Max Picks …songs from 1986

1986

Crowded House – Something So Strong

It was love at first listen to this song. They had another hit that was larger in Don’t Dream It’s Over but this song is a perfect pop song. The lyric “bring life to frozen ground” still stands out to me and I cannot hear this song enough. As far as pop songs go it’s hard to beat this New Zealand band.

The song dates back to 1984 when Neil Finn did a demo of the song. He was still in Split Enz at that time. They split in 1985 so Finn and drummer Paul Hester formed Crowded House.

The song was written by Neil Finn and  Mitchell Froom.

R.E.M. – Fall On Me

A musician friend of mine invited me over to listen to this album. We must have played it 5 times through by nighttime.

Bill Berry (drummer) said the song was specifically about Acid Rain, which occurs when the burning of fossil fuels releases sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides into the atmosphere, causing rain to be acidic and threatening the environment.

Michael Stipe said about the song: “I was reading an article in Boston when I was on tour with the Golden Palominos, and Chris Stamey showed me this article about this guy that did an experiment from the Leaning Tower of Pisa, whereby he dropped a pound of feathers and a pound of iron to prove that there was… a difference in the… density? What did he prove? I don’t even know. They fall just as fast.”

Steve Earle – Someday

Ever since I heard him in the mid to late 80s I liked Steve Earle. He opened up for Bob Dylan in 1988 and he was fantastic. His music was between country, folk, and rock. You can’t really put Earle in a box…and you shouldn’t. I’ve read reviewers compare him to Randy Newman, Bruce Springsteen, and Waylon Jennings in the same review. That is a great span of artists.

The song is about escaping the town you are living in. I knew a lot of people who wanted to escape the small town I grew up in. The song reminds me a little of The River by Bruce Springsteen in content. It’s a song that many people will be able to relate to.

The song was from his debut album Guitar Town. I remember he was being played on country radio and WKDF…Nashville’s number-one rock station back in the 80s. The album is ranked 489 on Rolling Stone Magazine’s top 500 albums. They called it a rocker’s version of country.

Georgia Satellites – Keep Your Hands To Yourself

A friend of mine who played guitar in high school got a bootleg of this song a year before it was officially released. His band was playing in the gym before we went on and they played this song. I thought they wrote it until I asked him. It’s a great-sounding song live.

It was an instant bar band song classic. It was a song you didn’t really have to rehearse…just one listen would do it. We learned it in one take… and again it was one of only a handful of times that we played a song in the top ten at the time. This is the kind of music I missed in the mainstream during the mid to late eighties.

This was the only big hit for the Georgia Satellites, although lead singer Dan Baird had a hit as a solo artist in 1992 with “I Love You Period.” They didn’t have another big hit but they did have some songs that got airplay on radio and MTV like Battleship Chains and a cover of Hippy Shake. This was one of the few straight-out rock and roll songs to hit the charts at this time.

Dwight Yoakam – Guitars, Cadillacs

Buck Owens made the Bakersville sound popular and it’s one of my favorite types of country. Yoakam and Steve Earle came out at around the same time and they were not like everyone else (George Jones has a funny quote about that at the bottom). They were a breath of fresh air in country music and they crossed over genres as well. They essentially brought the country back to being country and not southern rock pop with a twang.

It was released in 1986 and was the second single off of his debut album Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc. This song was written by Dwight Yoakam. Pete Anderson (producer) was a huge help in the making of the album. He provided some ideas music-wise, played the guitar, and even sang background vocals.

George Jones: ‘We spent all these years trying not to be called hillbillies, and Dwight Yoakam and Steve Earle fucked it up in one day.’”

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

46 thoughts on “Max Picks …songs from 1986”

    1. They also considered Merle Haggard, Marty Stuart, and a few others part of that sound. Not your regular country at the time… yes I love the Satellites.

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      3. I used to love George when I was young. Something about his voice. He Stopped Loving Her Today is still one of my top 5 favorite songs of all time. It says a lot about me (and my draw to his voice) that it would be so high on my lifetime list of favorites since the others are rock and blues songs!
        I think I will list my favorites on an upcoming post. Cheers!

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      4. It took me a while to warm up to him because I grew up 30 minutes from Nashville. It was shoved at me so I started to like bands that were British and older like The Beatles, Who, and Stones… but yes…after a while the rebellion wore off and I started to appreciate all of it…looking foward to it! Sorry for the long comment!

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      6. Oh I’ve been there before! I was coming out of Clarksville and was totally lost and ended up in Elkton Ky. I’m from Ashland City…halfway between Nashville and Clarksville.

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  3. Those debut albums from Steve and Dwight are just so phenomenal, quite different from each other and yet different than most anything at the time. Great reminder of R.E.M. and Crowded House tunes that I don’t listen to anymore, not that I don’t like but we all have the same problem, too much music, too little time.

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    1. Oh I know that feeling!
      The last three had a southern bent for sure….and REM were southern but didn’t sound it. The Satellites song made me smile when I heard it back then…rock and roll on the charts!

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    1. Thats alright…some coming up you might like. I always go to the top ten when making these…it’s no, no, no, no, maybe, no, no….rinse and repeat through the top 100 and alternative charts.

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  5. Thanks for including “Guitars, Cadillacs”. That was one I wanted to be sure you listed.

    The other is from a local guy (to me). He left here to hit the big time in Austin and is seen by most as a one-hit wonder. That would be Pat MacDonald of Timbuk 3. Their one hit in 1986 was “The Future’s so Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades”. It was catchy and upbeat and went over the heads of most listeners. I saw the title worn unironically on shirts at an Apple picnic. The engineers didn’t seem to realize it was a song about nuclear annihilation. Albert Einstein was known for his genius and for being a poor student. Pat wrote “Einstein at the Pool Hall”, making the young Einstein a dropout pool hustler capitalizing on his knowledge of physics. “Reverend Jack and his Roman Cadillac Church” lampooned evangelical preachers getting rich by fleecing their flocks. “Assholes on Parade” (pre-Timbuk 3) was a little more obvious. “Studyin’ Up On You” starts out sounding like a song about an obsessive lover, then maybe a stalker, and ends up being about identity theft.

    Timbuk 3 lost out to Bruce Hornsby for the Best New Artist Grammy and maybe became a little too edgy and not enough poppy to stay popular.

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    1. I loved that song back in the 1980s…I had completely forgot about it I appreciate you briging it up. Yes one look at the video and they should have figured out what it was about…like yesterday I had a song Melt With You and it was about a nuclear bomb dropping. The cold war was in gear.

      I’ll check some of their other stuff out. Like I said…I always liked it. I just rewatched the video and I remembered it like it was yesterday.

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  6. Good list! I was surprised to see you lob Crowded House up there, but pleased, I really liked their first three or maybe four albums… I think ‘World Where You Live’ was my favorite off that album but it was pretty full of good tunes, certainly including ‘Something So Strong’. And of course I love that REM… ‘Lifes Rich Pageant’ ws the first album by them I bought, on the strength of ‘Fall on Me’ which I was hearing a little on radio and seeing a lot on Much Music (with that eye-catching B&W upside down video of industrial lands) . I liked the album so well I went back and got their previous two albums (not the debut oddly enough , looking back) in short order. I like that “Guitars , Cadillacs’ too, though I doubt I heard it until much later on.

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    1. The year had a southern bent to it…. except Crowded House. The more we go the harder it is for me to find things…but it’s a lot of fun. This was a solid list though.

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  8. Good playlist, Max. Not one of my favorite Steve Earle songs, but you know how much I love him. Not sure if you have seen the HBO series, Treme, but he’s a recurring character in it and plays a street musician. This is one of his from 1995 (yes, I know this is about 1986, sorry 😉 ) about home town that I love (love the whole album!)

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  9. Awesome stuff from the year. I love the Georgia Satellites and Dwight songs, both are exemplary. I’d kind of forgotten about Steve Earle’s track, over the years only one of his songs has really stuck with me and I’m sure anyone can guess what it is. I also haven’t heard that Crowded House song in a long time, the only one of theirs I really hear at all is the other one from that time.

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    1. Yep and that Earle song is coming up later…That is why I posted that Crowded House song…you never hear it hardly over the other one.

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  11. Pretty wild and varied styles today Max. I liked Crowded House but preferred Split Enz overall. ‘Better Be Home Soon’ is another Crowded House song thats worthy. The Satellites works because its got humour and doesn’t go the ‘Serious Artistes At Work’ road. Good stuff today, something for everyone.

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    1. I need to look into Split Enz more…I just heard/saw their videos on MTV…I don’t know a lot about them but they seem more experimental for sure.
      It is a good variety today…

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      1. As an album ‘True Colours’ is a great starting point for Enz, it was MASSIVE here and in Aus, deservedly so. My personal pick though? ‘Charlie.’ Heartbreakingly sublime.

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  15. I only knew the Crowded House and Georgia Satellite songs. I 100% agree “Something So Strong” is a perfect pop song – catchy melody, neat sound and fantastic vocals. I love the jangly sound of the R.E.M. song. That Steve Earle track sounds great as well. I only started listening to him in more recent years. I know the name Dwight Yoakam, but I’m not familiar with any of his music. “Guitars, Cadillacs” has a nice country rock vibe. Great picks!

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    1. Oh you never heard the REM song or Georgia Satellites? Those are two good songs. The Georgia Satellites song was the only rock and roll on the radio back then lol.

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