MUSICAL MUSINGS
by Josh Hosler
October 12, 2004

THE QUARTER-CENTURY PERSPECTIVE

I've written before about some of my pop music hobbies. One of these is to listen, each week, to the top 40 songs from certain weeks in history—specifically, 30 years ago, 25 years ago, 20 years ago, and any other multiples of five I have time for. Let's focus on what was happening in pop music a quarter-century ago ... this week in 1979.

The fading decade of the 1970s left the U.S. with a mélange of musical styles. The dominance of disco began to fade immediately after its peak in 1978. What disco remained was quickly morphing in different directions. Donna Summer carried the flag for traditional disco with "Dim All the Lights," and France Joli scored a disco classic, "Come to Me." Herb Alpert sat at #1 with "Rise," a jazzy instrumental with a funky beat. British musician Robin Scott, better known as M, gave us a sneak peek of the new wave revolution with "Pop Muzik." Michael Jackson stuck to disco's R&B roots, hitting #1 with "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough." And K.C. & the Sunshine Band, so pivotal several years prior, had apparently seen the writing on disco's wall. They chose to make their comeback with a ballad, "Please Don't Go."

Ballads, in fact, would be the winning combination in the years following the death of disco. The Commodores had two ballads in the top 10! Dionne Warwick was in her ascendancy. Kenny Rogers would find his biggest success of all in the next year with songs like "Lady" and "Coward of the County." Barry Manilow and Anne Murray also had new entries in the top 40 this week in 1979.

The music we now think of as classic rock was beyond its prime, but it was still present. "Heartache Tonight" was the fastest-climbing Eagles hit ever. Foreigner was doing well with "Dirty White Boy," Journey was finally emerging into the mainstream with "Lovin, Touchin', Squeezin'," and Styx had just released a future classic, "Babe." The Knack's second hit was "Good Girls Don't," a song whose explicit lyrics shock me when I compare them to other hits of the period. And Fleetwood Mac was zooming up the chart with "Tusk," a tasty, bizarre production featuring the U.S.C. Trojan Marching Band.

As the 1970s died, so did the era of big novelty hits. Early in the decade, Cheech & Chong made the top 10, Dickie Goodman recorded his mock political interviews featuring spliced-in song clips, and even Steve Martin became a musical star. But the final great anomaly of the 1970s was the chart success of Kermit the Frog, who, with a little help from his creator Jim Henson, made "The Rainbow Connection" 25 years ago.

For those of you who want to revisit the era in depth, I've reprinted here the top 40 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 from October 20, 1979:

Musical Musings Archive

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