The Number Fortys: Dan Hartman - "We Are The Young"

In The Number Fortys, we review whatever song was sitting at #40 on the Billboard charts. We began in the first week of January 1984, right around the time this writer became cognizant/obsessive about music, and will continue until we get bored. The seeds for the idea came from Tom Breihan's Number Ones column over at Stereogum. However, we here at k-postpunk believe that the bottom is more interesting than the top (and obscurity is more interesting than either). Also, if you want to read the Number in the title as meaning "more numb," I think that's totally understandable at this point.

What's this "we" shit, old man?

Dan Hartman was 34 when this came out. It was the follow-up to I Can Dream About You, his previous single that had reached #6. That song is a glorious piece of 80s soul (it's a 10), and there's a hell of a backstory about it. Hartman was commissioned to write a song for a movie called Streets of Fire (the movie is a 4; Diane Lane is a 9). Those guys in the video sing the song in the film, but Hartman had a stipulation in his contract, which he exercised the fuck out of, that it be his voice on the soundtrack, and if they issued the song as a single, that it be his voice on the single.

It was a savvy decision on Hartman's part. He got a major hit out of it at a time when he desperately needed one. The only problem was the video for the song didn't feature Hartman, it featured the band from the movie.  Here's the video that MTV played the shit out of. That is not, I repeat, not, Dan Hartman in blackface. Those are the guys from the movie.

So most anyone who knew who Dan Hartman was in 1984 would have (quite reasonably) assumed that Dan Hartman was a good-looking young black man who could dance his ass off. I have no memory of MTV ever playing We Are The Young (a year later, we would be told we are the world, we are the children), but if they had I would have been pretty confused.

None of this would have mattered if We Are The Young was a great song, but it most emphatically is not. It's actually an uninspired rip of the beat from Shannon's Let The Music Play (that song is a 10 btw). It shamelessly panders to what advertisers call "the youth demographic." However, it does, in the line Every street is an arcade of dreams has one of the few Top 40 lyrics that could have reasonably come from a Walter Benjamin notebook.

Dan Hartman had been kicking around music since the early 70s. He wrote/sang/did nearly everything on The Edgar Winter Group's 1973 Top 10 hit Free Ride. The song itself is an 8, but this performance is a 10.

Dan Hartman was a gay man who spent his entire life in the closet. He died of AID-related causes in 1994.

THE NUMBER ONE

In other parts of the world the song was European Queen or African Queen (no idea if there was a Korean Queen), but in North America, they went with Caribbean Queen. It's fine. Billy was born in Trinidad, and he co-wrote the song, so it's not as problematic. You know this song. I know this song. The bassline is straight-up Billie Jean. The song is catchy. It's fine. Billy is about to have a long stretch of hits. It's a 4.

But ______ Queen was something of a comeback for Billy. He had a couple of hits in 1976-77, and I would not be doing my job as a music connoisseur (I spelled that so badly the first time that spell-check suggested concessionaire) if I didn't share this great piece of 70's soul from Billy Ocean. This one's a 9. Enjoy.