Weekend Diversion: 1984, Part 1

A new year, a new series of posts about the songs that went to Number One, this time in the year 1984. This post is a little different from last year’s series: The first Number One IN 1984 was "Say Say Say", which I talked about in the linked post. However, the first Number One OF 1984 didn’t hit the top of the chart until January 21, 1984, and that song (video up top, cued to the start to where MTV’s playing of it began; the full version is more than six minutes long) was ”Owner of a Lonely Heart” by British progressive rock band Yes. The song would be Number One for two weeks, and it was the group’s only Number One.

I wasn’t a fan of this song or of Yes. When I was at university, I had a couple of friends who liked the band. We were talking one day and one of them was talking about them, ending their sentence with Yes. I responded, in a way that seemed hilarious to 18 or 19 year old me, “No!” And that’s pretty much where things stayed with me for decades.

Sometime in the past five years or so, my late friend Andy, who died last June, suggested I give the group a listen. Andy specifically suggested the band’s 1983 album, 90125, which is the album “Owner of a Lonely Heart” is from. I think he reasoned that because the album had produced a Number One hit, pop music-loving me be able to connect with it more than the band’s earlier albums—a perfectly reasonable assumption. I added the album to my Spotify because it was the best way to listen because it’s be free to do so. I never got around to listening to it before Andy died, which I regret, even though I know that in those years the last thing I cared about was listening to an old album by a band I’d never liked.

I decided to listen to it while I worked on this post. I can’t say listening made me a fan, but I noticed some years ago that I now often appreciate music and artists I that I once didn’t like—or, sometimes, even intensely disliked. So I can appreciate the album, and, probably, Yes as a band (I’ve still never listened to any of their earlier albums). However, I think that sometimes it’s enough to appreciate a work, even if it’s just because of its historic significance. It seems unlikely that anyone can like everything, after all. This won’t be the last time I listen to something older that I’ve never listened to before, but I hope if anyone ever asks me to give something a listen that I do so while I can still talk with them about it.

The music video was directed by graphic designer Storm Thorgerson, who had designed album covers for Yes, as well as doing work for Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Def Leppard, and others. The video wasn’t one of my favourites from that era, possibly because I didn’t like the song very much, but it also just didn’t draw me in visually. To each their own, and all that—and, of course, “Arthur’s Law”.

As with the Number One that preceded “Owner of a Lonely Heart”, "Say Say Say", while I wasn’t particularly fond of the song or its video, I didn’t hate it, either. For both songs, I was mostly kind of indifferent to them. Nothing about that has changed for me in the 40 years since—not for either song.

“Owner of a Lonely Heart” reached Number 14 in Australia, 2 in Canada, 16 in New Zealand, 28 in the UK (Silver), and Number One on the USA’s “Billboard Hot 100” and “Mainstream Rock” charts, as well as Number One on the Cash Box “Top 100”.

The album 90125 (which is named after its Atco catalogue number, by the way) reached Number 27 in Australia (2x Platinum), 3 in Canada (2x Platinum), 25 in New Zealand (2x Platinum), 16 in the UK (Gold), and 5 on the USA’s “Billboard 200” chart (3x Platinum).

I’ve talked a little bit about the charts, and the first post in a new series is good place to point out some realities contained in the charts. Both charts I mention note a song or album’s peak (highest) position, but certifications (Gold, Platinum) are cumulative. Nowadays, the charts give much greater weight to streaming than to sales (of either physical units or digital versions) because physical sales have been declining for many years. The trouble is that older hit music can straddle eras, and Wikipedia ties to accomodate that. They include those traditional charts, as well as certifications. The problem is that many songs and albums maybe have high certification implying good sales, when, in fact, it at least sometimes can mean that it’s been streamed a lot.

In the case of this particular song and album, there’s a seeming discrepancy: The album seemed to sell better than its hit single did, even though the album’s peak chart positions were lower, and the certifications were much higher than was the case for the single. This is almost certainly because of streaming: At the time I was writing this post, “Owner of a Lonely Heart” had been streamed nearly 240 million times on Spotify alone.

None of this is actually all that important: Big Numbers = Good, no matter how the song or album gets there. But for a group like Yes, the difference between the single and album charts seems appropriate: They’re pretty much the definition of an “Album-oriented rock” band.

And that’s it for the first post about the Number One songs of 1984, a year that, like 1983, was important to me. It’s also true, as it was last year, that many of the songs that meant the most to me that year were never Number One. In 1983, there were 17 Number One songs (one of which, "Down Under", was Number One two different times). In 1984, there were 19 new Number Ones, plus the last Number One of 1983, "Say Say Say", for a total of 20 different songs at Number One in the year. The fact that, just like 1983, several songs had multi-week runs at the top of the charts means that maybe this year I can again work in more songs from the year, ones that weren’t Number One (except maybe for me personally). There are always stories hit songs, and sometimes the most personal stories aren't about hits.

Thanks for joining me back at the turntable for a new this series about 1980s music. The next post about a 1984 Number One will be on February 4—unless I have a chance to talk about some of those other, somewhat less popular songs.