REO Speedwagon, "Can't Fight This Feeling"

[tico]

This is one of my favorite ballads from the 80s. I don't ever get tired of hearing it. It still gets a lot of airplay to this day, primarily on AC stations.

[jimmy74747]

Great song from a great band. I also never got sick of this song, which is probably my second favorite from them (after "Time For Me To Fly")

[Hervard]

I never got tired of this song either. I loved it from the first time I heard it and was glad that it hit #1 on the R&R chart. It was also the longest running #1 song within the year 1985. I was hoping that it would be number one for the year (on R&R), but "Crazy For You" gained a few more points.
The song was number one on Top 40 Satellite Survey's Top 80 of 1985, though, so at least that's something.

[irock]

I gotta break with you on this one, tico. This sucks. I suppose it would have been fine if it had only been a pop hit, but this debuted on rock stations, apparently because everyone thought REO was a rock band. Well, they were at one time, but that time had long passed before this came out.


This was the beginning of the end of AOR radio.

[Hervard]

It was actually the beginning of the change of AOR radio. Most formats do change over the years. People who listen to AOR radio today - if they had a sample of what was played back in the early 80s, they'd be like, "HUH?? This is what this station was playing back then? What were they thinking?"

Just like people who think CHR/Pop music has always been hip-hop oriented. Just ten years ago, the format seemed to be more alternative and rock. Now, that kind of song is fewer and further between, although many of the songs that do make it do very well (most of the past ten years has featured a rock oriented song at the top of the year-end chart).

[irock]

ulij20 said:

It was actually the beginning of the change of AOR radio.

True enough, but that "change" was so complete that by the end of it AOR bore little resemblance to its former self. I don't mean to sound as though I'm blaming everything on ICFTF, it's just that that song was a good example of what had been happening to the format for some years. More and more tunes from bands and acts that had once been rock but had gone over to pop were hitting the AOR charts.

AOR at its best was kinda like an anti-format, not entirely unlike what AAA is today. Albums usually had lead singles (as they do today) and those songs would often be hits all over the country concurrently, but once the album itself came out you might have two or even three tracks getting considerable airplay all at once, not one at a time the way it's done now. And sometimes the songs that were popular in, say, Jackson MS might not be the same songs that were popular in Chicago, at least not at the same moment in time.

One almost universally consistent feature of AOR radio that I remember and miss so very much was that individual spins of a hot-rotation record were spaced at about seven hours. It was at about the time that the subject song was popular that I began to notice that AOR stations were tightening up their hot-rotation to the point that only four or five hours separated repeat spins, and from there we went to three or four hours and by that time AOR was no longer AOR. It had become something of a Rock-40 format (we now call it Active Rock) and it hasn't changed much since.

[JCMF3]

I love this song.

[DaveZ35]

I never get tired of hearing this either. REO Speedwagon is a guilty pleasure for sure.

[John77]

This song was my favorite for seemingly forever back in 1985.... 21 years... has it really been that long??? Wow!!!

And REO/Survivor also happened to be my first concert I ever went to... during that "Wheels Are Turnin'" tour...

[Pet Shop Boy]

Pure 80's rubbish. You can practically hear the mullets....

[areyoureadytojump]

The video:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVUJEih2gY8

[tico]

Funny this song was bumped up. There's a commercial on TV in which a man and a woman are sitting in a car and they reminisce being at an REO Speedwagon and the man is dressed up as Kevin Cronin and when they come back into reality, they look at each other and kiss each other madly.

[lazer]

Really good song. One of the better soft rock hits of the 80s.

[𝓲𝓽'𝓼.𝓰𝓿]

I almost thought this is a ballad since the covers I hear online were mellow. Then I found out that this is kinda rock. Awesome song too.

[disman00911]

This is one of two songs that I most associate with this band (the other is Keep on Loving You).  I prefer the other song mentioned but this one solid too.  I believe I've heard them on the AC stations when I was younger but didn't know the name or song title of the band until much later.

music video
www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpOULjyy-n8

[🇯🇲 lucy88 🇯🇲]

My fave from them. I think I much prefer this one over "Keep on Loving You".

[🇯🇲 lucy88 🇯🇲]