1987

The mid-80s have been pretty disappointing (It's basically Madonna's Immaculate Collection.) with occasional flashes of brilliance in the form of 80s classics and nostalgic movie themes. I'm in 1987 now and I was delighted to discover the following:

The #18 song of 1987 was "I Think We're Alone Now" by Tiffany.
The #19 song of 1987 was "Mony Mony" by Billy Idol.

These are both covers of originals by Tommy James and the Shondells, one of my favorite underrated 60s bands. "I Think We're Alone Now" was the #12 song of 1967 while "Mony Mony" came in at #13 in 1968. It was fun to find these consecutive covers by different artists two decades later. Tommy James, you rock.

When I was about 6 years old, there was a local TV personality who belonged to my church. He made a series of three music videos starring members of our church to run on the local news. The first was "It's Judy's Turn to Cry" (Lesley Gore, 1963) starring me and my daycare classmates. The second was "Draggin' the Line" (Tommy James, 1971). And the last was "Too Late for Goodbyes" (Julian Lennon, 1985), which I just rediscovered as I made my way through 1985.

There, it was kind of a stretch but I tried to bring it all together with that random memory. :-)