Playlisting: Ultimate Treasure Chest

What makes a Treasure Chest most?

Sometimes, when my best friend Tim and I get on the phone, we end up listening to SiriusXM together, skipping around the channel and alerting each other to songs we (may) wanna hear:  “Smiths are on First Wave!” “Ozzy‘s Boneyard is playing ‘Turbo Lover’!” One of our favorite things on all of SXM is the Treasure Chest feature on ‘80s on 8, every hour at :45, where they play an ‘80s single which you may have forgotten, but was definitely a hit in its day (albeit often a minor one). Often, they get it right and pull out some real forgotten gems: Tim’s partial to Scarlett & Black’s 1987 #20 single “You Don’t Know,” while “Black Cars,” a 1985 almost-hit (#42, but MTV loved the video) by Gino Vannelli, is a particular favorite of mine. But “Islands in the Stream”?! Granted, ‘80s on 8 doesn’t play much country crossover, but c’mon - that song was a huge #1 smash, and everyone remembers it. We’ve even heard them play Michael Sembello’s “Maniac,” another #1!  Whereas another ‘80s #1 single, Huey Lewis & the News’s third and final chart-topper, “Jacob’s Ladder,” is completely unknown today.* (And in retrospect was clearly the epitome of a payola record (a #1 no less), as it barely existed as a hit even at the time: after making it to #1 for a solitary week, it promptly plummeted 7-12-28-50, out of the top 40 a mere 4 weeks after topping it.)

So we decided to do something about it, making our own playlist of nothing but Treasure Chest records - ones we deem right and correct. We call it, fittingly, Ultimate Treasure Chest. A few guidelines:

1. At least one of us has to really like the song.

2. We’re allowed to veto songs we just can’t stand hearing. (I pushed hard for Ray Parker Jr.’s “Jamie” (its only online “video,” a set piece from Solid Gold, is truly amazing), but Tim loathes RPJ, so it was a no-go.) 

3. We have to actually remember the song; there’ve been a few I’ve suggested that Tim can’t recall. If one of us doesn’t remember it, it’s not well-known enough anymore to be a Treasure Chest.

4. Tempo and feel matter. We’ve avoided most ballads, because they just drag the playlist down. Same is true for some non-ballads; Sylvia’s “Nobody” was originally in the playlist, as it fits the M.O. perfectly, but on shuffle it just made things sad.

5. One single per artist.

6. The original version has to be available on Spotify. I nixed Natalie Cole’s “Jump Start” because the only version streaming is an extended mix. The only exception we’ve made is including the demo version of Steel Breeze’s “You Don’t Want Me Anymore,” which is both a) pretty damn close to the eventual single version, and b) kinda the lodestar for this whole playlist, a #16 hit from we greet with glee anytime we come across it on, say, ‘80s on 8’s Big 40 countdown (or, in fact, on Treasure Chest).

7. A guideline for the guidelines: this is US-chart-centric. Obviously “I Should Be So Lucky” is a much-loved chestnut in the UK. But we’re not in the UK.

Our sweet spot is songs which peaked between, roughly, #25-40 on the Hot 100. Often they’re one-hit wonders, or third and fourth singles from big albums, though as a rule we lean away from superstars. Top 10s are fine as long as they have little-to-no presence these days, such as Paul McCartney’s “Press,” or the first singles from TV stars-briefly-turned-pop stars Don Johnson and Bruce Willis. And it’s okay if a single didn’t crack the top 40, but it likely would’ve come close, or otherwise isn’t going to be well-remembered enough for inclusion (cf. Paul Lekakis’s 1987 indie dance smash “Boom Boom (Let’s Go Back to My Room),” a #43 pop hit). (We’ve considered one other #1, by the way: Bob Seger’s only one, the ridiculous Beverly Hills Cop II soundtrack hit “Shakedown,” but deemed it just too well-remembered to qualify.) 

Obviously your mileage with these songs may vary, especially depending on where you fall/fell on the genre spectrum. New wavers are much more likely to recall “A Girl in Trouble” and “Heartbreak Beat,” while the likes of Europe and Stryper will probably ring more of a bell if you were a hair metal fan. We’ve tried to get a broad range across the decade; for the early ‘80s, that can mean more AOR, such as Canadians Loverboy and Prism (plenty of the predominant soft rock hits of the era would just make the playlist limp), while decade’s end features a bit more dance and R&B (“Fascinated”! “The Way You Love Me”! Nia Peeples!), as did the overall charts of the day. Fortunately for both of us, as we’re fans and always have been, much sophistipop squarely makes the cut.

Ultimate Treasure Chest is a living, breathing playlist - that’s the beauty of streaming playlists, isn’t it? - to which we’ll keep adding (and from which we may remove) songs. Everything has to pass the “shuffle play” test: how do I feel when this comes up randomly, mashed in between other songs? If it doesn’t pass, we’ll pull it. Call it road- (or desk-) tested. 

*”Jacob’s Ladder” fun facts:
1. Written by then-hot Bruce Hornsby and his brother John, the week it hit #1 (and the week following), it was in the top 10 concurrently with Hornsby’s hit with his band the Range, “Mandolin Rain.”
2. Its video, a concert performance, actually includes the accompanying live audio, a rarity at the time.
3. It’s the 10th result for “Jacob’s Ladder” on Wikipedia, which should say plenty about how un-well-known it is today.