#100 Dancing in the Street - David Bowie & Mick Jagger
It's not good in any musical capacity, but it is filled with (unintentional?) hilarity. Sadly, it was a harbinger of things to come for both artists.
#99 Lonely at the Top - Mick Jagger
It's nothing that great and Jagger's vocals don't exactly fit, but at least it has a guitar solo and a bit of a groove to it, which elevates it above two of Jagger's other hits from this year for me.
#98 California Girls - David Lee Roth
Unless you're a huge fan of DLR's voice, I just don't see any reason to listen to this rather than the Beach Boys original.
#97 Lucky in Love - Mick Jagger
Guess I just don't hate Mick Jagger as much as the rest of you. This one is a bit odd, but something about the janky chorus works for me. Plus Mick Jagger himself doesn't sound half bad here on vocals.
#96 Naughty Naughty - John Parr
I feel a little bad because John Parr is fine as a singer for this sort of AOR track, but "I'm a naughty naughty boy" is a goofy hook even for this kind of track, and some of those dated keyboards tones could have been produced by a Sega Genesis.
#95 C-I-T-Y - John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Band
There are tons of dated keyboard tones here, and John Cafferty feels like a poor man's Springsteen (as he often does), but I thought it was actually pretty fun. The chorus is fairly addictive and the performance is peppy.
#94 Tough All Over - John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Band
Yeah, can't help you here John Cafferty. This sounds like a cheap knock-off of Born in the USA-era Bruce, with weaker songwriting and a much weaker backing band.
#93 Smokin' in the Boys Room - Mötley Crüe
My least favorite of their radio hits. The gritty southern rock edge that Brownsville Station's original had really gave the track a lot of its life. This polished glam take falls flat by comparison.
#92 People Get Ready - Jeff Beck f/ Rod Stewart
Jeff Beck shows off his guitar chops and does some great soundscaping on this track. It's nothing he hasn't done before, but it sounds fine. I felt like Rod Stewart was trying too hard to sell this one though, especially towards the end of the full album version.
#91 We Built This City - Starship
I actually don't mind this song in isolation. After all, it's got some decent hooks and a spirited performance. However, sitting through it in the context of 99 songs from the same year, it becomes clear exactly how generic it is. It's also a microcosm of several of the worst trends of AOR during this era, particularly the overproduction and the fact that it's another late '60s/early '70s band getting tons of airplay at least partially because of who they used to be. Starship still worked out better than the KBC Band though, so they've got that going for them.
#90 Every Step of the Way - John Waite
I thought this was a decent if unexceptional AOR track. Wouldn't have minded it hanging around a little longer, but I'm not broken up about the fact that it's gone.
#89 Rebels - Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
In spite of some awkward production, I love the music here. It's got a nice sense of buildup and release, and the chorus feels appropriately dramatic. However, this is a pretty shaky vocal performance from Petty, who definitely sounds like he's straining in places. He had a much better hit this year anyway...
#88 Can't Fight This Feeling - REO Speedwagon
It's pure '80s stadium rock cheese, but if you're going for a big lighter-waving stadium rock ballad, you may as well go all out with it. And REO Speedwagon definitely do here, with keyboards, piano, a big sing-a-long chorus, and the obligatory dramatic guitar solo. It's kind of goofy, but I can't bring myself to hate it.
#87 Radioactive - The Firm
Much like their track from last year, there are some interesting ideas, but they don't come together. Their production still feels muddy, Paul Rodgers sounds merely okay, and I'm not sure what's going on with Jimmy Page's guitar work during that one segment.
#86 Sentimental Street - Night Ranger
Another one of those songs that kept going up and down for me when I was ranking - sometimes the AOR drama hits, sometimes I'm not really in the mood. The songwriting falls short of their greatest tracks, but there's still plenty to like here if you're in the mood for stadium rock melodrama. Of course though, if you like dramatic stadium rock, you could also just go back to earlier, better Night Ranger tracks.
#85 Rock and Roll Girls - John Fogerty
It sounds like every other John Fogerty song, but his swamp rock formula just works for me. The classic CCR sound had been out of style so long by 1985 that it feels weirdly fresh.
#84 Just Another Night - Mick Jagger
Repetition sets in pretty quickly on this track, and the random synths and production gimmicks thrown in at the end make it seem like even the producer knew this needed something more.
#83 The Confessor - Joe Walsh
"Bloated" is a great word for the songwriting here. The atmosphere building and the rocking here are both okay on their own merits, but they don't gel together on this track, which makes the 7+ minutes runtime tedious. In general, Joe Walsh seemed to be struggling a lot after the early '80s. He kept pivoting between trying to branch out with experiments and going back to his quirky roots but his results at both were mixed.
#82 Call to the Heart - Giuffria
I can see how the hooks and the vocal performance could have appealed to people at the time - they're both done well enough - but as someone who wasn't there, this sounds like a common denominator of countless other AOR tracks.
#81 Spellbound - Triumph
Copy and paste my review of the Night Ranger track for this.