Actors Who Sing: 80s TV Stars
By Eric Grigs | May 7, 2020
Ah the 1980s. Pop Rocks. LA Gear. Slap bracelets. And of course, the crossover appeal of TV stars who went on to release chart-topping—or at least chart-adjacent—songs.
Oh sure, we still get TV actors who can smash a musical episode or take a turn on Broadway. But the 80s may have been the last decade where a member of the “Must See TV” crowd was confident enough to think: “I’d like to record an album and see how it does on the adult contemporary charts!”
And thank god they did. Because while we might not be talking about the biggest hits of the 20th century, there are some real R&B, easy listening, and—my favorite genre—yacht rock gems. (For those days when you need to daydream about having a yacht, sitting on the deck under the sun, drinking champagne, and listening to music that’ll sail your mind away from the fact that boats are really hard to upkeep and super inconvenient to own.)
Crack open that Tab soda and take a listen to these TV star bangers.
Jasmine Guy featuring Peabo Bryson, “Like I Need You”
You might have known her more as the southern belle of 80s college sitcom A Different World, where she played Whitley Gilbert, the on-again/off-again/on-again love interest of fellow student Dwayne Wayne. But in addition to being one of America’s favorite college students, Jasmine Guy also started her music career in the 1980s, and one of her first forays was this late 80s underrated R&B duet with Peabo Bryson called “Like I Need You.” The song was the final track on Bryson’s ’89 album All My Love, better known for his #1 R&B song “Show & Tell.” But “Like I Need You” is pure late 80s love song sherbet, smooth and creamy for the full four minutes. A year later Guy would go on to release her own album, the self-titled Jasmine Guy, but we love this surprise nugget that hit right as Guy was in the sitcom zeitgeist.
Ellen Foley, “We Belong to the Night”
If you’ve ever heard “Paradise By the Dashboard Light” you’ve heard Ellen Foley impatiently musing if Meatloaf would love her forever. And if you loved the campy 80s sitcom Night Court, you’d recognize Ellen Foley as season two’s Billie Young, the energetic firecracker of a district attorney who jousted with John Larroquette and Harry Anderson. If you take one part Bonnie Tyler, one part Pat Benatar, and mix in a little Kim Carnes, you get the raspy vocals of Ellen Foley. Someone who, in other words, can knock a power ballad all the way to Jupiter. Take her smash “We Belong to the Night” (we can say smash because it went to number one in the Netherlands!), where she’s not only serving stadium rock vocals, she’s also serving some pre-RuPaul’s Drag Race outfit reveals.
Lisa Whelchel, “All Because of You”
Whether you know her has Blair from The Facts of Life or as… well, Lisa Whelchel from Survivor: Philippines, you might not know that in 1984 Whelchel tried her hand at music. She released her one and only album, All Because of You, which not only cracked the top 20 of the Billboard Christian music charts, it also led to Whelchel being nominated for a Grammy. Think about that—Blair Warner, Grammy Nominee! You can almost see it on her business cards. (Whelchel would lose to Donna Summer that year, for Summer’s performance of “Forgive Me,” for the award that was known at that time as “Best Inspirational Performance.”)
Tisha Campbell, “Love Me Down”
Most 90s junkies will know Tisha Campbell from her iconic days as Gina Walters on one of Fox’s first successful television shows, Martin. But in the 1980s, she was a lead cast member of an oft-forgotten comedy called Rags to Riches. And how about this plot: set in the 1960s, a suave businessman who’s a bit of a player decides to cultivate a family image by finding six orphaned girls and moving them into his Bel Air mansion to secure a business deal. But he grows attached to the girls, eventually adopts them, and the girls end up bursting out into music as a central part of many of the plotlines (oh, but not before producers decided that six girls were too many, and wrote-off one of them so that only five orphans lingered). God, the 80s were lit! Campbell starred as 15-year-old orphan Marva (one of the five who made the cut). A few years after this show ended, Campbell would release her first album, Tisha, and from it we would get this peak 90s video for a song called “Love Me Down,” which absolutely has the best superfluous rain-dancing sequence of any video from the decade.
Crystal Bernard featuring Peter Cetera, “(I Wanna Take) Forever Tonight”
Let’s board a flight to Nantucket, Massachusetts, and revisit sitcom star Crystal Bernard. In the 1980s Bernard flew from a stint on Happy Days to It’s a Living before landing a “Must See TV” role as Helen Chappel Hackett, a wannabe cello player who runs an airport lunch counter on Wings. But did you know Bernard also had a hand in one of the 1990s greatest contributions to the genre we like to call Mom Rock? It was a duet with the most buttery male vocalist of the last 40 years, Peter Cetera, called “(I Wanna Take) Forever Tonight.” We love a song with random parenthesis, and we love a song that could literally be played any minute of any episode of Delilah’s love song radio show. One other fun fact about Ms. Bernard: she co-wrote the Paula Abdul song “If I Were Your Girl” off Paula’s mid-90s comeback album Head Over Heels. Mind blown!
Gloria Loring and Carl Anderson, “Friends and Lovers”
Votes are in for the biggest 80s soap opera moment. Was it Luke & Laura’s wedding on General Hospital? Patch & Kayla’s wedding on Days of Our Lives? Katherine Chancellor’s facelift on The Young and the Restless? All good contenders, but we’re giving it to Days star Gloria Loring, who played Liz Chandler on the series from 1980-1986. Toward the end of her stint, Loring (whose character on Days was a bit of a cabaret/lounge singer) sang a song on the series with crooner (and an early Judas from Broadway’s Jesus Christ Superstar) Carl Anderson. Called “Friends & Lovers,” the song became one of the most famous music moments in soap opera history, and it would go into heavy rotation on radio, reaching number one on the adult contemporary charts and number two on the Billboard Hot 100. This wasn’t Loring’s first taste of music success in the 80s though. She actually co-wrote with her then husband, Growing Pains’ Alan Thicke, the theme music to TV’s Diff’rent Strokes and The Facts of Life (you can hear her vocals on the latter).
Jack Wagner, “All I Need”
And staying on the soap opera train for another stop, let’s close out this list with soapy heartthrob Jack Wagner. A mainstay of General Hospital in the 80s, Wagner played Frisco Jones (wait for this pure soap opera pop trash synopsis), a wayward singer whose vocal chords were damaged in a fight after he quit the music business but who went on to purchase a mysterious Aztec ring that lured an Aztec princess to town, with whom he eventually falls in love. Wagner’s voice eventually ended up being paired with legendary music producer Quincy Jones, who helped Wagner develop a blockbuster 1984 song called “All I Need,” a number one adult contemporary hit, a number two Hot 100 hit, and the theme song to many a high school program for the rest of the 1980s.
Bonus Tracks
Still not over your fix of 80s stars who had music careers? Here are some totally rad bonus tracks.
You might know Bonnie Bramlett as the partner in crime to Roseanne Barr when the two worked as waitresses in department store Rodbell’s on Roseanne. You can catch her jamming with the Connors and their friends in this clip from the show. Also, deposit these facts in your memory bank for the next time you audition for Jeopardy: she wrote the song “Superstar” made popular by The Carpenters, and once punched Elvis Costello in the face after Costello used some pretty awful racial slurs in the late 70s. Bad. Ass. Woman.
From playing Florence on The Jeffersons or Mary on 227, Marla Gibbs is not only a comedic acting treasure, but also has a music side to her, too. She sang the theme song to 227 (one of our favorites from the decade) and opened up a jazz club in 1981 called “Marla’s Memory Lane,” as well as releasing a 2006 jazz album called It’s Never Too Late.
And of course, what list of 80s TV stars with music careers would be complete without reference to potentially the mightiest among them, Rick Springfield? The Australian pop star had stints on The Rockford Files, Wonder Woman, The Six Million Dollar Man, and The Eddie Capra Mysteries before landing the role of Dr. Noah Drake on General Hospital in 1981. During his time on Hospital, Springfield would release 80s anthem “Jesse’s Girl,” which became an earworm extraordinaire and would catapult Springfield to early 80s pop icon and Grammy winner.
An unabashed 80s & 90s pop culture junkie, Michael Jones is a Brooklyn-based writer and co-host of the Pop Trash Podcast.