Don’t Stand So Close To Me because Jessie’s Girl has Bette Davis Eyes working 9 to 5

Back to a semi-regular week this week now that Spring Break is over – though this week will prove to be busier than last, because Princess Nagger has a doctor appointment on Tuesday, the hubby has oral surgery scheduled for Wednesday morning which means he’ll be home the remainder of the week with a level up from a “Man Cold” (you know what I’m talking about!) and I have an appointment on Thursday – all these appointments are a minimum hour drive away now that we live out in the boonies, but our new house totally makes the driving long-distance for simple things totally worth it.

Also, there will be visits to my dad, who is still hanging out at the rehab/recovery place a few blocks from the hospital (and an hour-and-a-half drive from here). Your continued prayers are appreciated, he is showing signs of improvement, which are encouraging! He meets with a neurologist today, and a orthopedic doctor on Thursday about his shoulder. We should have an ETA at that time when he’ll get to be sprung from that place and get to go home.

Meanwhile it’s Monday, and Monday means music! This week’s theme is Grammy tunes from the year you tuned 18 – so let’s get to it!

Let’s start off with a song I didn’t realize was about a teacher who lusts after one of his students. The lead singer of this group was a teacher before joining this band. After a lot of speculation, the singer denied that this came from any personal experience.

This won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Vocal Performance by a Group. The group reunited in 1986 to record updated versions of some of their old songs, but the reunion brought out old hostilities, and this was the only song they completed.

Here’s The Police with the Grammy winning “Don’t Stand So Close To Me”:

Next up is the Grammy Winner for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Male. This is what the artist said the person the song is about:

“I don’t know her name. It was a brief relationship I had when I was making stained glass for a while. I was going to a stained glass class in Pasadena, and I met this guy and his girlfriend. I was completely turned on to his girlfriend, but she was just not interested. So I had a lot of sexual angst, and I went home and wrote a song about it. Then about 4 months later I stopped going to the class and lost contact with them.

The only thing I remember is his name was Gary, so I changed the name, because ‘Gary’ didn’t sing very well. But the whole thing is absolutely what I was feeling. He was getting it and I wasn’t, and it was really tearing me up. And sexual angst is an amazing motivator to write a song. Actually, Oprah’s people tried to find her, and they got as far back as finding the stained glass guy. I couldn’t remember his name, but I said it was late ’70s; they found him, and he had died 2 years earlier, and they’d thrown all his papers out a year after that. So we missed finding out who she was by a year.”

This song was this artist’s second Top 20 hit, and it was his only #1, where it stayed for two weeks in August 1981. The popularity of the song and album that summer was bolstered by the fact that the artist, also an actor, had landed the role of Dr. Noah Drake on the soap opera General Hospital earlier that spring. He began acting in the mid-’70s when his music career had stalled and his then-girlfriend, actress Linda Blair, suggested he try it.

Here’s Rick Springfield (who I had a major crush on in the 80s) with “Jessie’s Girl”:

Next up is a song that won a Grammy for Record of the Year, and was the third-best-selling single of the 80’s in America.

The song itself was originally recorded in a 1920s Jazz style by Jackie DeShannon on her 1975 album, who said she got the idea for the song after watching the 1942 Bette Davis movie Now Voyager. It was the co-writer, Donna Weiss, who submitted the demo to this artist, who along with her band and producer came up with the hit arrangement for the song.

This song was a huge hit in the US, where it was #1 for nine weeks. The producer of this song had an assistant go out and buy the cheapest (and cheapest-sounding) drum set for this particular song. Combined with the sound of an early synthesizer, they found the sound they were looking for and the song was a hit.

The artist had several other hits before and after this, but none even close to this big. After this song became a hit single, Bette Davis wrote letters to this artist and the songwriters to say she was a fan of the song and thank them for making her “a part of modern history.”

One of the reasons the legendary actress loved the song is that her granddaughter thought her grandmother was “cool” for having a hit song written about her.

Fun fact: This artist’s raspy vocals led many listeners to believe Rod Stewart was the vocalist.

Without further ado, here’s Kim Carnes with “Bette Davis Eyes”:

Last, but certainly not least, is a song this artist wrote this for the 1980 film of the same name. The film (which was this artist’s acting debut) starred Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton, and Dabney Coleman and dealt with life in an American office, where the workday was 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. She wrote the song while the movie was filming.

This song won Grammys for Best Country Song, and Best Country Vocal Performance, Female; it also received a Grammy nomination for Best Album Of Original Score Written For A Motion Picture Or Television Special and received Oscar and Golden Globe nominations. It also won the People’s Choice Award for Favorite Motion Picture Song.

This song was a huge crossover hit for the artist, who expanded her audience to the world of mainstream pop. Years later, many country music artists, especially female singers like Faith Hill and Shania Twain, followed Parton’s lead and made headway on the pop charts.

Here’s the inimitable Dolly Parton with “9 to 5”:

That’s a wrap for this week – have a great Monday!

Now on to the particulars of Monday’s Music Move’s Me:   I have the supreme honor and privilege of being a co-host with the inimitable Xmas Dolly and our musical cohort, Callie from JAmericanSpice, and our awesome friend Cathy, from Curious as a Cathy has returned full force as a co-host.

Want to join in the fun? It’s easy – just find a tune that rocks your boat, post it and link up – don’t forget to grab Xmas Dolly…er, um, I mean her button…over at her place here. Check out Xmas Dolly’s sidebar for the random themes we sport each week – and you can always ask for a specific theme of music you like, too. Check out the other music lovahs and let’s jam!