3 Top 40 Hits From 1985 That Every 80s Kid Still Knows by Heart Today

Who doesn’t love the music of the 1980s? The entire decade is full of unforgettable songs. But especially in the middle of the 1980s, some of the best songs were released, including these three. All Top 40 hits from 1985, it’s pretty much a certainty that every 80s kid still knows them all by heart today.

“Dare Me” by The Pointer Sisters

On The Pointer Sisters’ Contact album is “Dare Me”. The song was written by Sam Lorber and Dave Innis.

“Dare Me” is a provocative song about attraction. The chorus says in part, “Baby, make your move / Step across the line / Touch me one more time / Come on, dare me.”

This song is the only successful single from Contact. “Dare Me” is also The Pointer Sisters’ final big hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. “Dare Me” was written in 1984, the same year Innis became part of the country group Restless Heart.

“Summer Of ’69” by Bryan Adams

One of Bryan Adams’ most popular songs, Adams wrote “Summer Of ’69” with his frequent collaborator, Jim Vallance. “Summer Of ’69” is part of Adams’ Reckless record.

The nostalgic song starts with, “I got my first real six-string / Bought it at the five-and-dime / Played it ’til my fingers bled / Was the summer of ’69.”

“Summer Of ’69” barely hit the Top 40 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock chart, although it fared far better on the Hot 100 chart. Still, no one is more surprised than Adams that the song became such a hit.

“I had no idea it would become such a classic,” Adams tells Louder. “Originally the song had been called ‘The Best Days Of My Life’, but we had always played around with the idea of writing a song about summertime. At one point while we were doing the demo, I just threw in the lyric, ‘It was the summer of ’69,’ and it stuck. And the guitar intro is about the only thing I can play, so that was pretty easy.”

“Let Him Go” by Animotion

Animotion only had three Top 40 singles, including “Let Him Go”. On their self-titled freshman record, “Let Him Go” comes after “Obsession”, their debut single and only Top 10 hit.

The group’s Bill Wadhams is the only writer of “Let Him Go”. A song about choosing to trust, “Let Him Go” says, “Let him go, let him go / Have the faith that he’ll be true / It’s the only way you can be sure / He’ll come back to you.”

Animotion released two singles in 1986, which both failed to chart. After two years of no singles, they returned in 1989 with “Room To Move”. That song became their third and final hit.

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