After a lot of deliberating, reminiscing and grumbling I managed to successfully narrow down the list to fifty #1 hits — five from each year.

While a lot of the songs from my list of seventy-five fell off simply because I “liked” them as opposed to “loved” them, I definitely had some trouble with the 5-per-year trimming. Casualties that fell out towards the end included Vangelis’ “Chariots of Fire” (1982), Joan Jett & The Blackheart’s “I Love Rock n’ Roll” (1982), J. Geils Band’s “Centerfold” (1982), Michael Sembello’s “Maniac” (1983), Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” (1983), Dexys Midnight Runner’s “Come On Eileen” (1983), Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” (1983), Lionel Richie’s “Hello” (1984), Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” (1984), Tears for Fear’s “Shout” (1985), Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer” (1986) and Terence Trent D’Arby’s “Wishing Well” (1988).

My results were as follows, broken down by year and then in alphabetical order by title…

Now that I had trimmed the entire decade down to just fifty #1 hits it was time to make some BIG decisions.

It was amazing how quickly the fifty became twenty…and then fifteen…and then twelve. I debated aloud. I listened to them each again. I called in Melissa and asked her to tell me whether or not she’d ever seen or heard me sing/dance/react to any of the songs. Of course she had. Back to the drawing board.

I then decided to start ranking them from #1 on down…and found that I had to knock two off – Bananarama’s “Venus” (1986) went first followed much later by Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” (1980). Sorry, Freddie!

Finally, my top ten was staring me down in an iTunes playlist. The only problem now was that I had to rank them from ten to number one…

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