They are two of the most iconic songs of the early part of the 1980s. And for the week ending September 13, 1980, they were the two biggest movers within the American Top 40 countdown, one song heading to the Top 10, the other heading straight to the top.
The biggest mover in the Top 40 was Kenny Loggins' first foray into movie music. "I'm Alright," the big track from the motion picture Caddyshack, starring Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield, Ted Knight and Bill Murray, jumped a hefty 15 notches from No. 27 to No. 12 on its way to peaking at No. 7. It would be Loggins' actual first Top 10 solo hit, even though 1978's No. 5 hit "Whenever I Call You Friend" was listed as a Loggins solo effort. He had help on that song from Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks.
"I'm Alright" would help establish Loggins as a bonafide star of singing movie music. Throughout the 1980s, it was his voice that gave life to movies such as Footloose (the title track, "I'm Free"), Over The Top ("Meet Me Halfway"), Top Gun ("Danger Zone") and Caddyshack II, which got him yet another Top 10 hit from that movie with "Nobody's Fool."
And hey, who doesn't remember the gopher dancing to "I'm Alright" after he helped to ruin the golf course at the end of the first Caddyshack and Dangerfield famously announced, "Hey everybody! We're all gonna get laid!"
The second biggest mover of the week was the third single to come from Queen's "The Game" album. It seemed as if the luster of the No. 1 song "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" had worn off after "Play The Game" only got as high as No. 42 in the mid-summer of 1980. Didn't look as if the album was going to carry on.
But there was a hidden jewel on the album that was ready to be the third release, a funky, dance record that bass player John Deacon composed that seemed like a throwaway on the album. Deacon composed one of the more popular songs the band had four years earlier in "You're My Best Friend," and he was about to do it again with a song that picked up quite a bit of radio airplay in the second half of the summer. I can still remember 99X WXLO-FM in New York playing the tar out of this dance tune.
And how I loved "Another One Bites The Dust." It's Deacon's bass complementing Roger Taylor's drums that make this tune memorable. Then you add the amazing and theatrical vocal of the late Freddie Mercury and that song would become one of the reasons we loved the 1980s musically.
"Another One Bites The Dust" debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 on August 16, 1980 at No. 67 and two weeks later, it was debuting in the Top 40 at No. 28. Two weeks later after that, the week of September 13, 1980, it leaped 14 places from No. 23 into the Top 10 at No. 9 to give Queen its fourth Top 10 hit (sadly, it would be the band's last Top 10 hit as "Bohemian Rhapsody," the band's classic 1976 Top 10 smash, would be re-released thanks to the "Wayne's World" soundtrack and hit No. 2 months after Mercury's passing).
Three weeks after it hit the Top 10 in a splashy way, "Another One Bites The Dust" would get to No. 1 and spend three weeks at the top and make the band first to have two No. 1 hits in the 1980s. "Another One Bites The Dust" would spend a mesmerizing 15 weeks in the Top 10.and since its release in the summer of 1980, it has become one of the biggest sports anthems of all time.
As for the very top of the Top 40 this weekend, Diana Ross held at the top with her fifth No. 1 hit after leaving the Supremes and her 17th overall No. 1 hit with "Upside Down," while Australia's Air Supply moved into the No. 2 spot with their second straight big hit "All Out Of Love" and the Rolling Stones held firm at No. 3 with the title track from their album "Emotional Rescue."
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