Number One Adult Contemporary Songs - 1988

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"Everywhere" >>>> "Kissing a Fool" >>>>>>>>>>>>> "Waiting for a Star to Fall" >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> the field

didn't realize gloria estefan was basically miami sound machine.

"Can't Stay Away From You," I determined last week after hearing it at the supermarket, is Estefan's best ballad.

I picked Johnny Hates Jazz's "Shattered Dreams," which, even more than "Breakout," brings a catch to my throat after the 45,000th listen (bongo solo!).

My wild card is one of Elton's forgotten '80s singles despite it being his biggest '80s hit; you're more likely to hear "I Guess That's Why They Call It..." over this, and rightly, cuz it's the better song. But I love the hamfisted keyboard work.

The rest:

One More Try
Everywhere
Giving You the Best That I Got

I don't hate "She's Like the Wind" like I should (it's better than anything by Atlantic Starr). I think Ned said in his Swayze obit that it's better than you remember it.

Don't hate "Make Me Lose Control" either -- it rode the "Dirty Dancing" wave, I guess.

lots of one-offs it seems

Just about all of these were MASSIVE pop hits too; this is the year with the greatest overlap between this and the Hot 100.

With the exception of "Everywhere" (!!) I think all these songs were top ten pop hits.

"Two Hearts" is Phil's best Motown pastiche, by the way.

roll with it

Last time, I picked Jets over some fierce competition. This time it's the Jets as default. I was glued to my radio in 1988 (I was nine) and can honestly remember disliking the bulk of these songs even then.

Just occurred to me, though, that this must've been my Dad's favourite music year ever. I remember us owning the cassingles of "Waiting For a Star To Fall," "One Moment In Time," possibly "Groovy Kinda Love" and definitely the Fleetwood Mac and Rick Astley albums those songs are off of.

I like "Two Hearts" and "Never Gonna Give You Up." If you're wondering where the Rick Astley vote came from...

one more try!

astley would be my runner-up after winwood

one. more. try.

^^

I'd vote for "Father Figure" if it were on here (very surprised it isn't--it made #1 pop).

would vote for any number of george michael hitz in any number of polls, but one more try is particularly great.

Father Figure would've gotten my vote, too.

father figure seems too seedy to count as AC

"One More Try" is a soul move and works despite not being a particularly soulful vocal -- too much high end, not enough grit, as if George had studied Daryl Hall instead of Otis (and Hall did have grit). I also noticed how the synth organ and percussion flirt with let-me-play-with-the-presets yet sound so warm. If George ever admits this is a demo he barely touched, I'd believe him.

#1 A/C (xpost):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FyjKQvWKw8

i voted rick astley. this was a lot harder than the 1987 poll.

Yeah, if FF were on here I would have gone with that too. I like OMT but I LOVE FF.

Butterfly Kisses is so creepy. I think it's also a really popular song for father daughter dances at weddings. retch.

voted anita baker over fleetwood mac, 'one more try', winwood, expose, my fave tiffany song. one of the better elton john 80s hits i think also.

lol I didn't even notice "Could've Been". The flowers you gave me . . .

The 80s did have it's own "Butterfly Kisses," though:

http://youtu.be/QT_xEye3b3M

By which I mean,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT_xEye3b3M

My radio station played it at least a hundred times an hour in late December '87.

They made us listen to it in school. The result? A roomful of grade schoolers snickering at a song about child abuse.

just heard "Where Do Broken Hearts Go" in the convenience store.

Am I correct that many of these songs were straight up top 40, and have only since been relegated to adult contemporary?

You know, I've always wondered, with acts like Tom Petty and Springsteen, Genesis and Mellencamp or whomever the '80s MTV mainstream, is that what kids (young people) were listening to as well? I want to say yes; I, and my friends, liked this now-boomer rock as much as Michael Jackson and much as Madonna as much as Prince or whatever. But where was the dividing line for the boomers? What were the boomers listening to? The same stuff? The Beatles? Big Chill soundtrack exclusively?

The eighties and early nineties were the last time the kids and their parents liked the same Phil Collins songs, yeah.

Let's see . . . in 1984, when I was 15, I was listening to Prince, Springsteen, Madonna, Duran Duran, The Police, Stevie Nicks, Van Halen, etc. I went to visit my dad, who was 39, that summer, and he was listening to The Police, Eurythmics, Blondie, Tina Turner, and, yes, The Big Chill soundtrack.

As weird as it looks now, I knew a couple of fellow thirteen-year-olds who bought Roll With It.

Am I correct that many of these songs were straight up top 40, and have only since been relegated to adult contemporary?

They were all both at the time. I think it's more your Dinosaur Jr.s and Galaxie 500s that have made the transition to adult contemporary.

"Can't Stay Away From You," I determined last week after hearing it at the supermarket, is Estefan's best ballad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eCluIu9zxw&feature=related

^I still kind of remember where I was when I first heard it. I was eight or nine years old, and it taught me the meaning of the word 'atmospheric'...

I used to like "Words Get in the Way" better. I'm listening to it right now...a little voice inside my head is saying don't look back, you can never look back.

anyways, this is Fleetwood Mac vs. Johnny Hates Jazz, with Waiting for a Star to Fall and One More Try as runners up...

Seasons Change!

Johnny Hates Jazz - Shattered Dreams was the spring/summer of 1987 in Britain, I'm 99% sure. Did it take a year to cross the Atlantic?

Also - what on earth does/did 'Adult Contemporary' mean? What was excluded from this category?

List is mostly bleah. Really brings out the pop-hating side of my personality.

I will take the Anita Baker song, easily, though I had no use for her at the time.

Or maybe I should say it brings out the Adult Contemporary hater in me, since this is really a narrow slice of pop (even if it overlaps a lot in this case, according to Alfred).

Adult Contemporary means that contemporary adults are often on hold with 800-number phone banks, shopping at supermarkets and at the mall...

Whenever I hear these songs now, they are always interrupted by the automated spokesperson for Marshall's, TJ Maxx, Subway -- wherever I happen to hear them.

nny Hates Jazz - Shattered Dreams was the spring/summer of 1987 in Britain, I'm 99% sure. Did it take a year to cross the Atlantic?

Most sophistipop hits took a year to cross over: see Swing Out Sister's "Breakout."

xpost Want to say the first kid I ever met with a walkman was listening to Steve Winwood's "Back in the High Life."

^and his name was Marty McFly

I was a fan of "Back in the High Life" as an eight-year-old. Pretty sure my family's summer vacation in 1987 was soundtracked exclusively by that song and "Who's That Girl?"

(Or at least that's what the radio stations between Chicago and Toronto played.)

WHEN YOU SEE HER
SAY A PRAYER
KISS THE WORLD GOODBYYYYE

"It would take a Strong, STRONG maaannnn..."

I forgot this song existed until a few months ago.. One of the clips on that "MTV's 30th birthday" thing was Rick Astley singing this (of all songs they could've chosen) on Club MTV, followed by Rick being interviewed by Downtown Julie Brown. I'm pretty happy I DVR'd that whole thing.

^^^ I didn't even notice this hit #1. It got NO airplay at my local station.

Remember "She Wants to Dance With Me"?

I might if I heard it... If you had asked me how many hits he had a few years ago, I would've said 3 (Never Gonna, Together Forever, and the long-hair gospel thing), but it turns out he had a few more than I remembered.

Def voting for "Shattered Dreams" by the way

'Everywhere' by Fleetwood Mac is probably the only song on that list that I'd listen to willingly.

"Everywhere" rules, but I figured it's going to win.

This was leaning very heavily towards "Shattered Dreams" until I got to "Giving You The Best That I Got". It isn't Anita Baker's best song, but it contains her best phrase (the passionate, drawn out "We've loved so strong" introduced later in the song) and I discovered earlier this summer that I still know almost all of the words despite not having listened to it since... 1990?

Had "Good Love" been on here, that would have been even more of a shoe-in.

Honorable mention to the following:

Fleetwood Mac - Everywhere
Miami Sound Machine - Anything for You
The Jets - Make It Real
Eric Carmen - Make Me Lose Control
Rick Astley - It Would Take a Strong Strong Man
Boy Meets Girl - Waiting for a Star to Fall

Astley's "Move Me" opens with the couplet

I go to work
in my clean shirt

Bottom feeders:

Groovy Kind of Love
Where Do Broken Hearts Go
Look Away

I like the concept of "Groovy Kind of Love" but wish pretty much anyone else had recorded it.

This is well into Whitney's truly unbearable period, where every song she released was an aural remora feeding off of the scraps of conventional wisdom's perceived notion of good taste. If I could, I would go back and time and destroy everything she released between 1987 and 1999 except for "I'm Your Baby Tonight" and maybe "My Name is Not Susan" if I was feeling generous.

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i like "my name is not susan." also like spinderella referencing it in "whatta man"

"Look Away" is lmao's

The songs that are funny as shit are redeemable imo

xp: tbh the equivocation is only because I can't remember if I actually liked the song or if the jokes my college friends made about accidentally calling someone Susan while in the throes of passion made me think more fondly of it

which one of this songs is the colossal squid?

i am not totally sure i like it, either. it might have been really boring, but the spinderella line delights me still.

xp

seriously though, the vast majority of the songs that made Whitney Houston a megastar are steaming bags of vomit; I remember actually wanting to hunt down and kill the programming director of our top 40 station the first time I heard "So Emotional"

it is not really a surprise that I started really getting into Skinny Puppy, Cabaret Voltaire and Ministry at about that same time

Whitney's music between 1987-1990 sounded like what your parents thought Skinny Puppy sounded like.

x-post:

Haha.

As weird as it looks now, I knew a couple of fellow thirteen-year-olds who bought Roll With It.

― lumber up, limbaugh down (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, November 18, 2011 6:22 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I remember begging my parents to buy me this tape in '88 (3rd grade for me). Loved (and still do to this day) "Don't You Know What The Night Can Do?"

http://skreened.com/render-product/f/y/s/fyssmxgeswoqazonukoa/you-gotta-be-freaking-kidding-me-tote.american-apparel-bull-denim-tote-bag.natural.w760h760.jpg

Cool! This video is on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

10 VOTE 'GROOVY KIND OF LOVE'
20 LOGOUT
30 LOGIN
40 GOTO 10

lol PP

My best of the '80s has a few.

And here are the #1s of this year.

Mostly agree with your assessments, although Elton at that point was pretty consistently meh imo. And I'd elevate Tiffany but that may admittedly be nostalgia talking. The George Michael, Anita Baker, and Gloria Estefan tracks induce and have always induced some serious emotions in me.

I would swap the Estefan rankings, though. 'Anything for You' knocks me on my ass every time.

There were only four Adult Contemporary Number Ones in 2024 - only three until this week when Jimmy Fallon & Jonas Brothers hit #1 with their Christmas song.

They other three were "Flowers," "Cruel Summer," and "Lose Control."

Between 2023 and 2024 "Flowers" spent 57 weeks at #1 Adult Contemporary.