The late Johnny Nash was born on this date in 1940. A couple of his better-known songs are included on today’s playlist.
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Your (Almost) Daily Playlist: 2-6-23
Lots of Bob Marley on what would have been his 78h birthday.
Throwback Thursday: 1980
Nineteen eighty wasn’t a game changing year on the US pop chart. It wasn’t 1964. It wasn’t 1991. For the most part it was music business as usual. The death of disco was greatly exaggerated. Just ask any member of Lipps, Inc., should you have any idea what any member of Lipps, Inc. looks like. Seventies hit makers stayed on the charts. Paul McCartney. Diana Ross. Stevie Wonder. Barbra Streisand. The Captain & Tennille did it to us one more time, it meaning having a hit single. A few outsiders snuck into the top 40 with sounds unlike the rest – Devo hit with “Whip It,” Gary Numan with “Cars,” and The Vapors with “Turning Japanese.” In the coming years more such weirdos would make their presence known.
While many of 1980’s hits were great singles, many classics were born outside of the mainstream. Releases such as Bob Marley & the Wailers’ “Redemption Song,” Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” Peter Gabriel’s “Biko,” Prince’s “When You Were Mine,” David Bowie’s “Ashes to Ashes,” and Funky 4 + 1’s “That’s the Joint” are often referred to as classics these days. In 1980, not a single one of them troubled the US Hot 100. Change was on its way. In 1980, rap wasn’t a fixture on the top 40, though its influence was heard in Queen’s #1 smash “Another One Bites the Dust.” The next few years saw #1 hits from Peter Gabriel, Prince, David Bowie and a rap song, plus a top ten reggae song.
Today’s Throwback Thursday playlist shines a spotlight on 1980.
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A Bob Marley Playlist
If you have only one reggae album in your music collection, there’s a very good chance it’s Legend by Bob Marley & the Wailers. It’s the best-selling reggae title of all-time. In the US it’s only the second album to spend more than 500 weeks on Billboard’s weekly Top 200 album chart. (The first to pass that milestone was Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.) These accomplishments are all the more astounding when one considers that Legend is a greatest hits album consisting of 14 songs, none of which ever cracked the Billboard Hot 100 singles survey.
When deciding what songs should go on Legend, compiler Dave Robinson was determined to expand Bob Marley’s renown. Stateside Marley (b. February 6, 1945) wasn’t a very big seller. Robinson figured that many people were turned off by the subject matter of some of Marley’s compositions, so he nixed the songs about herb. He nixed the songs about slavery. He toned down the presence of violence and the odes to Jah and Rastafarianism. He carefully selected a non-threatening photo for the album cover. He remade Bob Marley’s persona into one of an upbeat spiritual man spreading love and positive vibes, which was but one aspect of his artistry. On top of that, the word “reggae” was not used in advertisements created for the collection. It was genre-less music designed to be listened to by everyone.
I don’t point out the whitewashing of Marley as a put down. Quite the contrary, actually. There are useful marketing lessons here. Legend, released in 1984, three years after Marley’s death from cancer at age 36, brought millions of consumers to reggae music. And the songs on the album are great.
The songs on Legend make up a large part of today’s Bob Marley playlist. There are a lot more songs for further exploration.
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A Martin Luther King Day Playlist
“You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations.” – Martin Luther King, Jr. 1963
“He had a dream now it’s up to you to see it through, to make it come true” – “King Holiday”
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Your (Almost) Daily Playlist (10-30-20)
Inspired by the October 30 birthdays of Jefferson Airplane/Starship’s Grace Slick, Eddie Holland, Eagles’ Timothy B. Schmit, The Temptations’ Otis Williams, Snow, and Tom Browne.