Fave BILLY OCEAN hit?

Best of Billy?

  • Love Really Hurts Without You (1976; UK #2)

    Votes: 13 50.0%

  • Red Light Spells Danger (1977; UK #2)

    Votes: 12 46.2%

  • Caribbean Queen (No More Love on the Run) (1984; UK #6, US #1)

    Votes: 12 46.2%

  • Loverboy (1985; US #2)

    Votes: 3 11.5%

  • Suddenly (1985; UK #4, US #4)

    Votes: 3 11.5%

  • When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going (1986; UK #1, US #2)

    Votes: 6 23.1%

  • There'll Be Sad Songs (To Make You Cry) (1986; US #1)

    Votes: 1 3.8%

  • Love Zone (1986; US #10)

    Votes: 1 3.8%

  • Get Outta My Dreams, Get into My Car (1988; UK #3, US #1)

    Votes: 7 26.9%
  • Total voters
    26
O

old spice

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I stole a 750ml bottle of Long Island from a local museum after they wronged me a couple of weeks ago, and upon downing far too much of it I helplessly launched into a convoluted oration about bodies of water (I have issues) - during which I came to the realisation that the world's greatest ocean is actually named BILLY*. :disco:

Listed are all the UK/US top ten singles by everyone's favourite Trinidadian-British hitmaker. Please select your favourites and partake in this celebration of an unjustly-forgotten Caribbean KING.

(*ETA: Frank can have this title if he ever releases a third album, but till then I remain Team Billy.)
 
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My opinion: the two ballads are pure pap ('Suddenly' legit sounds like a Lionel song) and I'm not overly keen on 'Loverboy' or 'Love Zone', but the rest hold up better than expected.

'Get Outta My Dreams...' and 'When the Going Gets Tough...' should sound dated as fuck, but Mr. Ocean has a voice like pure sunshine which invigorates all production choices too tawdry. Part of me wishes I knew how to drive purely so I could bark "GET IN THE BACKSEAT BAY-BEEEEEEEH" with similar enthusiasm at all unsuspecting passersby. (And seeing 80s stars Douglas, Turner, and DeVito get fully into the spirit in the 'Tough' video is super cute!)

'Love Really Hurts Without You' is a total gem ofc, but I'd say 'Red Light Spells Danger' is his magnum opus. An expertly-modulated build-up of unfettered HYSTERIA (perhaps a symbol of life itself if one excludes the 'expertly-modulated' part) which I can only applaud.

 
I really like the major singles that were everywhere on US radio back in the day but I can’t say that I’ve ever listened to a full album of his.
 
Billy Ocean was really proper huge for a while but was always overlooked by Lionel and Luther, which is a bit unfair when you see how massive some of his singles were.

Even the big fun-for-weddings bops like Get Outta My Dreams and When The Going Gets Tough are actually fun. But I much prefer his R&B songs like Love Zone and Caribbean Queen. A really low key underrated hit also is Mystery Lady.
 
It was also much much later when I made the connection that he was the same Billy Ocean that had success in the 70s with his Motown-influenced and Northern Soul anthems.

So different to his 80s R&B and pop, and yet he managed to maintain and grow his career. Not bad.
 
I wonder what held When The Going Gets Tough off #1 in the US?
 
Goodness it's impossible to choose between those first two so I'm voting for BOTH

You RUN AROUND TOWN like a FOOL and you think that it's GROOVY :disco:

The drama of RED LIGHT always gets punctured CHEZ JO by my tendency to sing "Now I'm in the WOMAN'S OWN" rather than "Now I'm in the DANGER ZONE"
 
Love Really Hurts and Caribbean Queen are both absolute Charlotte Awbrey Tits Out Doing the Macarena.

I don't think I know Red Light Spells Danger.
 
Jocasta Clun said:
Goodness it's impossible to choose between those first two so I'm voting for BOTH

You RUN AROUND TOWN like a FOOL and you think that it's GROOVY :disco:

The drama of RED LIGHT always gets punctured CHEZ JO by my tendency to sing "Now I'm in the WOMAN'S OWN" rather than "Now I'm in the DANGER ZONE"
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I had the same conundrum

We always sing ‘Love really hurts without LUBE’ when it come on the radio like little schoolboys.
 
Also, don’t forget that Caribbean Queen was originally European Queen and flopped. There’s also an African Queen version too.
 
This topic inspired me to play his GH and wow I forgot how good his voice is. I don’t think I’ve heard any of these songs in 30 years except the off appearance of Caribbean Queen on a tv show or movie.
 
old spice said:
I stole a 750ml bottle of Long Island from a local museum after they wronged me a couple of weeks ago, and upon downing far too much of it I helplessly launched into a convoluted oration about bodies of water (I have issues) - during which I came to the realisation that the world's greatest ocean is actually named BILLY*. :disco:

Listed are all the UK/US top ten singles by everyone's favourite Trinidadian-British hitmaker. Please select your favourites and partake in this celebration of an unjustly-forgotten Caribbean KING.

(*ETA: Frank can have this title if he ever releases a third album, but till then I remain Team Billy.)
Click to expand...
Just here to note the iconic insanity of this post.
 
Three above the others- Love Really Hurts, Red Light and Caribbean Queen are all 13/10 moments, but probably the first and latter of the three are 13.5.
 
AGinAg (39) said:
Just here to note the iconic insanity of this post.
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Iconic insanity is an apt summation of my life tbf, so I thank you kindly!

It is pleasing that there are fellow 'Red Light' stans in this world, but I'm surprised that the two unabashedly pop tracks aren't doing better in this poll. 'When the Going Gets Tough...' was the only song of his I knew when younger, so I always believed it to be his biggest and most enduring hit! Biggest at the time, yes, but most enduring... I guess not? When I was drunkenly pontificating about oceans and seas the other week, my unwitting audience generally knew him only for 'Caribbean Queen'! Unwitting audience being this crowd right here btw:



(I hope that when I'm 800 years old I too am able to sway with such reckless abandon! :disco:)

Mr. Ocean's trajectory is really baffling in hindsight. Two brilliant barnstormers early on, then lost in the wilderness for several years before coming back and landing seven top tens in the space of a half-decade, and then pretty much disappearing into obscurity forevermore thenceforth!! Is there another career with commercial fortunes quite like it? Am kinda shocked that he hasn't parlayed the residual goodwill that he must surely have into a more notable second wind tbh. Why does dreary old LIONEL get Glasto while our Caribbean KING is left with the Chiddingfold Care Home night out wtf!!

I wanted to check out what he did after 'Get Outta My Dreams...' (which I suspect may have been so ludicrous a pop beast - even by 80s standards - that it ended up hampering him in the long run), and I see that he came back with THIS in the 90s:



Lyrically, it's clunky af, but musically it's about as on point as I'd have hoped for from Billy Ocean at that time. Surprised that he couldn't find an audience anywhere given that he's really a very good singer. (As a related aside from that video, I note that shaving one's beard apparently shaves a good decade off one's LOOK and I am sitting here taking notes.)
 
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Unfortunately I cannot hear the words Billy Ocean and not think of the Ying Yang twins line

Shawty crunk on the floor wide open
Skeet so much they call her Billy Ocean
:eyes:

Love Really Hurts Without You is my favorite. I think I first heard it in Sex Education? Caribbean Queen is great too
 
No... No... No... NO... NO



That is a live performance, and they are two cuffs and a collar.
 
If and when I DJ, I quite often throw Caribbean Queen into the setlist. Usually as a precursor to a DOUBLE WHITNEY. It goes down a STORM.
 
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