Which Hit Single Should Have Won Song of the Year at the 1985 Grammy Awards?

You won’t find a more hallowed honor for songwriters than Song of the Year at the Grammy Awards. In the Grammy Awards ceremony held in 1985, the five contenders all had enjoyed runs as smash hit singles.

“What’s Love Got To Do With It” by Tina Turner ended up taking the big award that night. We’re here to tell you if it deserved it, first by looking back at all five nominees. Then we’ll render our judgment.

“Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now)” by Phil Collins

When Phil Collins recorded his debut solo album, he worried that he had too many heartbroken ballads. Thus, he left a song called “How Can You Just Sit There?” on the cutting-room floor. A few years later, the producers of a film called Against All Odds came calling, looking for a theme song. Collins tweaked the previous song and came out of the process with a showstopper of a slow one.

“Time After Time” by Cyndi Lauper

Cyndi Lauper delivered the brassy side of her artistic persona with her debut single, “Girls Just Want To Have Fun”. She then broadsided anyone who wanted to pigeonhole her by dropping a sensitive standout ballad. “Time After Time” also gave folks a glimpse at Lauper as a writer. She penned the song with Rob Hyman, who, at the time, was just about to go pretty big in his own right as a member of The Hooters.

“Hello” by Lionel Richie

Richie had proven by this time that he could do more than soft-spoken ballads, as he’d scored several uptempo solo hits as well. But how could he resist occasionally going back to the slow stuff that first won him acclaim as a member of The Commodores? “Hello” gives him the opportunity to do some serious emoting on the mic. And speaking of emoting, who can forget that over-the-top video?

“What’s Love Got To Do With It” by Tina Turner

This is the only song on the list where the artist did not have a hand in writing the song. But you can argue that Turner’s impact on the recording transformed a just-OK song on the page. In fact, Turner herself didn’t think much of the song composed by Graham Lyle and Terry Britten, at least not until they played around with the arrangement and the song fell into her soulful wheelhouse.

“I Just Called To Say I Love You” by Stevie Wonder

There’s a scene in the film High Fidelity where the snobby record-store clerk, played by Jack Black, insults a customer for requesting this song. The implication being that Wonder had done much more substantial work in this career. That’s certainly true enough. But there’s nothing wrong with occasionally churning out a simple pop confection like this calendar-spanning song from the movie The Woman In Red.

The Verdict

Like we hinted above, “What’s Love Got To Do With It” gets a huge boost from Turner’s performance. But this award is based on the songwriting, which, for that track, pales compared to some of the others. Wonder’s song is too slight to really get a look.

That leaves three heart-rending ballads to compete. And while Richie and Collins bring all their formidable powers to bear on their songs, “Time After Time”, subtler and more affecting than the rest, outpaces them and should have been the winner of this particular 1985 Grammy Award.

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