143. How Will I Know - Whitney Houston
Stats:
- #1 for 2 Weeks in 1986 (February)
- Replaced: That's What Friends Are For - Dionne and Friends
- Replaced by: Kyrie - Mr. Mister
- Sample Headline from its Reign: Corazon Aquino replaces Ferdinand Marcos to become the first Filipino woman president.
- #2 Hits It Prevented from Reaching #1: When the Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going - Billy Ocean
- Top 200 #1 Hits 1955-2000 Rank: #144
There is a way in which 9-year old girls will always decide the pop charts. "What do you mean [Bob Dylan/Nirvana/Led Zeppelin/Modest Mouse] never had a #1 but [Bobby Vinton/Barry Manilow/Mariah Carey/Britney Spears] had multiple ones?" Yeah, yeah. The radio is important, hipster dudes, and kids who cannot afford to stock their whole iPod yet have to hear their favorite songs somehow. Yup. Whitney Houston's 80s #1s are the definers of this genre. And How Will I Know is the best of those songs. Upbeat and dancey, How Will I Know, which asks essentially the same questions as the Shoop Shoop Song, doesn't really care much about the first blush of love or the deeper meaning of woman's inability to read male signals. It cares about Whitney's voice, which is sweet and flowing like Karo syrup across flapjacks, and that synth line. And the little girls sang along and rightly so.
Coming up: #142 - "You keep samin' when you oughta be a'changin'"
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