My mind raced and I thought, what could I do?
Continuing my trip up the list of the most streamed songs for each year.
1990 : Thunderstruck - AC/DC
This is an odd one because, from the title alone, this isn't a track I know - I'm expecting to recognise it when I hear it, but I can't imagine what it had that made it take the year.
Well, that's a surprise - it was 4:52 of me sitting there thinking "nope, I don't know this". I suspect I must have heard it at some point, but it had never lodged itself in my consciousness. At first listen it seemed like a "fine" song - there's nothing wrong with it, but I couldn't get that excited about it either (it's really not my normal cup of tea). The video is a pretty straightforward "concert footage" video, but they did at least have a reasonable number of "fans" present and Wikipedia tells me they filmed it in a proper venue - Brixton Academy, which is sadly still closed and my Suede gig there in December was cancelled this week, so I do wonder if it will ever reopen.
Wikipedia has remarkably little on the track, with the highlight being some incredibly insightful analysis into the song's creation from Angus Young - "I had an idea, we played about with it for a couple of months - and after that we had a song!". Thanks Angus. It's generally recognised as one of their better songs and went down particularly well in Finland, where it got to #1 and is on a very odd run in Hungary, having appeared in their year end chart every year since 2017 - a quick Google turns up Ivett Toth, a Hungarian figure skater, using the track in her routine at the 2018 Winter Olympics, but that feels unlikely to be the full reason. And then, right at the end of the entry, we have the randomest fact - it was part of the cyber attack on the Iranian nuclear program in 09/10 which resulted in workstations playing the track at high volume late at night.
Wikipedia offers up no cover versions at all and secondhandsongs.com doesn't do much better, offering up some, but no-one I've ever heard of - although I was intrigued enough to check out Velocihamster (fine, but doesn't really add anything). YouTube offers something different from Steve'n'Seagulls (fine banjo and spoons work), 2 Cellos (this is quite the video), The Badpiper (bagpipes and flames) and Luca Stricagnoli (impressive fingerwork) - I wanted to find an acoustic folk female vocal version, but was disappointed there. It would also be rude not to include our friend Leo Moracchioli, but it probably won't surprise you that he doesn't really bring anything new to the party.
1990 feels like it was probably quite a fine year music-wise, so let's see if we can find some more likely candidates for track of the year. The best selling track of the year in the UK was The Righteous Brothers "Unchained Melody" (which I only recently learned is so called because it's the theme music to the film Unchained) but since that was first released in '64, it's not quite eligible. The rest of the top five is slightly more recent being Sinead O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2 U", Elton John's "Sacrifice", Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby" and Adamski's "Killer" - I'd have quite happily taken either Sinead or Adamski's offerings. Other fine tracks from the top 20 are Madonna's "Vogue", Beats International "Dub Be Good To Me" (featuring Fatboy Slim), New Order's "World In Motion", Snap!'s "The Power" and The Adventures Of Stevie V's "Dirty Cash" - all of which take me straight back.
Looking through the year's charts we can also come up with Depeche Mode's "Enjoy The Silence", They Might Be Giants's "Birdhouse In Your Soul" (I loved that album), Happy Monday's "Step On", Betty Boo's "Doin' The Do", Dee-Lite's "Groove Is In The Heart" (a proper choon!), The Farm's "Groovy Train" and "Altogether Now", The Beautiful South's "A Little Time", Berlin's "Take My Breath Away" and EMF's "Unbelievable". Wikipedia also tells me that New Kids On The Block had EIGHT singles in the chart this year - and I'm pleased to say I don't remember any of them. Looking across the pond the top selling single of the year was Wilson Phillips's "Hold On" - Mrs Reed loved that album but I wasn't QUITE so keen on it.
All in all, some fine tracks but maybe not the depth of quality we've seen in previous years (either that or I'm feeling very picky today!). There is no world in the multiverse where I would have picked AC/DC as my winners for the year - Sinead feels like she would have been a worthy winner because it still sounds really fresh after all these years or, if you want something very much of the time, then go for Adamski which is a fine track that you don't hear often enough these days. I'd also take Dee-Lite because that really is a very fine track indeed, but AC/DC took the year and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it!
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