Kim Carnes — “Invisible Hands”

Entered Top 40:  November 26, 1983
2  weeks 
Peaked at: 40

Kim Carnes has a great blues-rock voice, but the long shadow of her big synth hit “Bette Davis Eyes” and trends of the early ’80s saw her leaning hard into New Wavey sounds on 1983’s Cafe Racers. “Invisible Hands” was written by Martin Page, who’d just had a minor new-wave hit with a group called Q-Feel, “Dancing in Heaven (Orbital Bebop).” Page would go on to a #14 hit in 1994 with “In the House of Stone and Light,” which couldn’t be more different from Q-Feel. In between, he was one of the credited songwriters for the biggest song everyone hates, Starship’s “We Built This City.” So thanks a pantload for that.

This was the only Top 40 song from Cafe Racers; a couple of later singles hit the lower Hot 100. One Cafe Racers non-single has enjoyed a second life; I see that “I’ll Be Here Where the Heart Is” has some 1.2 million Spotify streams (the next-highest is indeed “Invisible Hands,” with just 30K). “I’ll Be Here…” was also on the Flashdance soundtrack and had a moment in 2022 where it was a bit of a TikTok meme. This is also the last time we’ll see Kim Carnes. She’d have one more Top 40 hit in 1985 “Crazy in the Night (Barking at Airplanes)” (#15; hey, I don’t name the songs) and would move to Nashville in the early ’90s, where she’d continue to record while writing songs for others. Reba McEntire & Vince Gill had a #1 Country hit with Carnes’s “The Heart Won’t Lie” in 1994.