What song was #1 when you were born?

Carman posed me the titular question recently, and I was surprised to learn that it was a song I’d never actually heard before: “Everything She Wants” by Wham!, the George Michael project of “Wake Me Up before You Go-Go” fame. What a song it is.

One tends to forget that the end result of disco was an adult contemporary hybrid of dance music and utter schlock; “Everything She Wants” is a monument to this. Over light hi-hat clasps, sparely thumping bongos, and deliriously cheesy synth stabs, Michael intones a lyrical psychodrama of soap operatic proportions. The story: Our narrator got with a girl despite a warning that she would juice him for his duckets. He is able to overlook her materialism at first, but by the second verse six months have passed and he realizes all of his earnings are going to her, and she won’t even show him appreciation! For the lyrical climax – after which she announces she’s pregnant and he is unable to muster any joy – Michael cries out, “If my best isn’t good enough / then how can it be good enough for two?” Shania Twain be damned; that’s adult contemporary.

So I pose the question to you, Rawkblog readers; what was the Hot 100 #1 on your birthday? (If you wanted to put it up on Sendspace and write a blurb in the comments, I wouldn’t be opposed.)

Wham! – “Everything She Wants”: mp3

(Photo by antjeverena)

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