I’m a list man. I love making them, I love talking about them, I love everything about them. And if I accept a challenge to make a list I will painstakingly carve it out and be able to defend to the death why I chose what I did.

About three weeks ago I was challenged to make a list of the Top Ten ‘80s hits that I wish I would never hear again. Overall, finding these songs is not a terribly difficult thing for me as I would prefer not to listen to the Top 40 for the most part and instead focus more on these Bottom Feeders or the more obscure tracks anyway. But the part that took me three weeks to finalize is simply cutting it to just ten songs. If the criteria would have been 50 songs it would have been a piece of cake but just ten is ridiculous. But, I’ve done it and I told my buddy who proposed the challenge that I would post the ten songs as one of my intros to the segment. And while I’m not going to go into the full explanation of why I chose them here (that would just take way too long) I will tell you that my only criteria was that they were a Top 40 hit. To choose something that hit #98 would be too easy and clearly not the point of this exercise.

So here I present you with the ten top 40 hits from the ’80s that I could live without ever hearing again — in no particular order:

Beach Boys, “Kokomo”
Bobby McFerrin, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”
Bangles, “Walk Like an Egyptian”
Katrina and the Waves, “Walking on Sunshine”
Corey Hart, “Sunglasses at Night”
Corey Hart, “Boy in the Box”
Rolling Stones, “Emotional Rescue”
New Kids on the Block, “Cover Girl”
Steve Miller Band, “Abracadabra”
Michael Bolton, “That’s What Love is All About”

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DOWNLOAD THE FULL MIX HERE

As Prince said, “I think I wanna dance!” Sometimes in the weekly Mix Six shuffle it’s easy to forget the lasting impact of disco on the culture at large. Go to any wedding reception where there’s a DJ who can read the crowd, and soon enough you’ll be hearing some of the tunes featured here.

Disco was certainly loved — but also hated — when it originally surfaced in the popular culture of the ’70s. Many were praying that disco would ultimately implode and go away … forever!

Wrong! Hahaha.

“Jupiter,” Earth, Wind & Fire

The horns, the harmony, and the badass funk of it all. There’s just something about these EWF albums of the mid- to late ’70s that’s pure funk gold. Can I get a “Hell, yeah?” (more…)