Now that I am stuck in 1979, I looked up the top songs in the current issue of Jet magazine. Here they are (the “hyperlinks” go to posts of mine with the same song or artist):
- Donna Summer: Bad Girls
- Teddy Pendergrass: Turn Off the Lights
- Anita Ward: Ring My Bell
- Con Funk Shun: Chase Me
- Earth, Wind & Fire: Boogie Wonderland
- McFadden & Whitehead: Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now
- The Jones Girls: You Gonna Make Me Love Somebody Else
- Minnie Riperton: Memory Lane
- KC and The Sunshine Band: Do You Wanna Go Party
- Lou Rawls: Let Me Be Good to You
- Stephanie Mills: Whatcha Gonna Do With My Love
- Evelyn “Champagne” King: Music Box
- Chic: Good Times
- The Gap Band: Shake
- Isley Bros: I Wanna Be With You
- Earth, Wind & Fire: After the Love Has Gone
- Donna Summer: Hot Stuff
- Bootsy’s Rubber Band: Jam Fan
- Switch: Best Beat in Town
- Gloria Gaynor: Anybody Wanna Party
Chic’s “Good Times” was then rocketing up the charts, about to become the number one song across the US.
In 2020 I could easily type in the names of any of these songs into YouTube and watch the music video. But it is 1979. Music videos, much less video on demand, are not a thing yet in the US. The closest thing is to wait till Saturday afternoon and watch “Soul Train” on television and hope they play the song. Or go and buy the record. Or, what I did, wait for it to come on the radio. The songs near the top were played to death and are pretty much burned into my brain. I was sick of hearing “Boogie Wonderland”, but now I like it for its nostalgic value.
See also:
- Programming note #41: Living like it’s 1979
- New words from 1983 to 2012 – what is a hyperlink?
- songs: the 1970s
- Time Warp Radio: 1979 – WABC-AM in New York, the very radio station I mainly listened to then, on April 17th
- R&B: a brief history: 1975-1979
- Jet Beauty of the Week
- Don Cornelius – who started “Soul Train”
I can sing most of all those songs of the top of my head. A few escape my memory but I very if I heard them I’d remember.
1979 was the beginning of the end of my childhood. The 80s. Would be the first full decade of my life that I would remember from beginning to end (I can tell you where I was on NYE 1979 and 1989).
I don’t miss the 70s. I miss the 80s sometimes.
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Those were the days!!! Music isn’t what it used to be!!!
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