 | Dave’s Faves:My Album Collection in 1985 |
By year’s end, this was what my collection looked like. Albums acquired in 1985 are marked with an asterisk.
Resources and Related Links:
First posted 8/31/2021. |
DavesMusicDatabase.com is devoted to ranking, rating, and reviewing music of all genres and eras. The DMDB blog serves up album and song reviews, best-of lists, music history snapshots, and music-related essays.
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Tuesday, December 31, 1985
Dave’s Faves: My Album Collection in 1985
Saturday, December 21, 1985
Lionel Richie hit #1 with “Say You Say Me”
 | Say You Say MeLionel Richie |
Writer(s): Lionel Richie (see lyrics here) Released: October 1985 First Charted: November 1, 1985 Peak: 15 US, 15 CB, 16 GR, 14 RR, 15 AC, 12 RB, 8 UK, 14 CN, 3 AU, 3 DF (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): 1.0 US Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 33.6 video, 182.82 streaming |
Awards:Click on award for more details. 
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About the Song:At the end of November 1985, Phil Collins climbed to the pole position on the Billboard Hot 100 with “Separate Lives,” a duet with Marilyn Martin. Three weeks later, Lionel Richie’s “Say You, Say Me” ascended to the throne. Both songs were featured in Taylor Hackford’s film White Nights, making it only the sixth movie of the rock era to generate more than one #1 song. FB The others were Saturday Night Fever, Grease, Flashdance, Footloose, and Purple Rain. Interestingly, though, the song was not on the soundtrack. Richie was supposed to deliver a new solo album to Motown and they wouldn’t allow the song on the soundtrack. They did, however, agree to have the song released as a single in time to promote the movie. Richie’s new album (Dancing on the Ceiling) wouldn’t surface until August 1986. Hackford had a good track record with #1 songs from his movies. An Officer and a Gentleman produced Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes’ “Up Where We Belong” and Against All Odds generated the title song from Phil Collins. He wanted Richie for this movie, asking if he’d write the title song. Richie’s manager, Ken Kragen, reached out a couple of weeks later to say that Richie couldn’t come up with a song called “White Nights,” but had written another song called “Say You Say Me” which he tought would work. Hackford thought it was perfect. FB The song, which uses many of the same session players as Michael Jackson’s Thriller, SG is “a soft R&B ballad, with an upbeat dance bridge, about the pain of loneliness and the power of friendship.” SF It fit well with the movie’s story about an unlikely friendship which formed between a Russian ballet dancer (Mikhail Baryshnikov) who defects from the Soviet Union, and a tap dancer (Gregory Hines) who defects from America. “Say You Say Me” won an Oscar for the Best Original Song- beating out “Separate Lives.” Resources:
First posted 5/22/2022; last updated 12/26/2022. |
Saturday, December 7, 1985
Mr. Mister “Broken Wings” hit #1
 | Broken WingsMr. Mister |
Writer(s): Richard Page, Steve George, John Lang (see lyrics here) Released: June 1985 First Charted: August 24, 1985 Peak: 12 US, 12 CB, 2 GR, 11 RR, 3 AC, 4 AR, 1 CO, 4 UK, 11 CN, 4 AU, 2 DF (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): -- US, 0.2 UK Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 176.0 video, 227.34 streaming |
Awards:Click on award for more details. 
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About the Song:“If you’re looking for reasons to make fun of ’80s pop music – the fashion, the keyboards, the blaring guitar leads, the almost disarmingly terrible band names – then [Richard] Page’s band Mr. Mister makes for a great target. Mr. Mister didn’t rock. They made ultra-produced, vaguely worded expensive-digital-studio music, and they embodied a moment when that was what pop radio wanted.” SG The group emerged after Richard Page and high school friend Steve George worked together in Andy Gibb’s backing band. They formed the band Pages, releasing three albums and charting with the the song “I Do Believe in You,” (#84, 1979). After they split, Page did backing vocals with DeBarge, Neil Diamond, Amy Grant, Al Jarreau, Mötley Crüe, John Parr, REO Speedwagon, and Twisted Sister. He said he was even asked to replace Bobby Kimball in Toto and Peter Cetera in Chicago. Instead, he and George reunited to form Mr. Mister. Their 1984 album I Wear the Face gave them a #57 hit with “Hunters of the Night.” Their sophomore album, Welcome to the Real World, was a much bigger success. Page, George, and their old Pages bandmate John Lang wrote “Broken Wings” for that album in about 20 minutes. As Page says, “The drum machine was going. I started with the bass line. Before I knew it, the song was done.” FB Lang wrote the lyrics, basing them on the 1912 philosophical novel Broken Wings by Lebanese poet Khalil Gibran. SG The record company balked at releasing “Broken Wings” as the third single, favoring something more upbeat. The band, however, thought it was the strongest track and fought for it. Initially it looked like they were going to be proven wrong. It was several months after the song’s release before it charted, which is usually a death knell for a song. Then it started to catch on in Minneapolis and Denver and the record company jumped on it. FB “The song’s level of drama is absurd, almost fantastical, and it pulls it off.” SG It is about trying to “keep a relationship together through the magic of flowery language.” SG The song “captures a state of sustained anticipation. The synths drone and sigh. The guitars whine and howl. The bassline mutters dejectedly to itself. Little funk-guitar ripples glide across the surface…It’s like the whole song is holding its breath, waiting to see if the whole “take these broken wings” line is going to save this relationship.” SG Resources:
First posted 12/29/2022; last updated 1/15/2023. |
Asia's third album, Astra, hit the charts
Astra |
Buy Here:
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Charted: December 7, 1985 Peak: 67 US, 68 UK, -- CN, -- AU Sales (in millions): -- US, -- UK, -- world (includes US and UK) Genre: classic rock |
Tracks: (Click for codes to singles charts.)
Total Running Time: 45:06 The Players: |
Rating:  3.104 out of 5.00 (average of 14 ratings)
Awards: (Click on award to learn more).
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About the Album: When Asia’s “debut album came out in 1982…they seemed like a repudiation of the new wave movement, the pop music equivalent of the Reagan revolution in politics. Like Ronnie, however, Asia ran out of gas around mid-decade.” WR After two albums with the supergroup lineup of John Wetton, Steve Howe, Carl Palmer, and Geoff Downes the group showed signs of wear. Howe left the group because of tension with Wetton. WK Howe said the record company asked him to play on the album, but he declined after hearing the material. WK The group brought in Mandy Meyer who’d previously wielded his axe for hard rock band Krokus. It wasn’t quite the same as having a future Rock and Roll Hall of Famer on guitar. “With less lyrics about love, Astra was a bit different from its predecessors,” WK but the band was “still constructing keyboard-dominated, heroic-voiced arena pop.” WR Unfortunately, “nobody cared anymore, or at least not enough customers to vault them into the Top Ten, and for this kind of band, it’s platinum or don’t bother.” WR The band did still land a top-ten album rock track with Go and songs like Voice of America, Rock and Roll Dream, and Countdown to Zero all felt like they should have been similarly embraced by radio stations focused on album rock, even if they didn’t quite feel right for pop radio. However, the ho-hum reception to the album signaled the end of the band as fans had known them. Wetton left the band soon after the release of the album and a tour was cancelled. They resurfaced in 1990 for a tour and a greatest-hits collection, but subsequent studio albums were really Asia in name only as Geoff Downes was the only consistent member. The credential-free singer John Payne stepped in for Wetton and Howe and Palmer made only occasional appearances. The four original members wouldn’t work together again until they reunited for a tour in 2006 and three subsequent studio albums. |
Resources and Related Links:
Other Related DMDB Pages: 
First posted 4/19/2008; updated 8/6/2021. |
Friday, November 15, 1985
Double “The Captain of Her Heart” released
 | The Captain of Her HeartDouble |
Writer(s): Kurt Maloo, Felix Haug (see lyrics here) Released: November 15, 1985 Peak: 16 US, 20 CB, 18 RR, 4 AC, 8 UK, 17 CN, 64 AU, 1 DF (Click for codes to singles charts.) Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 28.9 video, 20.19 streaming |
Awards:Click on award for more details. 
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About the Song:Singer and guitarist Kurt Maloo formed the pop-rock duo Double (pronounced doo-BLAY) with keyboardist and drummer Felix Haug in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1983. They only released two albums, 1985’s Blue and 1987’s Dou3le. The former gave them their only real chart success with the single “The Captain of Her Heart,” which went top-10 in the UK and several other European countries. The song hit #16 in the United States, making Double the first Swiss act to crack the top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100. It was their only chart entry in America. Stewart Mason of All Music Guide called it “one of the great lost one-hit wonders of the mid-1980s,” AMG citing the song for its “casual sophistication and melodic grace.” AMG The song came about when Haug recorded a demo on his synthesizer. He said he got the notes from a blackbird singing outside his window. SF Maloo wrote lyrics to it in the studio “about a woman who’s tired of waiting for the man she loves to return.” SF He said, “They were just there out of the blue. It was almost spooky. I never thought the lyrics would touch so many hearts around the world and I’m still overwhelmed from the positive feedback I get.” WK Mason said, “Maloo’s detached, diffident vocals…manage to out cool Bryan Ferry at his own game” AMG while the “waterpiano riff that drives the song…[sounds] like a cross between Floyd Cramer and early Elton John.” AMG It is also features “one of the best alto sax solos this side of Gerry Rafferty’s ‘Baker Street.’” AMG Resources:
First posted 10/8/2022. |
Tuesday, November 12, 1985
Bruce Springsteen “My Hometown” released
 | My HometownBruce Springsteen |
Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen (see lyrics here) Released: November 21, 1985 First Charted: December 6, 1985 Peak: 6 US, 7 CB, 6 GR, 7 RR, 11 AC, 6 AR, 9 UK, 16 CN, 47 AU, 1 DF (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): 1.0 US Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 68.3 video, -- streaming |
Awards:Click on award for more details.
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About the Song:Bruce Springsteen’s “My Hometown” was the seventh single released from his 1984 Born in the U.S.A. album. More importantly, it was the seventh top-10 hit from the album, matching the record established by Michael Jackson’s Thriller. The song was also the seventh from the album to reach the top 10 on the album rock chart. It is also the only Springsteen song to date to top the adult contemporary chart. Billboard called it a “contemplative, insightful single.” WK The lyrics focus on the protaganist’s memories of the pride his father instilled in him regarding the family’s hometown. By song’s end, the narrator is planning to move, but takes his son driving to experience the same community pride his father had demonstrated. “My Hometown” starts out feeling like it will be a nostalgic look at childhood, but delves into the racial violence and economic depression which the narrator saw in his adolescence and young adulthood. WK Springsteen drew on the racial strife and economic tension he saw in his own hometown of Freehold, New Jersey, offering what Cash Box called a “tender and somber look at the real American hometown.” WK The song’s bleak portrait of the life of the working class extended his audience with the common man, especially during the Reagan era as many small towns were falling apart. SF In a case of life mirroring art, the 3M company closed its factory in Freehold, echoing the line in the song about “they’re closing down the textile mill.” SF Resources:
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First posted 8/7/2022; last updated 2/21/2023. |
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