Welcome to the regular weekly Reminiscings of Youth segment on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" where I provide one of the songs that gladly adorned my childhood and adolescence in the 1970s and 1980s. And now...back to the countdown. Wait! That's not my line...that's Casey Kasem's line when he was hosting "America's Top 10". Whenever I could catch it on TV, I did so to see what was hot and cool on the charts and one group that was doing that a lot on the show was Hall & Oates. In fact, they're up above as well at No. 7 on the charts in this November 1983 episode.
In fact, I remember their October 1983 single "Say It Isn't So" taking up near permanent residency on those charts for months on end, and it didn't take long for the song to make it to local radio stations. And it soon became one of my favourite songs by them during their dance-pop days in the 1980s. I especially liked the extended version (great sax solo by Charles DeChant) that played through the official music video below (and yeah, that beat makes it a great walking song). For both versions, Hall really liked to take advantage of those vocal effects especially the one where he seems to yell from one speaker to another.
In Canada, "Say It Isn't So" reached No. 18 while in the United States, it hit No. 2 on Billboard. Meanwhile, what was also hitting the record stores in October 1983?
Chiemi Hori -- Yuugure Kibun （夕暮れ気分）
Seiko Matsuda -- Hitomi wa Diamond （瞳はダイアモンド）
Some how I remember the name Casey Kasem although I was definitely not watching America's top 10 back in 1983.
ReplyDeleteYou might remember the voice since he was doing a lot of voice work back in the 1970s such as Shaggy from "Scooby-Doo" or Mark from the dubbed version of "Gatchaman".
Deleteponderous, man
Deletehttps://youtu.be/ndUk6yX3PBo?si=Jcae5Oih-EUrsz4_
To me, Komugiiro no Mermaid by Seiko Matsuda feels like an early mellow Hall and Oates song .
ReplyDeleteMan, can you imagine if those AI folks actually decided to adapt "Komugi Iro no Mermaid" into a Hall & Oates tune?
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