One person’s view: “The pairing of Iglesias and Nelson was absurd... ... Loaded with accents and vibrato, it was unbelievably ear shattering. ... Excluding novelty songs and strange one-hit wonder stuff, I would have to rank this as one of the absolute worst hits of the decade (and probably beyond).” – ArnieNuvo @ PopRedux80
The public’s view: 1.71 / 5.00
When the Joe Cocker & Jennifer Warnes duet “Up Where We Belong” was released in 1982, many radio DJs thought that Island Records was pranking them. Cocker’s alcohol-laden croak was such a harsh mismatch to Warnes’s willowy vocal that no one believed the two singers had been intentionally paired together. Plus, the lyrics were ludicrous. Some stations shipped their copies back to the label to ensure that they didn’t accidentally play the tune over the air. It wasn’t until the success of the associated movie, An Officer and a Gentleman, that the ballad was taken seriously. “Up Where We Belong” ultimately went to the very top of the charts – where the eagles cry on a mountain high. No one publicly admitted that it had been a joke, but the people involved in making the record were later seen laughing all the way to the bank. Except for Joe Cocker, who vomited all the way to the bank.
For those radio programmers who remembered being Cockered and Warned, it must have been déjà vu when “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before” showed up in the mailroom. Now this had to be a prank. There was essentially no overlap in the fan bases of Julio Iglesias and Willie Nelson, and nobody was asking to hear them on the same record. The duo even looked preposterous together. Julio always wore a tux everywhere in case someone asked him to emcee the Oscars on a moment’s notice. Willie would be standing right next to him, dressed like he was about to head out to the barn to slop the pigs. Their collaboration was a classic case of what I call a “hot fudge crabcake”: two items that are perfectly good on their own, combined in a way that ruins both.
The first time I heard “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before” was when it made its debut on Casey Kasem’s American Top 40. The twelfth time I heard it was on its twelfth and final appearance on AT40, eleven weeks later. I never encountered it anywhere else. The pop and rock stations didn’t play it. My parents’ Soft and Lite and Warm and Wimpy stations didn’t play it. MTV never aired a video for it nor held a contest in which a lucky viewer could win Willie’s childhood outhouse. None of that stopped Nelson and Iglesias from hanging out in the top 10 with Cyndi Lauper, Lionel Richie, and Kenny Loggins. It was weird at the time and is still weird.
One day I snuck a peek at a Billboard at Waldenbooks, and noticed that the Hot 100 listing for “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before” was now accompanied by a solid-filled circle. This was the universally recognized symbol for an RIAA gold certification. I was incredulous. Today the RIAA generously gives away gold and platinum awards like a rib joint hands out extra napkins, but in 1984 a gold single was a big flappin’ deal. It meant that one million copies of the 45 RPM disc had been shipped to record stores and presumably sold. Most of the time a record needed to hit #1 or #2 to have a chance at being certified gold, but Julio and Willie had done the near-impossible. They sold a million singles without the support of radio or MTV, and they did it without appealing to the usual single-buying demographic of teenagers. The main reason to purchase “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before” was to keep it as a collectible. The record was a curiosity, a 1980s pop culture mistake that would someday be good for a laugh. It belonged in a climate-controlled room with a Pittsburgh Maulers USFL jersey, an unopened case of New Coke, and a Mary Decker action figure that blames a nearby Cabbage Patch doll every time it falls off the shelf. It didn’t belong on a turntable.
Now that I am even older than Willie and Julio were in 1984, I thought that revisiting their duet might yield a new appreciation for it. It did not. Both men are excellent singers, to be sure, but that only makes the endeavor more painfully embarrassing. If I have to hear two geezers wistfully recalling their thousands of one-night stands, I want the proceedings to be jocular rather than sincere. “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before” would work better as a locker room brag than it does as a corny ballad.
Whatever you think of this song, it does contain one truthful observation: the winds of change are always blowing. Those winds carried Willie away, along with Kenny, Dolly, and all of the other country acts that had crossed over to the Hot 100 in the first half of the 1980s. Country singers were effectively banished from the pop chart for many years to come, and it was probably the fault of “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before”.
My rating: 1 / 10
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