At last we’ve reached the point when I’ve got a buncha tunes in each category, and, I must say, “West End Girls” rules this list even if I weren’t a partisan: cool, sleek, terse, keeping its secrets to itself. I’d say the spring #1s are the coolest of my life until that point: how else explain “Kiss,” “Rock Me Amadeus,” and “Addicted to Love”? And ‘coolness’ wasn’t an abstract virtue either, for “Venus” hit #1, a remake fit to be sung with the chorus PENIS WAS HIS NAME if you were of grade school age. Peter Gabriel, writing a similarly impassioned number, needed allowances too.
The other songs require more patience than I’m prepared to expend. “True Colors” might be an LGBTQ anthem but I can’t forget how it and its parent album represent the grisliest betrayal of a putative major artist I’d heard in my lifetime. Catchy, braying, and stupid, “Invisible Touch” qualifies under the same rubric. But as I’ve gotten over and know the number of AIDS deaths, “That’s What Friends Are For” sounds less cloying — it sounds as smart as a parent whose child has died struggling for solidarity. Keep this in mind: Dionne Warwick recruited Black voices.
The Hague
Peter Cetera – Glory of Love
Mr. Mister – Kyrie
Starship – Sara
Boston – Amanda
Whitney Houston – Greatest Love of all
Cyndi Lauper – True Colors
Meh
Genesis – Invisible Touch
Billy Ocean – There’ll Be Sad Songs (To Make You Cry)
Berlin – Take My Breath Away
Huey Lewis and the News – Stuck With You
Steve Winwood – Higher Love
Peter Cetera and Amy Grant – The Next Time I Fall in Love
Bon Jovi – You Give Love a Bad Name
Sound, Solid
Bruce Hornsby and the Range – The Way It Is
Dionne and Friends – That’s What Friends Are For
Patti LaBelle and Michael McDonald – On My Own
Heart – These Dreams
Robert Palmer – Addicted to Love
Simply Red – Holding Back the Years
Falco – Rock Me Amadeus
The Bangles – Walk Like an Egyptian
Good to Great
Pet Shop Boys – West End Girls
Madonna – Live to Tell
Janet Jackson – When I Think of You
Prince and the Revolution – Kiss
Bananarama – Venus
The Human League – Human
Peter Gabriel – Sledgehammer
Whitney Houston – How Will I Know?
Madonna – Papa Don’t Preach
Humanizing The Vacuum 
Now that I’m doing the 70s I finally remember where the opening chords of Simply Red reminded me of: Teddy Pendergrass’ “Close the Door”. Ginger plagiarist.
I forgot to say kudos for aknowledging Jam&Lewis most painstankingly produced ballad. Everything produced before (Tender Love) or after (Come Back to Me) can be traced in “Human”. A gorgeous song somebody else panned as “robotic” matches its liquid video (it does sound like “Rain” before it’s drop) because Oakey’s confession is somebody else’s tears falling down. Until the brillant twist, Joanne Catherall’s own risposte. Proving J&L did understand the he said/she said dynamic that made the band great in the first place. And that you cannot really judge a song because you dislike the narrator. As George Clinton would say: That’s whole lot of BS.