The Bridge: Pub Rock, Power Pop and New Wave
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Hey, everybody. This is Chris Molanphy, host of Hit Parade, Slate’s podcast of Pop Chart History. Welcome to the Bridge.
Speaker 2: I’m walking in Times Square.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: This is the bridge I burnt. The last song Elvis Costello recorded for Warner Brothers Records for a 1997 compilation album called Extreme Honey. The song is quite literally about burning a bridge career wise. Costello recorded it specifically to fulfill his Warner contract. There was no love lost between the label and Costello in the liner notes to a later reissue. He revealed that the label had allotted a $1,000 budget total to promote Extreme Honey Worldwide, which he said is, quote, About as close as a major record company can legally get to putting a horse’s head in your bed, unquote.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Given the anemic promotion the Extreme Honey album did not chart. Incidentally, the original recording of The Bridge I burned includes four lines lifted from Prince’s 1985 number seven hit Pop Life. However, when asked permission by Costello for the lyrical allusion, Prince refused. Instead, Costello replaced the lines with audio of someone shouting through a megaphone. Ever the punk. Even in the nineties, Elvis was willing to burn a bridge in. Everybody.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: And these mini episodes, bridge, are full length monthly episodes. Give us a chance to expand on those episode topics and enjoy some trivia. This month, I’m delighted to welcome back a guest whose expertise ranges widely. He was just on the bridge earlier this year after our Hall and Oates episode.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Stephen Thomas Erlewine is a senior editor at Xperi, whose database of music information is available at all musical. In his quarter century with all music, Tom has written thousands of record reviews and biographies. He’s also contributed to Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Billboard, Spin, Vulture and the L.A. Times, and has written liner notes for Legacy and Vinyl. Me, please. Yet again, Tom’s work at all music was a prime resource on my latest hit Parade episode. He has reviewed many of the albums by these so-called Angry Young Men, and he has thought more deeply about the differences between pub rock, power, pop and post-punk than most critics, let alone most music fans. Tom Erlewine, welcome back to The Bridge.
Speaker 3: Thanks so much for having me again, Chris. It’s a pleasure.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Oh, it’s my pleasure.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Let’s start out with what I consider to be the most obvious question, and it’s one that has popped up in some of the interactions I’ve had with listeners since this episode dropped a couple of weeks ago. Okay. I call it the punk question. Do you think any of the so-called Angry Young men, Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson, Graham Parker, were ever really punk? I mean, maybe at the beginning, were they ever.
Speaker 3: I would put Elvis Costello and the attractions in there, and I think Graham Parker is adjacent. Graham Parker doesn’t really have an edge outside of his voice. There’s a real snarl in his delivery and also in his lyrics, but it’s closer to new wave than punk, whereas Elvis is set aside of the polish of My Name is True New York, and go right into this year’s model. And that’s a punk record by any stretch of the imagination.
Speaker 3: Same thing with Joe Jackson. Portions of Look Sharp and I’m the man. Once you have the really high octane Joe Jackson numbers, they’re definitely in control. And also when you look at, say, The Clash, Joe Strummer also had that background in Pub rock. He was in the one on one.
Speaker 2: A lot of the public hearing because in an era back in London on down.
Speaker 3: There’s a lot of other people that cut their teeth in pub rock or something that’s a little bit pub adjacent and wound up being absolute punks. And also the terms are sort of amorphous and mutable to like they meant one thing at the time and then they’ve come on to signify something else as the years go on.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Let’s talk about pub rock, because, you know, your scholarship was useful to me in this episode and an old review of yours I turned up. You wrote the following quote. Pub Rock is the frequently forgotten forefather of punk rock, although on the surface the two genres don’t appear to have much in common, unquote. Now, how did you mean that? Where are the commonalities and the differences and bonus question Is it fair to call pub rock a scene?
Speaker 3: I think it’s absolutely fair because, you know, there was an actual circuit, you know, there were the people play the same pubs that played the crown and anchor for, for instance. So, you know, people would have residences in certain pubs and they also played on each other’s records and had a certain kind of aesthetic and repertoire that they would share. And a lot of that stems from a deep love of the band. Like, the band is sort of ground zero.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that’s. Start from the beginning.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Interesting. That’s an influence. I didn’t point out in the episode the idea that the band were so influential.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, because they also would switch instruments. They would bring in covers to an extent like it during their concerts, and it had that sort of back to basics feel to it. And it’s very difficult to see pop rock developing in the way that it did. Without that. Now it gets a little bit of like a harder R&B swing sort of thing that sort of stems from British Beat Era of the Sixties. But there’s a coziness to a lot of pop rock that comes from the band and then Crosby, Stills and Nash, that sort of harmony laden in country rock a lot of early Brinsley Schwarz, which was Nick Lowe’s first band, is certainly heavy on the yes and Y harmonies and by and. Interesting.
Speaker 3: And you get the feeling, especially in the years that the subsequent, is that pop rock can be used as pejorative, that it’s that there’s not not a lot of ambition there. And it’s also, you know, very comfortable that it doesn’t try to make any waves. Whereas the idea of punk is that it’s a disruptor, that it was like a revolutionary thing. But in a weird way, they both come from the same instinct of going back to basics, like they’re going back to basics either of the sixties or fifties, rock and roll. And a lot of players in the pop rock scene, as I mentioned before, go on to punk. So they have the shared roots.
Speaker 3: And then there’s like a band like Dr. Feelgood who made their way up through punk rock. And actually had a wild success in the UK. Just as punk was happening and beat once up being enormously influential on punk and post-punk. Their guitarist Wilko Johnson, just passed in the last week and he had a very distinctive, aggressive fingerpicking style that is staccato and sort of nervy. I saw somebody.
Speaker 4: Older, like.
Speaker 3: Rock said. I wonder who it could be. And if you listen to that, that can go on to post-punk like it’s hard to imagine Gang of Four without him. Steve Albini tweeted out that he was one of his primary influences. But if you look at a certain perspective, Dr. Feelgood, it is just hard rock and roll, hard R&B like that, sort of like coming out of the the Stones and the animals and that sort of thing. Pop rock actually didn’t have much of an edge, which is also interesting about Graham Parker is that he did have this snarl that sort of pivots out of pop rock into this new wave, as it were.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Right. Lowercase and lowercase. W Exactly.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: We’ll get to that one, too. Yeah. Now, power pop. By contrast, I didn’t go too deep into power pop in the episode because it seems to me that power pop, first of all, wasn’t really a scene. It was a sound, it seems transatlantic. On the one hand, I’ve heard people say Badfinger, who are British were power pop. Yet then a lot of the power pop bands that were famous were American.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: And then it gets kind of applied to the likes of Elvis Costello and Joe Jackson later and comes up as power pop bands are starting to score hits, but it seems to sit outside of the whole pop rock thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I very much agree with that. Like, power pop is very amorphous in terms of a term like it seems like it would be very definitive thing because it tends to be used for things that are harking back to sixties guitar pop, that are very hooky, very punchy, very like songs about love and girls and just basic topics like that. So it seems like it would be an easy thing to do. But the fact of the matter is that power Pop has a term is sort of a retroactive phrase, like if you look at the pioneers of the early seventies, big star, which nobody really heard at the time, right. There were a memphis group that tried to sound like the British invasion.
Speaker 2: And they didn’t have any hits.
Speaker 3: Todd Rundgren was a weirdo. And if you listened, he has individual songs like Can I Just Tell You sort of like contains the template for Big Star in a way, with its chimes and really loud beats.
Speaker 2: The other. Up in.
Speaker 3: But nobody was called upon to send. The first wave of power. Poppers still bristle at the name being applied to them. I know that Marshall Crenshaw, for instance, really hates the term power pop. Pete Townsend uses it in an interview in the sixties. Townsend Towns is a very thoughtful guy and very interesting thinker, but he also spoke nonsense in interviews like, it’s not something serious. It’s not like something that was a really crafted term. And I found no record of him ever talking about power pop again. But it’s something that Greg Shaw and the team bombed in San Francisco, which was a fanzine and a label that specialized in this kind of sound. They sort of found the term and but the term was sort of floating in the air, and they started building the scene around the bands of the late seventies that specialized in this very hooky, very catchy pop music. And it’s sort of like the platonic ideal of a pop single without actually bothering with the charts. You know, it’s like it’s sort of like a.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Pop without the hits and the right.
Speaker 3: It’s a fantasy version of radio and a common theme among power pop fans. It’s like, this could have been a huge hit.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Right in a parallel universe. This should have been Exactly.
Speaker 3: And basically, you only have a handful of power pop songs from the seventies and early eighties, which is really the peak of the skinny tire that actually were hits. An interesting crossover between the American scene and British is Dave Edmunds produced Flaming Groovy Shake some Action, which is probably the definitive power pop song and album sometimes but. Me south. And so that would be right around the time that he produced new favorites of Brinsley Schwarz. And just about as his solo career really takes off when he’s signed to Swansong Led Zeppelin’s label.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Glad you brought up Dave Edmunds, because he seems to be a kind of Zelig figure who just shows up every place across pop, rock and power, pop and post-punk and New Wave. He’s kind of there. The same eventually goes for Nick Lowe, who just seems to show up in these places. I see Dave and Nick Edmunds and Lowe being these sort of liminal figures who kind of bring these scenes together. Does that make sense to you?
Speaker 3: To an extent, yes. And what’s interesting, if you look back, Dave Edmunds, he actually had this huge hit with I hear you knock a cover of the Spy Lewis song, which is actually it is retro, but not.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: All right. It still sounds like the seventies.
Speaker 3: Exactly. Because in the early seventies, there was a lot of fifties revival going on in both sides of the Atlantic. But he managed to make it sound not quite glam, but sound modern. And he had a really great production ear. And if you will, Birch’s bionic glow proved to be kind. Admins had a tendency to go in and just push all the levels up in the studio and to make everything very loud. So like he would make pop stuff sound really alive and loud and forceful, which is something that Nick sort of picks up in his productions. Which earned him his nickname of Basher because he would just go in and do just a minimal amount of takes and sort of keep the vibe going.
Speaker 2: So what it is and.
Speaker 3: Edmund’s not only was sort of this bridge between, you know, this retro rock power pop and pop rock, but he was kind of on the outskirts of rock royalty in the eighties. You know, he shows up and Paul McCartney’s give my regards to Broad Street. He plays the early Rock and Roll Hall of Fame stuff. He was he played like a New Year’s Rockin Eve MTV thing around 85. So he was actually kind of big for a while. Then he just fades away because he actually couldn’t adapt with the times. So that really his last big thing was producing Nick’s Party of one album in 91. And then he had a plug in, which was a play on Unplugged in 93, but then he just disappeared, like for good 30 years or so. But Dave really could make great records, and he was also somebody that had some real rock vitality in there and helped make Power pop seem more alive.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: And it seems to me that new wave is the most capacious term of all. I mean, I once downloaded a playlist from the late, lamented Blender magazine that defined New Wave as spanning everything from the modern lovers and Elvis Costello to early Prince R.E.M. and Duran Duran. So is New Wave just a catch all? And did the angry young man have anything to do with what New Wave became?
Speaker 3: Well, to an extent it is a catch all, but I tend to think of it as like an era as much as anything else. And it was a marketing term, a way to sell punk to like it’s the softer, sweeter side of punk or more accessible. But it definitely was a fate is that sort of comes in around 78 and probably last 283 or so that encompasses these earlier club survivors to the first New Romantics. Now, there’s not a direct connection between Graham Parker and Duran Duran, but, you know, squeezing out Sparks has a new wave production on it, as far as I’m concerned.
Speaker 2: When you. Didn’t bother you?
Speaker 3: We our prince absolute dabbles with the elements of new wave on dirty mind. You know the ways the guitars are produced and the synths.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: On Dirty Mind. Frankly, the synths even remind me of Elvis Costello.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 2: What are they?
Speaker 3: And I do believe that Prince, like at that time was absorbing everything. And if you listen to those early attractions records and Steve lives, keyboards are just like and they’re overpowering and they’re sort of like careening. So I think that it’s certainly likely that Prince was listening to that stuff. To me, I don’t like to put R.E.M. there. This just might be my own personal taste, is that R.E.M. seems to be a reaction to New Wave. To me, it becomes more guitar oriented and, you know, they do sort of throwback to some sixties things. They might sound like The Byrds to an extent, but that becomes its own thing. That sort of grows up maybe a little out of post-punk, definitely out of punk. But it opens the doors to American indie underground college rock in the eighties.
Speaker 2: Oh, my gosh. I know.
Speaker 3: But new wave to me feels like it’s that the polish of these records, combined with early MTV and the synth pop, and it was a time that also there were so many, like, weird quirks that it was open to novelties as well. Like, and people were trying trying to make a hit however they could. And it sort of stems out of the stiff record stuff, too, which like the stiff records were shameless hucksters. And that’s what I really like about like early night clothes that you listen to just as cool. And it’s a it’s not one thing. It’s like about 50 different styles within 12 songs. And I feel like that sort of pushes it forward because like it’s it’s also a little bit postmodern like itself. Run for Control doesn’t take itself too seriously. And that’s sort of where new wave comes to for for me.
Speaker 2: So it’s a long cycle and cycle cycle. Oh, it’s going nowhere. No, it’s such a cycle. I saw it. I saw it.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: That makes total sense.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: You know, you mentioned Graham Parker a couple of minutes ago and. And the new wave sound of squeezing out sparks. And yet, when I listened to those earlier records, I definitely hear, like, a Van Morrison soul. Oh, yeah. White boy, R&B vibe. He just seems to be the odd man out here because not only because he never really had any hits, I mean, even fewer than Elvis Costello, but his material was just very different. Where do you see him fitting in?
Speaker 3: I really like Graham Parker, and I think that he doesn’t really fit easily into any of these categories. I feel like he shows up a little bit too early and then by the time that he really gets going, his his aesthetic is a little bit too much for the past and that that keeps going. And he’s he also doesn’t seem as adventurous as either Costello or Joe Jackson or Nick Lowe, for that matter, because he’s very much rooted into this cross of Van Morrison, the Rolling Stones.
Speaker 2: I find that.
Speaker 3: He’ll dabble in some rockabilly and some folk balladeer in a bit, and he also can get sharper pop hooks. But he is pretty much like what the classic pop singer is like. He has a bar band behind him that he and then he they can take a break and he can play play an acoustic song and he stays that way throughout the seventies and into right now. But it’s an aesthetic that only could have been commercially successful, probably in the seventies to extent, and he gets almost there with the early records. And the early records are alive and they sound really good, but then he gets the right amount of polish for squeezing out sparks. But there’s also a real edge to his voice. I think his doesn’t make for background. Listen, like if he comes on the radio, you’re drawn to his voice.
Speaker 2: Oh, by the way. The girls.
Speaker 3: And I think that that’s the difference between him and Joe Jackson. Like Graham Parker, even if he had to step out, he couldn’t sing that. He’s the one that’s more of a pop rock survivor. Whereas, like Costello cut his teeth in pub rock. He trailed Brinsley Schwarz around and he was basically their number one fanboy. And then he he Flip City has lots of Brinsley and band influences, but then he starts to come into his own with My aim is true. And when he has the attractions, his quality is like, sir, to come into to like, like the songs are might be better than my aim is true, but this year’s model has a sharper execution and aesthetic because it is. It’s a band record, not the band, but it’s like a group playing together.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Because it’s the first attraction.
Speaker 3: Right, Exactly. Have.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: And I think when people think of Elvis Costello, they think of that as the quintessential Elvis Costello sound. But one thing that I was remarking on as I put this episode together was just Elvis Costello contains multitudes. I mean, he’s really ranged all over the place. I’m not sure there is a one Elvis Costello sound.
Speaker 3: No, and I think there’s a certain generation, older listeners that do get attached to this year’s model. But even as you get to armed forces, it’s it doesn’t sound the same way. Armed Forces is a much grander production. They were listening to a lot of ABBA at the time. That’s a direct connection between it and all Oliver’s army.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Because I’ve never heard that before, that Oliver’s army was an homage to other. Yeah.
Speaker 3: When you get that. Actually, they tried to get some of the same keyboard sounds and feels, which is you can sort of hear it, but sort of not, which is what I like about the record, is that if you read about some of the origins, it comes into play, but it sounds very distinct.
Speaker 3: COSTELLO It really is the opposite of Parker or was that where he was restless? And to me. COSTELLO A lot of the critical talks and fans go around songwriting, which is absolutely worthy. But I think that he’s also a huge record geek because if you look at his catalog, it’s like each record has its own distinct vibe in them, from the sound to the presentation, and you can group him into about four or five different things. He does his pop stuff, he does it has rock stuff. He has his more sophisticated uptown classical stuff, and he has this country folk stuff and he sort of cycles through them. I think that’s a real difference between him and even Joe Jackson, where Joe Jackson definitely has stylistic exercises on his records, but it feels like that’s more from the composition than the record itself and sometimes.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Right. I mean, Jackson scored the biggest pop hits of any of the three Angry Young Men. And yet in his ordinariness, he almost seems punk to me just in his kind of attitude. And yet less than the music. Is that plausible? No.
Speaker 3: I get where you angle is there because he’s a crank in a lot of ways, right? You read interviews with him, he.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Pulls no punches.
Speaker 3: Right? Whereas Costello very much has a lot of his father in, particularly after you get through the hump of the early eighties and the horrible Stephen Stills band incident. You know, he learns to turn on the charm and he’s very funny in interviews and he’s witty and Jackson also is witty. But in the eighties and nineties, not a good Garris interview at all.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Even when he was scoring big top 40 pop hits, especially almost.
Speaker 3: And there’s an element of that in the music. But he also has a gentler voice than Costello too. You know, breaking us in to is another one is something. Me. Jackson could actually sort of croon a little bit. And that, combined with the melodic system, does mean that he had the potential to get hits on the radio, which he did for a while. It’s just then he doesn’t follow up like Night and Day was a huge album and it’s a great record. But then he also does Willpower and Big World is a poppy record, but it’s also recorded live in the studio. So it’s a conceptual thing.
Speaker 2: It’s a big one.
Speaker 3: She sort of ran away from any possible hints that he could have had. It’s a fascinating career, and that unwillingness to follow up on a commercial thing was sort of plays into your point that he sort of seems ornery and like a real punk, that he just follows his own muse. He’s cultivated a cult, but it’s not the same thing as like Costello, who is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the other two artists. There’s a lot of right there.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Right? I think Elvis was practically a first year eligible.
Speaker 3: He was. Yeah.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Whereas the other two guys have never even come up on the ballot. And, you know, despite the fact that Jackson is the one with the big top 40 pop hits. But Costello has the breadth of career.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And also the connections that he wrote with McCartney, like he was positioned as like one of the heir parents. And he did very well as the critics love him because he gives them a lot to write about. That’s I think that’s always a good thing to keep in mind with critics, is that you’re looking for an angle like sometimes the big people that make really great music might give you an angle to work with. It’s hard to do shape your review or your feature on that.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Well, I’m glad you mentioned the critics because, I mean, that’s the one thing that ties these guys together. I think I quoted parsing job in this episode among so-called charts more than any other episode I’ve ever done. Of course, there’s the infamous quote from David Lee Roth that the reason critics love Elvis Costello is because we look like him.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Very dismissive, but also a little bit true. Yes.
Speaker 3: It’s a good.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Question. It’s both in itself and it’s totally, totally true.
Speaker 3: He’s not in. It’s not entirely wrong.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Right. Right. But, you know, if the angry young man blip and it was kind of a blip, right, because that term really only had purchased for a couple of years. If it has any legacy, it seems to be spawning the critical fetish object with minimal chart success. Right. I mean, are the the ultimate descendents of, you know, the angry young man, I don’t know, tame Impala or wet leg or something like that?
Speaker 3: Possibly. I mean, I can see what you’re where you’re getting out there, that it is not quite the birth of the critics band, because I would think that you could look at the earliest paths and jobs and can I can probably New York Dolls are that way, too.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: And I’m looking for a kid. Or the Velvet Underground.
Speaker 3: Right. But those are two bands that had a pervasive influence. And I do believe Costello had a pervasive influence, as did Nick Lowe. I wasn’t angry, but is like it is sort of. You’ve covered him in this episode. But those are definitely generations have of similar minded artists or things like Wilco have. You know. Right. You can see a direct connection there.
Speaker 3: But critical success also points to how many different publications there were in the seventies. Like if you did a big critic’s poll, it’s possible to build a consensus around Graham Parker and I sort of pristine analogy that in a way he’s a working man’s rocker. Like he’s somebody that just goes out and plays guitar. There are a lot of Workingmen’s critics, too, sort of like people that covered this beat for newspapers and everybody sort of has that same kind of background, and they might have grown up with the same Stones and Van Morrison that they loved. And so it’s like you’re hearing echoes of things, and that’s what a lot of the critics darlings do do. It’s like they remind you of records you’d like to be for.
Speaker 3: And so that’s what sort of builds upon things. And I think that’s true with wet legs, certainly, which I like was. It’s it reminds you of other other records, too. That’s that’s one of the reasons that people like to write about them and advocate for what’s right.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Well, Tom, as always, you are a fount of knowledge. I cannot thank you enough for taking the time to be with us.
Speaker 3: This pleasure. Some of my favorite music and I talk about it all the time.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: That’s wonderful. Now, as long as Twitter still continues to exist, is that the best way for people to keep up with you?
Speaker 3: Yes. Start there. I have launched myself on the various platforms. I am on mastodon posts and have with holiday week and family stuff. I haven’t been particularly active, but I have a tweet on Twitter that shows where my different profiles and my Substack newsletter is. But basically it’s all star line SDR really, which is also how you can find me on Twitter.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Well, Tom, thank you again for joining us on Hip Parade Bridge.
Speaker 3: It’s my pleasure, Chris. Thanks, Tony.
Speaker 2: Now is how I welcome our panel with you. I’ve got to tell you, I wanted to kill you. Well.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Now comes the time in hip parade, the bridge where we do some trivia. And joining me from Van, Texas, it’s Christina. Hi, Christina. Are you there?
Speaker 4: Hello. Good afternoon.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Good afternoon. Now, you and I are contemporaries. I understand.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I was born in 1970. So especially our eighties, memories are very much in sync.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: And I understand you were also descended from a country music singer.
Speaker 4: That is correct. My grandfather was a country music singer in Texas. Harmon Bozeman. Lee Harmon was the stage name he went by.
Speaker 3: There’s no. Want to talk to no one to care. Just to empty glasses.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Long. Cool.
Speaker 4: And he had a nightclub called The Junction in San Antonio in the sixties. And Willie Nelson was probably the most famous of the artists who used to play there regularly.
Speaker 4: I have a great picture of Willie with my mother and grandfather. And Willie still had short hair. And he’s in a suit.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Right? Because that was Willie back in the days when he was writing stuff like crazy for Patsy Cline and, you know, doing those early hits of his.
Speaker 4: Exactly.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: A place to fall.
Speaker 3: And I never give free.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: I recently watched the George Carlin documentary, and it’s a little bit like how George Carlin, before he became the groovy George Carlin, was in a suit and Willie Nelson had a similar face like that.
Speaker 4: Right. And it hurts your brain to see it now.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: It really does. It Really? Really.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Well, Christina, I’d also, of course, like to thank you for being a Slate Plus subscriber. We only open our trivia rounds to plus members. And if you plus member would like to be a trivia contestant, please visit Slate.com slash hit parade.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Sign up. All right, Christina, I’m sure you know how this works. We’re going to ask you three trivia questions. The first will be a callback to our most recent episode of Hit Parade. And the next two will be a preview of our next episode of Hit Parade. And then at the end, you’ll get a chance to turn the tables and ask me a question. Are you ready for some trivia?
Speaker 4: I’m ready.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: All right. Here goes. Question one In our last episode, I noted that Elvis Costello had very modest U.S. chart success. What single with a distinctive reggae rhythm was his first to chart in America in 1977? A Alison. B Accidents will happen. C Watching the detectives or D Radio. Radio.
Speaker 4: I love all of those songs, but that doesn’t help me know the right answer. But since you said reggae, it’s got to have been C watching the detectives.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: You picked up on that clue. That’s exactly right. The answer is C, though it only bubbled under the hot 100 at number 108. It was Elvis Costello’s first single to see the pages of Billboard at all. By the way, as I noted in the episode, Costello did not have a Top 40 hit until every day I write the book in 1983. All right, you’re one for one. Are you ready for some preview trivia?
Speaker 4: I’m ready.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Here we go. Question two What do these four songs have in common? Charts wise, The Beatles. Hey Jude, Princes When Doves Cry, Cher’s Believe and Dua Lipa’s Levitating A They all hit number one on the Hot 100. B, They all peaked on the hot 100 in the month of December. C Each was the lead single of a number one album. Or D Each was a billboard top song of the year.
Speaker 4: Oh, gosh. Okay. I don’t think it’s December because I don’t think levitating was at the peak in December. Oh, gosh, this is a hard one. So I’m going to say I’m going to say that they were all the top single of a best selling album.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: I’m sorry, but the correct answer was D. They are the Billboard top song of their respective year. Not all of them hit number one. They all peaked at different times of the year, and not all of them were album leading singles. But Hey Jude was the top ranked Billboard song of 1968 When Doves Cry was tops for 1984. Believe was tops for 1999, and Levitating was the top song of 2021. All right, one for two. I know that the question was a little complicated. Now, here’s one more for you. Are you ready for this one?
Speaker 4: Okay, I’m ready.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: All right. Question three. Dua Lipa’s Levitating was the top song of 2021, despite peaking at number two on the hot 100. Which of these songs also peaked at number two, but wound up as the top hit of its year anyway? A Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs Wooly Bully. B Chicago. Look away. C Next too close or D Danielle Powder bad day.
Speaker 4: Oh gosh, none of those. Seems to me like it should be the top song of the year that they released.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: That’s the point.
Speaker 4: I’m going to just take a wild guess and say Daniel Powder.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: And I’m sorry. The correct answer was a wooly bully by Sam, the shaman, the Pharaohs, despite peaking at number two. It was the top hit of 1965 over the actual number one hits. I can’t help myself by the Four Tops and Satisfaction by the Rolling Stones. Look Away. Two Close and Bad Day all reached number one on the hot 100.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: All right. I know those are some tough preview trivia questions. You did go one for three. That’s not bad. And now’s your chance to get your revenge on me, because I think you have a trivia question for me.
Speaker 4: I do have one for you. And I decided to center mine around the 2022 Rock Hall induction since that just happened.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Oh, delightful.
Speaker 4: So 2022 Rock Hall inductee Pat Benatar had a big hit with the song Heartbreaker. But she’s not the only 2022 Hall of Famer to hit the top 40 with a song by that name. Who else from 2022 Class had a pop hit called Heartbreaker? A Duran Duran. B, Carly Simon. C, Dolly Parton or D, Eurythmics?
Chris, Chris Molanphy: That’s an excellent question. And you said that this was not only a song, but a hit.
Speaker 4: It reached the top 40. Yup.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Okay. And the choices are Duran Duran.
Speaker 4: Carly. Dolly Parton and Eurythmics.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: And Eurythmics. Because we’re both eighties teenagers, Right? You relate. I feel like I know the catalogues of Duran Duran, and they’re in the mix pretty well. And I don’t remember a heartbreaker for either one of them in the top 40. That leaves me with Carly and Dolly, and because Dolly just flat out didn’t have that many pop top 40 hits in general, I’m going to do process of elimination and say it’s be Carly Simon.
Speaker 4: Well, that is a good guess. But it was see Dolly Parton?
Chris, Chris Molanphy: It was while.
Speaker 4: It was her song was written by Carole Bayer Sager and David Wolford. And it reached number 37 in 1978. It did also reach number one on the country chart.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: That’s what I figured, is that that’s where most of her hits are. But that is an excellent piece of trivia. I did not know that. So cool. Well, you stumped me. I think that accrues to your column. And you did get one of my questions right. So not a bad performance by you. Christina, I hope you’re feeling pretty good about yourself.
Speaker 4: Well, thank you very much. Yeah, I had a lot of fun doing that. If you need a trivia question, Writer. I’m happy to provide my services anytime.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Well, judging by your last trivia question, you are good at writing Stumper, so I will keep that in mind. Thanks so much, Christine, for being on her parade. The bridge.
Speaker 4: Oh, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: Let me speak.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: So as those last two trivia questions indicate, our next episode of Hit Parade, our December episode will be about hits of the year. Sometimes I think go back to school. Say nice.
Speaker 4: Spoon fucking me out.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Okay. So it’s December when Billboard announces its top singles and albums of the year. These are not judgement calls by the magazine. They run the math to determine what was tops for the year. Even so, the results are often a little bizarre. Number two hits do occasionally wind up on top for the year, and there have been several one hit wonders or short lived acts that pulled off a year end number one. Some of the year end toppers are by megastars whom you’d expect to have the top song. The Beatles. Elton John. Prince. Whitney Houston. Mariah Carey. Beyonce. Drake. But just as often, it’s someone fairly random. Do the names Domenico Modugno, Mr. Acker Bilk, Los Del Rio, Next Lifehouse, Daniel Powder or Gotye. Mean anything to you?
Chris, Chris Molanphy: Chart Followers like me normally assume that the song that spends the most weeks at number one in any given year will be the top song of the year. But that’s often not the case. Including, by the way, this year 2022, I can explain the methodological reasons why this happens. But what’s more fun is to consider these songs themselves and their legacies from I Want to Hold Your Hand to every Breath you take to Old Town Road.
Chris, Chris Molanphy: And yeah, Macarena too, does a top song of the year do anything for a career? Is the song memorable? Even if it’s the artist’s only hit? And which are the most enduring top songs of the year? On our next hit Parade episode. I’ll walk through six and a half decades of Billboard’s top songs and figure out if dominating a year’s hit parade is all it’s cracked up to be. This episode of Hit Parade The Bridge was produced by Kevin Bendis. And I’m Chris Molanphy. Keep on marching on the one.
