I reviewed the set in September 2013 during Soft Rock Week on HERC's Hideaway, pointing out that the songs from the Sixties, while competent, were not a good fit with the rest of the predominantly Seventies and Eighties songs on the set. There were 112 songs on the eight discs and I determined that less than 50% of them were on the soft side of rock, having charted on the Easy Listening chart which later became the Adult Contemporary chart. What does all of this have to do with K-Tel? Hang on, I'm almost there.
On Friday night, I was viewing the on-screen cable program guide and noticed Journey, Styx and REO Speedwagon listed as a 30 minute show that started in two minutes. I tuned in and was greeted by classic rock clip after classic rock clip before original MTV VJ Mark Goodman, now 63, came on screen peddling a new Time Life collection called The Heart Of Classic Rock. I watched more clips before getting the details - it was the exact same set, same songs in the same order on the same titled four discs - now with a fifth double-disc album titled Don't Stop Believin'. So now the offer was five double disc albums with 144 songs.
Which brings us to today's featured K-Tel album, The Heart Of Rock, a 1982 compilation of rock love songs dating back to 1976. Six of the fourteen songs on The Heart Of Rock can also be found among the 144 songs in The Heart Of Classic Rock collection. If you're any kind of classic rock fan, you probably have all fourteen tracks on The Heart Of Rock elsewhere in your collection.
The neon style cover art is appealing to me as I like both the style and the color palette. I like the song selection nearly top to bottom with all but two tracks (tough break, Foghat and Pablo Cruise) making the cut among my favorite songs of all-time. There are some power ballads and some unapologetic rockers among the cuts on The Heart Of Rock and I am positive some of them cracked the Top 40. Some of the more recent songs may have even made the Top Tracks chart. Honestly have no idea if any of them crossed over to Adult Contemporary chart but we'll see after we run it through the K-Tel Scale.
The HEART OF ROCK [1982]
| 32.32 | |||||||
| Billboard Top 40s | ||||||||
| Pop | COU | R&B | Rock | AC | CB | WLS | ||
| Keep On Loving You | REO Speedwagon | 1 | 9 | 1 | 1 | |||
| Who's Crying Now | Journey | 4 | 4 | 14 | 3 | 5 | ||
| Feels Like The First Time | Foreigner | 4 | 5 | 3 | ||||
| Third Time Lucky | Foghat | 23 | 19 | |||||
| Baby, What A Big Surprise | Chicago | 4 | 8 | 4 | 12 | |||
| Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad | Meat Loaf | 11 | 31 | 9 | 11 | |||
| Dust In The Wind | Kansas | 6 | 6 | 3 | 6 | |||
| The Best Of Times | Styx | 3 | 16 | 26 | 5 | 4 | ||
| Tonight's The Night (Gonna Be Alright) | Rod Stewart | 1 | (42) | 1 | 1 | |||
| Show Me The Way | Peter Frampton | 6 | 4 | 8 | ||||
| Love Hurts | Nazareth | 8 | 9 | 5 | ||||
| Cool Love | Pablo Cruise | 13 | 23 | 14 | 17 | |||
| Just Between You And Me | April Wine | 21 | 11 | 20 | 9 | |||
| Dog & Butterfly | Heart | 34 | 33 | 31 | ||||
As the majority of the tracks predated 1981, I reverted back to a modified Scale with WLS as a contributing factor. Exactly how much of a contributing factor, you ask? Adding WLS back into the mix, with eleven of the album's fourteen songs making their weekly survey, added exactly .38 of a point to the overall score, an itty bitty amount if there ever was one. Eleven Top 15 singles with six of them going Top 6 and two Number Ones. Only five Top Tracks crossovers but seven scoring AC crossovers. This one just might make the Top 10 List - give me a second to check. So close. Number 10 had a score of 32.92.
Though The Heart Of Rock is also available on 8-track and cassette tapes, I could find no evidence of a unique Canadian edition. The album has a registered copyright date of January 22, 1982, making it the third K-Tel compilation bearing that date. Next time out we'll be taking a ride on Hit Express from July 1982.
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