Loading summary
Transcript36 lines
- [00:00]
A
You're listening ad free on Amazon Music.
- [00:05]
B
Hey there Hit Parade listeners. What you're about to hear is Part one of this episode. Part two will arrive in your podcast feed at the end of the month. Would you like to hear this episode all at once the day it drops? Sign up for Slate Plus. It supports not only this show, but all of Slate's acclaimed journalism and podcasts. Just go to slate.com hitparadeplus you'll get to hear every Hit Parade episode in full the day it arrives. Plus Hit Parade the Bridge, our bonus episodes with guest interviews, deeper dives on our episode topics, and pop chart trivia. Once again, to join that slate.com hitparadeplus thanks and now please enjoy part one of this hit Parade episode. Foreign. Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate Magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanfi, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number One? Series on today's show 37 years ago, in the summer of 1985, British art rock goddess Kate Bush issued the first single from what would become her best selling studio album, Hounds of Love. The song, a cross between an intimate meditation and a thunderous anthem, was called Running up that Hill. In a career that had already generated a string of hit singles and albums in her UK homeland since the late 70s, Bush had, as of 85, yet to score a major pop hit in America. This song, whose full title was Running up that Hill, parentheses A Deal with God would finally change that. By the fall of that year, it would crack the top 40 on Billboard's Hot 100. However, even a song as power as this one could only do so much to break Kate Bush in the U S. Running up that Hill topped out at number 30 on the chart by November 85, unable to get past current hits by the likes of Dire Straits, Sting and the Cars. But as I speak, in June 2022, running up that hill is back on the Hot 100. Only this time it's doing considerably better. Just before we recorded this episode, Running up that hill not only re debuted on the Hot 100 all the way up at number eight this week, it leaps to number four. At age 63, Kate Bush has her first ever American top ten hit. Top five. So what changed in those 37 years? Did Bush's American audience grow? Surely. Did the song become more resonant to younger generations? Probably. But the main thing that catalyzed this comeback was the screen that's flickering in your living room or den. Television and TV has been making songs hits for a long time. There were pop stars made bigger by tv.
- [04:09]
C
Keep saying you love me and they'll look upon a teenager's old man.
- [04:18]
B
Pop stars literally made by TV. And pop songs expressly written for television. Eventually, TV went a step further, resurrecting songs that had failed the first time and making them into second chance smashes. Because when a song fuses with characters we let into our homes each week, that song starts to seem like a family friend too.
- [05:06]
D
I don't wanna wait for our lives to be over I want to know right now what will it and in.
- [05:16]
B
The 21st century, music licensing to TV has become big business. It's the way some artists break wide open. A well placed song on a hit show could make a career. Or turn an oldie into a new classic. Today on Hit Parade, we will travel through the tube for a brief history of not just cool songs, but hit songs fueled by TV exposure. From the Ventures. To vonda shepard. Chart history is filled with examples of songs made bigger through TV exposure. But the song we led off this episode with was part of a particularly pivotal moment in 1985. It wasn't a TV theme then, but funnily enough, the very week Kate Bush cracked the American top 40 for the first time, the song and the album at number one were the backdrop to a hit TV show. One where the music defined the action. And that's where your hit parade marches today day, the week ending November 9, 1985, when Miami Vice Theme by Jan Hammer hit number one on the Hot 100 while the Miami Vice soundtrack was number one on the album chart. And that same week, cracking the top 40 at number 39. Was Kate Bush's Future hit from TV's Stranger Things running up that hill. How did we get from Jan Hammer's 80s defining TV theme to a time when TV showrunners became musical cool hunters? Little did Kate Bush know it in the fall of 85, but she would one day strike a bargain with the boob tube, a compact in cathode rays. Let's just call it a deal with the TV God.
- [08:35]
A
Now, yesterday and today, our theater's been jammed with newspapermen and hundreds of photographs from all over the nation. And these veterans agree with me that the city never has witnessed the excitement stirred by these youngsters from Liverpool who call themselves the Beatles. Now tonight, you're gonna twice be entertained by them right now and again on the second half of our show. Ladies and gentlemen, the Beatles.
- [08:55]
B
I'm sure you're familiar with this probably the most famous musical moment in TV history? Without question, the Beatles February 9, 196064 appearance on the Ed Sullivan show, watched by A then record 73 million Americans, more than a third of the country fueled Beetle Mania in the US and sealed the Fab Four's popularity here for all time. However, As we noted in our Fab Four sweep edition of Hit Parade, the Beatles arrived in New York for the Sullivan show already in possession of a US Number one song. I want to hold you'd hand was in its third week atop the Hot 100 when they performed it live on the telly. Given the data lag on Billboard's charts, it had really been number one for about a month. Surely the Sullivan appearance helped accelerate the song's popularity. Maybe I want to hold you'd hand wouldn't have spent seven weeks on top without it. Though that is debatable. The Beatles went on to dominate the charts for the next three months. We'll never know. Now, let's flash ahead a little over three years. When the Beatles recorded this, All you need is love only existed because of television. It was written by John Lennon and performed by the Beatles live in a studio backed by a small orchestra for the first ever global live televised satellite broadcast our world watched by some 600 million people worldwide by 1967. The Beatles were savvy enough about television as a catalyst for hit making that they used TV to create and market a hit song. All you need is Love topped the hot 100 about eight weeks after that live satellite TV performance. The distinction between I want to hold your hand and all you need is love. How each hit used television is at the heart of this Hit parade episode. I'm focusing on songs that are in some way intrinsic to television or whose hit status can be largely attributed to the tube. TV's musical impact comes in many forms. There's the TV theme, a staple of the medium virtually since inception. And many of these songs are so culturally omnipresent, they feel like hits.
- [12:29]
D
It's the story of a man named Brady who was busy with three boys of his own.
- [12:36]
B
Here, for example, is the theme song to the late 60s early 70s ABC sitcom the Brady Bunch. If you're of a certain age or you've digested the show through its decades of syndicated reruns, you can probably sing every word.
- [12:55]
D
We all became the Brady Bunch, the Brady Bunch, the Brady Bunch that's the way we became the Brady Bunch.
- [13:07]
B
But as culturally omnipresent as it was, the Brady Bunch theme was never a hit song you would hear on the radio. By the way, in its first season, this theme song was credited to an actual studio band, the Peppermint Trolley Company. But they never issued it as a recording, and by season two, the theme had been re recorded by the Brady Bunch kid actors. That kiddie version is the one I just played. The Brady Bunch theme is a widely renowned song. How could it not be, given its exposure to tens of millions of TV viewers week after week? But it wasn't a standalone hit song. Now here's another popular theme song from a couple of decades later. The Rembrandt's theme to TV's Friends, I'll be There for you, was fueled by the smash NBC show, but also had a life beyond it. As we've discussed on prior Hit Parade episodes, the Rembrandts recorded a version that was long enough to stand on its own as a radio singer. That version topped Billboard's Radio Songs chart for eight weeks in the summer of 1995. It was a real world hit outside the confines of the boob tube. This is the distinction I'm looking to make. Even beyond their theme music, TV shows have turned songs into cultural touchstones or put them back into circulation like, say, this Diddy. If you're a baby boomer who remembers the pop hits of the early 70s, you'll know that as the 1974 Hot 100 number one smash Hooked on a Feeling by Blue Swede. If, however, you're a Gen Xer or perhaps an older millennial who recalls late 90s television, and in your head right now you're thinking, that's the Dancing Baby song from Ally McBeal. Indeed, during a 1998 episode of that Fox TV show, the Ally McBeal character hears the Blue Swede song playing every time she imagines a computer generated baby, a hit meme from World wide web version 1.0 doing a little shimmy to invoke Ally's ticking biological clock. But neither Ally McBeal nor the late 90s web meme put Blue Swedes Hooked on a Feeling back on the charts. Hooked on a feeling on Ally McBeal was a cultural moment, certainly, but it didn't lead to a revived hit song. So as I'm walking through this episode, I'm sure many of you will be thinking of your own favorite TV musical moments, whether that's something as kitschy as the Doobie Brothers in 1978 on the ABC sitcom what's Happening? As Raj would say, which doobie you be? Or something as hip and cool as the 2005 finale of HBO's Six Feet under, which made brilliant use of Australian singer Sia's song Breathe Me. Song synchronizations like these, or sinks in the parlance of Hollywood, certainly help these musicians careers. Placing a song in a hit TV show makes a rising artist that much more culturally relevant. But when a song breaks free of the few million people who catch it on TV and spreads to the millions more who hear hit songs on the radio, buy them in record stores or nowadays consume them on digital services, that's a whole different level of impact. The song may have been catalyzed by its TV placement, but it becomes a standalone hit in its own right. That after all, is what just happened with Kate Bush's Running up that Hill, Which again was single handedly made a top five hit by TV's Stranger Things. This instantly ranks it as one of the biggest TV spawned hits of all time. You could argue that Bush's seemingly Improbable now inevitable 2022 hit is the byproduct of decades of evolution in how TV makes hit. I'll be focusing in this episode on the times when TV directly affected a song's chart trajectory and there are plenty of those. They date back almost to the beginning of TV as a popular medium and the early days of the Billboard and killed Timber Bar when he was only 3. Davy Davy Crockett the King of the Wild Frontier Music Historian Call 1955 the start of the so called rock era. But months before Bill Haley's Rock around the Clock went to number one, Billboard's pop charts sounded more like this. Bill Hayes's theme from the five part Disneyland TV miniseries Davy Crockett. The song was written for the TV series and while Bill Hayes's version was not the one heard on the tube, the televised version was by vocal group the Wellingtons. Hayes quickly recorded cover capitalized on the Davy Crockett craze in late 1954 and 55. He went off to Congress and served a spell fixing up the government laws as well. The Ballad of Davy Crockett was released near the dawn of television itself. TVs were in just 2/3rd of American homes by 55 and it is the earliest chart topping example of a show's titular theme song made into an actual hit. But here's another archetype also from 1955.
- [20:29]
E
I owe my soul to the company store.
- [20:36]
B
Tennessee Ernie ford was a five day a week TV personality on NBC's daytime schedule as well as a recording artist. He first performed Sixteen Tons, a 1947 country song by Merle Travis on his TV show and only thought to record it when his label Capitol Records insisted they needed another single. Thanks to its exposure on the tube, 16 ton sold a million copies in just three weeks. The fastest selling single of the recording industry to date. In the world of 1955, the line another day older and deeper in debt basically became a meme.
- [21:25]
E
You load 16 tons another day older and deeper in depth.
- [21:32]
B
Both Davy Crockett and 16 tons proved to the music biz in the early days of TV that the medium was a great way to sell pop songs. It was also a good way to launch a pop act. Ricky Nelson, you, you might say, represented a third TV music archetype after the theme song and the TV Exposed single. Ricky's entire music career probably wouldn't have happened if not for his exposure on the ABC TV series the Adventures of Ozzy and Harriet. Ricky's launch as a teen idol kicked off on the show completely complete with swooning teenagers. Writes Fred Bronson in the Billboard Book of number One Hits, Quote, after Ricky's first hit, a cover of Fats Domino's I'm Walking, no one would ever underestimate the power of television again. Nelson's stilted cover of the Domino classic reached number four on Billboard's best sellers chart, matching the Domino originals peak on the magazine's radio chart. After I'm Walking, Nelson became one of the top artists on the charts for the rest of the 50s. So TV could sell singles by the truckload. Could it sell albums? Oh my, yes. Consider Henry Mancini's soundtrack to the TV detective show Peter Gunn. The album underestimated by RCA Records, which only printed 8,000 copies. At first, wondering who would want to buy an LP of instrumental TV music went on to top Billboard's bestselling LPs for 10, 10 weeks in 1959. This was yet another TV to pop charts model the hit instrumental theme distinct from the Ballad of Davy Crockett, which was more of an explanatory signature song. By the 60s, TV was well established and so were the models for spawning hit songs via the tube. There was the TV idol a la Ricky Nelson, for example. Teen actress Shelley Fabre turned her stardom on the Donna Reed show into a showcase for her single Johnny angel, which hit number one in 1962.
- [24:41]
D
How I tingle when he passes by Every time he says hello.
- [24:48]
B
On the other end of the age spectrum, Bonanza star Lauren Green took his spoken word western outlaw story song ringo to number one in 1964, while that NBC TV series he fronted was still number one in the rating.
- [25:08]
E
But a spark still burned. So I used my knife and late that night I saved the life of Ringo.
- [25:18]
B
Yes, TV could even turn this 49 year old into a chart topper. Though in 64, one imagines anything titled Ringo would do well on the Hot 100. Ringo was Bonanza adjacent content. But it wasn't a theme song. Those were a harder sell on the charts. TV was going through its period of the plot explainer theme years before the Brady Bunch themes like, say, Gilligan's island were trying to summarize everything you needed to know about a show in about a minute.
- [25:57]
E
Five passengers set sail that day for a three hour tour. A three hour.
- [26:06]
B
These explanatory theme songs, Gilligan's island, the Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres were not chart hits neither, by the way, decades later was the Fresh Prince of Bel Air theme. The trick with a theme song, if you wanted it to succeed on the radio, was giving it a personality not reliant on the show. So, for example, Johnny rivers theme for CBS's American broadcast of the British import Danger man was titled Secret Agent Man. That song functioned as a standalone pop hit apart from the show, and it reached number three on the Hot 100 in 1966.
- [26:54]
C
Secret Agent Agent Man Secret Agent Man.
- [27:01]
E
They've given you a number and taken away your name.
- [27:08]
B
Or Lalo Schifrin's classic theme for the CBS espionage show Mission Impossible, which sounded cool even away from the tube. Unlike Henry Mancini's theme from Peter Gunn, which sold truckloads of albums but didn't chart As a single, Shiffrin's banger of a theme actually cracked the Hot 100, just missing the top 40 at number 41 in 1968. Part of the issue with chart performance was that the TV and music industries had different priorities. A theme as catchy as CBS's Hawaii 5o, performed by composer Morton Stevens, Was designed to burst out of the confines of a TV speaker over a show show's credits. But when established surf rock group the Ventures got a hold of the Hawaii Five O theme, They improved the sonics, extended the melody and turned it into a legitimate pop hit. The Ventures Hawaii 5o reach number 4. 4 in 1969. It grooved like a late 60s rock smash, but benefited from the TV show's top 20 ratings. Indeed, TV's megaphone was so big it could make a song a hit accidentally. In 1968, Tijuana brass bandleader Herb Alpert recorded a love song for a TV special featured during a short romantic vignette of Alpert with his wife on a Malibu beach. The recording, this Guy's in Love with you, written by legendary songwriters Burt Bacharach and Hal David, was meant as a one off. Albert, a trumpet player, had never sung before. You see this guy? This guy's in love with you. Yes. But the day after the special aired, CBS was flooded with calls from viewers clamoring for Albert's love song to his wife. This Guy's in Love with youh went on to top the Hot 100 in June 1968. Ironically, the vocal track was instrumentalist Albert's first ever number one hit. It wouldn't be his last. Hold on to Herb Alpert's name. Because TV would give him another hit a decade later. Alpert's hit reinforced a key element of TV musical success. Context mattered. This Guy's in Love with youh wasn't just a hit because the great Bacharach and David wrote it. It was a hit because viewers associated it with something they loved on their TV screens. No act would benefit more from TV in the 60s and Doe eyed viewers sense of televised contextual romance than the pop group that was literally invented to front a TV show. Here we come walk down the street. The Monkeys were TV's ultimate prefab musical creation. Manufactured by TV executives to capitalize on the Beatles success, the Four Monkeys Monkeys Mickey Dolenz, Davy Jones, Mike Nesmith and Peter Torque in real life actually out charted the group that inspired them. Unlike the Beatles, who took over a year to break on the Billboard charts, the Monkees, introduced from the jump in millions of American living rooms, scored an instant 1966 number one hit with last Train to Clarksville. And in 1967, the year of Sergeant Pepper and the Summer of Love, the group with the most weeks at number one on the album chart was not the Beatles. It was the Monkees. The year's top seller was the album More of the Monkees. The group's second LP featuring real world chart conquering hits like I'm a Believer and their cover of Paul Revere and the Raiders. I'm not your stepping stone. Fans and critics. Critics are still debating today the legacy of the Monkees who became a legitimate group in their own right and wrested control of their recordings away from their TV creators. Die hard. Monkees fans are still protesting the Rock and Roll hall of Fame for not inducting them. In any case, the template for a TV spawned band proved durable and was replicated in 1969 with a number one hit for the animated Archies, And in 1970 with a chart topper for another live action TV combo, the Partridge Family.
- [33:28]
C
This Morning I Woke up.
- [33:32]
B
The 70s was the decade of the variety show, giving performers yet another platform to promote hits. The husband and wife team of Sonny Bono and Cher, hit makers of the 60s, launched their Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour in the summer of 71, just as Cher was pivoting to her solo career. She'd never had a solo number one hit before the TV show, but after performing Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves live on the show, the song soared to number one in November 1971. What really took off in the 70s was the TV theme song, which finally got really polished. Popularized by the tube but able to stand on its own as a radio hit. There were instrumentals that picked up where Hawaii 5o left off, adding muscle to ditties that were already so catchy to begin with you wanted them to last beyond a minute. For example, in 1974, MFSB, the Studio Group associated with Philadelphia International Records and the Philly soul sound of producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, recorded the theme to the premier black music show Soul Train. They called it TSOP for the sound of Philadelphia and it topped the Hot 100 in April of 74. It was the first TV theme to hit number one on the Hot 100 and depending on how you regard the limited series story song from Davy Crockett may be the first such number one hit ever. Two years later, the theme from the short lived crime drama Swat was issued as a single by the studio group Rhythm Heritage. The funk group's wah Wah tastic version of theme from SWAT hit number one in February 1976. That same year, the composer of Theme from Swat, Barry Devorzon, scored another TV affiliated hit when his composition Cotton's Dream, the long running theme to the CBS soap opera the Young and the Restless was adopted by Star 1976 Summer Olympics gymnast Nadia Comanich. Renamed Nadia's Theme, the instrumental cracked the top 10 in the fall of 76, peaking at number eight. It is still the theme to the Young and the Restless today. As for TV themes with vocals, those were doing better on the charts as well. TV producers got the hint that themes with words could prolong the life of a show if the lyrics weren't too plotty and the song could stand apart. Big hits included the theme to welcome back Cotter John Sebastian's welcome Back, a number one hit in 1976 welcome Back.
- [37:37]
E
You, dreams were your ticket act, welcome back to that same old place that.
- [37:45]
B
You laughed about or the 50s kitsch theme to Happy Days performed by pop duo Pratt and McLean, a 1976 number five hit, these days are I Happy, Happy Money. And the theme to Happy Days spin off Laverne and Shirley, performed by Cindy Greco and taken to number 25 in 76. Both theme songs, Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley's rode the top 40 at the same time.
- [38:28]
D
Straight ahead and on the track now we're gonna make our dreams Come true.
- [38:34]
B
In the 70s and early 80s, a show didn't even have to be a ratings hit for its theme song to connect. Actor and one hit wonder David Naughton took the 1979 theme to ABC's disco fied show Makin it to number five even as the show lasted only two months. Makin it, the song peaked on the charts months after making it, the show was off the air. Speaking of disco, Saturday Night Fever co star Donna Pescow got her own TV show in 79, Angie and its Theme by Maureen McGovern Different Worlds reached number 18 on the pop chart and number one on the adult contemporary chart. Angie lasted two seasons. And in 1981 the reluctant superhero comedy the Greatest American Hero lasted for three abbreviated and ratings challenged seasons on abc. But its theme song by Joey Scarbury, Believe it or Not, a number two hit in August of 81, lives on in the annals of beloved yacht rock era hit. Mind you, if the show was a hit, so much the better on the countryside. The Waylon Jennings theme to the Dukes of Hazzard, a TV ratings monster at the turn of the 80s, topped the country chart in 1980 and even crossed over to the Hot 100. And 20. But the most interesting category of TV spawned hit one that eventually leads to Kate Bush's unlikely 2022 comeback is the song that is unaffiliated with TV that is then resurrected by a hit TV show. These only started to emerge at the dawn of the 80s when Hollywood music supervisors gained the clout to search farther afield for songs that could motivate a plot and one show, another daytime soap opera that was once even more popular than the Young and the Restless deserves a sidebar all its own. General Hospital, TV's top rated soap from 1979 to 1988, was a song reviving jukebox driving. The show was a long running romantic plot between the characters Luke Spencer, played by Anthony Geary and Laura Spencer, Jeannie Francis and the monumentally popular Luke and Laura spawned two count em two hot 100 topping hits in 79. A controversial rape plot between Luke and Laura brought life to a smooth, smooth disco instrumental by Herb Alpert. Remember him? Rise was intended to be Albert's comeback single after a mostly hitless 70s, but it was performed, performing poorly on the Hot 100 before General Hospital's music supervisor Jill Phelps chose the song to soundtrack the Luke and Laura rape plot. Rise took off, rising to number one in October 1979. Three years later, music supervisor Phelps struck again when she needed a song for another Luke related plot after Laura was written out of the show and Luke was paired with a new lover. This time, Phelps chose A failed 1981 single by Patty Austin, a duet she did with James Ingram called Baby Come to Me Me. General Hospital single handedly brought that song back to the hot 100 more than a year after it peaked and it eventually reached number one in February 1983. Just FYI, General Hospital was so popular at this time that actors from the show also became pop stars after their exposure on the soap. There's that Ricky Nelson archetype again. However, neither Rick Springfield, who played Dr. Noah Drake, Nor Jack Wagner, who played Frisco Jones. Played their big hits in character on the soap at the peak of their career. Nonetheless, their careers were significantly boosted by General Hospital. The General Hospital model of recontextualized hits would be supercharged in prime time by NBC's Miami Vice, a 1984 show whose apocryphal origin story involved NBC president Brandon Tartakoff scribbling in a notepad just the phrase and MTV Cops. As on mtv, Miami Vice's music sequences were highly stylized and impressionistic, as when, for example, Don Johnson's Sonny Crockett and Philip Michael Thomas Rico Tubbs drove menacingly through the nighttime to Phil Collins 1981 hit in the Air Tonight. That Miami Vice exposure would bring Collins hit back to rock station playlists three years after it had peaked on the charts. Miami Vice also rebooted the career of former Eagle Glenn Frey, whose 84B side, Smuggler's Blues, became the plot for a whole Vice episode, turning the song into an A side and sending it back on the charts all the way to number 12. Fry even acted in the episode.
- [46:52]
C
Sailors in the Pilots, Soldiers in the.
- [46:56]
B
Glenn Frey then recorded a brand new song, you Belong to the City, for the premiere of Vice's second season in the fall of 85. Not since Peter Gunn had a TV show made such an impression on the Billboard charts. The soundtrack to Miami Vice hit number one on the album chart the same month, Glenn Fry reached number two on the Hot 100 and the aforementioned Miami Vice theme by Jan Hammer reached number. The Miami Vice soundtrack spent a whopping 11 weeks at number one on the album chart, still the longest any TV soundtrack has spent on top of that chart. It affirmed the primacy of the music supervisor in helping to make or break a TV series series. As impressive as all this was, Miami Vice proved hard to replicate, and you might say it didn't represent the future of TV music placement. Arguably, a resurrected hit one year later, one even unlikelier than the hits spawned by General Hospital, would create the template for what we might now call the Stranger Things approach. This song wasn't sleek, it wasn't sex charged or cutting edge, but in its quiet way, this number one hit would change the game.
- [48:50]
C
What did you think I would say at this moment when I'm faced with the knowledge that you just don't love me?
- [49:08]
B
When we come back. Family Ties yes, the Michael J. Fox family sitcom plays Kingmaker on the charts. Non Slate plus listeners will hear the rest of this episode in two weeks. For now, I hope you've been enjoying this episode of Hit Parade. Our show is was written, edited and narrated by Chris Melanie, that's me. My producer is Kevin Bendis. Alicia Montgomery is the executive producer and Derek John, the supervising narrative producer of Slate Podcasts. Check out their roster of shows@slate.com podcasts. You can subscribe to Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts, in addition to finding it in the Slate Culture feed. If you're subscribing on Apple Podcasts, please rate and review us while you're there. It helps other listeners find the show. Thanks for listening and I look forward to leading the Hit Parade back your way. We'll see you for Part two in a couple of weeks. Until then, keep on marching on the one I'm Chris Melanfi.
- [50:19]
C
The ground that you walk on if I could just hold you again.