Top 100 Hits Of The Ladies Of the 80′s

From: The Backlot

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“GLORIA”

 Laura Branigan

And here we are, the greatest top ten hit of the 80′s from a female artist. It was this song that started me on my obsession with 80′s pop music. I was watching Solid Gold as a Wee snicks, and Laura appeared. I still remember being completely enthralled with what I was hearing and seeing, and I forced my mother to take me to Waldenbooks that weekend where I purchased my first copy of … Billboard magazine. Every week (I would save up my lunch money during the week to buy my weekly Billboard) I watched “Gloria” climb the charts … slowly … very slowly, until the week when it debuted on America’s Top 40, and Casey Kasem (RIP) played it for the first time. It continued its slow build to the top, where it finally peaked in its 23rd week on the chart at #2 for three weeks, in December of 1982. It would spend 22 weeks in the Top Forty and 36 weeks in the Hot 100, which was a record for a female artist at the time (Proving she was no one-hit wonder, her Top Ten followup “Solitaire” debuted on the Hot 100 the week after “Gloria” dropped off).

Below you can see Laura’s first appearance on Solid Gold, filled with fire and passion.

Here’s the original Italian version, from Umberto Tozzi

Thanks for enduring this extremely long list, and I know I left off a lot of obvious favorites, and didn’t include nearly enough Madonna, but feel free to give a shoutout to your favorite! And look for the next list to start on Monday. After all the love I’ve given to the best of the best, it’s time for Dark Snicks to come out. Join me for The Worst Songs Of The 70′s And 80′s!