Customer Reviews

Entertainment Weekly: Greatest Hits 1982

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"Entertainment Weekly: Greatest Hits 1982" is one of those relatively rare multi-artist compilatons of 1980s music where the majority of the songs are worth owning. This is a great disc. I was 11 years old in 1982, and that was the first year that I started taking a strong interest in listening to the radio. It was also the year that I started watching MTV.

Two of my favorites songs here are "867-5309" and "Don't you Want me." Certainly those are two very different kinds of songs. "867-5309" is a pure rock song, with some wonderful, hard driving, elegant guitar work. This song is a classic. "Don't You Want Me" is on the poppish side, and somewhat influeced by new wave. It is famous as the first #1 hit where 100% of the instruments were synthesizers. It's a very catchy song, and I am glad to have it on this compilation.

"Maneater" is another one of my favorites on here. Even though I already have the Hall and Oates CD "H2O" from which this song orgianlly comes, it's still nice to hear the song in the context of this compilation.

"Rock This Town," "Shake It Up," and "Centerfold" are all nice to have. Each of these was a good solid hit, and all three of them have stood the test of time quite well.

"Gloria" is an excellent song, and Laura Branigan's Voice sounds just as powerful, strong, and lovely as I had remembered it from nearly two decades ago.

"I Ran" and "Rosanna" aren't exactly among my favorites, but I do find them to be pretty good, and I'm glad that they are on here.

There are only three songs here that I really do not enjoy: the Rick Springfield song, the Alan Parson's Project song, and the Olivia Newton-John song. When I programmed my CD player to play the other nine songs, and to skip those three, this disc sounded pretty much perfect. But when I played all twelve songs straight through, those three songs were an annoyibng distraction. So I am giving this CD a rating of four stars.

Usually these "Entertainment Weekly" hit collections do pretty well on actually having a lot of #1 hits included in the dozen tracks chosen to represent a given year. For "Entertainment Weekly: The Greatest Hits 1982" there are three chart toppers: "Centerfold" by the J. Geils Band, "Don't You Want Me" by the Human League, and "Maneater" by Daryl Hall & John Oates. Consequently this is one of those albums were the other songs end up coming out ahead, what with "Rock This Town" by the Stray Cats, "867-5309/Jenny" by Tommy Tutone, "Rosanna" by Toto, and Laura Branigan's anthem "Gloria." The album also does a good job of providing a representative mix of the music we were listening to on the radio back in 1982, although it does seem strange to put Olivia Newton-John and the Alan Parsons Project on an album that also has the Cars and A Flock of Seagulls. However, it is odd to find nothing in terms of R&B or anything beyond the pop/rock songs personified by Rick Springfield found here. As always the problem remains that if you were really into music that particular year you probably already have most of the good stuff on this one, so finding the requisite five tracks to make this worth picking up might be difficult. Still, this is at least an average collection from "EW," which usually makes it a notch above the competition (i.e., the "Billboard" 10-track yearly collections of hits).

Don't you just hate those times when you're on the hunt for a song that you've just heard on the radio & really liked, but don't know the song's title or the artist(s) who performed it? So you try to look it up at one of those computerized music catalog stations that most modern record stores have nowadays, only to discover that there's either no results at all, or so many results that it'd take you weeks to go through them all to find exactly the tune you desire. Then you head over to the service counter, explain your sitch to the clerks, and try to sing (very badly) a few bars of the song, to see if they recognize the tune. Unfortunately, this usually results in the clerks and surrounding customers giving you a look that lets you know they think you're a freakin' moron.

Yep, it's pretty pathetic the humiliation one will endure when tracking down his fave cuts. I had to do this when I was looking for the 80s classic cut "I Ran (So Far Away)" by A Flock Of Seagulls. Fortunately, the record store guy took pity on me (I'm sure he was bucking for `Employee of the Month'), and let me know the title & artists. I then discovered this song was on just about every other 80s pop compilation CD out there! Being a semi-regular reader of Entertainment Weekly, I decided to grab the `EW Greatest Hits 1982' collection. Most of the tunage on this disc is not too bad, but the Flock's cut was the only one I was really looking for, although I also enjoyed the Alan Parsons Project's "Eye In The Sky" and the J. Geil's Band's infamous "Angel In The Centerfold". Even with just these three tunes, I thought this disc was more than worth what I shelled out for it. I only wish I could get a little something back for all the humiliation I had to go through to find that one song I was looking for...

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