Old Music Friday: 5/9/85

"Square Rooms," Al Corley (No. 96, peaked at No. 80)
What David Hasselhoff was to Austria, Al Corley was to France — only not as much, and for a far shorter period of time. (That's the saddest sentence I've written in a long, long while.) Like Hasselhoff, Corley is probably best remembered (in the States, anyway) for his screen work — specifically, his tenure as Steven Carrington on Dynasty, which reached its first conclusion at the end of Season 2 in 1982. He'd later return to the role for the show's 1991 reunion movie; in the meantime, he pursued a recording career, which netted him a handful of hits in Europe. "Square Rooms," the first of the bunch, went to No. 1 in France. It did fuck-all here, but Corley kept acting; also in 1985, U.S. audiences had the opportunity to watch him star opposite Pamela Sue Martin in Torchlight. Most of them passed.

"Meeting in the Ladies Room," Klymaxx (No. 89, peaked at No. 59)
Right off the bat, I need to tell you that I absolutely do not care for this song, and probably said everything I had to say about it in a CAPTAIN VIDEO! post from 2010.

At least it isn't "I Miss You," though. That song really blows chunks.

"Ways to Be Wicked," Lone Justice (No. 86, peaked at No. 71)
Short-lived stars of the cowpunk movement, Lone Justice burned bright and flamed out fast, only releasing a pair of albums before stepping aside to make way for Maria McKee and Marvin Etzioni to go on and become household names in their own right. "Ways to Be Wicked" isn't their signature song — that honor probably goes to "Shelter," which came a lot closer to cracking the Top 40 the following year — but it does a fine job of distilling the group's appeal.

"Hold Me," Menudo (No. 85, peaked at No. 62)
According to certain pundits, the song not only helped create the foundation for '90s boy band pop, but deserves to be ranked among the greatest boy band singles of all time. I would argue with those people if I had the energy — this strikes me as a deeply pedestrian example of a genre whose foundational appeal has always been extremely basic anyway — but since I do not have that energy at the moment, I'll just say it's very easy to understand why Menudo's Top 40 clock got cleaned by New Edition in 1985.

"Every Time You Go Away," Paul Young (No. 70, peaked at No. 1)
For most people, this is the only Paul Young song that might as well exist, which is sort of a shame. It isn't a HUGE shame, because all of Young's records are wildly uneven, but this song makes a great case for him as a talented interpreter of other people's songs. (The other person in this case is Daryl Hall, who has publicly resented not having a hit with Hall and Oates' version for decades.) "Go Away" kept Young on the Columbia payroll through the end of the decade, which was good for one more big hit, a (really quite good) cover of "Oh Girl." After losing his deal, Young notched another Top 40 single with his cover of "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted" from the Fried Green Tomatoes soundtrack; following that, he spent a number of years recording Tex-Mex music. (I'm not kidding. Look it up.)

"You Give Good Love," Whitney Houston (No. 67, peaked at No. 3)
There isn't much left to say about "You Give Good Love" in 2025, and I'm pretty sure you're fine with that — we all know every note of this song by now. At this point, for a column like this, I guess it's chiefly interesting in that it captures Houston in the moments before she went supernova; her only preceding single, the Teddy Pendergrass duet "Hold Me," didn't make much of a dent in the Hot 100 when it was shipped to radio in 1984. But after the release of the Whitney Houston LP, everything changed — the No. 3 "You Give Good Love" was followed by seven consecutive No. 1 pop hits.

"Crazy in the Night (Barking at Airplanes)," Kim Carnes (No. 65, peaked at No. 15)
I think a lot of folks think of Kim Carnes as a one-hit wonder, which is really pretty fucked up — even if we acknowledge that all of her other work will forever be overshadowed by "Bette Davis Eyes," she still had a fairly lengthy and prolific run of successful singles on pop and country radio. This particular song, which is way less '80s than its parenthetically gonzo title would suggest, marked the end of her days as a pop Top 40 artist, but at least she went out in style — the song is really pretty fun, and it was one of her bigger Hot 100 hits. (Bonus points for the sweet story behind the song, which was supposedly written about Carnes' son being afraid of the dark.)

"Tough All Over," John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Band (No. 53, peaked at No. 22)
Among the legions of not-quite-Springsteens who cropped up in the '80s, John Cafferty and his astronomically stupidly named Beaver Brown Band were arguably the most successful, at least in terms of commercial success within a fairly short period of time. (How's that for qualified praise?) "Tough All Over" was the leadoff single from Tough All Over, otherwise known as the studio album that followed the band's unexpectedly popular efforts for the Eddie and the Cruisers soundtrack; if you listen carefully, you can hear every executive at Scotti Bros. crossing their fingers and holding their breath before the song begins. Their gamble kept paying off a little while longer — after "Tough All Over" topped the Mainstream Rock chart, "C-I-T-Y" bested its No. 22 pop peak. Their luck ran out pretty quickly after that, but they're still together; in fact, they released a new album, Sound of Waves, in 2023.

"Sussudio," Phil Collins (No. 39, peaked at No. 1)
Phil Collins owned the Top 40 throughout the '80s, but this marks the spot where he really exploded. An impossible-to-argue-with bit of synth-fueled nonsense, "Sussudio" heralded the arrival of Collins' massively popular No Jacket Required album, whose four Top 10 singles fed straight into the arrival of Genesis' Invisible Touch LP the following year. Much has been written about the eventual backlash against Collins' entire deal, and the frank humility with which he's responded to it has only made him more sympathetic, but if you weren't around to live through his imperial phase, don't treat the people who got sick of him too harshly. I was there, and let me tell you: It was a lot. (Side note: I will never stop finding it funny that Collins basically plagiarized himself with "Who Said I Would," a slight "Sussudio" inversion recorded for the same goddamn album.)

(To take a look at the rest of the Billboard Hot 100 for this week in 1985, click here.)