The Number Fortys: Night Ranger - "When You Close Your Eyes"

The week of July 28, 1984 saw Prince remain at #1 for the fourth consecutive week with When Doves Cry, and #40 saw the return of Robin Gibb as he ended his brief trip through the Top 40. This mirrored the chart positions exactly of three weeks earlier, which means I have no reason on earth to write about them again (here's a link to three weeks ago).

Sometimes a band name makes perfect sense when viewed from the right perspective. Night Ranger is a stupid name. Night Ranger is a stupid band. See? Makes total sense.

Night Ranger is best known for "Sister Christian," a song that can only be enjoyed ironically; it's a 6, but I don't really mean it.

Fun fact: The band actually held off on releasing Sister Christian because they were afraid of losing their credibility as hard workers. No shit.

I hate everything about this band, the way they sound, the way they look, the video, the song, the melody, the guitar solo. That this song climbed to #14 on the charts is as good an indictment of this decade as anything. The subject of the song, I wonder if that girl I dated in high school still thinks about me, because I haven't dated anyone since then and so I obsess over the one person who I actually got to kiss in my life, is so obviously targeted at what I imagine as the typical Night Ranger fan as to border on shameless pandering. The fact that a great band like Van Halen basically ripped the chorus off a couple of years later in their song "Dreams" only makes it worse.

This song, and Sister Christian, are from a Night Ranger album called Midnight Madness. Allmusic gives it four stars, and called When You Close Your Eyes a "memorable melodic rocker." Allmusic should delete their fucking website. The writer also called the song "(You Can Still) Rock in America," a song that is absolute garbage, "frenetic."

See, I would have described this as a song about a 16 year old girl sneaking out to get laid that manages to equate her burgeoning sexuality with the band's image of themselves as courageous rockers fighting against the oppression of Americans not wanting them to rock. As such, the song, in its false sense of victimhood,  anticipates our current era where white men can still rule everything in this country and yet manage to see themselves as marginalized. Imagine thinking you were a hero in 184 for having the courage to rock, in America. Whatever..

When You Close Your Eyes is a 2. (You Can Still) Rock in America is a 0. Night Ranger is a blight on the history of music.

THE NUMBER ONE

 

Prince definitely rocked harder than Night Ranger. And off the top of my head, he didn't have to use the word Rock in any of his songs to get that point across. In fact, I'm pretty sure that any song after 1963 that has the word rock in its title does not actually, in fact, rock (Run DMC's King of Rock is an exception). Feel free to submit more exceptions in the comments. The person who posts the best song, as judged by me, the proprietor of this blog outpost, will receive a free t-shirt.

And don't come at me with Def Leppard's Rock of Ages either. That song blows.