4 Hits From the 1980s With Surprising Names in the Songwriting Credits

Hit songs of the 1980s came from just about every direction and source. While some acts had the ability to write their own smash singles, many more had their antennae up, looking for outside songs that were going to make a big dent with the public at large.

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In some cases, the artists looked to surprising, counterintuitive names to get the job done. Here are four songs that you know, along with the contributing writers you might not.

David Ritz for “Sexual Healing” by Marvin Gaye

Ritz doesn’t have the name recognition that others on this list do. But his story might be the wildest of them all. Fans of excellent music literature might recognize Ritz as the author of several stellar biographies. His subjects include Ray Charles and Nat King Cole. He was writing a bio on Marvin Gaye when he unexpectedly got involved in the songwriting process. While visiting Gaye overseas, he noticed a pornographic book in the artist’s collection. Ritz questioned if the book was a good idea and suggested Marvin might need “Sexual Healing”. Gaye liked the phrase and asked Ritz to write some lyrics. He ended up with a co-writing credit, although many in Gaye’s camp have disputed his involvement over the years.

Mark Knopfler for “Private Dancer” by Tina Turner

Knopfler was in the middle of his Dire Straits career around the time that Turner was plotting her big comeback album. He generally didn’t write songs as a hired gun for other artists. As for “Private Dancer”, he wrote it in the early 80s, and the band recorded the backing track. But he didn’t think it sounded right with a male singer. Turner got wind of the song and added her own smoky pipes to the haunting story. At first, the intent was just to have her sing over Dire Straits’ original recording. However, contractual issues between record companies prevented that. Thus, she re-recorded it along with some members of Dire Straits. But not Knopfler. Instead, fellow British guitar legend Jeff Beck took the solo in Turner’s hit version.

Bernie Taupin for “We Built This City” by Starship

This one makes a little more sense when you consider some of the bold phrasing in the lyrics, similar to the kind of wordplay Taupin would use on so many Elton John songs. At the time he wrote “We Built This City”, he was somewhat estranged from John and was working with others. Martin Page helped him with the original writing, while producers Dennis Lambert and Peter Wolf also finagled songwriting credits. How did that happen? Well, the original song, as envisioned by Taupin and Page, was a bit more downbeat. The producers took that and brightened it up a bit with a chirpy chorus. Starship rode it to the bank, even though a few of its members would go on to criticize the track years later when consensus turned against it.

John Oates for “Electric Blue” by Icehouse

Many people who heard Icehouse all over US pop radio in 1987 assumed that it was a new band. But the Australian group had actually been recording songs since the start of the 1980s. John Oates was a fan, and he encountered the band’s frontman, Iva Davies, in New York City. The two decided they’d write together, with Oates actually flying to Australia to hang with Davies and make that happen. For a while, no good ideas emerged. To clear their heads, they headed to a nearby beach. While there, Oates saw a woman emerge from the water topless. So as not to be rude, he focused on her eyes, which he described as, you guessed it, “Electric Blue”. He and Davies had no problems writing the song after that, and it became Icehouse’s biggest US hit.

Photo by David Redfern/Redferns