I celebrated a special birthday recently. I'll let you figure out which one. If you read along it's easier than a Sudoku puzzle. The answer is within the following list of songs, all of which were No. 1 on the Billboard chart on my birthday (April 10) throughout the years.
Some years I had some good stuff to listen to. A lot of years I didn't. Put them all together and I've got my very own Ryan Seacrest American Top, ahem, 40. We're counting down from No. 40 ...
(OK, actually we're counting down from No. 41 because I started on the day I was born, so that give us an extra song.)
41) 1990: I'll Be Your Everything by Tommy Page
-- In 1990 the Cincinnati Reds were my everything. (Sorry, Indians.) I lived and died with Reds, quite often falling asleep with the radio next to my ear as I listened to a game. They were my everything starting at the tail end of the Big Red Machine in 1979; through the dreary 1980s which featured guys like Nick Esasky, Gary Redus, old Buddy Bell, and Pete Rose as manager; all the way into college and 1990, the year our relationship was finally consummated. That year the Reds won the World Series with Jose Rijo on the mound and my favorite Red, Eric Davis, in center field. They won it in spectacular fashion, sweeping the steroided-up Oakland A's of Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco. I lived and died with Reds games throughout my youth. Despite having moved from northwest Ohio to Cleveland to attend John Carroll University, I was still able to follow
Never heard of this one? Me neither, until I put this list together. Apparently this song became popular because it featured the New Kids on the Block, which explains why I never heard of it. And don't like it. Tommy Page kept his feet on the ground and kept reaching for the stars, though, by releasing eight more albums through 2000. I never heard of any of those albums either.
40) 1989: She Drives Me Crazy -- Fine Young Cannibals
-- You know what drives me crazy? Loud whistles, the Cleveland Indians, Pittsburgh Steeler fans, spills on my carpet, and this freaking song. Oh, it was everywhere in 1989. It's still too many places now. Including my own personal Top 40.
39) 1988: Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car -- Billy Ocean
-- The problem with this song is once it gets into my head I want it to get right back out. But it won't. Please, Billy Ocean, get outta my head and back into obscurity.
38) 1976: Disco Lady -- Johnnie Taylor
-- Whatever I was doing on my birthday in 1976 didn't involve ladies, that's for sure. It might have involved peeing my pants. Maybe eating some mud or drawing in a coloring book. None of my subsequent birthdays ever involved this song, though, that's for sure. I think it's going to stay that way for the duration.
37) 1987: Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now -- Starship
This song was featured as the theme to the romantic comedy film Mannequin. That was a movie where some guy fell in love with a store mannequing. And then his true love brought her to life! I have never watched the movie Mannequin, have never known anyone who has watched the movie Mannequin, and have never fallen in love with a mannequin. Well, there was that one mannequin in the window at Higbee's downtown ...
36) 1986: Rock Me Amadeus -- Falco
-- This song was rocking me when it came out. I distinctly remember playing basketball in my neighbor's driveway when this song came blasting out of the car stereo. (Yes, we turned on the car stereo in those days. iPod was just a misspelled word back then.) I think "Hangin' Tough" by The New Kids on the Block came on right after it. And you thought the music they played at the Cavs games was bad.
35) 1994: Bump N' Grind -- R. Kelly
-- R. Kelly has been around this long? Wow, R. Kelly is older than me! (I just looked it up.) I never paid much attention to R. Kelly, except to know that everyone makes fun of him for making 487 chapters of "Trapped in a Closet" and that he likes teenage girls a little bit too much. I still liked teenage girls in 1994 but I was just about to the point where it became creepy. Plus it would have made my girlfriend mad.
34-21) 2009: Poker Face -- Lady GaGa
* 2008 Touch My Body Mariah Carey
* 2007 Don't Matter Akon
* 2006 Bad Day Daniel Powter
* 2005 Candy Shop 50 Cent featuring Olivia
* 2004 Yeah! Usher featuring Ludacris & Lil Jon
* 2003 In Da Club 50 Cent
* 2002 Ain't It Funny [Murder Remix] Jennifer Lopez featuring Ja Rule
* 2001 All for You Janet Jackson
* 2000 Maria Maria Santana featuring The Product G&B
* 1999 No Scrubs TLC
* 1998 All My Life K-Ci & JoJo
* 1997: Can't Nobody Hold Me Down -- Puff Daddy featuring Ma$e
*1996: Because You Loved Me -- Celine Dion
-- And here I thought this was the year I turned old. It was actually 13 years ago, 1996, when I officially turned old. That's when the No. 1 song began simply passing me by. Oh, I've heard all these songs. But usually it's been during warmups at high-school basketball games. (All right, I haven't been to any high-school basketball games lately and I have heard "Poker Face". But still.) But since I'm not a clubber, don't watch American Idol, and hate Celine Dion, these songs just flew right by me when they came out.
20) 1993: Informer -- Snow
-- It's quite embarrassing that 16 years later I can still sing along with this song. Well, at least with the part of the song I could sing along with back then -- "A licky boom, boom dooooown." No one could understand the rest of the lyrics then and no one is interested in them now.
19-18) 1995: This Is How We Do It -- Montell Jordan
18) 1991: I've Been Thinking About You -- Londonbeat
-- For most of the early 1990s I was just there, floating along, having a good time occassionally but not really accomplishing anything. In 1991 I graduated from John Carroll University and then moved to Steubenville where I worked at the newspaper for five years. That was about four years too long. It was kind of like these songs. You don't mind hearing them every once in awhile, but too much of them is a bad thing.
17-16) 1973: The Night The Lights Went Out in Georgia -- Vicki Lawrence
1992: Save the Best for Last -- Vanessa Williams
-- All right, two pretty solid songs. I don't love either one; I don't hate either one. I don't turn the radio off if either one comes on. So I guess I like them equally. Now, there's a body of work for each of these performers out there beyond their songs. In this corner we've got Vicki Lawrence who went on to The Carol Burnett Show and then her own show, Mama's Family, which aired for years and years. You've got Vanessa Williams, who was a Miss America and has acted in many films of her own. Now, I just about threw up every time Mama's Family came on during those years and years. Not only because I hated the show (and especially hated Mama), but because it was usually on Saturday evening. If I saw Mama's Family on a Saturday evening it meant I was a bigger loser than the guys down the street having their Dungeons & Dragons party. Meanwhile, Vanessa Williams had nude pictures published. Edge goes to Vanessa Williams.
15) 1977: Don't Give Up On Us -- David Soul
-- All the times I've heard this song and I never knew that the guy who played Starsky in Starsky & Hutch sang it. I guess that makes it cooler than it actually should be. It's not a horrible song. But Starsky & Hutch makes it even better than not horrible. (By the way, I never watched Starsky & Hutch. Not the show, not the movie, not any of it. I hear it was really cool, though, and I'm sure if I woke up in 1977 tomorrow I would watch it. But back in the real 1977 I preferred The Dukes of Hazzard.)
14) 1975: Philadelphia Freedom -- The Elton John Band
-- I never knew there was an Elton John Band until I looked up the top songs on my birthdays. I certainly didn't know there was an Elton John Band in 1975. I knew how to ride my bike (with training wheels) and that's about it. I could go to the bathroom on my own and read, too, but that's not all that impressive when you're six.
13) 1972: The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face -- Roberta Flack
-- I don't remember anything I saw in 1972. I do remember riding my tricycle around our neighborhood, but only as far as the trailer where the old lady who was a witch lived. At least I think she was a witch. She had a big, loud, barking dog, too. Not too many witches have dogs, now that I think about it. But I still never rode my tricycle past her driveway, and if I did it was really, really fast. And it might have been a couple years later. But anyway.
12) 1984: Footloose -- Kenny Loggins
-- Let's face it. Everyone today who makes fun of the High School Musical movies just absolutely loooooooooooved Footloose back in the day. Is there any difference between the movies? (I say this as someone who has not seen either Footloose or the HSMs. The videos for every song from Footloose were on so much on MTV that I never felt I had to actually see the movie.) Certainly Footloose had the better soundtrack, which is why this song made it to No. 1 on my birthday 25 years ago. And recent rumors linked HSM's male lead, Zac Efron, to a Footloose remake. But, really, HSM is just the same thing for a new generation, just like Grease was before Footloose.
11) 1974: Bennie and the Jets -- Elton John
-- Buh buh buh Bennie and the Jets. It's just a fun song. It's one of Those Songs where you know and love the chorus and try to sing along but can't remember any other words. So you kind of mumble along and smack the steering wheel and then belt out that chorus. I didn't do any of that yesterday, seriously I didn't.
10) 1978: Night Fever -- The Bee Gees
-- I never wore bell bottoms of platform shoes or shaggy long hair, mostly because I wasn't old enough to be that cool. I think my Aunt Jean, who is just a few years older than me, had all of those things. Maybe if I was her niece instead of her nephew she would have dressed me up in her leftovers and I could have been the coolest pre-teen on the planet. Instead I had to settle for never, ever having a Bee Gees album. Shucks.
9) 1981: Kiss on My List -- Hall & Oates
-- I always get Hall & Oates confused, and this dates back to at least the time this came out. In order to remember I have to break it down like an algebra problem. OK, you've got Hall and you've got Oates. That's two different guys. It's Daryl Hall. It's John Oates. Two different guys. I've established that much, that it actually is two different people. One of them has a mustache and a big frizzy afro and I think he's shorter than the other guy. But which one is that? Eventually I associated Daryl Hall with being tall. And the tall guy is the guy without the mustache. So Oates is the frizzy afro and mustache guy. Has to be. It was not 1981 when I finally got all this down. It took a few years, probably right about the time they vanished from sight.
8) 1982: I Love Rock 'n Roll -- Joan Jett & The Blackhearts
-- It probably was around 1982 that I knew I liked girls. But I was still confused about Joan Jett. She's not your classic beauty. She looked kinda rough. She could probably punch a lot of guys out. But she, not unlike I, loved rock and roll. So that was one thing we had in common. She seemed like she like guy things, too, like football and playing in mud puddles. I don't know this to be a fact, but I just got that feeling. I also don't know if Joan Jett is or was a bad girl, but now I realize that she had a bad girl image which was part of the reason for being confused about my attraction for Joan Jett. I'm also pretty upset that that terrible actress from Twilight, Kristen Stewart, is supposed to play Joan Jett in an upcoming movie. I think Joan Jett should play herself, because she still looks bad-girl awesome.
7) 1969: Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In -- Fifth Dimension
-- I guess you could do worse for a No. 1 song on the day you were born. At least it was a successful song, sitting at No. 1 for six weeks. It certainly sounds like the 1960s. It came in 27th on AFI's list of the Top 100 songs in American cinema. I didn't know any of this until years later, because I was being born that day.
6) 1979: What a Fool Believes -- The Doobie Brothers
-- This is a great song for no other reason than it wasn't a disco song and still made it to the top of the charts in 1979. Disco was on its deathbed in the late 1970s and this song was one of the nails in the coffin. Back then I was too busy listening to Alvin and the Chipmunks, Kermit singing the Rainbow Connection, and my mom's country-music 8-tracks to know anything about disco (or much rock music for that matter). But thirty years later I am thanking the Doobie Brothers for writing this song.
5) 1985: We Are the World -- USA for Africa
-- Everyone loves to make fun of this song. Saturday Night Live parodied it the moment it came out. Jimmy Kimmel parodied it in an R-rated video just last year. Everyone else made fun of it in between. But I'll tell you what, you can't beat the star power that came together to make this song. If you tried in any other realm to put together a lineup like We Are The World put together, you'd have to resurrect the dead. Check it out: Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, Lionel Richie, Paul Simon, Diana Ross, Billy Joel, Kenny Rogers -- these people were giants then and now. I can assure you that I never made fun of this song, not when it came out and not today.
4) 1980: Another Brick in the Wall -- Pink Floyd
-- I was scared of music like this in 1980. My parents were probably scared that I'd listen to it, too. If Pink Floyd said they didn't need no education, maybe I would think I didn't need no education neither! Now Pink Floyd is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with a really cool exhibit dedicated to this song. Maybe they really didn't need an education since they've got about a bajillion dollars now thanks to this. I, on the other hand ...
3-2) 1971: Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me) -- Temptations
1970: Let it Be -- Beatles
-- I was a baby when these songs came out. I'm sure I heard them during that time, but I have no memories of it. I have heard them plenty of times since. They had some pretty good songs when I was a baby.
1) 1983: Billie Jean -- Michael Jackson
-- I once won a Michael Jackson glove off my hometown radio station. If you were caller seven when you heard "Billie Jean" you would get a replica of the glove Michael Jackson wore in the video for the song. I was at my grandmother's house when I called, and it was long-distance from there. I got in trouble for calling long-distance. I never did get to go pick up that glove. Well, maybe I can wind up with the real thing in the auction Michael's currently holding.