With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, I thought this 80s Love Songs compilation would bring some romantic thoughts into your minds. I always liked Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away.” Marvin Gaye’s classic “Sexual Healing” and “Slow Hand” amp up the mood.
But there are a couple of clunkers here. Starship’s “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” and Leo Sayer’s “More Than I Can Say” are weak links.
Do you remember these love songs from the 1980s? GRADE: B
Track Listing:
| Title/Composer | Performer | Time | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Take My Breath Away | Berlin | 04:19 | |||
| 2 | No One Is to Blame | Howard Jones | 03:36 | |||
| 3 | More Than I Can Say | Leo Sayer | 03:04 | |||
| 4 | Sukiyaki | A Taste of Honey | 03:37 | |||
| 5 | Lessons in Love | Level 42 | 04:34 | |||
| 6 | It Might Be You | Stephen Bishop | 04:27 | |||
| 7 | Sexual Healing | Marvin Gaye | 04:51 | |||
| 8 | Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now Albert Hammond / Diane Warren | Starship | 04:22 | |||
| 9 | Slow Hand | The Pointer Sisters | 04:52 | |||
| 10 | Celebration Joanna Clifford Adams / Robert “Kool” Bell / Ronald Bell / James L. Bonnefond / George “Funky” Brown / Claydes Smith / James “J.T.” Taylor / Curtis “Fitz” Williams | Kool & the Gang | 03:33 |
Another mish-mash. And what is party anthem “Celebration” doing amidst these slow jams? In my humble opinion, the best pop songs about love are:
Buddy Holly’s “True Love Ways” (first dance at my wedding).
The Seekers’ “I’ll Never Find Another You”.
Talking Heads’ “I Guess That This Must Be the Place”.
Cat Stevens’s “Two Fine People”.
That’s it. That’s the list!
Deb, great list!
I like “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now,” innocuous but well-crafted pop. But I’m a lone voice here, I expect.
Fred, my favorite Starship song is “Miracles” from 1975.
Beware “New stereo recordings by the original artists.” Are they original recordings simply re-mastered for stereo, or completely new recordings? If the latter, they aren’t the versions you heard on the radio back then.
Fred, they’re re-mastered.
The biggest surprise here is that “Sexual Healing” was 1982. I would have guessed much earlier.
“Slow Hand,” OK, but it wouldn’t make my list.
“Sukiyaki”? Really?
Jeff, “Sukiyaki” is a head-scratcher pick. It must have been affordable.
Probably my favorite here is Leo Sayer’s More Than I Can Say.
I’m with you and Jeff on the Sukiyaki selection.
Beth, “Sukiyaki” is just out of place here. These compilation CDs often include songs that boggle the mind!
The eighties were mostly a musical wasteland for me but there are a couple of good songs here! Also, some I don’t know! Marvin Gaye did a lot better than Sexual Healing, like What’s Going On?!
Bob, I have all of Marvin Gaye’s albums and play them regularly. “What’s Going On?” is a classic!
With apologies to Beth, Sayer is one of those whose voice and choice of repertoire always annoyed the hell out of me, so I don’t think I recall this one, but will trust your dismissal. I’d forgotten about A Taste of Honey’s version of “Sukiyaki”…it’s sultry if thin and, well, forgettable. The YT segue from Taste is to Sade’s Much better “Is It a Crime”…Deb’s good list could stand to add that one, though Sade had several good candidates.
It was hard to miss Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away”…I have had for decades Berlin’s first album, PLEASURE VICTIM, which was mostly (and amusingly) about sexual games, with the exception of one of the two hits, “The Metro”, vs. the other, very much on-topic, “Sex (I’m a…)”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleasure_Victim
Teri Nunn was pretty in “The Metro” video, but Helen Folosade Adu was consistently gorgeous. Crackers in bed not a problem, either way, of course, to late teens me.
Todd, Berlin’s impact on popular music of that era is underestimated.