(April 22, 2023). It was April 23, 1983, during the early months of Michael Jackson’s chart blitz with the album Thriller and its two biggest monster hit singles, “Billie Jean” and “Beat It.”
One song—“Billie Jean”—was at the peak of its run, having just spent its seventh frame at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 the previous week (April 16). The other—“Beat It”—was moving up fast on its predecessor’s heels, having just climbed from No. 10 to No. 5.
Having two singles in the top five simultaneously was almost unheard of in the 1980s. No artist had done it since Donna Summer in 1979 with “Dim All the Lights” and “No More Tears (Enough Is Enough),” the latter a duet with Barbra Streisand. The only other artist who would accomplish the feat during the eighties decade was Madonna two years later (with “Crazy For You” and “Material Girl”).
But the King of Pop’s reign was otherworldly.
Not only did he have two top-5 hits simultaneously, but he had the chance and the momentum to become the first act since the Beatles in 1964 to replace himself at No. 1.
Alas, on April 23, “Beat It” made a strong leap from No. 5 to No. 2, surely to become No. 1 the following week. But the tune at the top was no longer “Billie Jean.”
It was the song that had been No. 2 the previous week: “Come On Eileen” by a group out of Birmingham, England who’d never charted in America before (and would never reach the top 40 here again): Dexys Midnight Runners.
Indeed, “Come On Eileen,” the song inspired by the post-pubescent thoughts of its songwriter and lead singer, Kevin Rowland, whose real-life “Eileen” he’d dated years earlier, won over the hearts and minds of pop music fans everywhere (it also became the group’s second No. 1 single in its home country, after 1980’s “Geno”).
But “Eileen” was a song that almost didn’t exist, given the band’s travails during its creation. And once it did, the record label Dexys Midnight Runners was signed to nearly passed on releasing it as a single.
As the story goes, band leader Kevin Rowland had displayed dictatorial tendencies with his bandmates and, after that initial success with “Geno” in the U.K., had driven most of Dexys’ members away with his demands that they give up their other jobs and rehearse all day to recapture that earlier song’s success.
But that success was elusive.
After “Geno,” they hit the top ten once more in the U.K. with “There, There My Dear,” which reached No. 7 in 1980. Over the next two years they got one more top-40 hit in their home country, which didn’t get any higher than No. 16 (“Show Me”).
But with the hits drying up (they still hadn’t yet made it in America) and all but one of his band mates leaving to form another group called the Blue Ox Babes, Rowland’s frustration led him to the decision that if 1982’s project didn’t do well, he would begin to look for another way to make a living.
That project was “Come On Eileen,” which Rowland wrote about his teenage romance and repressed thoughts that “verged on dirty.” Rowland was as obsessed about the creation and perfection of the song as his vocal performance on it suggests.
Rowland wales and swoons and pleads for “Eileen” to give in, as if his life depended on it. And, in a way, it did.
When he and the group’s trombonist Jim Paterson began creating the song, the two started collaborating as normal, with Paterson laying out the chords while Rowland played with various melodies over the top of those chords.
But Rowland’s obsession with getting it “absolutely right” led to friction and caused Paterson—the lone original member to remain in the group with Rowland—to leave Dexys. In an interview he gave M Magazine in 2011, Rowland says he also fired the band’s saxophonist for expressing doubts over whether the song would work.
Ironically, what made the song work—eventually—was the idea Rowland “borrowed” from the band that was created by those other former Dexys members.
Blue Ox Babes’ Kevin Archer, former guitarist for Dexys Midnight Runners, had shown Rowland a tape with three of the newer band’s songs on it (why would he do that?). One of those was a tune called “What Does Anybody Ever Think About.”
The distinctive fiddle that introduces “Come On Eileen” was the result of the Celtic-soul/folk sound that Blue Ox Babes had used on their track. In fact, Archer stated in at least one interview that the whole style Dexys used for their 1982 album, Too-Rye-Ay, was a rip-off of his newer band’s sound. Rowland apparently admitted he’d copied Blue Ox Babe’s style and paid Archer royalties for “Eileen.”
The fiddle was just one of the many elements that arguably made “Come On Eileen” the most unique-sounding song to top the Billboard Hot 100 during the eighties.
Rowland, who wasn’t an Irishman but had Irish roots, incorporated Celtic elements into the song, with prominent use of the fiddle, banjo, accordion and saxophone (the latter instrument adding a soulful element).
The song’s hook, “Toora, loora, toora, loo-rye-aye”, was so catchy it inspired the album’s title, Too-Rye-Aye.
The song’s rhythm—that “bomp ba bomp, bomp ba bomp” beat—also wasn’t totally original (Rowland attributed its inspiration to Tom Jones’ “It’s Not Unusual,” among other songs), but it worked, particularly for the Celtic-like stomp-dance that the band does in the video.
And the song’s famous bridge, which incorporated the same chord progression as the choruses, but in a slowed-down fashion before revving up in tempo to its ultimate frenetic climax, was one for the ages!
Yet all of that uniqueness wasn’t an immediate sell for the band’s record label, Mercury Records, who nearly passed on releasing it as a single.
Rowland, who had grown so weary of the industry after the band’s earlier failures, didn’t put up much of a fight either. He was prepared to embark on that new life journey if “Eileen” and Too-Rye-Ay weren’t successful. It wasn’t until a radio station programmer convinced the label that the song would be a hit that they decided to release it.
And thus began the climb up both the U.K. (where it became the biggest-selling hit of 1982) and later the American charts for the song that almost never was, its No. 1 success no doubt spurred on by the heavy rotation the video received on MTV.
And speaking of the video, like those of Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and “Beat It” songs, Dexys “Come On Eileen” storyline plays out mainly in a street setting where leader Rowland desperately tries to win over “Eileen,” who isn’t wearing a “pretty white dress,” but sports blue denim overalls as she rejects Rowland’s advances.
The irony of “Come On Eileen” replacing “Billie Jean” at No. 1 is that MJ’s song is one of denial that he even had an encounter with the woman in question, while Dexys’ hit is one in which the singer wants nothing more than to do just that.
In the end, Rowland gets the girl, and the two are seen walking off together on a street corner while his band continues playing the tune. The scene uncannily resembles the “street corner” scene at the end of “Billie Jean” where MJ’s character transforms into an invisible tiger (presumably after his conquest) and is seen walking off while the sidewalk lights up beneath him.
Ultimately, it was “Come On Eileen,” not “Beat It,” that replaced “Billie Jean” at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, thereby preventing the King of Pop from doing what was unthinkable at the time: succeeding himself at the top (it’s happened several times since in the post-1991 SoundScan/Nielsen/Luminate point-of-sale tracking era).
It would also be the last time one song with a woman’s name in the title replaced another. In fact, the last time any song with a girl’s name in the title reached No. 1 was in 2007 (“Hey There Delilah” by Plain White T’s).
“Come On Eileen” spent a lone week at the top of the chart before being replaced by “Beat It,” which remained at No. 1 for three weeks. Dexys’ followup single in the U.S., a rerelease of the tune “The Celtic Soul Brothers,” reached No. 86 on the Billboard chart.
The band would never hit the American charts again, but their lone top-40 hit in this country holds a distinction that is forever etched in music history. And true to Kevin Rowland’s wishes, we’re likely gonna “hum this tune forever.”
On the 40th anniversary of it reaching No. 1 here, we celebrate “Come On Eileen.”
DJRob
P.s.: the only other times that women’s names in song titles replaced each other at the top of the Hot 100 were: in 1962 when the 4 Seasons’ “Sherry” replaced Tommy Roe’s “Sheila” at No. 1; and in 1975 when Barry Manilow’s “Mandy” replaced Elton John’s “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds,” which had, in turn, replaced Helen Reddy’s “Angie Baby” at the top.
DJRob (he/him/his), who tried to do that “Come On Eileen” stomp dance to no avail in 1983, is a freelance music blogger from somewhere on the East Coast who covers R&B, hip-hop, pop and rock genres – plus lots of music news and current stuff! You can follow him on Twitter at @djrobblog.
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