1982 in music: Men at Work bolstered by hits and Loverboy still rules in Canada

Listening to this record was a fascinating experience, one that had me looking back on how success was defined in the good ol' days of the offline music business. 

After finishing this album, the worldwide best-selling album of 1982, I found it remarkable how ... okay it was. It dawned on me that an album like this, hardly what I'd consider to be a smash hit album, spent all those weeks at #1 based on two big hits - and they really were big hits. Who Can It Be Now and Down Under propelled this album, and as obvious as that is, I find it really interesting to think back to a time when two big hits were enough to drive album sales because, apart from buying singles on vinyl, where else were you going to hear those songs on demand? In today's market, you might expect that those two songs would showcase huge streaming numbers while the rest of the songs would be barely touched, but back then, to get the hit songs you bought the album. 

Also - they were lucky that Thriller wasn't released until November because nothing and nobody stood a chance against that record for the next two years. We'll get back to that soon.

Meanwhile, up in Canada:

I'm not going to pretend that I'm listening to every song of every year in chronological order, but as I make my way through the hit records I'd say that the declaration of Loverboy's Working for the Weekend is that the quintessential 80s sound has arrived. 

https://youtu.be/dsgBpsNPQ50