"Suddenly Last Summer" - Motels

Oh, I bet you do. A great forgotten 80's tune. Didn't become a hit until featured in the movie Vision Quest a few years later and John Waite was a bigger name after "Missing You."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApZ1aD8nYEk

I can also think of a few tunes that were rereleased due to exposure on MTV. "White Wedding" by Billy Idol and "Should I Stay or Should I Go" by the Clash being two.

By the way, I was in Weatherford, OK from 81 to 84. Didn't have MTV but we had Night Flight, Night Tracks on WTBS and Friday Night Videos. But I saw MTV when I went back home to Houston in the summers.

Edited by Indy500

Indy500: You win... :-) Now that I hear it, I do remember it... had to blow the dust off that memory. That IS a good tune!

I'd watch MTV over at my uncle's, and watched Friday Night Videos when my parents would relinquish the TV. :)

AaronK, you may have a good point. If there are songs that were wildly popular that fell between the cracks on Billboard's charts, that's something I need to look at.

One of the most glaring problems I've found with using Billboard (& this was discussed in another thread, too) is that songs like Madonna's "Into The Groove" don't show up at ALL because they were a B-side, never released as a single.

I don't know if there are other songs like that... but it wouldn't surprise me.

The book you're talking about; is it this one?

Amazon.com: Billboard's Hottest Hot 100 Hits

Wouldn't that just be Billboard's charts?

I think I'm now going to have to go back to that website and compare it to Billboard's year-end charts... darn it! :)

NightAire wrote: I don't know if there are other songs like that... but it wouldn't surprise me.

Another one that someone recently brought up is "All My Love" by Led Zeppelin. There are probably few airplay-only hits that never had commercial 45s, especially when you're talking about records that would have made the year-end top 100.

NightAire wrote: Additionally, MTV wasn't available everywhere, especially at first. I was trying to find stats on market penetration by year but failed... I only know that Tulsa, Oklahoma was one of the VERY first markets to get MTV... which is why a station which labeled itself as "The Music You See On MTV" did so well here 1983 - 1985. :)

My area didn't get MTV until 1983 and doing some "lazy man" research awhile back, I found that many other areas of the country didn't get it until then as well. So I believe that may be the starting point of MTV's national influence.

As for the John Waite song, I don't remember ever seeing the video or even hearing it on the radio in '83. I do remember it from the "Vision Quest" soundtrack because I bought the album. Then in the late '80s when I started listening to AOR stations, I finally heard it on the radio.

Thanks for the info.