adult KB: Shut up, and go watch The Get Along Gang or something, pipsqueak.
33. We Are the World, USA For Africa - Guys. GUYS. This song. If you weren't alive and an impressionable age in 1985, I don't know that it carries the same weight but let me tell you, as an 8-year-old, this song with all its MTV heavyweights being earnest as all get-out, was the end all be all. I remember leaving school late one day because our principal was awesome enough to roll out the old AV club TV/VCR combo and let us kids watch it in the hallway. And I know exactly where I was (the traffic light where Sycamore Ave. meets Hwy. 35 in Shrewsbury NJ, with my equally-captivated-by-the-song BFF Brian in the backseat of his mom's car as she drove us around that day), when the worldwide simulcast happened on Good Friday 1985. In present-day, this has become a large-group karaoke birthday party staple (I'm from Monmouth County and therefore get to be Bruce by default, just to FYI).
32. PYT, Michael Jackson - If you were a child in the 80s, Thriller can basically do no wrong, especially because it's probably the first MAJOR pop culture thing in your memory (at least, in mine) and also because the entire album is iconic. "Thriller" will always be the gold standard for music videos in my book and I still can't believe the song never got past No. 4 in the Hot 100 (WHAT), but this is my favorite track off the album.
31. I Can't Wait, Nu Shooz - This is one of those songs I don't actually have downloaded anywhere, but whenever it comes on, I crank it up.
30. Out in the Street, Bruce Springsteen - If there's a better 80s song that encapsulates a summer Friday, well, you can keep it.
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