US #1s of 1987

Nothing here I love. :(

Weird. Maybe it's because I was 13 that year, and really starting to embrace music, but I love every single one of these songs. I've kind of put 1987 on a pedestal.

(oh wait, I just noticed Billy Vera...and the song from Dirty Dancing...okay, I don't love every single one of these songs after all)

Most wtf #1: Bob Seger "Shakedown"
Runner-up: The Queen of Soul doing a #1 duet with the guy from Wham!

1987, You Were A Diverse Year:
Whitesnake, "Here I Go Again" & Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam, "Lost in Emotion" back-to-back

And then there's Tommy James, still cashing in those royalty checks.

With Or Without You.

cutting crew!!!!

i love scrolling through the options in these polls and waiting for the chorus or main hook or whatever to appear in my head like an algae bloom. gonna go with whitesnake, just cuz.

x-post this is a really ilm thing to say but god have those u2 singles soured on me, i don't hear anything from joshua tree anymore except for a faint trace of self-importance.

i loved those whitney songs at the time--they're some of the first songs i can remember going apeshit over at the ripe old age of 5 yo.

Oh oh, we're half way there.

Though Alone could be a contender. Clash of the ridiculous rock ballads.

ohhhhiwannaDANCE with somebuuuddy

I was all set to vote for "What Have I Done to Deserve This?", but I guess that just missed. So "Open Your Heart," with "Alone" runner-up. I was working in a downtown record store at the time, so most of what's here I heard non-stop for eight hours a day--a lot of it's dead for me.

With or Without You is the worst song of the ones I know.

is it a challop to say that "livin on a prayer" is my least favorite song of all time? cuz it is

i voted for "bad"

I guess my top 5 would look something like:

Michael Jackson, "Bad"
George Michael, "Faith"
Whitney Houston, "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)"
Club Nouveau, "Lean on Me"
U2, "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"

'open your heart' is one of my very favourite madonna singles. it makes you feel so powerful, invincible, triumphant. listen to the lyrics, everything's stacked against her. the boy's actively avoiding her! by rights it should feel pointless or, worse, stalkery, but she just nails an optimism that brooks no argument - she will get her boy, of this there is no doubt.

"Open Your Heart," with "Jacob's Ladder," "Heaven is a Place on Earth," and "Shake You Down" (still an underrated song) right behind; it might be my favorite Madonna single from this era. The power and fervor of the thing is unstoppable.

"head to toe"

followed by
"open your heart"
"i wanna dance with somebody"
"with or without you"
"heaven is a place on earth"
"faith"

the bill withers cover is pretty great too.

I prefer "Why You Treat Me So Bad," which takes the backing track from Genesis' "Tonight Tonight Tonight" to outer space.

"(I Just) Died in Your Arms" is the worst song ever written and sung.

"Open Your Heart," pretty clearly. Only "Head to Toe" had a chance.

don't really have an opinion on the original cutting crew song but it was sampled for a grime beat a couple of years ago - this track is amazing, one of my favourite grime tracks ever i think

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2felzw33L0

junior high hell

hell, freshmen hell, even

thank the music gods for college radio.

is it a challop to say that "livin on a prayer" is my least favorite song of all time? cuz it is

i voted for "bad"

― swag serf (J0rdan S.), Sunday, June 21, 2009 8:24 PM (5 hours ago)

"livin on a prayer" was my prom song :(

lol @ new york

What a horror show. I'll say "Head to Toe" though it was a little too Supremesy; Lisa Lisa did better singles before & after. The Kim Wilde track is, oddly, less Supremesy & pretty good.

"Nothing's Gonna Stop us Now" was MY prom song.

When a slight but pleasant song like "Heaven's a Place on Earth" rises to the top of a list, you gotta know it's a pretty crappy list.

Very very seriously considering voting for "Alone" here and I think I'm right.

kinda surprised at the couple songs here I don't even remember at all:

Gregory Abbott, "Shake You Down"
Billy Vera and the Beaters, "At This Moment"

what the fuck are these?

terrible list btw

i wanna dance w/somebody is the only stone classic thing on here.

I really liked that Ruff Squad track!

Did the singles from Hysteria and Appetite for Destruction only chart the following year or did none of them go to #1?

While I know it's probably not the best song, it's really hard to deny my elementary-school self's desire to vote for "Livin' On a Prayer".

My prom song was "High Enough". Ugh.

This is a fantastic list, you haters. (and all the Hysteria/Appetite stuff was '88 IIRC)

yeah "open your heart" is the best thing here.

much love to lisa lisa... and bon jovi. and whitesnake! lest we forget: whitesnake - "here i go again"

I am voting "Shake You Down", not because it's my favorite song here, but because it deserves a vote for being so fucking awesome.

i was a young kid but i knew something was deeply wrong with all those retroid covers at the time (tiffany, club nouveau, billy idol)

For Shakey. I'm sure you've heard this:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyEc0j2ny68

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyEc0j2ny68

also, Billy Vera:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH4odHVfF5E

This was the year I graduated from high school, went to college and discovered non-chart music. Voted Huey Lewis for the lols.

hahaha I have never heard Billy Vera speak before, wow

"At This Moment" was "Family Ties"'s jump-the-shark moment.

You should have changed your screen name to "Olivia Huxtable" for that post.

Well.

haaaaaaaaaaaaa

we can build this poll together

cuz we're the poll of fools.

love shake you down

alone is really good too

Am seriously considering voting for Faith. I don't know how I feel about that.

Come on, you know it's 'I Wanna Dance With Somebody'. Just listen to it! It's amazing!

Was ready to vote Belinda but then, at the bottom, there was FAITH. Great song.

There were probably about 20 freestyle records that should have gone to #1 in this year instead of these "winners." Not to mention tons of hip hop. "Paid in Full," folks?

I agree Paid In Full should have had a high chart placing. Wiki says it was in 1988, though. *shrugs*

pre soundscan though

and there wasn't a hip hop format stations in a lot of big cities then either

^^Well, that was the problem. And there weren't a lot of freestyle or crossover dance stations either. And top 40 was mind-numbingly conservative, as the top list indicates. Hence the injustice.

I genuinely don't like a single song on here (I guess the Los Lobos cover is okay but its not very interesting)

reminds me of why I hated high school so much

The 86 and 88 lists were a lot better.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

ha -- i don't like any of these either! can't remember what the tiffany or carlisle tracks sound like, though.

Neither "With Or Without You" nor much of the Joshua Tree sounded nearly as good to me then as it does today.

"Open Your Heart" was a pretty uncommonly good single for Madonna, though, now that I'm forced to recall how it went.

Michael Jackson, "I Just Can't Stop Loving You" 0

:(

I thought I'd voted for that.

Huey Lewis and the News, "Jacob's Ladder"

wtf is this? the only thing on the list that i have zero memory of ever hearing

Written by Bruce Hornsby

Goes (as any song called "Jacob's Ladder" would) "Step by step - rung by rung."

Nothing to do with Tim Robbins, Vietnam, etc.

Bruce Hornsby wrote a song that Huey Lewis did?

*blood vessels in my brain explode*

Oh my god, that's so not right. Oh my god, that's...horrible.

yes! top 2!

leave bruce hornsby alone

actually bruce & huey they seem like 2 peas in a pod kinda

The three people who voted for Cutting Crew will never meet me.

Let's go deeper!

87 is a special year for me and I love almost all of these

This is one of the troubling years for me, because I felt like my aesthetic was being pulled in at least three directions at the time. Only later would I understand that they weren't in conflict, and that one could love different things for different reasons. Lots of these songs are awesome, and it's fascinating (to me anyway) how many different ways they find to be awesome.

80s music had lots of problems, but I do think there was a notable diversity of expression that allowed Lisa Lisa, Whitesnake, Whitney, and U2 to occupy the same cultural moment so thoroughly and so seamlessly (from the perspective of my teenage clock radio).

that's why I don't know what "eighties music" means.

I do think there was a notable diversity of expression that allowed Lisa Lisa, Whitesnake, Whitney, and U2 to occupy the same cultural moment so thoroughly and so seamlessly (from the perspective of my teenage clock radio).

so emotional?

I dated this Latina at the time who was lost in emotion

Wow what a great year for top 40. I had a dubbed cassette with "License to Ill" on one side and "Invisible Touch" on the other, that's what kind of year 1987 was.

can we discuss "Don't Disturb This Groove" forever

and the weirdness of my home girl Gloria Estefan's "Rhythm is Gonna Get You" isn't discussed enough

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZkjeJKBI0M

of course this is the year i was born

^ me too, but i'm not really feeling these songs so much. there are some good ones there, but the only really great one to me is "Fight For Your Right." I like "Valerie" as well but not the 1987 remix.

P much love all but the Bon Jovi

xpost The Hague for 87 is a particularly dire list of tunes. Seems worse - quantity and lack of quality - than previous years.

Very few issues with Alfred's ranking as opposed to the '86 one - Bon Jovi undervalued again, and I'd put "Right on Track" and "Sign o' the Times" in the highest category. What really jumps out to me is how many I don't know - esp those in the 'meh' category. I was 15 and a 24/7 radio listener at the time, so it must be a US-Europe thing.

"Right On Track" would be in good to great today.

Hurrah!

Just had a look at the Dutch top 10s, and yes, it was a very different year here. Mel & Kim, "Pump up the Volume", Sabrina's "Boys", the original Rickroll, LL's "I Need Love", and a handful of Terence Trent D'Arby singles. Oh, and "Crockett's Theme" by Jan Hammer...

Just the #1s, see.

I'm surprised to realize how few of these outside of your 'good to great' I have much time for. I guess we still have a little way to go until we witness the crystalline perfection achieved by the pop music of the PB Interzone.

Can’t believe “Heaven Is a Place on Earth” is from ’87(!) Belinda was my first big “celebrity crush,” and I thought I was younger at the time... :/

Head To Toe is not and never has been meh, you monster

que sera que sera!

The best song won this poll. And also the worst song won this poll.