 | 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
50 years ago: Bing Crosby charted with “Silent Night”
 | Silent NightBing Crosby with the Guardsmen Quartette |
Writer(s):Joseph Muhr/Franz Gruber (see lyrics here) First Charted: December 21, 1935 Peak: 7 US, 30 HR, 19 GA, 8 UK, 1 DF (Click for codes to singles charts.) Sales (in millions): 30.0 US Airplay/Streaming (in millions): 3.0 radio, -- video, -- streaming |
Awards:Click on award for more details. 
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About the Song:We might never have heard this popular Christmas carol if it hadn’t been for mice rendering a church organ useless. Popular accounts have suggested that mice ate out the bellows of the organ SF at Nikolaus-Kirche (Church of St. Nicholas) in Oberndorf, Austria. WK Father Joseph Mohr was concerned about having music for the 1818 Christmas Eve service. He’d written a poem called “Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht” and presented it to his friend Franz Xaver Gruber, a headmaster and amateur composer, hoping he could do something with it for guitar. SF The pair gave the first public performance of the song with only Mohr’s guitar accompaniment at the service. SF Since then, the song has become one of the most popular in the world, having been translated into more than 44 languages. WK However, it is John Freeman Young’s English translation published in 1859 that is the most frequently sung today. WK It became the most recorded song of the first half of the 20th century. PM In Britain, it is the most recorded Christmas song of all time. SF To date, it has been recorded by more than 300 artists including Elvis Presley, Simon & Garfunkel, Linda Ronstadt, Boyz II Men, Stevie Nicks, Tori Amos, Mannheim Steamroller, Mahalia Jackson, Andrea Bocelli, Sinead O’Connor, and Brad Paisley. WK The best known version is the 1935 recording by Bing Crosby with sales estimated as high as 30 million. PM Bing proved to be successful with a few other tunes as well; he sold over 300 million records with well over 300 charted songs over 35 years time (1928-63) and landed 36 songs at #1, more than any other recording act in history. PM Resources:
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First posted 7/8/2012; last updated 8/4/2022. |
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. |
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First posted 4/19/2008; updated 8/6/2021. |
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