HIts and Memories Meme

Yet another meme, this one about your formative taste in music. Dobbed in for this one by one of the formidable For Battle team members, it goes like this:

The idea is to go boingand type the year you left school in the search box. [I have linked to a different site than the original for reasons I will outline below].
Click on the link "Top 100 hits of... " and cut and paste the results into your blog.
Bold the songs you like, strike through the ones you hate and underline your favourite. Do nothing to the ones you don't remember (or don't care about).

Firstly: I haven't done 100. I've spared you that. I've done the Australian top hits for my particular year, and then the top 30 number 1s of that year for Aus, UK and USA combined.
I've concentrated on Aussie hits because I went to a country boarding hellschool to do my HSC (leaving certificate) and we didn't get anything on the radio station except what was in the Aussie charts. Countdown was a godsend, SBS something I only saw on holiday when I went home to Sydney. Any alternate music was unknown until I got to university, where the uni bar jukebox blew my mind. Don't get me wrong -- I'm not a country girl, spent some damn good years in England where I discovered the dichotomy of punk and disco, but that country exile set me back a fair bit in the musical knowledge stakes.

We had a game we played in the dorms at lights-out (9.00). The radio would be on, and you had to be the first to identify the song they were playing. Thus I have a major disability in that anytime a mainstream song of the vintage 1975-1984 comes on anywhere -- supermarket, doctor's surgery, car, middle of sex, I have to say its title very fast. It can be very annoying for all parties concerned.

Anyhoo, I digress. The following list has the criteria listed above, with one exception. It's a damn good list. I like a lot of the songs on it. It was a very good year for pop music. So not only are the ones I like bolded, but the ones I LOVED are in caps.

NUMBER 1 hits for 1984
All Night Long (All Night): Lionel Richie
Original Sin: INXS
LOVE IS A BATTLEFIELD: Pat Benatar
Girls Just Want To Have Fun: Cyndi Lauper
99 RED BALLOONS: Nena
Eat It: "Weird Al" Yankovic
Footloose: Kenny Loggins
Hello: Lionel Richie
It's Just Not Cricket: The Twelfth Man
Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go: Wham!
When Doves Cry: Prince
What's Love Got To Do With It?: Tina Turner
Careless Whisper: George Michael
I Just Called To Say I Love You: Stevie Wonder
Like A Virgin: Madonna

Top 30 No 1s for 1984 (Aus, UK, US)

1 I Just Called To Say I Love You: Stevie Wonder
2 Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go: Wham!
3 Hello: Lionel Richie
4 99 RED BALLOONS: Nena
5 Careless Whisper: George Michael
6 TWO TRIBES: Frankie Goes To Hollywood
7 The Reflex: Duran Duran
8 Like a Virgin: Madonna
9 When Doves Cry: Prince
10 Footloose: Kenny Loggins
11 Jump: Van Halen
12 Relax: Frankie Goes To Hollywood
13 LOVE IS A BATTLEFIELD: Pat Benatar
14 What's Love Got To Do With It?: Tina Turner
15 Karma Chameleon: Culture Club
16 All Night Long (All Night): Lionel Richie
17 Ghostbusters: Ray Parker Jnr
18 Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now): Phil Collins
19 Freedom: Wham!
20 I Feel For You: Chaka Khan
21 Do They Know It's Christmas?: Band Aid
22 Let's Hear it for the Boy: Deniece Williams
23 Girls Just Want To Have Fun: Cyndi Lauper
24 Say Say Say: Paul McCartney & Michael Jackson
25 Time After Time: Cyndi Lauper
26 Caribbean Queen (No More Love On The Run): Billy Ocean
27 Let's Go Crazy: Prince
28 Owner Of A Lonely Heart: Yes
29 Missing You: John Waite
30 Out Of Touch: Daryl Hall and John Oates

Good year, no? Of course there's some shite, but a lot of those songs ARE the eighties.

And I'd also like to point out that I was the youngest person in year 12 that year.