Great success on this category (suck it ChrisV) - at least four new songs for the ipod and maybe more when I research some of these artists.
Tough category up and down - 11 and up were all decent songs (sorry NBZ).
They’re called caffeine pills on the show but it was clear to me that it was about amphetamines. Just couldn’t get that past the censors back then I guess.
The Red Hots are the props that were used for the show.
Ohhhh duh. Ok that makes more sense.
You can get pretty wigged out on caffeine pills, especially if you aren’t a coffee drinker. And it’s not fun at all.
Could have also been about ephedrine - which was legal at the time.
If that’s the pub opposite the Scala that’s where we used to go beforehand
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Great category, and very enjoyable reveal Suzzer. Thanks
Oh God I’d rather be blackout drunk than high on caffeine. Not even close.
I can’t find the exact one I had picked out but it would have been by one of the better vocaloid producers like the ones who produced the song I actually submitted. Only difference is I gave you a real singer instead of Hatsune. For example:
I found this entire genre to be pretty interesting (as a musical phenomenon) and will post more about it later.
You made a wise choice.
Oh Hai, I winnded again!
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Apparently we have the same musical tastes.
Do you have a large collection of saved songs? I’ll trade you.
Maybe I should have looked for some Babymetal.
That’s what Walrus is all about. 
This is really good.
This Madonna track is really clever and I’m glad you posted it. It also uses a number of borrowed chords that make it sound more interesting than if it had only used chords from the key. It’s just not nearly as complex as Plastic Love which has extended chords with altered tones and more progression complexity. Here is a site I like for this stuff. You can click on the individual chords for MIDI playback at your own pace to hear the chord transitions:
The metrics aren’t a fair comparison and I don’t really look at those anyway. I’m looking at the Roman numerals to see how the progression is classified which is faster than looking at the chord names without context. I’m going to simplify it a bit by removing the inversions and duplicates. Borrowed chords (not in the key) are bolded:
V - V / vi - vi - V - V / V - ii7 - I - V - I
and the actual chords for Borderline (D major) are
A - F# - B min - A - E - E min7 - D - A - D
This is nifty for a Madonna pop song. The V / vi reads “five of six” which is the major dominant chord of the submediant (vi) chord. The V / V reads “five of five” and is the dominant chord of the dominant chord. These are secondary dominant chords and are the most common chord substitutions in music, especially the V / V. They are choosing these for tension and release. The V → I cadence resolves very strongly to your ear, which is to say there’s a method to this madness and they aren’t just picking random chords out of thin air.
This is just one aspect of Borderline. It does a few other oddball things with the verse and inversions. The point, though, is that composers who are good at this can slide these things into a song in a way that’s so smooth it’s deceiving, sort of like a chef that could sneak cotton candy into a gourmet steak dinner and get away with it. Even musicians with great ears can be deceived by this, often thinking the structure is far more simplistic than it actually is. I posted this in another thread but it might be the best example of all time:
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After reading your breakdown of coffee brewers, baseball, dfs, furniture, headphones and pop music i’m glad we don’t have a porn thread.
I’ve already stated that I choose porn based on the furniture they use in the set designs.
Borderline was one of the 20 or so songs that played on loop all day, every day at my first job - making change for people in Skeeball Hall at World’s of Fun (Kansas City’s main amusement park).
To this day I can’t stand any of those songs.
Came out in 1983. Same year as 99 Red Balloons. Did they play that at Skeeball?
This would be 1985. The songs I can remember:
Borderline
Get into the Groove
SheBop
Girls Just Want to Have Fun
Sweet Dreams (are made of this)
Axel-F song from Beverly Hills Cop (I can still tolerate that one because it’s instrumental)
Everybody Wants to Rule the World
Let’s Hear It for the Boy
What’s Love Got to Do with It
Missing You
The Reflex
Somebody’s Watching Me
The Heart of Rock & Roll
Love is a Battlefield
She Works Hard for the Money
You Can’t Hurry Love
Careless Whisper
I Want to Know What Love Is
Easy Lover
Don’t You Forget About Me
The Heat is On
I looked up the top 100 hits from 1983-1985. I’m 85% sure about the list above.
That one song that starts like Word Up with the whistle, but then has lyrics that say “Can’t slow down”. Sounded kind of like Prince but wasn’t. I remember it because it was my favorite. Anyone know the song I’m talking about?
Found it:
Never realized that was Kool and the Gang lol
Also they don’t seem to say can’t slow down so who the hell knows. My memory blows. But I know this was one of the songs.
Lionel Ritchie had a “Can’t Slow Down” in 1983.