Old Music Friday: 10/17/25

These days, Old Music Friday tends to live in a dedicated channel at the Jefitoblog Discord (a benefit for paying subscribers!), but this week, for the first time in as long as I can remember, I combed through every new release listed at Pause & Play and heard nothing that moved me to issue a recommendation. Here, then, are the ten songs that debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 during this week in 1985:

"Conga," Miami Sound Machine (No. 95, peaked at No. 10)
This single is ground zero for Gloria Estefan's chart reign. Miami Sound Machine waited eight albums before making a bid for mainstream U.S. stardom with their first English-language LP, 1984's Eyes of Innocence; that record failed to chart, but undeterred, the band returned the following year with Primitive Love, which went triple platinum and set off a string of a dozen Top 40 singles lasting into the next decade.

Sort of like Phil Collins, Estefan's fate as an adult contemporary legend was sealed the instant she scored her first hit with a ballad ("Words Get in the Way," which peaked at No. 5 in '86), but to her credit, she never stopped pushing uptempo stuff, and "Conga" serves as an early example of just how effectively she could sell that side of her artistic persona. It's also well worth mentioning that to wide swaths of American listeners, this kind of thing was awfully exotic; aside from the occasional Julio Iglesias crossover hit, Latin music was decidedly in the margins of the Hot 100 when Estefan started her reign. "Conga" proves that when you're making an argument for an entire culture, your best bet is to be simply irrefutable.

"Talk to Me," Quarterflash (No. 90, peaked at No. 83)
There are countless examples of acts who scored a big hit and then faded away for reasons completely beyond their control, and when you revisit the records they released after the spotlight faded, you feel the righteous anger that comes with bearing witness to inexplicable injustice. This is not the case with Quarterflash. Just a few years removed from their big hit with "Harden My Heart," the group was clearly out of ideas by the time they released their third album, 1985's Back into Blue. Admittedly, I haven't listened to the rest of it, but when your leadoff single is a lump of unseasoned ham like this song, it's a pretty clear signal that the folks at the label simply didn't know what else to do with the material they were given.

"Talk to Me" might have done okay as a second-side cut on a soundtrack album, but even in that context, it's seriously middling stuff, beaten hands down by, say, Karla Bonoff's "Somebody's Eyes." I defy you to remember this song several hours from now.

"Welcome to Paradise," John Waite (No. 89, peaked at No. 85)
It's easy to argue that Quarterflash played their one good Top 40 hand with "Harden My Heart," but John Waite's career tells a bit of a different story. I'd argue that with "Missing You," he cursed himself with a hit so endlessly omnipresent that people didn't want to hear his voice again for years to come — or at least that's how I felt in 1984, and this is my website, so I get to extrapolate however I want.

Anyway, Waite eventually went on to rule the charts again as a member of Bad English, but his solo discography is a tale of starting out strong and than limping along for years. It wasn't always a case of subpar material, but "Welcome to Paradise" is a slog and a half — the fact that this was the second single from his Mask of Smiles LP suggests he was feeling, shall we say, less than inspired at this point.

"Tears Are Falling," Kiss (No. 85, peaked at No. 51)
It's a well-known fact among Kiss fans that at this point in the band's career, Paul Stanley was essentially dragging things along through sheer force of will while Gene Simmons fucked off to try and conquer Hollywood by acting in movies with Tom Selleck and John Stamos. He deserves a big mulligan for that, at least if you're a Kiss fan. I, personally, have never been much of a Kiss fan, so I'll just be over here giggling at the incredible "Tears Are Falling" video. Oh man.

"Hold Me," Laura Branigan (No. 84, peaked at No. 82)
Today, Laura Branigan is best remembered as the voice behind "Gloria," to the extent that I think a lot of people probably think of her as a one-hit wonder. The reality is that she enjoyed a string of hits throughout the early '80s, including the original version of "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You." It's honestly a little difficult to understand why her chart momentum stalled as quickly as it did, although there's no way in hell she helped herself by posing for the frankly weird Hold Me album cover.

As for this song? Eh, it's fine. Certainly better than that Quarterflash thing, but it's also no "Self Control."

"Tarzan Boy," Baltimora (No. 80, peaked at No. 13)
I'm a little pissed that this song ended up here, because there's an entire post to be written about Baltimora, and while I have no intention of writing it today or possibly ever, I also can't really address "Tarzan Boy" without feeling like I'm giving this project's saga short shrift. Suffice it to say that Baltimora was a sort of proto-Milli Vanilli consisting of some Italian musicians who found an EMT from Derry to act as their flamboyant, lip-syncing frontman — an experiment that worked like crazy for about a year before fizzling out.

"Tarzan Boy" is deeply silly, but it's also a lot of fun. Longtime readers may remember that during the years when Friend of Jefitoblog Jason Hare was co-fronting the group Acoustic '80s, I harassed him into making this song part of their set, and he was surprised by how well it worked. It's catchy, era-appropriately anthemic, and it was played just enough during its moment to keep future reminders of its existence from being annoying. Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh.

"America," Prince and the Revolution (No. 70, peaked at No. 46)
Still riding the afterburners from Purple Rain, Prince instinctively understood that the best thing he could do was run right back with a new record before the weight of expectations started bogging him down — and make it a record that was not only not a Purple Rain II, but one that seemed to actively shy away from the prospect of megaplatinum success. This is not to say that Around the World in a Day is without its share of radio-friendly fare — "Raspberry Beret" and "Pop Life" might as well have been gift-wrapped to Top 40 program directors — but in overall spirit, it's a lot closer to the final single, "America," a densely assembled jam with scattershot social commentary mixed in.

All of which is to say that Prince continued doing whatever the hell he wanted even when the stakes got higher, and while it probably perplexed a bunch of kids in the suburbs, we were all better off in the long run for it.

"Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves," Eurythmics and Aretha Franklin (No. 62, peaked at No. 18)
Researching this post made me realize that living through the Eurythmics' chart run left me with the impression that it lasted longer, and produced more hit singles, than it actually did. What they did was still impressive — nine Top 40 singles in four years is nothing to scoff at — but I was kind of surprised to see that this song was their penultimate gasp in terms of Stateside hits, with only the No. 18 "Missionary Man" coming after.

In retrospect, it makes a certain kind of sense; the band released music so regularly — and Annie Lennox and David A. Stewart were so restlessly eclectic — that they were probably bound to wear out, and wear out their welcome at radio, sooner than later. "Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves" is typical of the other uptempo hits they had during this period, which is to say it's sort of a sonic assault that indulges Lennox's leather-lunged soul-singing side, but to be fair, there was only one way this was ever going to go once she ended up trading lines with Aretha. (Something else I didn't know until today: Tina Turner was given first crack at the song, but she wasn't available, so Lennox and Stewart made do with the Queen of Soul. Gee, must have been rough.)

"Alive & Kicking," Simple Minds (No. 52, peaked at No. 3)
Already well known in the U.K., Simple Minds came out of fucking nowhere for American listeners with "Don't You (Forget About Me)," the Breakfast Club soundtrack anthem they famously almost passed on before reluctantly agreeing to record it. Fresh off their first (and only) American chart-topper, they wisely followed suit with "Alive and Kicking," a track that effortlessly distilled everything that made them a perfect band for the era: Jim Kerr's mountainous vocals, Michael MacNeil's stirring synths, Charlie Burchill's chiming guitars, and a skyscraping melody that slaked a growing thirst for the seriously anthemic that'd soon be quenched more thoroughly by The Joshua Tree.

Unfortunately for Simple Minds, what was great timing going in proved to be less fortuitous later on. As the mid '80s became the late '80s, they were increasingly lumped in with a long list of other "Big Music" bands who were accused of trying and failing to be U2. Like I said, time has been kind to them, but there were definitely some lean years in between.

"Sleeping Bag," ZZ Top (No. 49, peaked at No. 8)
Like a number of '80s rock bands, ZZ Top were so hugely popular as an AOR phenomenon that they felt bigger on the mainstream level than they might have actually been. To put it another way, there are probably half a dozen ZZ Top songs that any random person could hum along with, released across a span of several decades, but the fact that people even know who you're talking about when you say "ZZ Top" rests pretty much squarely on the left-field spurt of multi-platinum sales they enjoyed between 1983 and 1985; a lot of their most enduring songs were hardly hits, or weren't hits at all.

To put it still another way: "Gimme All Your Lovin'" crapped out at No. 37, but "Sleeping Bag" — "Sleeping Bag"! — is one of two ZZ Top songs that peaked inside the Top Ten. (The other one is "Legs," another hit that felt bigger than it was.) Meanwhile, "Rough Boy," which I've always thought of as this album's big hit, stalled at No. 22 — a spot below "Stages." "Stages"!

Anyway, "Sleeping Bag" is fun for what it is, and ultimately, I guess I'm just glad I didn't find out the thuddingly dumb "Doubleback" sneaked its way into the Top 40. Hey, Heather Langenkamp!