1982 Archives – How Good It Is

In case you haven’t heard, we’re on a little bit of a journey, meeting various women who have had an influence on multiple pop songs. In today’s episode we’ll be visiting Rosanna Arquette. The interesting thing here is that whether or not the songs in this episode are about Rosanna has been an on-again, off-again mystery. For a while they’re not, then they are again, and maybe, maybe not. Personally I think the evidence is there, although I can accept the explanation that there are other models for one song and there’s a deliberate ambiguity in the other, because of the nature of the music that was influencing the singer. At any rate, there’s a terrific storm going on tonight and I’ve already lost power briefly one time; let me get this out before there’s another outage. Click here for a transcript of this episode.  Click here to become a Patron of the show. Paid members get a newsletter 48 times per year and ad-free episodes. Free members get the newsletter on a delayed basis.  

The Go-Go’s (somehow that always looks wrong) started out in the late 1970s as a punk band in Los Angeles, and they were a pretty solid presence in that city’s Punk scene. But as they started to grow in prominence, they moved away from that edgy sound and into more of the pop scene. When IRS records finally signed them in 1980, they cut their first album, which included a re-recording of their first single. If you listened to college radio, you probably remember the original version of “We Got The Beat,” which was an import here in the US and was actually part of their demo record. You probably also found yourself wondering what happened to it when you finally heard the song released as a single in the early days of 1982, while “Our Lips Are Sealed” was making its slow climb back down the charts. Well…wonder no more, because I’ve got that story for you right here. Click here for a transcript of this episode.

It was the biggest album of 1982, and the title track was the last Top Ten single to come from it. That’s seven singles out of nine tracks total. Michael Jackson wanted to top not only the success, but the ambition of his previous album, Off The Wall, and I think we can all agree that he more than succeeded. Thriller remains the largest-selling album of all time. What! you say, bigger than Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band? Bigger than Dark Side of the Moon? Bigger than Bat Out of Hell? Yes, indeed. As of this week, the top 15 all-time sellers are: Artist Album Title Year Sales (in millions) Michael Jackson Thriller 1982 66 AC/DC Back in Black 1980 50 Pink Floyd The Dark Side of the Moon 1973 45 Meat Loaf Bat Out of Hell 1977 43 Whitney Houston / Various artists The Bodyguard Soundtrack 1992 42 Eagles Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975) 1976 42 Bee Gees / Various artists Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack 1977 40 Fleetwood Mac Rumours 1977 40 Shania Twain Come On Over 1997 39 Led Zeppelin Led Zeppelin IV 1971 37 Michael Jackson Bad 1987 35 Alanis Morissette Jagged Little Pill 1995 33 Celine Dion Falling into You 1996 32 The Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band 1967 32 Michael Jackson Dangerous 1991 32 That’s THREE albums Jackson has in the all-time Top 15, and Off the Wall isn’t even one of them. (It’s way down the list, a spot or two below HIStory.) This was one of the pictures originally considered for the album’s cover, which is why they used it for the Special Edition. Anyway. Today we’re looking at the title track, a song that started as “Starlight” and ended with Quincy Jones’ wife recruiting Vincent Price to do a little white-boy rap. Per our Standard Operating Procedure, if you’ve got a favorite podcatcher, you should be able to hear this week’s show already, or you can just click the player below: And, as usual, if you were to go to iTunes or wherever you find your podcasts and leave a rating, and maybe even some feedback, well, that’d be nice too.