The 1980s File Feature
What Does It Take
What Does It Take: Honeymoon Suite's Long Summer ClimbCanada's rock scene in the 1980s operated largely in the shadow of American arena rock, producing bands…
01 The Story
What Does It Take: Honeymoon Suite's Long Summer Climb
Canada's rock scene in the 1980s operated largely in the shadow of American arena rock, producing bands that could fill clubs in Toronto or Vancouver but struggled to break through to the massive U.S. market where the real commercial prizes lived. Honeymoon Suite was one of the exceptions: a Niagara Falls-based hard rock outfit with enough melodic instinct and radio-friendly production to carve out genuine American chart presence. What Does It Take, through the long summer and fall of 1986, was the record that proved their crossover credentials beyond doubt.
A Band Built for the Radio Age
Honeymoon Suite came together in the early 1980s and found their footing in the lucrative space between hard rock energy and pop accessibility that defined the era's commercial sweet spot. Their sound leaned on crunching guitars and singer Johnnie Dee's versatile vocal style, which could navigate the forceful demands of arena rock and the melodic requirements of a genuine pop chorus without apparent strain. The band had already built a substantial Canadian fan base and accumulated domestic hits before American radio took significant notice, and What Does It Take represented their most sustained and successful push into the American mainstream. The single came from their third studio album, The Big Prize, which had also given them another Canadian chart entry in Feel It Again.
Sixteen Weeks of Steady Progress
The chart run for What Does It Take told a story of persistence rather than instant gratification. The single debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 on July 12, 1986 at number 94, entry-level territory that required sustained radio play to translate into real chart progress. Over the following weeks, it climbed deliberately and consistently: past 82 in late July, past 71 in early August, past 66 as summer deepened into late season. It reached its peak of number 52 during the week of September 13, 1986, a genuine mid-chart placement that put Honeymoon Suite in the same commercial conversation as many of the bigger names of that summer. The single spent 16 weeks on the Hot 100, a run that demonstrated real and lasting traction with American rock radio.
The 1986 Rock Landscape
The summer and fall of 1986 were dominated by a certain kind of polished hard rock: big choruses, layered guitar sounds, production that made everything feel simultaneously enormous and immediately accessible. Bon Jovi had cracked the commercial code earlier that year; other bands were racing to establish themselves in similar territory. Honeymoon Suite fit naturally into that conversation, bringing a tightness and melodic discipline to the arena rock template that distinguished their work from more generic entries in the crowded field. Their Canadian perspective gave them a slightly different angle on the form, and the song had a directness that cut through the genre's occasional tendency toward self-mythology.
The Stakes of a Crossover Attempt
For a Canadian rock band in 1986, getting 16 weeks on the American Hot 100 was not a casual achievement. It required radio promotion, tour support, and the goodwill of American program directors who had no particular obligation to choose a Niagara Falls band over the many American acts competing for the same slots. That Honeymoon Suite earned that support through the quality of the record itself, rather than through industry muscle alone, made the chart run all the more meaningful as a validation of their artistic approach. The persistence of the climb, which never showed a single week of dramatic acceleration but simply kept moving upward week after week, reflected the organic way the record found its audience.
A Moment That Mattered
Honeymoon Suite continued to record and tour through the decade, and their Canadian commercial success remained strong well into the late 1980s. Their follow-up work built on the foundation that What Does It Take had helped establish in the American market. In the full context of their career, this record represents their clearest and most sustained American statement: a tight, well-crafted rock single with a hook that held its own wherever it was played and a chart performance that spoke for itself. Press play and hear what determination sounds like when it finally gets the result it was working toward.
“What Does It Take” — Honeymoon Suite's singular moment on the 1980s charts.
02 Song Meaning
The Meaning Behind What Does It Take
Few questions in the romantic lexicon carry more weight than the one embedded in this title. What Does It Take is a song of frustrated devotion: the narrator has given what they understand to be everything, and still the connection they want remains just out of reach. The question is genuine rather than rhetorical. The song does not claim to know the answer; it is asking with increasing urgency precisely because it genuinely does not, and because the not-knowing has become its own kind of pain.
The Paradox of Effort
There is a particular kind of romantic frustration that this song captures precisely: the experience of trying harder without getting closer. The narrator is not passive or indifferent; on the contrary, the whole emotional premise rests on investment and sustained effort. What makes the situation painful is exactly that willingness to keep trying. The song inhabits the gap between the effort given and the response received, and that gap is both the lyric's subject and its emotional engine. Anyone who has found themselves working to earn an affection that should not require earning will recognize the territory with uncomfortable clarity.
Hard Rock and Emotional Honesty
The genre context matters here. Hard rock of the 1980s was not typically associated with emotional vulnerability or admitted uncertainty; its preferred register tended toward bravado, conquest, and the projection of confidence. What made Honeymoon Suite's approach genuinely interesting was their willingness to let real uncertainty and need into the lyric without the protection of irony. The narrator of What Does It Take is not a winner posturing about dominance; they are someone asking for guidance, reaching toward understanding. That openness inside a genre usually devoted to projecting strength gave the song a human dimension that distinguished it from many of its peers.
Communication and Connection
At its core, the song is about the failure of communication that can occur even within close, intimate relationships. The narrator believes they are communicating love clearly and consistently; the response they receive suggests the message is not landing with the force or clarity intended. That disconnect is extremely common in real human experience, and it is rarely addressed with honesty in arena rock. The lyric's willingness to name the disconnect directly, rather than sublimating it into aggressive posture, is what gives it its particular resonance and staying power.
Universal Questions, Specific Feeling
The lasting appeal of songs that ask unanswered questions is that they stay useful as long as the questions themselves stay unanswered, which is to say, more or less forever. What Does It Take offers no resolution, no reassurance that effort will eventually be rewarded if only you persist long enough. The question hangs open at the end, which is exactly the right artistic choice. Life rarely provides the clean answers that pop songs sometimes pretend to offer, and a song willing to sit honestly with that uncertainty rather than covering it over earns a genuine and durable relationship with its listeners in return.
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