"She Works Hard for the Money" was post-disco, as were "Bad Girls" and her duet with Barbra Streisand, "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)." Summer (or her producer) adjusted her style to remain relevant after disco crashed and burned. She was a stronger singer than most of the other disco divas so she could pull it off.
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Why are big hits "lost?"
- Thread starter tall_guy1
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Oldies...
SIX MILLION PEOPLE bought Foreigner. They just bought it on a big record with a little hole, giving the band more money and prestige and themselves more value for their money.
Exactly. But as we know, the Hot 100 then was based on sales (of singles) and airplay. Fortunately the album reached #1 on the 200, but having the single top the 100 would have been sweet too.
It would have been a meaningless metric. It was the seventh year of declining sales of 45 RPM records. By 1981, singles were largely a promotion tool used to sell albums via radio.
Livvy, Daryl and John would have loved to move albums like Foreigner did from their singles. Olivia managed two million albums (if you want to talk about the influence of trends, there's the answer), Hall and Oates sold one million.
I think with Olivia, it was more her music video of "Physical" (tying in with the fitness craze) being more popular on MTV than her LP.
Was "Heart Attack" in '82 on the same album or was there a follow up? I don't recall.
"Heart Attack" was a bonus cut (along with "Tied Up", which stiffed at #38) on "Olivia's Greatest Hits Vol. 2". Single peaked at #3, album at #16, but sold as many copies over time as the "Physical" album (2 times platinum).
No, you wouldn’t, because when people tune in to a hit music station they want to hear hits.
Um, yeah, had they sold more…but they didn’t. And frankly, 40 years later, no one cares. Physical was a fluke, and is mostly confined to the trash heap. Foreigner didn’t deserve the number one that time because something else best them.
I still hear Physical being played on KCKC in Kansas City.
Wait, you listen to KCKC in Kansas City?? Who would have thought?
😊 This is why this message board is fascinating, because there are so many different viewpoints, that it is difficult to reach a consensus.
(Not that reaching a consensus should be desirable or should be any kind of a goal! Subjective opinions based on personal experience are important).
And it's also difficult to reach a consensus, because it's such a big country, with so many different radio markets, different cultures, different musical tastes, and different business viewpoints about radio station management.
There's also many different ideas about psychology and how a song gets started trending, then later goes into the category of a hit.
That is not the way charts work. This is not a horse race, where there is only one winner.
"Physical" would have sold just as many units, as it a different genre with different consumers. A Foreigner song might also have done as well or better... or not.
Remember, there are weeks where the #1 song sold vastly fewer unit than in a different week when there were more strong songs. That is why the year-end charts were based on sales often showed a song that spent weeks at #1 in a slow sales period ended the year outside the top 30 or 40 songs; its total sales just did not compare well with other songs.
This is yet another reason why radio stations research to find out what songs people want to hear today. The ancient statistics are almost meaningless
It is totally personal, as the meaning of #1 in sales can be vastly different from one week to another.
And, besides, songs don't "deserve" a particular sales ranking. There are plenty of songs that were huge radio hits that did very well in the kinds of research prevalent in any particular era but which did not sell well. In radio, we called them "turntable hits" and they were songs people loved to hear but which they never felt a need to buy.
I heard "Heatwaves" from Glass Animals on Triple J, an Australian radio network that plays new alt, pop, and rhythmic.
That's a one listen. I knew on that first listen that this is a number 1 song.
AND.... about 27 months later it was number 1 at American CHR.
It just doesn't make sense that programmers would not jump on a sure thing, an alt pop hit that the format begs for.
Worse is when they continue to play obvious stiffs, this is your job and really not having ears is like being in the NBA without the ability to jump!
They actually need to dred on with medium rotation to get the song familiar, then they accept the listener saying yes I know this one and it's garbage.
Top 40 was killed by this. It's so sad. Can't hear hits is bad, but can't hear stiffs was the nails in the coffin.
This crapping on Hall and Oates is hilarious. I love those who think that what they think of subjective art forms is fact, they should just sing I'm BLUE la da Dee Dem o crah. Lol
physical was as true a hit in it's time as you can get.
It was part of the whole early 80s exercise craze.
This song is an example of one that didn't age well.
We all know that it was the biggest song of the 80s, yet even in 1989'wplj was not including it in their top 5 of the 80s.
Some songs were just of their time, even though it's completely dead today, that doesn't mean it wasn't a true hit.
Ok, and?
You know, I totally forgot about “turntable hits”. I’ve heard the term before, years ago. I thought it applied to just 50’s and 60’s records. It makes sense. Thank you.
He means that Physical was not one of the big hits that got lost, because he hears it still being played.
Stations test on their core listeners. KRTH likely does something line 32 to 49... a bit on the young side to know where they are going, but nothing on the very high side.
If they play it, their core listeners like hearing it today.
I still have an oldies station up here -- WFYX Walpole, NH, and its Woodstock, VT, translator -- and that station still plays Paul Anka's "(You're) Having My Baby," another song often labeled a "bad song" that should be avoided at all times. But here we have an exception, just like KCKC still playing "Physical." The stations have quite a bit in common -- small-time ownership and lagging ratings, although KCKC owns Christmas in KC. That alone tells me you can't use either station to argue that either song should still be played everywhere in 2023.
However, that "research" is sometimes rather questionable. There is a problem with people not wanting to be surveyed these days.
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