Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia - Turn Around, Bright Eyes, Part 1
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Slate
3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 16 October 2020
⏱️ 49 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
Hit Parade is back for non-Slate Plus listeners! Upcoming episodes will be split into two parts, released two weeks apart. For the full episode right now, sign up for Slate Plus and you'll also get The Bridge, our Trivia show and bonus deep dive into our subjects. slate.com/hitparadeplus.
Producers and songwriters have a major impact on how a finished pop song sounds, and feels. But it’s possible no hitmaking mastermind—not even Phil Spector—has had a more specific pop sound than Jim Steinman. His songs have an unmistakable signature: pounding pianos, revving motorcycles, sometimes literal thunder. And power-vocalists singing passionate lyrics that don’t always make sense but always sound like the fate of the world depends on this song.
Chris Molanphy tells the story of a fervent, headstrong songwriter who fused with a singer who called himself Meat Loaf, creating a blockbuster song cycle called Bat Out of Hell. Steinman then went on to spread his pomp-rock to other artists: Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” Air Supply’s “Making Love Out of Nothing at All.” Celine Dion’s “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now.” Every song sounded like a hallelujah chorus and a Broadway show—even though Steinman’s actual Broadway show was a notorious flop. But nothing keeps Jim Steinman down. Forever’s gonna start tonight.
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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. |
| 0:05.9 | As we recently announced, we are thrilled to be bringing our full-length episodes back to |
| 0:11.1 | non-slate Plus listeners. |
| 0:13.4 | Starting this fall, non-plus listeners will hear our episodes in two parts. |
| 0:19.1 | What you're about to hear is part one of this episode. Part two will |
| 0:23.9 | arrive in your podcast feed at the end of the month. Would you like to hear this episode all at once |
| 0:30.2 | the day it drops? Sign up for Slate Plus. It's just $35 for the first year, and it supports not only this show, but all of Slate's |
| 0:40.7 | acclaimed journalism and podcasts. Just go to slate.com slash hip parade plus. You'll get to hear |
| 0:48.5 | every hip parade episode in full the day it arrives. Plus, Hit Parade The Bridge, our bonus episodes, with guest |
| 0:57.2 | interviews, deeper dives on our episode topics, and pop chart trivia. Once again, that's |
| 1:03.8 | slate.com slash hip parade plus. Thanks. And now, please enjoy part one of this Hit Parade episode. |
| 1:14.8 | Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart History from Slate magazine, about the hits from coast to coast. |
| 1:25.3 | I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slate's Why Is This Song Number One series? |
| 1:32.7 | On today's show, 33 years ago this week in October 1983, America's number one song was a master class in melodrama. |
| 1:45.0 | It was sung by a raspy-voiced woman from Wales who'd only scored one prior American hit. |
| 1:52.0 | She would never top Billboard's Hot 100 again, but her biggest hit became icon. That same week in 1983, America's number two song was by a duo from the other side of the world, Melbourne, Australia. |
| 2:21.2 | This Aussie duo had never met the Welsh woman sitting next to them on the Hot 100 that week. |
| 2:28.6 | But their respective hits sounded uncannily similar to each other, like thundering theatrical twins. |
| 2:37.0 | Every time I see you all the rays of the sun, |
| 2:43.0 | streaming through the waves in your head, and every star in the sky is taking |
| 2:48.0 | the secret to the similarity had nothing to do with the Welsh woman, Bonnie Tyler, or the Australian duo, Air Supply. |
... |
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