1984: The Year In Top 40 Hits (Week 8: February 25, 1984)
Better get a bottle of water and a snack, cause the second one is gonna take a while. Also: John Lennon, Kenny Loggins, Thomas Dolby and what made me rethink my New Wave devotion.
Two months in and what we think of when we think of 1984 is starting to take shape. Including the start of the reign of…well, we’ll get to him. There were 12 new entries this week, the highest being the song that introduced me to one of my all-time favorite songwriters, “They Don’t Know” by Tracey Ullman, at 63. (That’ll be in a future installment.)
At #7, “Nobody Told Me” by John Lennon
As a child, I was a Beatles fan above everything else. My lifelong obsession with pop music is entirely down to my sisters playing Beatles records for me in my crib.
And my love for the Beatles was definitely a known thing. So on the morning of December 9, 1980, it seemed like all of the sixth grade teachers at Loma Linda Elementary in Longmont, Colorado, thought “Keep an eye on Stewart today, the news about John Lennon probably really shook him.” Not that all of them had great ideas: my English teacher called me to his desk to suggest that I write an extra credit…
