1985: The Year In Top 40 Hits (Week 7: February 16, 1985)

Classics from Dead Or Alive, The Smiths, and, oddly, Soft Cell, plus The Associates and The Bluebells

Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash

In pop terms, it’s the middle of February when things start getting interesting again. The holiday lull, always followed by the blahs of January, is over and it’s time to start gearing up for the always important spring release schedule. This is where the charts start truly feeling like 1985 instead of the remnants of 1984. Anyway, Elaine Paige and Barbara Dickson’s “I Know Him So Well”was number one for its second week. There were 7 new chart entries, the highest being “Just Another Night” by Mick Jagger at 42.

At #19, “You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)” by Dead or Alive

In the last half of the 1980s, the writing and production team of Stock Aitken Waterman dominated the British pop charts, scoring dozens of hit singles. Not all of them made it across the Atlantic — we never heard much about Jason Donovan, Mel and Kim, or Sinitta, for example — but their strings of smashes for acts like Bananarama, Kylie Minogue, and Rick Astley define a certain brand of high-energy ’80s electronic dance pop. You know the Stock Aitken Waterman sound the second you hear it even if you don’t know the brand…