STARLITE [1983]

Back in 1978, K-Tel began using a new item number NU-XXXX instead of their then-standard TU-XXXX. According to Mickey Elfenbein, who worked at K-Tel from 1969 to 1996, TU stood for Teen USA and NU stood for Novelty USA while TC stood for Teen Canada and NC Novelty Canada. The majority of the albums bearing the NU catalog prefix were aimed more towards older adult listeners, albums often filled with soft rock or, as the blurb says on the cover of Starlite, THE LIGHTER SIDE OF TODAY'S MUSIC. The interesting thing about Starlite is that it didn't have an NU number but rather TU though based on the previous five years of similarly-themed releases it should have came with an NU item number. According to the data I've gathered, that NU number was last used for the album Pure Magic - NU 9940 - and then not used again until 1984 when it was used for the three albums below:

Regrettably, those three albums fall outside the parameters of the K-Tel Kollection but I do have them on the shelf so they may appear here one day. But we're gathered here today to look back at one album in particular, 1983's Starlite.

The second of three albums with a copyright date of January 15, 1983, Starlite features fourteen songs that were getting airplay on Top 40 and soft rock stations back in 1981, 1982 and 1983. (And later, as well, for a lot of the songs.) I am very familiar with twelve of the fourteen songs and over the past couple of years have re-discovered "A Penny For Your Thoughts" by Tavares. The other track that didn't ring any bells until I listened was Paul Davis's "Love Or Let Me Be Lonely". I'm very curious how these songs did on the charts and I'd guess that none of them topped the charts. But let's fire up the K-Tel Scale and see how Starlite does.

STARLITE [1983]						27.04
		Billboard Top 40s
		Pop	R&B	COU	DISCO	Rock	AC	CB
Steppin' Out	Joe Jackson	6			(45)	7	4	5
Eye In The Sky	The Alan Parsons Project	3				11	3	3
Personally	Karla Bonoff	19					3	12
Nobody	Sylvia	15		1			5	9
Goin' Down	Greg Guidry	17					11	20
Love Or Let Me Be Lonely	Paul Davis	40					11	(41)
Blue Eyes	Elton John	12					1	10
Wasted On The Way	Crosby, Stills & Nash	9				9	2	8
Only The Lonely	The Motels	9				6	27	8
On The Wings Of Love	Jeffrey Osborne	29	13				7	23
A Penny For Your Thoughts	Tavares	33	16				15	28
You Can Do Magic	America	8					5	7
Who's Crying Now	Journey	4				4	14	3
Love's Been A Little Bit Hard On Me	Juice Newton	7		30			4	5

Half the songs made the Top 10 and all made the Top 40 but there were no Number Ones on the Hot 100 though two songs topped other charts: Sylvia's "Nobody" was Number One on the Country chart while Elton's John's "Blue Eyes" was Number One on the Adult Contemporary chart. (It says something about my listening habits that the two songs I was least familiar with were the lowest charting singles.) Thirteen of the songs made the Top 40 on the Cash Box chart. The K-Tel Scale score for Starlite is a slightly below average 27.04. You can listen to my friend Brandon Hixson's vinyl rip of his copy of the Starlite album below.

Starlite was also released on both cassette and 8-track with each format bearing a slightly different running order than their vinyl counterpart. Up in Canada, instead of releasing Starlite, K-Tel put out Countdown, using similar artwork and a few of the tracks that had appeared on Starlite.

The album features sixteen songs though only fourteen of them made the Top 40 here in the States; Billy Squier's "Emotions In Motion" peaked at number 68 and Surrender's "It's All Been Done Before" missed the Hot 100 altogether.

The latter song originally appeared on a four-song mini-album released in Canada in 1982 (above left) and was later featured on one of the member's solo albums in 1984 (above right). You can listen to the song below.

Next time out, we'll be featuring the very last K-Tel album I remember buying new at the time it was released - Chart Action 83!