Monday, August 15, 2011

THE BILLBOARD BOOK OF NUMBER ONE HITS

Down Under: Men At Work were actually a fairly decent band that incorporated a number of different musical styles. Check out Colin Hayes more recent solo work.

"You wanna see a knife? This is a knife."

Africa: When I went to the W. Ross Macdonald School For The Blind (more about that when we get to 1997 and subsequent years) there were these two mentally retarded kids in senior residence. Ryan Lublin had autism and I'm not sure what Bill McKendry's condition was. Ryan used to tease Bill by putting the wrong letter at the beginning of words. Ryan would talk about songs from the eighties and ask where they were. He used to frequently ask, "Where's Toto's Zafrica" (meaning of course Africa, the song in discussion here.) Bill, who was a big jerk of a human being to begin with, would get mad.

Billie Jean: Michael Jackson was so overrated. Everyone of his songs is just "Uh, uh, uh, uh."

Come On Ileen: In the episode where Homer recounts his time in "The B Sharps", Homer calls home after the group wins a grammy award. Lisa says, "You beat out Dexie's Midnight Runners."

Beat It: Weird Al did a parody of this song called "Eat It."

Every Breath You Take: It is amazing some people still think this is a love song.

FBI agent radio host Hal Turner used to play a sketch on his radio show featuring two British intelligence agents singing a parody of this song about how they were going to spy on the public all the time.

Maniac: Groundskeeper Willie sang this song on the Simpsons. (See also "Downtown")

Tell Her About It: This song hit number one on the day I was born.

Total Eclipse Of The Heart: The Arrogant Worms did a sketch involving a deejay taking requests on a female-targeted radio station. The sketch made fun of the fact that stations aimed at females play songs like "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" as opposed to more hardcore songs done by female artists such as Hole.

Islands In The Stream: The melody of this song was used in the rap song "Ghetto Superstar."

This song always makes me think of a simile used in Jerry Spinelli's children's book "Maniac Magee." Jeffrey "Maniac" Magee gets to the segregated community of Two Mills, Pennsylvania and meets black girl Amanda Beale. Amanda is carrying a suitcase of books to school so the dog can't chew them and her younger brother and sister can't colour on them. Jeffrey stops Amanda and talks to her. Jeffrey, Amanda and the suitcase are described like "a rock in a stream" as the other kids flow by on their way to school.

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