Acclaimed Music Top 40 Songs from 1983 poll

let's hear it for the women, nice placing for a bunch of songs by the girls.

Photograph.

41 Culture Club - Karma Chameleon, 42 Violent Femmes - Add It Up, 43 The Style Council - Long Hot Summer, 44 New Order - Age of Consent, 45 Yes - Owner of a Lonely Heart, 46 Malcolm X - No Sell Out, 47 Kraftwerk - Tour De France, 48 Liquid Liquid - Cavern, 49 Womack and Womack - Love Wars, 50 Elvis Costello and The Attractions - Everyday I Write the Book, 51 Rufus and Chaka Khan - Ain't Nobody, 52 ZZ Top - Legs.

Blue Monday.

Which I think will ultimately win this poll, to be honest!

I actually used "Holiday" for student-entry music just this morning...Time was I would voted for that or "Time After Time." But I belatedly discovered "Beat Bop" a couple of years ago, and that towers over everything--Schoolly-D before the fact. I would have thought the '83 "Radio Free Europe" would have been on here.

It was a conundrum until I read the last entry, "Cattle And Cane" all the way. Such an indelible view of childhood.

Haha I am voting for Big Country.

"Let the Music Play" or GTFOH

18 1241 Shannon - Let the Music Play
14 858 Madonna - Holiday
13 763 Cyndi Lauper - Time After Time
1 40 New Order - Blue Monday
9 420 Eurythmics - Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)
16 1055 David Bowie - Let's Dance
11 569 Run-D.M.C. - It's Like That
7 332 Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel - White Lines (Don't Don't Do It)
24 1592 Talking Heads - Burning Down the House
15 868 Herbie Hancock - Rockit

relax (sorry big country)

it's like that

Tempted by Cattle and Cane and This Must be the Place, but how can I resist This Charming Man?

Shannon. That record started a whole genre. A lot of the other options are great but none spawned so much and none is as exhilarating.

18 1241 Shannon - Let the Music Play
28 1814 Indeep - Last Night a D.J. Saved My Life
13 763 Cyndi Lauper - Time After Time
1 40 New Order - Blue Monday
9 420 Eurythmics - Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)
7 332 Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel - White Lines (Don't Don't Do It)
12 651 Madonna - Borderline
5 210 Frankie Goes to Hollywood - Relax
15 868 Herbie Hancock - Rockit
35 2208 Liquid Liquid - Optimo

"Blue Monday" is even bigger.

xpost

girls just wanna have fun
optimo
time after time
gone daddy gone
white lines
cattle and cane
borderline
gimme all your lovin
this charming man

Borderline

can't do it

"Blue Monday" is huge, yet I feel it comes out of, or is related to things Bobby O and other NYC people were doing. I know Bobby O was inspired by "Blue Monday," but I assume New Order had also heard Bobby O since he already had a bunch of records out. At any rate "Let the Music Play" strikes me as more sui generis and inexplicable. Both records are amazing though.

"In A Big Country" narrowly over "Time After Time" and "Borderline"

Even "Let's Dance" sounds good in this company. Voting Big Country over both Madonna's, ZZ Top, Def Leppard and a bunch of others.

'This Is the Day'. One of the best songs of the decade, imo.

voted: Let The Music Play.
runner-up: Girls Just Want To Have Fun
honorable mention: Ain't Nobody (the number 51, apparently)

Relax just ahead of Cattle & Cane. Love Wars and Tour De France would both be contenders if included in the main list.

Hand in Glove - a game changer

What happened between 1982 and 1983? Even the Talking Heads tracks are below par.

"Let The Music Play" over "In a Big Country," "Middle of the Road," "Borderline," and "Cattle and Cane."

What? This Must Be the Place is probably my favourite TH track.

xpost

What's great about this list is that everybody knows these songs. In last year's list the only songs that were hits were "Rolling In The Deep", "Superbass", "Pumped Up Kicks", and "We Found Love". If you ask a regular person about the rest of the 2011 list, they probably never heard of them, except maybe "Holocene" because of the Grammys.

never saw what was so good about this must be the place personally.

Let the Music Play
Borderline
Hand in Glove
This is the Day
Love Cats
White Lines
Let's Dance
This Must be the Place
Relax

This is hard don't make me choose. :(

It's not my favorite oh-look-we've-matured Heads song (that would be "Creatures of Love").

7 332 Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel - White Lines (Don't Don't Do It)
25 1627 Talking Heads - This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)
27 1676 John Cougar Mellencamp - Pink Houses
37 2367 Eddy Grant - Electric Avenue

Probably one of these.

I WANNA TOUCH YEWWWWWWW

Going to go with "Let the Music Play," partly because it has a strong association for me of: you're not in high school any more, thank god. 1983 was the year I graduates and being at Temple University was a huge relief after being stuck in a small suburban high school.

"Let the Music Play" over "All Night Long (All Night)", "Every Breath You Take" & "Cattle & Cane".

"Let the Music Play" blew me away from the start, totally ubiquitous in my little corner of Florida at the time.

in South Florida every Shannon single got airplay; she was the Donna Summer of freestyle through summer '85. These days I actually prefer "Give Me Tonight."

What happened between 1982 and 1983? Even the Talking Heads tracks are below par.

― besides Sunny Real Estate (dog latin), Thursday, December 6, 2012 9:30 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's interesting-- this list is every bit as difficult to settle as the '82 one, but the players who make it difficult are totally different than the ones who made '82 such a challenging choice. '83 really REALLY has the feeling of a new freshman class.

white liiiines

actually i voted for "time after time"

never saw what was so good about this must be the place personally.

― besides Sunny Real Estate (dog latin), Thursday, December 6, 2012 9:40 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yah but you also don't like Fear of Music, so plainly you are an unreliable judge of T Heads :P

Glad to see so many people share my love for "Let The Music Play". Truly a great record.
Still don't know what I'm going to vote for though.

i really, really want to vote for "Song to the Siren" or "The Love Cats" as i feel it won't get any love on this poll. probably will vote for "Blister in the Sun" though, still undecided.

"This Charming Man" over "Photograph" and "New Year's Day"

Cattle & Cane over Photograph and Let The Music Play

Time After Time vs Photograph

with like a dozen classics underneath those

Ha, I may be the most rockist ilXor when it comes to 1980s Acclaimed Music lists.

This is a tough poll. I went with This Must be the Place (Naive Melody). I've always loved the title of this song, how the parenthetic aside kind of undermines the lyrics.

There are a lot of songs on here that I didn't really know in 1983 but have become favorites since then, which I don't think I can vote for. Instead, I'm voting for Big Country because that's one I've loved since it first came out.

didn't vote for it, but that is a v worthy winner

The margin of victory is like ILM atoning for all those incorrect poll winners via one mass mea culpa.

You will rue the day...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9I56Kkxh_os

(I'm half-kidding--I only discovered the song myself when Rammellzee died two years ago. And "Let the Music Play" is great.)

a #1 i've never heard of

― some dude, Monday, December 10, 2012 7

what

::shrugs::

I envy you!

I'm tempted to start a thread: "Let's Babble To Some Dude About the Awesomeness of Shannon"

this is gonna be sacrilege on ILM but i don't really get freestyle, one or two Lisa Lisa songs aside, it's all just ok but not nearly as appealing to me as other adjacent styles from the era

There's a lot of freestyle that doesn't work for me either. And then there's "Let the Music Play," which is among the 2 or 3 dozen most awesome dance songs post-disco.

yeah i'm not making a call on whether i like this or not on one listen

Good plan. I didn't always revere it so.

especially when "Give Me Tonight" exists

this is gonna be sacrilege on ILM but i don't really get freestyle, one or two Lisa Lisa songs aside, it's all just ok but not nearly as appealing to me as other adjacent styles from the era

― some dude, Monday, December 10, 2012 5:14 PM Bookmark

burn the witch

wau that is some margin of victory

fantastic song tho

and no daylight between Lionel Richie and Robert Smith.

as it should be

I like Let The Music Play, but I think it might be just a tad bit overrated on ILM.

Would've gone with "Beat Bop," had I seen this, but Shannon would easily be in my top 5 -- maybe Top 2, though zero-vote-getters Indeep, Run-DMC, and John Cougar would be close.

I like Let The Music Play, but I think it might be just a tad bit overrated on ILM.

― Moodles, Monday, December 10, 2012 9:50 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

see this is interesting to me because i've been here 11 years and i can't remember even seeing it mentioned before this thread

c'mon, the board is full of wankers talking about "Let the Music Play" instead of most-interesting-record-of-all-time "Blue Monday"

yeah people (for example, me) have been championing that song since 2001

it's no DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DU-DU-DU-DU-DU-DU-DU-DU HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE A BIT GRUMPY AT THE FRESHERS BALL

i'm not saying it hasn't happened i'm just surprised it all slipped by me!

fwiw NV i am delighted for ANYTHING to get more votes than "blue monday"

yeah i think my snarkasm might be a bit diffuse basically on your side evrybody who wanted "Blue Monday" to lose hard

is there anything less satisfying than a snarkasm?

it's definitely less satisfying than a snarkgasm

surprise snarkasm?

i feel bad now i forgot that woman with an involuntary snarkasm reflex offed herself last week

I see snark in the harbor

icon and shall ebay

Isn't there something a bit unusual about personifying love in a pop song? It seems medieval.

poor violent femmes

poor run-dmc

I like Let The Music Play, but I think it might be just a tad bit overrated on ILM.

― Moodles, Monday, December 10, 2012 9:50 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

see this is interesting to me because i've been here 11 years and i can't remember even seeing it mentioned before this thread

― some dude, mardi 11 décembre 2012 03:06 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

c'mon, the board is full of wankers talking about "Let the Music Play" instead of most-interesting-record-of-all-time "Blue Monday"

― let's hear it for the women (Noodle Vague), mardi 11 décembre 2012 03:08 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

In the ILX 1980s singles Poll, Shannon was #98 and "Blue Monday" was # 6.
I think she was Top 10 or at least Top 15 in my ballot.

I've listened to "Let the Music Play" three times since seeing the results of this poll and I am kind of disappointed in that I don't think I am able to hear why it beat out these other songs, especially Blue Monday which is not what I voted for but the song that I expected would win this. Is "Let the Music Play" historically interesting for some reason? Why did it run away with this poll so dramatically?

n.b. i was born long after 1983

It's one of the first songs for which the Roland TB 303 was used as a compositional tool, iirc. There's a great 303 Primer in Wire #303 (2009) in which it was featured.

did my orig post really look that unsnarky?

I didn't think anything could beat New Order on ILM, never mind 11-4, but this result brings joy to my heart

(didn't vote for it tho - it was probably my second choice but I went for White Lines. surprised at various 0-vote showings, but there were a lot of great songs to choose from)

The Imposter - Pills & Soap

I really had no idea what this was, most disappointing google search ever

that's from his "good" period imo :(

everything that got more votes than "Photograph" is not as good as "Photograph" btw

Thought with a title like that, it was going to be some squelchy proto-acid rave up xp

Shame to see Indeep with no votes.

I love both "Let The Music Play" and "Blue Monday" and both were played to death for the next 20 years on Miami radio – they've never gone away. Shannon gets the edge because she stars in the quintessential disco melodrama: playing out romantic hysterics on the dance floor while yelling over synth whooshes.

I think it just happened that the pop/dance vote coalesced around one song this time and the indie vote split, whereas the opposite happened in previous polls (not that "Blue Monday" isn't just as much dance music as "Let the Music Play")

It's generational too. "This Must Be The Place" has emerged as POO Heads song in the last ten years.

no "Blue Monday" is still the most popular song among poo heads

I think it just happened that the pop/dance vote coalesced around one song this time and the indie vote split

Don't discount the swing vote.

Looking at this list again, it's easy to see why it was so easy for me* to get out of my college radio snob funk (around this time) and take what I wanted from the charts. There are a lot of songs on this list that I could have voted for.

"Let the Music Play" has held up well for me personally, I think, mostly because it's such a solid dance club song. Even if I haven't danced to it much, I can feel the dance in it.

*I'm going to leave in the lyrics sound alike writing on purpose.