Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia - Be the One to Walk in the Sun, Part 1

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🗓️ 20 November 2021

⏱️ 64 minutes

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Summary

Thirty-five years ago, in the fall of 1986, women with rock foundations and pop sensibilities were doing quite well on the charts. Three acts in particular were drawing sizable attention—and they were all singing on the same album: Cyndi Lauper’s True Colors, which featured backing vocals by the Bangles and ’Til Tuesday’s Aimee Mann.

It turns out these women had more than that brief coincidence in common. Lauper, Mann and the Bangles came up at the same postpunk, new-wave moment in ’80s pop. And they fought many of the same battles: record-label machinations…a media that stoked rivalries, whether or not they existed…and a sexist music industry that repeatedly underestimated their skills. In this Hit Parade episode, Chris Molanphy recounts how these women emerged from distinctive rock scenes––from punk-era New York and Boston, to L.A.’s Paisley Underground—then outgrew them. They found critical and commercial acclaim and remain influential decades later, in a variety of media, from Hollywood to Broadway. What forces were they up against, and how did they fight to define themselves?

Podcast production by Asha Saluja.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening ad-free on Amazon Music.
0:03.4	Hey there, hit parade listeners.
0:06.0	What you're about to hear is part one of this episode.
0:10.1	Part two will arrive in your podcast feed at the end of the month.
0:14.3	Would you like to hear this episode all at once the day it drops?
0:18.7	Sign up for Slate Plus.
0:20.6	You can try it for a month for just one dollar,
0:24.0	and it supports not only this show, but all of Slate's acclaimed journalism and podcasts.
0:30.8	Just go to slate.com slash hit parade plus. You'll get to hear every hit parade episode in full the day it arrives, plus Hit Parade Plus. You'll get to hear every Hit Parade episode in full the day it arrives, plus
0:40.3	Hit Parade The Bridge, our bonus episodes, with guest interviews, deeper dives on our episode
0:47.4	topics, and pop chart trivia. Once again, to join, that's slate.com slash hitparade plus.
0:55.8	Thanks.
0:56.6	And now, please enjoy part one of this hit parade episode.
1:18.5	Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart History from Slate magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slate's
1:24.1	Why is the song number one series. On today's show, 35 years ago, in the
1:30.6	closing months of 1986, women with rock foundations and pop sensibilities were doing
1:38.5	quite well on the charts, from Tina Turner to Belinda Carlyle, Carly Simon to Aretha Franklin. The Chrissy
1:47.5	Hind led Pretenders to the Annie Lennox-fronted Eurythmics. But by November 1986,
1:56.2	three acts in particular were drawing outsized attention, and they were all singing on the same
2:03.2	LP.
2:08.2	That album was True Colors, the second studio LP by New York singer, songwriter, and fashion iconoclast, Cindy Lauper.
2:21.4	A lot was riding on Lauper's sophomore album, which was following up a multi-platinum debut.
	...

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