 Various Artists This album, which I saw advertised on TV and would never buy, is complete fucking snake oil. A two-disc, 30-track compilation trying to cash in on the recent "Number Ones" trend as well as the annoyingly rampant 80s nostalgia, it revises history to offer shallow dumb-asses a totally fallacious version of that decade's most popular songs. As with most pop culture nostalgia, Billboard #1s reconfigures reality by banking on the masses' apathy for truth. Most people would see this album and think, "Ha, I love 80s music! And these are all the #1 hits from the 80s!" But that's horseshit. Of the 30 songs on here, only 12 actually hit #1 on the Billboard singles chart, and of the remainder, some choices are just ridiculous. "New World Man" by Rush? That didn't even crack the Top 20 (#21)! "Everybody Wants You" by Billy Squier? #32. "Just Another Night" by Mick Jagger? #12. "A Life of Illusion" by Joe Walsh? I haven't even ever heard that song, and at any rate, it peaked at #34. Some of the songs seem like they must have been #1s, but weren't. Pat Benatar's "Love is a Battlefield" … #5. "Love Shack" by The B-52s? Nope, only #3. "867-5307" by Tommy Tutone? Sure, it was played to death, but only charted at #4. Foreigner's "Waiting For a Girl Like You" famously stalled at #2. "Downtown Train" by Rod Stewart hit #3, and incidentally, that was in 1990. Such bullshit! Should I care? Should you care? Yes! It's corporate mind-control propaganda, Stalinizing the 80s for those who choose to have compilation producers select their nostalgia for them. It's worse than therapists planting false childhood molestation memories in their patients! Well … to me, it is. All credibility is thrown out the window with "Orange Crush" by REM, which didn't even chart, and "Fascination Street" by The Cure (#46). Sure, we should integrate what was then limited to the "modern rock" ghetto into the overall tapestry of What Was the 80s. But not in a forum that sells itself on a verifiable fact: #1 placement on Billboard's Top 100. "Sleeping Bag" by ZZ Top? Surely no one believes that was #1 (though surprisingly, it did get as high as #8). "Touch of Grey" by the Dead? Fuck you (#9)! Egad, this is making me far too angry. Was there a shortage of actual overplayed #1s to license? Or do they just want to avoid admitting that stuff like "Didn't We Almost Have it All" or "Jacob's Ladder" or "Bad Medicine" or "Batdance" were the real #1s? You can't choose history; it is what it was. And on top of all this, the real #1s that they do manage to include are mostly from '84-'87, with some of the lamest songs ever to hit the top of the chart ("Invisible Touch," "Amanda," "The Living Years," "Mony Mony" … yuck!). Fuck you, Rhino, you fucking asshole.
Review by La Fée |
