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Van Halen - " Dreams " from the album 5150 (1986) Billboard Hot 100 peak: #22 (one week) Weeks in the Top-40: 7 Today's Song of the Day is from the hard rock band Van Halen , who recruited Sammy Hagar to be their new lead singer after David Lee Roth's departure, and scored a top-3 pop hit with the synthtastic " Why Can't This Be Love? ". The most widely seen video for the second single, "Dreams", brought in the Blue Angels flying squad, catching the Top Gun fever without having to be a part of the movie.... "Dreams" became the second "Van Hagar" top-40 pop hit in July of 1986. The record also climbed to #6 on the Mainstream Rock radio charts. Internationally, though, the macho adrenaline kick didn't really transfer, as it missed the top-40 in Canada, Australia, and England. (Click below to see the rest of the post)

Friday is finally here, so time to run down my top 100 tunes from the past week. Ed Sheeran scores his first #1 on my chart, while Sam Smith (pictured above) lands in the top-5. Songs from Chris Willis, Vassy, and OneRepublic make the biggest jumps (moves of 10+ places highlighted in red ), while former big hits from Weezer and Miranda Lambert drop off the list. This Week              Song/Artist (last week's position in parentheses) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. Don't - Ed Sheeran (2) 2. Take Me To Church - Hozier (6) 3. All About That Bass - Meghan Trainor (1) 4. Secrets - Mary Lambert (4) 5. I'm Not The Only One - Sam Smith (9) 6. Stolen Dance - Milky Chance (3) 7. Rather Be - Clean Bandit f/Jess Glynne (5) 8. Riptide - Vance Joy (8) 9. Cool Kids - Echosmith (7) 10. Elevation - Erasure (15) 11. Gotta Get Away - The Black Keys (14) 12. Supe...

The Rolling Stones - " One Hit (To The Body) " from the album Dirty Work (1986) Billboard Hot 100 peak: #28 (one week) Weeks in the Top-40: 4 Today's Song of the Day comes from the rock and roll legends the Rolling Stones , whose 20th American album, Dirty Work , had already scored them a top-5 pop hit with a cover of the soul nugget " Harlem Shuffle ", although it came during a tumultuous time in the band's history, as lead singer Mick Jagger and lead guitarist Keith Richards were feuding over Jagger's solo side-career among other things. The second single from the album, although still credited to Mick as well, was written by Richards with Ronnie Wood. Led Zeppelin axe-man Jimmy Page donated a guitar solo to "One Hit (To The Body)", and Springsteen's future wife Patti Scialfa and Kirsty MacColl (the wife of the song's producer) sang backup... "One Hit" became the second top-40 pop hit from Dirty Work in Ameri...

It's Throwback Thursday 80s time, and this week I'm back to 1984, the year Bob Geldof and Midge Ure organize, write, and record the charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas?", which went on to be one of the biggest-selling singles of all time. The Jacksons - " Body " from the album Victory (1984) Billboard Hot 100 peak: #47 Songwriter: Michael Jackson Possibly the worst song the brothers ever released. Marlon sang lead, and Michael and Jermaine couldn't even be bothered to show for the video. Fun to watch for the 80s aerobics cheesiness though. (Click below to see the rest of the post)

It's time to head Down Under to check out the songs making their debut on the official singles chart in Australia this week, as Ed Sheeran hold at #1 for a fifth week with " Thinking Out Loud "... Hometown hero rap star Iggy Azalea moves in at #29 with "Beg For It" featuring Danish singer/songwriter MØ. It's Iggy's seventh trip in the Aussie top-50 - surprisingly she only climbed to #5 here with "Fancy" (her collab with Ariana Grande, "Problem", which "Fancy" kept from the top in America, peaked at #2 here) (Click below to see the rest of the post)

Prince & The Revolution - " Mountains " from the album Parade (Music from Under The Cherry Moon) (1986) Billboard Hot 100 peak: #23 (one week) Weeks in the Top-40: 6 Today's Song of the Day is by Prince, who's second foray into the movies Under The Cherry Moon had returned him to #1 on the American pop chart with " Kiss ". The follow-up track, "Mountains", harkened back to his psychedelic work on his last album, Around The World In A Day . Now of course, he's still got his team of lawyers tracking any YouTube presence, and refuses to have his own channel, and now even his MySpace music page links this song to a "review clip", so f it. In the words of Steve Albini, "If your little daughter does a kooky dance to a Prince song don’t bother putting it on YouTube for her grandparents to see or a purple dwarf in assless chaps will put an injunction on you. Did I offend the little guy? Fuck it..." Well anywa...

Today's "hump-day" 70s flashback goes back to 1974, the year German electro-rock pioneers Kraftwerk release their classic album Autobahn ... Al Wilson - " Show And Tell " from the album Show And Tell (1973) Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 Songwriter: Jerry Fuller Although Wilson had the hit with this emotive mid-tempo wonder, I grew up listening to the Johnny Mathis version that my mother adored. (Click below to see the rest of the post)