RCA 7180
Producer: Mr. Mister and Paul De Villiers
Track listing: Black/White Uniform of Youth / Don’t Slow Down / Run to Her / Into My Own Hands / Is It Love / Kyrie / Broken Wings / Tangent Tears / Welcome to the Real World
March 1, 1986
1 week
Mr. Mister’s 1984 debut album, I Wear the Face, stalled at number 170. It wasn’t singer/bassist Richard Page’s first failed attempt at the big time. He and keyboardist Steve George had been members of a band called Pages, which recorded two albums for Epic and one for Capitol. All failed to chart.
After that experience, Page and George stuck together, working as session musicians for the Michael Jackson, Patti LaBelle, Rick Springfield, the Pointer Sisters, and Donna Summer. In 1982, they formed Mr. Mister with drummer Pat Mastelotto and guitarist Steve Farris.
Following the disappointing sales of I Wear the Face, Mr. Mister weren’t exactly aiming for the sky with their follow-up album. “We had absolutely no expectations, having had several commercially unsuccessful records before,” says Page. “We figured it would be another one of those. It would be a record that we loved, but it wouldn’t make any noise. It would catch a few people’s ears and that would be the end of it.”
Page’s instincts, of course, were wrong. Welcome to the Real World would become a surprise hit, thanks largely to “Broken Wings,” a song Page initially didn’t think was a particularly good choice for a single. “I’ve always been really bad at predicting things,” he says. “When the executives at RCA and our manager all said that ‘Broken Wings’ should be the first single, I tried to talk them out of it. I thought it was a great song, I just didn’t think it would be a big hit.”
Although Page was initially unsure of the commercial potential of “Broken Wings,” he knew he was on to something when he started composing the song at his Southern California home. “I just had the bass line and melody,” he says. “But I called up my collaborator John Lang and said, ‘Get in the car and get over here now. This is important.’ He came over and jotted down some words and in an hour we were pretty much finished with it.”
While “Broken Wings” came together quickly, it took the single more than a dozen weeks just to chart. Eventually, however, it began to move up the Hot 100. On December 7, 1985, it hit Number One.
Yet it would take a second chart-topping single to push Welcome to the Real World to the top of the album chart. “Kyrie” was a song that Page initially didn’t want to record. “John came up with the lyric,” Page says. “‘Kyrie eleison’ means ‘Lord have mercy.’ It’s from the Greek Sanskrit. It’s one of the oldest known sayings in history. I just thought that people would think it was a Christian thing and felt really uncomfortable about it.” Yet Lang insisted, and the band recorded the track.
On March 1, “Kyrie” became Mr. Mister’s second Number One single, as Welcome to the Real World hit the peak of the Top Pop Albums chart in its 27th week. “Don’t anyone ask me for advice on hit records,” quips Page
THE TOP FIVE
Week of March 1, 1986
1. Welcome to the Real World, Mr. Mister
2. Promise, Sade
3. Whitney Houston, Whitney Houston
4. The Broadway Album, Barbra Streisand
5. Scarecrow, John Cougar Mellencamp