You are the best / You seem to stand out from the rest / Ooh, your intentions / To be more than an honorable mention / You must feel that victory / Release that energy and ride like the wind / With fire in your eyes, shake those butterflies / Go ahead and go for the win now
[Image description: a collage of photos of the 10 musicians and musical groups featured in this poll. In order from left to right, top to bottom: Kim Carnes, Diana Ross and Lionel Richie, Kenny Rogers, John Lennon, Rick Springfield, Kool & the Gang, Hall & Oates, Eddie Rabbitt, Dolly Parton, REO Speedwagon. End description]
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This year marks the debut of something that will come to define this decade as we know it: MTV. The channel launched on August 1st with The Buggles' Video Killed the Radio Star as its first video. However, the videos haven't successfully killed the radio yet, so we won't see the channel's effect on the charts right away.
This was a good year for soft rock, as well as country crossovers with Kenny Rogers, Eddie Rabbitt, and Dolly Parton. Rogers and Parton were already well-established superstars in Nashville, but the early eighties marks the point when their presence reached mainstream audiences as well. I was going to use Dolly Parton's 9 to 5 as a springboard to talk about Reaganomics, but I scrapped that because it bummed me out.