In this series I will be looking back at each year on the charts between 1986 and 1996 and asking the question "When did the Eighties actually end?" The background to this is a research project that focuses on the proliferation of Greatest Hits albums in the early 1990s. The assumption is that the shift from vinyl to CD, the influence of Baby Boomers and the value offered by compilation albums, reframed the way people thought about Pop. In my last post we looked at 1986: the classic rock album versus the novelty pop single.

Nineteen Eighty-Seven

We turn our attention now to 1987: a year dominated by nostalgia, generated in part by films like Stand By Me (1986) and Back To The Future (1985); but also Bartle Bogle Hegarty's series of advertisements for Levi jeans starring the model Nick Kamen. Kamen went on to release a Madonna-produced album in 1987, preceded by the hit single"Each Time You Break My Heart"(#5). However, the re-release of Marvin Gaye's song used in the advert arguably had a bigger impact."I Heard It Through The Grape Vine" (#8) heralded a frenzy of nostalgic revivals. These included: Ben E King's "Stand by Me" (#1) (from soundtrack to Stand By Me); Bruce Willis's cover of the The Drifters "Under The Boardwalk"(#2); and Percy Sledge's "When a Man Loves a Woman" (#2), which was used in a follow-up Levi advertisement.

Notable also on the charts in 1987 is the proliferation of the AOR Power Ballad, with epic performances from Starship, Heart, Whitesnake, Def Leppard, U2 and Belinda Carlisle. There is also a solid selection of AOR tracks making it into the Top 10: Billy Idol, Fleetwood Mac, The Pretenders etc. However, the influence of this sound was beginning to wane. Ultimately the year belonged to Stock Aitken and Waterman, who had entered their Imperial Phase: refining the Hit Factory formula by slowing down the Hi-NRG tempo, introducing Motown stylisations and incorporating Sixties Pop sweetness. The end result was no less Postmodern than the Kamen's Levi campaign: repackaging nostalgia in a technologically enhanced pastiche of genre and heritage. Addressing the pre-teen market was SAW's masterstroke: reframing the narrative in which Pop was consumed, and providing a definitive cultural experience for the children of Baby Boomers, children who would go on to become proto "Millennials".

Greatest Hits

There is a slight rise in the profile of the Greatest Hits album in 1987, with roll-over chart placings from the previous year from The Police and Queen. Again there is a total of twelve albums that reach the Top 10, if we include the re-release of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Mirroring the pattern of the previous year, none of the these compilations made the end of year Top 10: with only Paul McCartney’s All the Best! (#17) and UB40’s The Best of UB40 - Volume 1 (#20) featured in the Top 20. McCartney’s release includes a new song "Once Upon a Long Ago” which reached number 10 in the singles chart. Out-lying Top 30 performers include: The Pretenders’ The Singles (#23); Eric Clapton’s The Cream of Eric Clapton (#26) and Hot Chocolate’s The Very Best of Hot Chocolate (#29). Once again, compilations represent 16% of the end of year Top 30. Various artist compilation continue to be included in the album chart with five placings in the top thirty: Now 10 (#4); Hits 6 (#5); Hits 7 (#10) ; Now 9 (#12); and, tellingly, Sixties Mix (#30).

Classic Albums

Mirroring the perpetuity that pervades the album chart in 1986, many of those albums listed in the 1987 End of Year Top 30 go on to become “classic albums" by legacy performers:

• Michael Jackson’s Bad (#1)

• U2’s The Joshua Tree (#2)

• Whitney Houston’s Whitney (#3)

• Fleetwood Mac’s Tango in the Night (#6)

• Paul Simon’s Graceland (#14)

• Pet Shop Boys’ Actually (#15)

• Genesis’s Invisible Touch (#18)

• Simply Red’s Men and Women (#19)

• Madonna’s True Blue (#21)

• George Michael’s Faith (#25)

Graceland, The Joshua Tree, Whitney and Bad are all listed in the Rolling Stone magazines Top 500 Albums of all time. Likewise, Actually, True Blue and Faith are viewed as high-points from the Imperial Phases of Pet Shop Boys, Madonna and George Michael. Although Fleetwood Mac might be associated more with the Seventies, Tango in the Night is a very worthy Second Act, generating three Top 10 singles in 'Big Love'(#9), 'Little Lies'(#5) and 'Everywhere' (#4).

Singles Chart

The singles chart does not really reflect the legacy of heritage artists on the album chart. Only a handful of artists appear in both the End of Year Top 30: Whitney Houston’s "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)”(#3); Pet Shop Boy’s “It’s a Sin” (#8) and “Always on My Mind” (#14); George Michael (and Aretha Franklin) "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)” (#11) and Faith (#29); Madonna’s "La Isla Bonita” (#17) and “Who’s That Girl” (#20). That is not to say that there are no significant hits for nominally "album artists", but that they tend to be at the lower end of the Top 10 and usually in the Modern Rock idiom.

• The Pretenders’ "Hymn to Her” (#8)

• The Style Council’s "It Didn't Matter” (#9)

• Iggy Pop’s "Real Wild Child (Wild One)” (#10)

• Carly Simon’s "Coming Around Again” (#10)

• Freddie Mercury "The Great Pretender” (#4)

• Alison Moyet’s “Is This Love?” (#3), “Weak in the Presence of Beauty” (#6) and "Love Letters” (#4)

• U2 "With or Without You”(#4); "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For” (#6); "Where the Streets Have No Name” (#4)

• Prince "Sign o' the Times” (#10)

• The Pogues and The Dubliners’ “The Irish Rover” (#8) and "Fairytale of New York” (#1)

• The Smiths "Sheila Take a Bow” (#10)

• Fleetwood Mac "Big Love” (#9); “Little Lies” (#5)

• George Michael "I Want Your Sex” (#3)

• Whitesnake’s “Is This Love” (#9) "Here I Go Again” (#9)

• A-ha’s “Cry Wolf” (#5) and “The Living Daylights” (#5)

• Heart’s “Alone” (#5)

• Beastie Boys "She's on It” (#10)

• Michael Jackson’s "I Just Can't Stop Loving You” (#1) and “Bad” (#3)

• New Order "True Faith” (#4)

• Def Leppard "Animal" (#6)

• Billy Idol "Mony Mony” (#7)

• Paul McCartney "Once Upon a Long Ago” (#10)

• Pet Shop Boys "What Have I Done to Deserve This?” (#2) and Rent (#8)

• Belinda Carlisle "Heaven Is a Place on Earth" (#1)

Clearly the Rock Anthem is big, with notably hits from Heart, Whitesnake, Def Leppard, U2 and Belinda Carlisle. This is also strategy deployed by newcomers T’Pau with "China in Your Hand”, which ranks fifth in terms of end of year sales. However, there is also a creeping sense of nostalgia. This nostalgia is evidenced most strikingly in Punk pioneer Iggy Pop’s only ever Top 10 hit: a cover of a Johnny O’Keefe’s 1958 “Real Wild One”(given an AOR makeover). Over on the End of Year Top 30 , the formula for Iggy Pop’s record is repeated more successfully by former-Beatle George Harrison, who’s cover of 1962 James Ray "Got My Mind Set on You” reaches number 2 (becoming the 15th best selling song of 1987).

Combining both nostalgia and a power ballad is Starships’ (Diane Warren-penned) "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now” (#2), recorded for the soundtrack of romantic comedy Mannequin, which tops the chart for five weeks. Starship were, of course, the splinter group of Sixties psychedelic rock act Jefferson Airplane/Jefferson Starship. Another anthemic comeback is the Bee Gees “You Win Again” (#4), building upon their success as songwriters the previous year with Diana Ross's Motown-pastiche "Chain Reaction". This, however, is their first big hit as a group since 1979's "Tragedy".

This sentimentality is manifest also in the number of releases making the end of year chart: Ben E. King’s Stand by Me” (#7); used as the title song for the film Stand By Me; Percy Sledge’s "When a Man Loves a Woman” (#23) used in another Bartle Bogle Hegarty Levi jeans advert; and Jackie Wilson’s 1968 recording "I Get the Sweetest Feeling” (the follow-up to the successful ’86 re-release of “Reet Petite”). Other notably revivals include: a saccharine cover version of the Drifters 1964 hit "Under the Boardwalk” by Bruce Willis (#12); Ferry Aid’s cover of "Let It Be” (#13) - a Stock-Aitken-Waterman produced charity single in memory of the victims of the Zeebrugge Disaster; and Los Lobos’ version of the 1958 Ritchie Valens hit "La Bamba” (#18).

The Pet Shop Boys synth pop tribute to Elvis Presley with "Always on My Mind” (#14) deserves a special mention for a radical reworking and contemporary production. In total the number of covers/releases in the End of Year Top 30 was eight:

• Ben E. King’s "Stand by Me" (7)

• Bruce Willis’ "Under the Boardwalk” (12)

• Ferry Aid’s "Let It Be" (13)

• Pet Shop Boys’ "Always on My Mind” (14)

• George Harrison’s "Got My Mind Set on You” (15)

• Los Lobos’ "La Bamba” (18)

• Percy Sledge’s "When a Man Loves a Woman” (23)

• Jackie Wilson’s "I Get the Sweetest Feeling" (28)

Other Top 10 hits with a similar feel include: Freddie Mercury's cover of The Platters "The Great Pretender" (#4); The Pogues and The Dubliners’ traditional “The Irish Rover” (#8); and Alison Moyet's faithful reworking of Ketty Lester's 1961 hit "Love Letters" (#4). Sixties stars enjoying a renewed interest include Tom Jones with "A Boys from Nowhere" (#2) and Dusty Springfield in collaboration with Pet Shop Boys on "What Have I Done To Deserve This?" (#2).

However, the year also marks the beginning of Stock Aitken and Waterman's Imperial Phase, with six hits in the Top Thirty: Rick Astley’s "Never Gonna Give You Up” (#1) and "Whenever You Need Somebody” (#26); Mel and Kim’s “Respectable" (#6); Ferry Aid’s "Let It Be” (#13); Pepsie and Shirley's "Heartache"(#24); and Sinitta’s "Toy Boy” (#27). Other Top 10 placings for Hit Factory recordings include Samantha Fox's "Nothing Gonna Stop Me Now" (#8); Bananarama's "Love In The First Degree" (#3); and Rick Astley's cover of Nat King Cole's "When I Fall in Love" (#2).

Although Stock Aitken and Waterman had had previous hits with both Hazel Dean and Dead or Alive in '84 and '85; these were very much in the Hi-NRG mode pioneered by Bobby Orlando. Likewise, Mel and Kim's 1986 breakthrough "Showing Out (Get Fresh at the Weekend"(#3) was in a Chicago House style. By contrast, SAW's 1987 records are a lot sweeter, and a lot slower: possibly influenced by the experience of working with Bananarama on the tracks "Venus" and "More Than Physical" for their 1986 release True Confessions. Compare the BPM of early SAW hits from 84 like Hazel Dean's "Searching"or Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me Right Round" and they are both 128. This is very similar to Divine's SAW-produced "You Think You're a Man" (127) from the same year, with all three clearly influenced by the sound of both Bobby O's groundbreaking "She Has a Way" (124) and "Reputation" (126).

As 1987 proceeded, however, SAW, seemed to decrease the tempo with "Respectable" (122), "Toy Boy"(120), "Love In the First Degree" (118), "Whenever You Need Someone"(115) and "Never Gonna Give You Up" (113); arguably finding a sweet spot, which recurs in Kylie Minogue's subsequent hits "I Should Be So Lucky" (116) and "Je Ne Sais Pas Pourquoi" (116), as well as Donna Summer's "This Time I Know Its For Real (#116). This tempo is also very redolent of Motown hits like Supremes "Stop! In The Name Of Love" (115) and The Four Tops "Reach Out I'll Be There" (120), as well as more disco-inflected Pop, like Blondie's "Heart of Glass"(115) and Abba's "Super Trouper" (118). Sixties classics that hover around this point include The Mamas and Papas' "California Dreaming" (112) and The Beach Boys "God Only Knows". In appropriating the vernacular of melody and tempo, SAW arguably produced a box-fresh simulacrum of Pop history: Warholian in both its plasticity and production process.

Conclusion

It is perhaps this collision of nostalgia and technology that is the essence of 1987. MTV was finally launched in Europe: the music video having reframed the way people thought about Pop from the late-70s onwards. Its influence could be felt everywhere from TV and film production to magazine design, and nowhere was this more so than in television advertising campaigns, like the Levi commercials. Drum machines and synthesisers would also come of age. Although they had been around for over a decade, until this point the technology had been routinely blended into mythologies of Rock authenticity: often perpetuated in the lip-synch live-performance style of early music videos. SAW celebrated the role of technology and orientated their records very much at the mainstream: deploying a different aesthetic code to that of early Synth Pop pioneers.

Post Live Aid the avant-garde sounds of Synth Pop also gave way to fuller band sounds, Stadium Rock and warmer resonating recordings. Arguably Live Aid afforded Rock a pomposity not seen since Punk: epitomised in acts like Simple Minds, U2, Sting and Peter Gabriel. The revival of Sixties Pop was perhaps a reaction to this. However, it was also a function of Baby Boomers reaching middle-age and looking back nostalgically to the past. Tellingly, the compilation album Sixties Mix scrapes into the of End of Year Top 30. Just as the advertising agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty repurposed sentimentality to sell Levi jeans to teenagers, Stock Aitken Waterman represented Pop's past in synthetic simulations to sell records to children. These were often the children of Baby Boomers, with parents who played them the sounds of Sixties: consequently they were sweet-toothed and eager for Pop sugar.

The genius of the Stock Aitken Waterman's sound was that it encapsulates this imagined hyper-real nostalgia: encompassing elements of Motown, Disco and Classic Pop. They played with the grammar of genre and fashioned this into their own vernacular that would dominate Pop for the next three years. SAW's further brilliance was putting technology forward in the mix and dispensing with the traditional emphasis on cultural authenticity and musical performance: concepts that were irrelevant to children. For these proto Millennials, the deregulation of Pop history from both the weight of social context and the pretensions of instrumental virtuosity would prove to be instructive. As much as Kraftwerk or Hip Hop, Stock Aitken Waterman paved the way for the bricolage consumption of Pop in the 21st Century. Their legacy manifest today, not just in the pick and mix of streaming services or the cut and paste liminality of EDM, but also the carnivalesque infantilism of the music festival.

Top 50 Singles 1987

1 "Never Gonna Give You Up" Rick Astley

2 "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" Starship

3 "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)" Whitney Houston

4 "You Win Again" Bee Gees

5 "China in Your Hand" T'Pau

6 "Respectable" Mel and Kim

7 "Stand by Me" Ben E. King

8 "It's a Sin" Pet Shop Boys

9 "Star Trekkin'" The Firm

10 "Pump Up the Volume" M/A/R/R/S

11 "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)" George Michael and Aretha Franklin

12 "Under the Boardwalk" Bruce Willis

13 "Let It Be" Ferry Aid

14 "Always on My Mind" Pet Shop Boys

15 "Got My Mind Set on You" George Harrison

16 "Can't Be with You Tonight" Judy Boucher

17 "La Isla Bonita" Madonna

18 "La Bamba" Los Lobos

19 "Hold Me Now" Johnny Logan

20 "Who's That Girl" Madonna

21 "Everything I Own" Boy George

22 "Down to Earth" Curiosity Killed the Cat

23 "When a Man Loves a Woman" Percy Sledge

24 "Heartache" Pepsi & Shirlie

25 "Always" Atlantic Starr

26 "Whenever You Need Somebody" Rick Astley

27 "Toy Boy" Sinitta

28 "I Get the Sweetest Feeling" Jackie Wilson

29 "Faith" George Michael

30 "I Just Can't Stop Loving You" Michael Jackson featuring Siedah Garrett

31 "Live It Up" Mental As Anything

32 "Love in the First Degree" Bananarama

33 "Crockett's Theme Jan Hammer

34 "Alone" Heart

35 "Wipe Out" The Fat Boys and The Beach Boys

36 "Call Me" Spagna

37 "Let's Wait Awhile" Janet Jackson

38 "Jack Your Body" Steve 'Silk' Hurley

39 "The Great Pretender" Freddie Mercury

40 "Male Stripper" Man 2 Man meets Man Parrish

41 "Lean on Me" Club Nouveau 3

42 "What Have I Done to Deserve This?" Pet Shop Boys with Dusty Springfield

43 "Is This Love?" Alison Moyet

44 "A Boy from Nowhere" Tom Jones

45 "With or Without You" U2

46 "Wishing Well" Terence Trent D'Arby

47 "Heart and Soul" T'Pau

48 "Fairytale of New York" The Pogues featuring Kirsty MacColl

49 "Full Metal Jacket (I Wanna Be Your Drill Instructor)" Abigail Mead and Nigel Goulding

50 "When I Fall in Love"/"My Arms Keep Missing You" Rick Astley

Record Mirror. London, England: Spotlight Publications. 23 January 1988. p. 36.

Top 50 Albums 1987

1 Bad Michael Jackson

2 The Joshua Tree U2

3 Whitney Whitney Houston

4 Now 10 Various Artists

5 Hits 6 Various Artists

6 Tango in the Night Fleetwood Mac

7 Whenever You Need Somebody Rick Astley

8 Bridge of Spies T'Pau

9 The Phantom of the Opera Original London Cast

10 Hits 7 Various Artists 2

11 Running in the Family Level 42

12 Now 9 Various Artists

13 Raindancing Alison Moyet

14 Graceland Paul Simon

15 Actually Pet Shop Boys

16 Introducing the Hardline According to Terence Trent D'Arby Terence Trent D'Arby

17 All the Best! Paul McCartney

18 Invisible Touch Genesis

19 Men and Women Simply Red

20 The Best of UB40 – Volume One UB40

21 True Blue Madonna

22 Live in the City of Light Simple Minds

23 The Singles The Pretenders

24 Keep Your Distance Curiosity Killed the Cat

25 Faith George Michael

26 The Cream of Eric Clapton Eric Clapton

27 Solitude Standing Suzanne Vega

28 Always Guaranteed Cliff Richard

29 The Very Best of Hot Chocolate Hot Chocolate

30 Sixties Mix Various Artists

31 The Circus Erasure

32 Give Me the Reason Luther Vandross

33 Silk & Steel Five Star

34 Hysteria Def Leppard

35 F.L.M. Mel and Kim

36 Brothers in Arms Dire Straits

37 Popped In Souled Out Wet Wet Wet

38 So Peter Gabriel ]

39 Whitesnake 1987 Whitesnake

40 It's Better to Travel Swing Out Sister

41 Who's That Girl Original Soundtrack

42 Simply Shadows The Shadows

43 You Can Dance Madonna

44 Dancing with Strangers Chris Rea

45 The Return of Bruno Bruce Willis

46 Bad Animals Heart

47 Hearsay Alexander O'Neal

48 Move Closer Various Artists

49 Tunnel of Love Bruce Springsteen

50 Licensed to Ill Beastie Boys

Record Mirror. 23 January 1988. p. 37