Greatest Week In Pop Music History

May 2, 1981... Sheena Easton leaps to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. For all the passionate connections I felt with artists through my early years—The Partridge Family, Carpenters, Barry Manilow, Olivia Newton-John and disco—something inexplicable happened the first time I heard "Morning Train" in March 1981, sitting in a friend's dorm room as a freshman in college, literally writing down the week'hits from "American Top 40 with Casey Kasem." It was an instant connection, an adoration for the song and artist, and a real sense of ownership in her success.

The next day, the 45 was mine. Ah, those precious times when you could own your favorite song and appreciate it not only aurally but as a tactile experience. Anyone else old enough to remember the smell of opening a vinyl album? Heavenly. I bought Billboard magazine on the newsstand, not yet knowing that it was carried in the student union every week... and I hung that precious poster-size Hot 100 on my dorm wall for a year. (see pic, no mustache snickering, please).

It's around this time that I founded my own weekly countdown, the TTT (Taylor Top Ten, then Twenty, then Thirty, then the simplified Taylor Top Tunes once I reached Forty). This went on through the mid-1990s, every week, without exception, producing my own annual top 100 that to this day, I conveniently utilize to catalog my iTunes by year. That year, "Morning Train" tied for the No. 1 of 1981 with Kim Carnes' "Bette Davis Eyes." No. 2 was "For Your Eyes Only" by Sheena, No. 3 "Modern Girl" by Sheena. Guess who had my No. 1 album of the year? I remember watching the Grammys in February 1982, and when Sheena won Best New Artist, I quietly cried. No, really. What's perhaps more ridiculous, all of my friends watching the telecast with me got it. They understood that Sheena and I were forever intertwined. (Click at left to see my No. 1s through the first half of 1981.)

Of course, since, the Sheena ranks have held hands with other pop divas—Celine Dion, Tina Arena, Delta Goodrem and a host of others that have charged my passion. And yet when it comes to reminiscing about the best times of my early adult youth, Sheena remains tops. So when I arrived at Billboard in the fall of 1995, it happened that Sheena was starring on "Broadway" in "Grease." My co-worker and now dear friend Alex and I made it our holy grail to get backstage to meet her... for the first time. I'll never forget standing there as she entered the room, glancing down at my khakis and realizing that you could actually see my legs trembling through my britches. I was terrified... and fulfilling a life's dream. Afterward, Sheena agreed to an interview for Billboard on "a pop star thriving after the hits stop." We went to dinner at Motown Cafe and I asked her questions with so much minutia that she realized I wasn't the average reporter who had glanced over the Billboard charts.

Years later, Sheena has become a friend, or at least a precious acquaintance. Alex, our fellow Sheena buddy Evelien (and pal Andy, when his wife allows him a night away from the kids) and I have seen her 15-20 times whenever she grazes New York (hell, we've traveled to Vegas any number of times, too) and she always, always indulges us with dinner, time and wonderfully bawdy conversation. For Sheena's rep as the girl next door in her 1980's heyday, we were delighted to find that she is a broad—in the best sense—and some of the conversations we've had are not the kind of things I'd tell my mammer about... So as I sit here and close up shop at Billboard, I'm obviously flooded with such magic memories. What times I've had.

I suspect that when I'm in the nursing home being spoon fed mashed carrots, I'll ask the nurse to pop "The Lover In Me" or "Telefone" in my brain chip. And even though I won't recall my own name, somehow I'll quietly gum the words aloud. What a sweet thought, eh?(Click on chart, cool cats, to see the whole Hot 100.)