Scenes 'n' Soundwaves top 100 of 1982

These were among my favorite songs of 1982, counted down from 100 to 1.

1982 was sort of a turning point in music. After two years of adult contemporary-leaning hits, including "comebacks" for artists popular in the 1960's and early 70's, and appealing to listeners that grew up in that era, music started swinging back towards fresh pop and rock sounds. Much music that was classified as "new wave", which was muted in recent years, began to surface. Much of that was due to MTV, while debuted the year before but broke out in popularity in 1982, helping to break many pop records that year. My cable system added MTV in the fall of 1982. Synth-pop records were part of the "2nd British Invasion" that started this year but would be more prevalent the following year.

My ranking, done at the end of 1982 is very rock-leaning, much of that was due not only to MTV, but also listening to Top 40 WPST out of Trenton, NJ, which leaned rock. However, there were still several adult contemporary songs on this list, as I had also listened to WKXW (Kicks 101 and a half, now NJ 101.5) which was adult contemporary. Due mostly to MTV, radio stations started leaning Top 40 for the first time in a few years, now on the FM dial. It was actually called "CHR" or "Contemporary Hit Radio".

1982 was the only year since 1960 (or even before) that New York City didn't have a definitive Top 40 station. Legendary station WABC, which was pretty much an adult station at that time, changed format to talk in May, 1982. It wouldn't be until the middle of the next year that Z-100 (WHTZ) and WPLJ would switch formats to the burgeoning CHR format.

All of these songs except one, made the Billboard Hot 100, (the other one 'bubbled under", and its peak position is shown. If the song also made Billboard's year-end top 20, it is also indicated. Since there was no real top 40 station, I used WYNY, an adult contemporary station at 97.1 FM's "Top 97" countdown which also included many rock-oriented songs on the list; hence it pretty much resembled what was popular in New York in 1982. If a song made the top 20 list there, it is also indicated.

This video is for entertainment purposes only; I do not own any rights to the music, the copyright owner has the right to pull any songs at their discretion, and no monetization is expected from this video.

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