Post by albe on Sept 3, 2015 14:46:30 GMT -5
In 1999, I saw a column on Billboard's web site which stated that, since the charts had begun indicating whether songs had videos (late 1984), only five songs had reached #1 on the Hot 100 without a video being available:
Jan Hammer -- "Miami Vice Theme" (1985)
Boston -- "Amanda" (1986)
Michael Jackson -- "I Just Can't Stop Loving You" (1987)
Tiffany -- "Could've Been" (1988)
Sheriff -- "When I'm With You" (1989)
When I posted this information in a newsgroup at the time the article ran, the consensus was that "Miami Vice Theme" in fact had a video; it was unclear why the article claimed otherwise. Several people also reported having seen "Could've Been" on MTV, but this was believed to an "unoffical" video edited from a multi-song live performance clip, in the absence of an official video for the song. Why this song wouldn't have had a video made for it is a mystery to me.
As for the others, Boston was an old-school band from the pre-MTV era making a comeback. Their comeback was big enough news, and MTV's influence still enough of a relatively recent trend (especially with their AOR base), that they were able to get away without making a video and still have a #1 hit. I believe that Jackson purposefully didn't make a video for "I Just Can't Stop Loving You" in an attempt to get people to focus on the music. As the lead single from the follow-up to Thriller, the song was guaranteed to get attention from radio and the public no matter what. "When I'm With You" apparently didn't have a video made when the song was new because the band was relatively unknown, and videos still weren't quite universal yet. By the time the song became a hit, the band had long since broken up. It's really amazing that this song was able to hit #1 in 1989 without a video.
Note that the last song on the list is from 1989. Assuming that the article was correct, every #1 hit from 1989 through the article's date of publication apparently had a video.
Check out this live version of When I'm with you
www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKGYYWBgXrc