The Motels — “Remember The Nights”

Entered Top 40:  January 14, 1984  
 3 weeks  
Peaked at: 36 

The Motels had trouble keeping lineups together. A band formed around singer-songwriter Martha Davis shopped a demo album around to Warner Brothers in 1976 (rejected) and Capitol 1977 (accepted), but split up before signing. Martha Davis formed a new iteration of The Motels the following year, and their first couple albums got some attention in Australia and the UK, amid a few lineup shifts.

The band caught on in the US with the help of some music videos with a “’40s torch-song singer fronting a new-wave band” aesthetic. “Only the Lonely” and “Suddenly Last Summer” both reached #9 on the Top 40, and despite being softer ballads, did better on the AOR charts (then called Top Tracks, now Mainstream Rock) than on Adult Contemporary. “Suddenly Last Summer” went to #1 on Top Tracks in 1982, between The Police’s “King of Pain” and Pat Benatar’s “Love is a Battlefield.” ”Remember the Nights” was the followup to “Suddenly Last Summer,” and it also did well on Top Tracks (#12).

The Motels would return to the Top 40 in 1985 with “Shame” (#21), which had an early video by David Fincher. Davis stays on brand in it by rocking a nice tulled hat. The followup, “Shock,” also with a Fincher video, didn’t crack the Top 40. Davis would split up the band in 1987, but would use the name on and off going forward. in 1989 she landed a fun cameo in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure; she’s one of the Three Most Important People in the World in the future. We won’t hear from future Most Important Person Fee Waybill. We will hear from Clarence Clemons, but not in a way you’d expect.