The 80s Countdown: It all began in 1989

Well, well, well… look who it is. It’s me! Nick is taking a bit of time away from writing his weekly column, so I decided to step in because this week’s 80s Countdown was for one of my absolute favorite years in music: 1989.

First, a little background: Every week, the 80s on 8 channel on SiriusXM airs a Top 40 countdown hosted by three of MTV’s original VJs. (Remember when MTV showed videos?) The countdown is based on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart for the chosen week, and it bops around from year to year.

How it all began…

For me, 1989 marks the year that I stepped into my own musical universe. As a teenager, a lot of my pre-1989 music listening was dependent upon what my mom or dad listened to. I lucked out because their musical tastes didn’t really overlap. So while I was introduced to Neil Diamond and Joe Cocker through my dad, my mom was very much into pop music: Donna Summer, Motown artists, and her faves Barry Manilow and Barbra Streisand.

I started listening to the radio more on my own right around 1988 or so. I began to develop likes and interests of my own, which led to me venturing more into records stores and buying 45s and cassingles. Eventually, my dad bought me a stereo system and I ventured into CDs.

Now, I like to think I have a pretty amazing breadth of music knowledge. And I learn weird facts about the songs and artists I like by listening to the various countdowns each week.

But before we get started

Since this is not my column, I hope that you will indulge me with some other commentary on this week’s 80s Countdown.

There are a lot of artists that I consider to be “defining” artists of the late-80s. Some of the names are better known than others. Outside of the top five, we have songs by Taylor Dayne and Debbie Gibson. Bobby Brown notched two songs in the top forty from his “Don’t Be Cruel” album, which remains a new jack swing classic. Milli Vanilli, who I feel were treated incredibly poorly in the wake of the lip synching “scandal,” were on the chart with their first hit, “Girl You Know It’s True.”

The week’s top debut logged in at number 50, which back then was considered a very high position. The song was “The Look” by Swedish duo Roxette. I became a quick fan of their music and I think my love of Roxette helped propel a lot of my exploration into other artists. In fact, I’ve even been published on the definitive Roxette web site, the Daily Roxette, on multiple occasions over the years. You can read my retrospective here.

Number Five: Be sure to let me know when the children stop crying

Kicking off the top five this week in 1989 was a song that I really didn’t care for back then: “When The Children Cry” by White Lion. It wasn’t particularly catchy and it wasn’t the pop or pop rock that I wanted in my life. The son — follow along on this — of my father’s then-almost-wife really liked this song and I remember the audio pouring out from his headphones.

2025 Dan understands and appreciates the lyrics.

White Lion was not, contrary to what you might think, a one-hit wonder. Their rockier “Wait” cracked the top ten in 1987. But proving my long-held mantra of “It’s always the ballad,” their biggest chart hit was “When The Children Cry.”

Number Four: You were born to what?

I was not a fan of hair bands back in the 80s. So, as with White Lion, I was not a fan of Bon Jovi. I remember girls in my middle school classes lusting after Jon Bon Jovi. I didn’t get it and I often wondered if they liked the music or just liked the music because they thought the lead singer was hot.

With age comes wisdom. 2025 Dan enjoys the music of Bon Jovi. To be fair, I started liking their music long before 2025. It’s funny to look back at their supposedly hard rock and have it all seem so… not hard.

I don’t know that “Born To Be My Baby” is the best Bon Jovi song. It made it all the way to number three on the charts, but it was sandwiched between two chart toppers “Bad Medicine” and “I’ll Be There For You.”

Number Three: Wild then, tame now

I often laugh at how certain things that were deemed “scandalous” in the 80s are considered anything but now.

I remember the uproar over the 2 Live Crew. Some stations even refused to play their hit “Me So Horny.” Another 80s Countdown during that time even refused to say the title of the song. That was the start of slapping the “Parental Advisory” notice on music that contained naughty words. I feel like every song released in the 2020s has at least one bleepable word. I suspect that their were gasps back in the 70s when Hall and Oates sang about the “rich bitch girl.”

But I have gotten off track. Tone Loc’s “Wild Thing” was really quite groundbreaking. It was one of the first rap songs to reach critical mass. It also introduced a lot of people to the art — and yes, it is an art — of sampling. At the same time it also introduced us to unauthorized sampling: the song featured an uncredited sample of Van Halen’s “Jamie’s Cryin’” and the group’s management team demanded payment. The amount is unknown, though some reports say it was just $5,000. No one had any idea that the song would become a hit.

There were pearls clutched over the song title being a euphemism for ess-eee-ecks. Flash forward a quarter century and the song “WAP” topped the pop chart.

Number Two: There’s a new Sheriff in tooooooooooown

Long before there was talk about Canada becoming the “51st state,” there was another sheriff on town — a band that was actually named Sheriff. A week earlier in 1989, the rock group did something with it’s song “”When I’m With You” that few other acts had done: it reached the top of the chart with a song that had been previously released (five years earlier) to little success. Say it with me kids, “It’s always the ballad.”

While there have been a bunch of Canadians who have topped the Billboard Hot 100 — I’m looking at you Céline Dion and Drake — there have been few rock acts to do so. Prior to Sheriff doing so, the only other acts that I can think of that fall into the rock category are The Guess Who (“American Woman,” 1970) and Bryan Adams (“Heaven,” 1985). After Sheriff we had “Black Velvet” by Alannah Myles in 1990 and Nickelback’s “How You Remind Me” in 2001.

And since there’s a record for everything, there’s this. “When I’m With You” has the longest held note of any number one song in Hot 100 history. Freddy Curci held a note for 19.3 seconds (check it out below around the 3:36 mark.

… and the number one song this week in 1989.

If you follow along with my weekly 80s Countdown tweets on Twitter/X, you’ll know that I never reveal the top song. I give away all the other 39 songs on the countdown. I don’t want to spoil the entire listening experience.

Here is the clue that I gave this week:

DRUMROLL PLEASE

If you guessed “Straight Up” by Paula Abdul, you got it! It held on to #1 for 3 weeks! Per Wikipedia: According to Paula Abdul, her mother found this song for her. She explains that her mother knew someone whose boyfriend was an aspiring songwriter, and she got “Straight Up” as an 8-track demo. The demo version was “so bad” that Abdul’s mother was “crying laughing” at it and threw it in the trash. But Abdul heard something she liked in it and retrieved it.

This was not Paula’s debut single — it was actually her third release. Thankfully, Paula yanked the song out of the trash because I cannot imagine pop music without the song and its iconic black-and-white music video.

Enjoy the video below and thanks for hanging out with me for this week’s 80s Countdown! If you are interested in what else I am up to, please check out my Manor Makeover series chronicling all the things that I have been up to here at Kroll Manor.