I know I said I’d be quitting the intros for a while, but I had to put this all into perspective. I hadn’t thought about the scope of this series since I first agreed to do it, but the other night it kind of hit me and put me into shock.

This is post #32. Usually I get about 20 songs in each post. Which means over the course of this series so far I’ve posted somewhere around 640 songs. 640! That’s a good 50-disc box set there.

Then it hit me that we’re only on the letter F. Take out letters like X and Z and we’re still only about a quarter of the way through the entire series at this point. Again, this is the 32nd week; at this pace we’re looking at 120-plus weeks, total. So by the end we’re talking two years and a few months and probably around 2,500 songs. But the good news is that I still enjoy putting each week’s post together even after eight months of them. Whew.

Well, here’s another disc and a half’s worth of the eventual ultimate Bottom Feeders box set, as we continue looking at songs that charted from 41 to 100 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the 1980s.

Fleetwood Mac
“Sisters of the Moon” — 1980, #86 (download)
“Fireflies” — 1981, #60 (download)
“Family Man” — 1988, #90 (download)
“As Long as You Follow” — 1988, #43 (download)

“Sisters of the Moon” was the last of the four singles released in the U.S. off of Tusk (1979). Someone needs to introduce Kanye West to this one. The beat seems right up his alley for a sample.

“Fireflies” is from Fleetwood Mac Live (1980), written by Stevie Nicks and one of the three tracks recorded in Santa Monica for friends of the band.

“As Long as You Follow” is the only one of the four tracks here that’s still heard on the radio today. It was one of the two new songs on their Greatest Hits album (1988), which is widely thought to be the last album released on eight-track.

I know Lindsey Buckingham is a Popdose favorite, so I’ll let you guys talk about the Buckingham-penned “Family Man,” from 1987’s Tango in the Night, in the comments section.

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If there’s one major aspect of the rise of hipster irony (the only rule of which seems to be, basically, “so bad/ridiculous/awkward it’s good”) that I appreciate, it’s what it’s done for cheesy music.

Toto’s “Africa,” for example, is now widely played and appreciated by countless twentysomethings. Go ahead and cringe, but let’s face it: you liked it once upon a time, too, if you don’t (secretly) still. I even bet that this mention of it will make you want to listen again in the not-too-distant future. You scoff now, but soon enough, that refrain will taunt you. “I bless the rains down in Aaaafrica / Gonna take some time to do the things we never haaaaaaaaad… ” And let’s not forget Hall & Oates, who I’ve legitimately liked — unabashedly — for quite some time now. The past couple of years have been kind to the H2O fanbase. One fan comes out of the woodwork, and dozens follow.

Well, here’s my suggestion for the next ironic hipster anthem: Foreigner’s “Cold as Ice.” (more…)

Foreigner - “Urgent,” circa ‘81

A friend of mine once observed that you know you’re getting older when most of your favorite bands are touring without their original singers. Thankfully, of course, my favorite band (Cheap Trick, for anyone who hasn’t figured that out yet) is one of the few bands from my youth with complete line-up intact. Even more reason to dig them!

This same friend is actually a writer for a Midwest newspaper and, this past summer, he found himself scheduled to interview members of two of his favorite bands from his teenage years: Foreigner and Styx. The only problem was that neither guy was actually a member of their respective band at the time. Thus, he approached the idea of interviewing Foreigner singer Kelly Hansen and Styx singer/keyboardist Lawrence Gowan with some trepidation.

What on earth would he ask mere hired guns whose job it was to help a couple original members hustle a revamped version of a once-great band on the nostalgia and casino circuit? (more…)