GP's 80s Rewind

GP's 80s Rewind "GP's 80s Rewind" is a program heard on Radio XL5 (RadioXL5.com) and is available for syndication.

It is a non-stop hour of 80s music with some 80's "411" mixed in with the hits. Long forgotten 80s tunes are included with main stream world-wide 80s hits.

06/14/2025

TONIGHT! SATURDAY! 11 PM ET its "GP's 80s Rewind!" on Radio XL5!
All 80s baby!

Right after 'GP Live!" which runs from 8-11 PM ET

Listen on https://www.RadioXL5.com
(click on the bouncing bar graphs)
Listen on TuneIn (search Radio XL5)
Listen OnLine Radio or Radio OneStop
Listen on Alexa skilled GetMeRadio or MyTuner

On June 9th 1986 Genesis release Invisible Touch, their most successful album. The title track gives them their only  #1...
06/09/2025

On June 9th 1986 Genesis release Invisible Touch, their most successful album. The title track gives them their only #1 hit.

Phil Collins wrote the lyrics, which are about a woman who holds power over the singer. He desires her even though he feels there is something sinister about her.

Genesis had 17 Top 40 hits in the US, but this was their only #1. They never had a #1 in their native UK. "Invisible Touch" only went to #15 in their own country.

The Invisible Touch album marked Genesis' complete transformation from complex, theatrical music (starting when Peter Gabriel was lead singer) to condensed pop songs. They lost some fans along the way, but gained many more.

According to Phil Collins, an influence on this song was the 1984 Sheila E. hit "The Glamorous Life," which was written by Prince. That song is about a woman who gets the best of men despite (or because of) her vanity.

Here is Genesis' 'Invisible Touch":

https://youtu.be/jpmiZ7zsHXY

All new "GP Live!" at 8 PM ET followed by 'GP's 80s Rewind" at 11 PM ETListen on smartphone friendly https://www.RadioXL...
06/07/2025

All new "GP Live!" at 8 PM ET followed by 'GP's 80s Rewind" at 11 PM ET
Listen on smartphone friendly https://www.RadioXL5.com
Listen on TuneIn
Listen on apps: Streema, OnLine Radio Box, OneStop Radio.
Listen Alexa skilled GetMeRadio or MyTuner

June 2nd 1987~Whitney Houston's second album, Whitney, is released. It contains four  #1 hits:"I Wanna Dance With Somebo...
06/02/2025

June 2nd 1987~

Whitney Houston's second album, Whitney, is released. It contains four #1 hits:

"I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)"
"How Will I Know"
"Didn't We Almost Have It All"
"Where Do Broken Hearts Go?"

Here is Whitney's 'I Wanna Dance With Someone":
https://youtu.be/QzZ-mtE1EHc

Look for 'GP's 80s Rewind" every Saturday night at 11 PM ET on our legacy stream Radio XL5. Yes! We have two streams from the Radio XL5 people! Radio XL5 and Epic Oldies!

Listen to either stream from smartphone friendly:
https://www.RadioXL5.com
Streema, Online Radio Box, OneStop Radio
Alexa skilled apps: GetMeRadio or myTuner Radio

Radio XL5 is also on TuneIn!

05/19/2025

A Blessed Easter to all.
04/20/2025

A Blessed Easter to all.

On the 18th of April 1987 Aretha Franklin and George Michael's duet "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)" hits  #1 in the U...
04/18/2025

On the 18th of April 1987 Aretha Franklin and George Michael's duet "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)" hits #1 in the US, returning Franklin to the top spot for the first time since "Respect" in 1967. The feat breaks the record for the longest span between #1 hits.

The disco era was not kind to Aretha Franklin, whose sound fell out of favor for the first time since her remarkable run of hits in the mid-'60s. After a slow start to the '80s, she got her groove back when Narada Michael Walden produced her 1985 album Who's Zoomin' Who?, which got her back on pop radio with "Freeway of Love" and the title track.

She teamed up again with Walden to record "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)," an upbeat duet with George Michael, who had recently left Wham! and was launching his solo career. It was a huge win for both singers, as Franklin got exposure from the contemporary star (and MTV favorite), while Michael earned credibility by singing with Franklin, who was one of his idols. The music video did double duty, appealing to views of MTV (thanks to Michael) and VH1 (thanks to Franklin).

Michael makes a smooth transition to solo stardom with his debut album, Faith, released in October. Franklin finds herself a tribute topic, with a 1988 PBS special called Aretha Franklin: The Queen Of Soul, featuring appearances by Ray Charles, Eric Clapton and Whitney Houston. Her legend entrenched, Franklin is "respect"-fully labeled a "Diva" in the '90s, the doyenne of a group that includes Houston, Mariah Carey and Celine Dion.

Here is the official video:
https://youtu.be/fDxzQJaA228

OK, so April 1st is also known as April Fools Day. There is a great joke that had to wait for a the Internet to be born ...
04/01/2025

OK, so April 1st is also known as April Fools Day. There is a great joke that had to wait for a the Internet to be born before it could happen. Yes.

On this day in 2008, on April Fools' Day, YouTube tricks users with the popular bait-and-switch prank called Rickrolling by featuring video links that actually lead to Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" music video. Users had no idea they were going to see the video; it just popped up and screamed out of the PC's speakers...Several other websites have the same idea, creating an unintentional, internet-wide April Fools' joke.

Here is the 1987 video of the song by Rick Astley that went to #1 in both the US and UK:

https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ

Epic Oldies is your real oldies station that plays the 50s-80s, Motown and Doo W*p 24x7 designed for your smart phone, smart speakers and now your smart TV! We push your memory buttons!
Listen on our smartphone friendly www.RadioXL5.com

Listen using apps: Streema, OnLine Radio Box, OneStop Radio.
Listen using Alexa skilled GetMeRadio or MyTuner.

On this 31st day of March 1984 Kenny Loggins' "Footloose" hits  #1 in America and  #6 in the UK. It's the title song to ...
03/31/2025

On this 31st day of March 1984 Kenny Loggins' "Footloose" hits #1 in America and #6 in the UK. It's the title song to the soon-to-be-famous film where Kevin Bacon brings dancing to a small town in the South. More details on the Epic Oldies FB page and "GP's 80s Rewind" FB page.
This was the theme from the movie of the same name starring Kevin Bacon in his breakout role; Rob Lowe and Tom Cruise also tried out for the part. He plays a teenager who moves to a small town where dancing is illegal. Dean Pitchford, who wrote the screenplay to the film and the lyrics to all the songs in the movie, got the idea from a 1979 newspaper article about the town of Elmore City, Oklahoma, where a law against dancing was on the books since the 1800s. The 14 high school seniors decided they wanted a prom, and got the town council to overturn the antiquated interdiction so they could dance. Pitchford visited Elmore City to research his screenplay, where he spent a week immersing himself in their culture.
Kenny Loggins was a big star and helped make Caddyshack a huge success with his song "I'm Alright" in 1980. In 1982, he had a hit with "Don't Fight It," which he wrote with Pitchford and Steve Perry, who also sang on the track. Getting Loggins for the title track was huge for Pitchford, who had never written a screenplay before and was trying to sell a movie based around nine songs - not a popular concept at the time. Losing Loggins could have derailed the entire project, and when Kenny broke a rib from a fall he took at a show in Provo, Footloose almost met its doom. Loggins had to take time off to recover, and the only chance for Dean to write with him was during his engagement at Lake Tahoe, Nevada, where he was performing before heading to Asia. Said Pitchford: "Paramount was chomping at the bit. They wanted to know that Kenny Loggins was going to be doing the title song, and if he wasn't then we had to move on and get somebody else. So it became absolutely vital that as soon as Kenny was back on his feet, I had to go and seal the deal, and the only place that we could seal the deal, he was going to attempt to get himself back on his feet in Tahoe, play one last engagement in the States, and then go off to Asia.
So it was decided that although Kenny lived at the time in the L.A. area, I should fly to Tahoe, and during the days when he was playing a show at night, we would try to at least get the beginning of a song so that I could go back to Paramount and say, 'Look, Kenny Loggins is pregnant, he is on board.' So I flew up to Tahoe in January of 1983, I think. I flew up sick, and I proceeded to get sicker and sicker and sicker while I was there. I had strep throat, as it turned out, but I could not let on to Kenny that I had strep throat, because I didn't want him going, 'Ooo, I can't come to your room, we can't be doing that.' And he was indeed coming to my room, because his wife Eva was there, and they had three kids at the time. I think she had given birth to their third, Isabella, so there were two little boys and a baby in his room. So that was not a place to work. So each day he would come to my room with a guitar and he was still taped up, with gauze and tape around his midriff while his rib was healing. He would show up with a guitar and he would ease himself into a chair, and it was obvious that sitting down was painful - if he was standing he was fine.
A key songwriting device on this one is the use of various names: Louise, Jack, Marie and Milo. Marie was Dean Pitchford's mother; Milo was Loggins' idea because he liked the sound of the vowels. Pitchford explained: "Once I had cracked the back of the song with the 'Oo-wee, Marie, shake it shake it for me,' once we had the idea of using names throughout the chorus and calling out, 'Jack, get back, come on before we crack,' once that had been set up as a convention, he threw out Milo because he liked the way that the words felt in his mouth. And there may have been one or two other lines that he came up with. And he did that on several other songs that we wrote. Like, we did a song for his next album called 'Let There Be Love,' and he gave me a couple of not even lines, at least the ends of lines. The word that he wanted the line to end on, or the word that he wanted the high note to be on. So it was like somebody stepping up to a canvas and putting a couple of strokes of paint on and saying, 'Okay, now go finish the painting,' and you having to figure out how to incorporate the strokes of paint into the ultimate picture."
The single was released a few weeks ahead of the movie, and the video, which used scenes from the film, got a lot of airplay on MTV, building anticipation for the release. By the time the film hit theaters, the song was already in the Top 40, and it went to #1 on March 31, 1984, where it remained for three weeks. MTV played a key role in marketing the film, and movie studios tried to follow this template, enlisting major acts to record a song for their movies and producing slick videos with scenes from the movie, essentially creating a preview.
This was the biggest hit and the only #1 for Loggins. It exposed him to an international audience when the movie did well outside of America. Two years later, Loggins contributed "Danger Zone" to the Top Gun soundtrack. Loggins stated in 2007 that of all his soundtrack hits, this is the one he most likes performing. "It's such a lighthearted tune. It's like doing a Chuck Berry song every night," said Loggins.
Kevin Bacon revealed to Conan O'Brien that he bribes DJ's at weddings with cash so they won't play the song. "I go to the disc jockey and hand him $20 and say, 'Please don't play that song,'" he told the talk show host. "Because, first off, a wedding is really not about me. It's about the bride and groom."
This was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song but lost to "I Just Called To Say I Love You," Stevie Wonder's song for the Gene Wilder movie The Woman In Red.
Here we go with 'Footloose"!

Official Video for ”Footloose” by Kenny LogginsListen to Kenny Loggins: https://KennyLoggins.lnk.to/listen_YDWatch more videos by Kenny Loggins: https://Kenn...

On the 12th of March 1988, Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" hits  #1 in the US. The video, which shows a buttoned...
03/12/2025

On the 12th of March 1988, Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" hits #1 in the US. The video, which shows a buttoned-up Astley singing his way around London, does well on VH1, but really takes off two decades later with the Rickrolling trend, as webmasters point links to the song's YouTube video to trick unsuspecting readers into watching it.

This song was written by the British production team of Stock, Aitken and Waterman. It was inspired by a woman Pete Waterman had been seeing for three years. Rick Astley was staying with Waterman at the time, and after a three-hour phone call with the woman, Astley said, "You're never gonna give her up." Aitken and Waterman then changed the story a bit and made him the one who was vulnerable.

Rick Astley worked in Stock, Aitken and Waterman's studio for two years, operating tape machines, singing on recordings for other singers, learning the trade and famously making the tea before the production trio wrote and produced this song for him, which became his first hit. It was recorded in October 1986, but wasn't released until July 1987, as the producers were waiting for the right environment to break a new artist.

In the UK, this was the biggest single of 1987, staying at #1 for five weeks. It topped the charts throughout Europe.
The music video, directed by Simon West, finds Astley singing at various West London locales, including an empty club where he gradually inspires a bartender (played by dancer Clive Clarke of the Top of the Pops dance troupe Zoo) to bust a move. Apparently, Clarke had been nursing a serious hangover when his attempt to do a stunt flip went awry and he landed on his head. Luckily, he wasn't injured and nailed the stunt on another take.
That wasn't the only snag during the one-day shoot. According to VH1's Pop Up Video, Astley's manager got into a two-hour argument with West over whether the singer's sleeves should be rolled up.

In the UK, this was followed by "Whenever You Need Somebody" and a cover of "When I Fall In Love." Those went to #3 and #2, respectively. Astley's next five UK singles also made the Top 10, giving him a record for placing his first eight singles in that stratum.
In America, the follow-up single was "Together Forever," which has a similar sound and was considered a sequel of sorts to "Never Gonna Give You Up," with Astley now settling into a permanent union with the girl he would never give up. That one also went to #1.

The track was inspired by popular club hits of the '80s from Colonel Abrams, known as the Godfather of House, and Steve Arrington, former front-man for the funk band Slave. McGuire explained: "Mike [Stock] and Matt [Aitken] would use the template that they thought would be ideal for a given artist, and the launchpad for 'Never Gonna Give You Up' consisted of Steve Arrington and Colonel Abrams. They thought their music would fit well with Rick, so someone brought in the records, one of which was Colonel Abrams' 'Trapped', and after we'd listened to them and analyzed them we started to replicate the sounds, trying to adopt their ethos rather than sample or rip them off in any way."

Here is Rick!
https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ

Recording engineer Mark McGuire told Sound on Sound what the production trio's expectations were for their "assistant" Astley: "Rick was the nicest artist I worked with there. He was extremely down-to-earth, but also incredibly shy, and although Pete Waterman had spotted him [playing the UK club circuit with a soul band named FBI] and wanted him to record, he feared that Rick would be too shy in the studio to get anything done. So he asked him to work there for a while, get to meet everyone, hang out with them and have a laugh, so that he wouldn't be intimidated when it was time for him to record. He was, therefore, employed there as an 'assistant,' but not really to work as an assistant. It was merely a way of introducing him to the studio."

Astley was a very pragmatic pop star who understood that his runaway success came with an expiration date. When the hits dried up after his 1991 album Free, his ego was in check and his finances in order. "I didn't leave my career penniless and kind of crazy, on the verge of insanity, which is how an awful lot of people tend to end up in pop music," he told Songfacts. "I got away with it really. I ended up making what I considered to be real money, keeping hold of most of it, and having a very comfortable, relatively sane, great life since. That's not a normal story for people who got into pop music the way I did."

Remember, 'GP's 80s Rewind" is on every Saturday at 11 PM ET right after "GP Live!" on Radio XL5.
Listen on smartphone friendly www.RadioXL5.com
Listen on TuneIn, Streema, OneStop Radio, Online Radio Box.
Listen on Alexa skilled GetMeRadio or MyTuner.

The official video for “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley. Never: The Autobiography 📚 OUT NOW! Follow this link to get your copy and listen to Rick’s ...

Going back to the 80s when Debbie Harry was on The Muppets.This is a clip from "Muppet Show" episode from season 5 numbe...
03/06/2025

Going back to the 80s when Debbie Harry was on The Muppets.

This is a clip from "Muppet Show" episode from season 5 number 9 of 1981.

Debbie Harry & Kermit The Frog - "Rainbow Connection"

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GP’s 80s Rewind!

GP’s 80s Rewind is all about the music of the 80s. The music of the 1980s was defined by GP Brefini at the start of Radio XL5 in 2012 as follows: ”...the 80s are the new oldies”. The 80s represent the most favoured tune decade of the last 60 years. Think about it: the most appreciated, the most loved decade of music since the beginning of rock and roll! Never has any decade except the one spanning the birth of rock and roll and into the mid 60s has been so much loved because of the melodies, the lyrics, the life-style and the memories made. As in the early 60s, our lives were changing; we were growing up with new technology and new ways to get into space. Satellites linked our world, old dictatorships as were walls were falling. We felt good about ourselves... As disco fell out of favor, the 1980s saw the emergence of dance music and new wave. Dance pop, Euro-disco, Italio & Hispanic Disco. Instruments used more electronics to create the melodies and the recording process became more digital. Computers were taking over. The world was on the verge of the explosion of the Internet and cell phones. To illustrate how popular the 80s are a poll of over 11,000 European participants, revealed that the 1980s is the most favored tune decade of the last 50 years. GP’s 80s Rewind is simply about the music. It is delivered in self-contained, one-hour segments, running 59 minutes 30 seconds to radio stations all over the world from the Boston MA USA studios of Radio XL5 (www.RadioXL5.com). Radio XL5 is a contemporary hit music and indie pop radio station that goes back to the 80s. On the weekends, since it’s inception in April 2012, Radio XL5 has done an ‘80’s Double Shot Weekend” where back-2-back 80s hits, some including “Lost Hits of the 80s” are played in between today’s hits and indie pop. Its a popular format and the whole 80s decade is so great and, filled with so many good memories that the programmers at Radio XL5, headed by GP Brefini, felt the music deserved its own special show. “GP’s 80s Rewind” is that show. It scratches the itch for great music that doesn’t suck. With a deep respect for the artists and producers, GP takes you into a journey and shares a little “411” on the song, or artist(s) or about the social significance of a song he is playing. GP views each song as a work of art that is meant to be respected. The music never stops and by the end of the hour you want more and depending on our affiliate there is always another hour of “GP’s 80s Rewind” available. So sit back and enjoy the memories of the Brat Pack, Magnum PI, Lite Bright, Teddy Ruxpin, Sony Walkman, Cabbage Patch Kids, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Transformers, My Little Pony, Speak and Spell, Big Wheels and Little Tykes Cozy Coupe, The Smurfs, Cherry Seven Up, the original New Coke....Plus the great music: Michael Jackson, Prince, Madonna, Bon Jovi, The Bangles, Expose, Boy George, Debbie Gibson, New Edition, Lionel Ritchie & Diana Ross, Billy Joel, Hall and Oates, U2, Dire Straits, Phil Collins, The Police, Queen, The Pet Shop Boys, The Rolling Stones and The Eurythmics....all of these artists and more, achieved tremendous success worldwide. Come with GP as he rewinds the 80s on “GP’s 80s Rewind!” from the Boston studios of Radio XL5. #GPs80sRewind #80sRewind #RAdioXL5 #80sMusic #80s #80sMixTapes #FluxCapacitor