Pat Benatar’s Get Nervous released

First posted 9/20/2020.

Get Nervous Pat Benatar

Released: October 29, 1982 Peak: 4 US, 73 UK, 16 CN, 15 AU Sales (in millions): 1.0 US, -- UK, 1.2 world (includes US and UK) Genre: classic rock

Tracks: Song Title (Writers) [time] (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to singles charts. Shadows of the Night (D.L. Byron) [4:20] (9/21/82, 13 US, 3 AR, 50 UK, 12 CN, 32 AU) Looking for a Stranger (Franne Golde, Peter McIan) [3:24] (4/23/83, 39 US, 4 AR) Anxiety (Get Nervous) (Neil Giraldo, Billy Steinberg) [3:42] Fight It Out (Giraldo, Steinberg) [3:56] The Victim (Giraldo, Steinberg) [4:43] Little Too Late (Alex Call) [4:06] (1/19/83, 20 US, 38 AR) I’ll Do It (Giraldo, Benatar) [4:09] I Want Out (Giraldo, Steinberg) [3:43] Tell It to Her (Roger Bruno, Ellen Schwartz) [3:44] Silent Partner (Giraldo, Myron Grombacher) [3:45] Total Running Time: 39:07

Rating: 3.966 out of 5.00 (average of 5 ratings) Awards:

About the Album: Benatar’s fourth album was her third to reach the top 5 of the Billboard album chart. Like its predecessors, it was supported by two top-40 singles and sold a million copies. Something was different, however. Benatar was tired of being stereotyped as a hard rocker, often saying interviews that she “preferred new wave's melodic keyboards over hard rock and metal's crunching guitars.” AMG It didn’t mean she abandoned rock. Indeed, “songs like like Anxiety (Get Nervous), The Victim, and Silent Partners are intense, forceful jewels that rock aggressively.” AMG However, Get Nervous was overall “the most melodic album she’d done since In the Heat of the Night.” AMG “The album’s pop elements and strong emphasis on melody leave no doubt that the last thing on Benatar’s mind was recording another Crimes of Passion.” AMG To that end, lead single Shadows of the Night showcased a more pop-oriented, new wave sound than previous guitar-driven songs. The song was written by D.L. Byron for the 1980 film Times Square, but rejected for lack of commercialism. Helen Schneider released it as a single in 1981 and Rachel Sweet recorded it that same year for her …And Then He Kissed Me album. Benatar’s version was a top 20 hit which won her a third Grammy for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance. The album’s second single, Little Too Late, was also a top-20 hit with a more new-wave feel. The song was penned by Alex Call, who’d previously co-written Tommy Tutone’s 1981 top-5 hit “867-5309/Jenny.” He also wrote the 1988 song “Perfect World,” a #3 song for Huey Lewis & the News.

Resources and Related Links: Pat Benatar’s DMDB Encyclopedia entry AMG All Music Guide review by Alex Henderson WK Wikipedia

Prince 1999 released

1999 Prince

Released: October 27, 1982 Peak: 7 US, 4 RB, 28 UK, 23 CN, 35 AU Sales (in millions): 4.32 US, 0.3 UK, 6.08 world (includes US and UK), 11.87 EAS Genre: R&B/funk/pop

Tracks: Click on individual song titles for more details, including songwriters, recording and release dates, chart peaks, versions recorded by other artists, and basic information aobout the song. 1999 Little Red Corvette Delirious Let’s Pretend We’re Married D.M.S.R. Automatic Something in the Water Does Not Compute Free Lady Cab Driver All the Critics Love U in New York International Lover Total Running Time: 70:33 Tracks, Disc 2: Promo Mixes & B-Sides (2019 super deluxe reissue) 1999 (7” stereo edit) 1999 (7” mono promo-only edit) Free (promo-only edit) How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore? (recorded 4/28/1982, released 9/24/1982 as B-side of “1999”) B Little Red Corvette (7” edit) All the Critics Love U in New York (7” edit) Lady Cab Driver (7” edit) Little Red Corvette (dance remix promo-only edit) Little Red Corvette (special dance mix) Delirious (7” edit) Horny Toad (recorded 6/5/1982, released 8/17/1983 as B-side of “Delirious”) B Automatic (7” edit) Automatic (video version) Let’s Pretend We’re Married (7” edit) Let’s Pretend We’re Married (7” mono promo-only edit) Irresistible Bitch (recorded 9/7/1982, released 11/23/1983 as B-side of “Let’s Pretend We’re Married”) B Let’s Pretend We’re Married (video version) D.M.S.R. (edit) Tracks, Disc 3: Vault Tracks I (2019 super deluxe reissue) Feel Up Up Irresistible Bitch Money Don’t Grow on Trees Vagina Rearrange Bold Generation Colleen International Lover (take 1, live in studio) Turn It Up You’re All I Want > Something in the Water Does Not Compute (original version) If It’ll Make U Happy How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore? (take 2, live in studio) Tracks, Disc 4: Vault Tracks II (2019 super deluxe reissue): Possession (1982 version) Delirious (full-length) Purple Music Yah, You Know Moonbeam Levels No Call U Can’t Stop This Feeling I Got Do Yourself a Favor Don’t Let Him Fool Ya Teacher Teacher Lady Cab Driver / I Wanna Be Your Lover / Head / Little Red Corvette (tour demo) The collection also included a fifth disc. Click to see details of Live at Masonic Hall in Detroit, Michigan. Other Songs from This Era: Gigolos Get Lonely Too (Prince) [4:41] (The Time, 10/5/82, 77 RB) O You’re My Love (Prince) [4:24] (Kenny Rogers, 1986 album cut) O Nasty Girl (recorded late March 1982, released 8/11/1982 as a single by Vanity 6) Baby, You’re a Trip (Prince) [5:51] (Jill Jones, 1987 album cut) O Cloreen Bacon Skin (recorded 1983) [15:37] CB4 O featured on Originals (recorded 1981-91, released 2019) B featured on The B-Sides (recorded: 1981-89, released 1993) CB4 featured on Crystal Ball (box set, achives: 1983-1996, released 1998)

Rating: 4.548 out of 5.00 (average of 23 ratings) Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

The Early Years The Minneapolis-born singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Prince Rogers Nelson was all of 19 years old when he unleashed his genius on the world with his debut album, 1978’s For You. That album didn’t make much noise, but it did introduced his “funkified falsetto.” PM On his 1979 self-titled sophomore release, he struck gold with “I Wanna Be Your Lover,” a slab of disco-funk that soared to the top of the R&B chart and reached #11 on the Billboard Hot 100. On his third album, 1980’s Dirty Mind, Prince “established a wild fusion of funk, rock, new wave, and soul that signaled he was an original, maverick talent, but it failed to win him a large audience.” AM While 1981’s Controversy was “a furiously funky album that featured some of the artist’s most complex songwriting” SL ““it was also the first Prince album that felt like he was simply spinning his wheels.” SL A New Sound For his next album, 1999, Prince “confirmed that he was in it for the long haul” SL by revamping is sound. “No one can deny the quantum leap in sophistication and scope it represents.” SL “Where his earlier albums had been a fusion of organic and electronic sounds, 1999 was constructed almost entirely on synthesizers by Prince himself,” AM not to mention “drum machines, sensual moans and screaming guitars.” PM “Naturally, the effect was slightly more mechanical and robotic than his previous work and strongly recalled the electro-funk experiments of several underground funk and hip-hop artists at the time.” AM While it was “an album dominated by computer funk” AM Prince “didn’t simply rely on the extended instrumental grooves to carry the album.” AM The “mechanical beats and treated voices are not a million miles from Funkadelic’s The Electric Spanking of War Babies – but Prince had the songs to match the sonic trickery.” RD His “songwriting was improving by leaps and bounds.” AM 1999 “became Prince’s widest, and most musically ambitious, landscape of sex and love.” PM He “ably demonstrates…[that he] is virtually peerless in creating musical textures of unparalleled sexiness.” SL “In one album, Prince managed to turn his own particular brand of horn-dog begging into poetic story-songs every bit as eloquent as those of his hero Joni Mitchell.” SL The album “is a massive, sexy, rump-shaking, and sometimes even disturbing masterpiece.” SL The Album’s Influence “With 1999, the bar for ’80s funk had been raised.” SL It “was the perfect test-drive for a sound Prince would fully harness on Sign ‘O’ the Times five years later. Yet, it was here, in-between the shimmying struts of showboating, apocalyptic electronica, where the multi-instrumentalist fully dove into the glamorous androgyny that codified him as such a singular, auteur figure in the 1980s.” PM A Wealth of Material Prince’s influence was being directly apparent in spin-off groups such as The Time, which featured “Prince’s own personal mini-me Morris Day,” SL who had had top-ten R&B hits in 1981 with “Get It Up” and “Cool,” both penned by Prince. There was also “the fetished-up girl group Vanity 6,” SL who reached the top 10 on the R&B chart with “Nasty Girl,” another song written by Prince. That also indicated just how material he was sitting on. He had “enough still-unreleased songs…to piece together three or four more solid LPs.” SL “Even the B-sides for 1999’s singles, like How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore? and Irresistible Bitch, have gone on to become unassailable classics.” SL The Songs “The first side of the record contained all of the hit singles, and, unsurprisingly, they were the ones that contained the least amount of electronics.” AM “Prince stretches out a bit too much over the course of 1999, but the result is a stunning display of raw talent, not wallowing indulgence.” AM Here’s a breakdown of each of the individual songs.

1999 Prince

Writer(s): Prince (see lyrics here) Recorded: July 1982 at Kiowa Trail home Studio in Chanhassen, MN Released: 8/7/1982 as a single, 1999 (1982), The Hits 1 (1993), The Very Best of (2001), Ultimate (2006), 4Ever (2016), Live at Masonic Hall in Detroit, Michigan (2019), Live in Utrecht (2020) B-Side: “How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore?” First Charted: October 16, 1982 Peak: 12 BB, 14 CB, 12 RR, 33 A40, 4 RB, 15 CO, 2 UK, 6 CN, 2 AU, 1 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 0.72 US, 0.4 UK, 1.13 world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 18.0 video, 72.62 streaming About the Song: While “1999” is well remembered as one of Prince’s best songs, it wasn’t one of his biggest hits. Based solely on peaks on the Billboard Hot 100, twenty Prince songs fared better on the charts than “1999.” That includes nineteen top-10 hits and the #11 hit “I Wanna Be Your Lover.” In fact, the song didn’t even hit the top 40 – the first time around. When it was released as the lead single for the album of the same name, “1999” stalled at #44. After “Little Red Corvette” reached the top 10, “1999” was re-released and peaked at #12. In the year 1999, the song resurfaced, hitting #40. It then charted for a rare fourth time in 2016 after Prince’s death, reaching #27. It became the first song to chart in three different decades. SF The song shares a commonality with Stevie Wonder’s “You Are the Sunshine of My Life,” which gives lead vocal duties to two other singers before Wonder takes charge. “1999” was initially intended as a three-part harmony, but Prince decided to separate out the voices starting each verse. WK Lisa Coleman sings the first line of the song, followed guitarist Dez Dickerson. Both were members of Prince’s backing band, the Revolution. Prince doesn’t sing until the third line of the song. Jill Jones, a backup singer, also sings a line in the song: “Got a lion in my pocket / And baby he’s ready to roar.” While the song’s “we’re gonna party like it’s 1999” feels like a celebratory line, it has a deeper meaning. During the Reagan administration, the United States stockpiled nuclear weaponry in an arms race with Russia known as the Cold War. The massive arsenals of both countries provoked a fear of Armageddon. SF Prince sings “Everybody’s got a bomb / We could all die any die.” Of course, Prince still plans to have fun until the end: “But before I’ll let that happen / I’ll dance my life away.” In a CNN interview with Larry King in 1999, Prince said, “We were sitting around watching a special about 1999, and a lot of people were…speculating on what was going to happen…Everyone that was around me whom I thought to be very optimistic people were dreading those days, and I always knew I’d be cool. I never felt like this was going to be a rough time for me…So I just wanted to write something that gave hope.” SF “It’s been said that sex and death guide nearly every aspect of human thought. So if Prince had already proven that he sings about sex like B.B. King sang about the blues, then 1999 is, in retrospect, the first indication that Prince’s preoccupation with death was equally voracious.” SL The song “parties to the apocalypse with a P-Funk groove much tighter than anything George Clinton ever did,” AM effectively turning “the Rapture into an excuse to boogie down.” SL/sup> On “the exquisitely climactic final few minutes…Prince’s familiar sequenced drum patterns go haywire, sounding like a rolling torrent of artillery fire.” SL It is “the masterpiece that preceded masterpieces. When the record begins, he asks what we should all make of the end of the world; by its end, there is only one right answer: we must go out grooving, with our bodies pushing against one another lovingly.” PM

Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

Little Red Corvette Prince

Writer(s): Prince (see lyrics here) Recorded: 5/20/1982 at Kiowa Trail Home Studio in Chanhassen, MN Released: 2/9/1983 as a single, 1999 (1982), The Hits 2 (1993), The Very Best of (2001), dance remix: Ultimate (2006), 4Ever (2016), Live at Masonic Hall in Detroit, Michigan (2019), Live in Utrecht (2020) B-Side: “All the Critics Love U in New York” First Charted: February 26, 1983 Peak: 6 BB, 6 CB, 5 RR, 11 RB, 17 AR, 2 UK, 5 CN, 8 AU Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 0.9 US, 0.2 UK, 1.1 world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 9.0 video, 29.77 streaming About the Song: BBC News says “‘Little Red Corvette’ is the song that made Prince a star” BBC and All Music Guide even says it “may be his very best.” JA He’d actually gone as high as #11 on the charts with “I Wanna Be Your Lover” in 1979, but this was his first top-10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100. This one also was more radio-friendly because it featured “more shiny keyboards and less raw funk.” SF Songfacts.com suggested that while some of his earlier songs were too blatantly sexual to be embraced by radio, this one was “just ambiguous enough not to offend most listeners.” SF However, All Music Guide calls this “one of the most sensual and frankly explicit hits ever to crack the charts.” JA It is “just on the verge of being obscene, [but] it never succumbs to blatant tastelessness.” JA Everything about this “after-dark masterpiece…is suggestive, from its moaning synthesizers to its bump-and-grind rhythm to the orgasmic squeals which punctuate Prince’s vocals.” JA It’s hard to imagine listeners didn’t pick up on the automobile metaphors as references to a one-night stand and even more laughable to think that people didn’t catch on that a line such as “she had a pocketful of horses, Trojans, some of them used” was a reference to condoms. The story goes that Prince fell asleep in the back of keyboardist Lisa Coleman’s car “after an exhausting all-night recording session. The lyrics came to him in bits and pieces during this and other catnaps.” SF However, Coleman says he was always borrowing her car, which she called “the perfect cruise mobile on a beautiful day in Minneapolis.” BBC She said he and then-girlfriend Vanity would be “making out, or doing whatever, in the back seat and they probably had a wonderful moment of afterglow, which is when he got the seed of the idea…But it’s not a red Corvette, it’s a pink Mercury!” BBC The title song for the 1999 album was released as the first single, but stalled at #44. After the success of “Little Red Corvette,” “1999” was re-released and hit #12. Prince’s “synthesizer riffs, usually consisting of closely clustered chords that give off a sense of suffocating closeness (listen no further than the intro of Little Red Corvette), have a pleasant sensual friction.” SL That song “is pure pop,” AM “an unfathomably hot, metaphor-drenched, post-disco rock number about casual one-night-stands.” PM It “helped Prince carry his funk roots over the line into full-fledged pop rock (a transition he’d fully embrace two years later on Purple Rain.” PM

Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

Delirious Prince

Writer(s): Prince Recorded: 5/9/1982 at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles Released: 8/17/1983 as a single, 1999 (1982), The Hits 2 (1993), Ultimate (2006), 4Ever (2016) B-Side: “Horny Toad” First Charted: 9/3/1983 Peak: 8 BB, 9 CB, 7 RR, 18 RB, 27 CN Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song: “Delirious takes rockabilly riffs into the computer age.” AM

Let’s Pretend We’re Married Prince

Writer(s): Prince Recorded: 3/30/1982 at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles Released: 11/23/1983 as a single, 1999 (1982) B-Side: “Irresistible Bitch” First Charted: 12/17/1983 Peak: 52 BB, 46 CB, 55 RB Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming Covered by: Tina Turner (3/1/1985 as B-side of “Show Some Respect”) About the Song: “Let’s Pretend We’re Married is a salacious extended lust letter.” AM Tipper Gore (wife of future Vice-President Al Gore) “reportedly leaped from her couch to save her children’s ears from the raunchy lyrics of ‘Let’s Pretend We’re Married,’ but the droning, double-time grind of the bassline of the song is, if anything, even more suggestive.” SL

D.M.S.R. Prince

Writer(s): Prince Recorded: 4/20/1982 at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles Released: 1999 (1982), Live at Masonic Hall in Detroit, Michigan (2019) About the Song: “Even though in the straight-up party-funk bomb D.M.S.R. Prince shouts, ‘I don’t want to be a poet ‘cuz I don’t want to blow it,’ the evidence strewn all throughout 1999 suggests that Prince can blow it out in his sleep.” SL

Automatic Prince

Writer(s): Prince Recorded: 4/20/1982 at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles Released: 1999 (1982), Live at Masonic Hall in Detroit, Michigan (2019) About the Song: “Automatic is what Kraftwerk would sound like if they exchanged their bicycles for loveless sex.” RD On the “nine-minute-long, bursting heart of ‘Automatic’” PM Prince “fashions a sonic that is as accessible as it is indescribable and provocative, with insatiable, well-paced lyrics about the art of pleasure and coveting (‘I’ll rub your back forever, it’s automatic’ and ‘Baby you’re a purple star in the night supreme’). The song is Prince’s forgotten opus.” PM It features “the atonal chorus of female orgasms sounding like the last few survivors of an orgy massacre.” SL

Something in the Water Does Not Compute Prince

Writer(s): Prince Recorded: April 1982 at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles Released: 1999 (1982)

Free Prince

Writer(s): Prince Recorded: 4/25/1982 at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles Released: 1999 (1982) About the Song: “Nearly every song on the album feels like a new direction for Prince.” SL “Free is an elegiac anthem” AM that “seems, upon first listen, to be a straightforward celebration of American freedoms” sup>SL but “the tremulously saccharine tone of the song stands in stark contrast to the balls-out assertiveness of the rest of the album.” SL “For a change, Prince had written a song whose meaning was not clearly discernible upon one listen.” SL

Lady Cab Driver Prince

Writer(s): Prince Recorded: 7/7/1982 at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles Released: 1999 (1982) About the Song: “Lady Cab Driver, with its notorious bridge, is the culmination of all of his sexual fantasies.” AM It finds “Prince angrily rattling off an endless litany of life’s disappointments with each hump.” SL It “is funk with an itch begging to be scratched.” RD

All the Critics Love U in New York Prince

Writer(s): Prince Recorded: 1/21/1982 at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles Released: 2/9/1983 as B-side of “Little Red Corvette,” 1999 (1982) About the Song: “All the Critics Love U in New York is a vicious attack at hipsters.” AM

International Lover Prince

Writer(s): Prince Recorded: 1/14/1982 at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles Released: 1999 (1982), Live at Masonic Hall in Detroit, Michigan (2019) About the Song: This “is splendid silliness writ large.” RD The song landed Prince his first Grammy nomination – for Best R&B Vocal Performance, Male.

Notes: The album was reissued in 2019. A 5-CD set included previously unreleased tracks, single edits and remixes, and a live 1982 show from Detroit. Resources/References: AM AllMusic.com review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine JA All Music Guide review Of “Little Red Corvette” by Jason Ankeny BBC BBC News (11/27/2019). “The real story behind Prince’s ‘Little Red Corvette’” by Mark Savage BC Benoit Clerc (2022). Prince: All the Songs – The Story Behind Every Track. Octopus Publishing Group Ltd.: Great Britain RD Robert Dimery (2006). 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Quintet Publishing Limited: New York, NY. Page 485. PM PasteMagazine.com (6/3/2024). “The 300 Greatest Albums of All Time” PV PrinceVault.com SL Slant Magazine (6/30/2003). “Vital Pop: 50 Essential Pop Albums” by Slant staff SF Songfacts page for “1999” song SF Songfacts page for “Little Red Corvette” WK Wikipedia page for “1999” song WK Wikipedia page for “Little Red Corvette” Related DMDB Pages: First posted 3/23/2008; last updated 7/27/2025.

Culture Club “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me” hit #1 in UK

Do You Really Want to Hurt Me Culture Club

Writer(s): Roy Hay, Boy George, Mikey Craig, Jon Moss (see lyrics here) Released: September 6, 1982 First Charted: September 18, 1982 Peak: 2 US, 11 CB, 12 RR, 8 AC, 39 RB, 21 AR, 1 CO, 13 UK, 12 CN, 16 AU, 4 DF (Click for codes to singles charts.) Sales (in millions): -- US, 0.88 UK, 6.5 world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 117.91 video, 112.03 streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: The new wave/pop band Culture Club formed in London, England, in 1981. Lead singer Boy George’s flamboyant, androgynous style first caught the attention of Sex Pistols’ manager Malcolm McLaren, who wanted him to replace the lead singer of Bow Wow Wow. Boy George, however, broke away from the group to form Culture Club. KL The group released two singles, “White Boy” and “I’m Afraid of Me” but neither made any impact. However, they hit gold with “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me.” Boy George, who was dating the band’s drummer Jon Moss at the time, said the song “was about all the guys I dated at that time in my life.” WK That included the band’s drummer, Jon Moss, who he dated for about six years but they kept their relationship hidden from the public. SF Boy George originally opposed releasing it as a single, saying “it was too personal and wasn’t a dance record.” KL However, the song caught on after the group appeared on the UK music show Top of the Pops. Shakin’ Stevens pulled out and Culture Club was asked the night before to fill in. WK Boy George’s look (a “white nightie with dreads wrapped in colourful ribbons and a face caked in make up”) SF and sexual ambiguity made newspaper headlines. The song soared up the UK charts (and hit #1 in 23 countries overall). SF All Music Guide’s Jose F. Promis described it as “a simple masterpiece, resonating with an ache that harked back to the classic torch songs of yesteryear.” WK The song also caught on in the United States, where it reached #2, held out of the top spot by Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.” The group’s debut album, Kissing to Be Clever, reached #5 in the UK and #14 in the United States, where it achieved platinum status. The album produced three more top-10 hits in the U.S. Resources: DMDB encyclopedia entry for Culture Club KL Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh (2005). 1000 UK Number One Hits: The Stories Behind Every Number One Single Since 1952. London, Great Britain: Omnibus Press. Pages 284-5. SF Songfacts WK Wikipedia First posted 10/1/2022.