Hi! Stacey & Mike here reminding you to keep track of the songs all week to win your free lunch from Jersey Mikes on Fridays when you guess the "theme of the week."
The title of today’s song is British slang and refers to a rebellious kind of teenager who would go against the grain. The phrase comes from insurgents in the Ottoman Empire during the late 1800s and early 1900s, which marked the Young Turk Revolution. The actual title though is in fact never heard in the song, the chorus instead centering on the phrase "young hearts, be free, tonight", leading to the song frequently being misidentified as "Young Hearts" or "Young Hearts Be Free".
The song itself is about a young couple who are full of dreams but short on cash. Feeling stifled, they leave home and set out for a new life together. They live wild and free, but the song ends with Billy breaking the news to Patty's parents that they had a baby boy. They have a number of challenges ahead, but time is on their side.
After making a splash with disco influenced hits, this singer was looking to stand out with something different from the weepy piano heavy songs which dominated the charts in 1981, so he wrote the lyrics to the backing of a new synthpop and new wave sound, in part influenced by acts like Devo and Kraftwerk.
Today’s song peaked at No. 5 in 1981 on the Billboard Hot 100. It also had a video which showed,m for the very first time in a music video on MTV, BREAK DANCING
This video was released a few months after MTV went on the air, and benefited from lots of play on the channel, which at the time didn't have a whole lot of content to choose from.
Rod Stewart...Young Turks...on K103’s I Know That Song!