Find Another Fool by Quarterflash

It seems like an unlikely start for a band, but Quarterflash got its start when a couple of teaching students met and fell in love.  Marv and Rindy Ross were a good foundation for the bands in which they played; Marv played guitar, and Rindy sang and, for good measure, also played saxophone.  And so they formed a band and gave it a name few people would forget:  Seafood Mama.

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Bed Intruder Song by the Gregory Brothers and Antoine Dodson featuring Kelly Dodson

Let’s be honest here:  I don’t listen to a lot of modern top 40, and I haven’t since the late 1990s.  But when I think of classic songs from since then, one of the most prominent would have to be “Bed Intruder Song”. Created by the Gregory Brothers, creators of “Auto-Tune the News” (now known as Songify the News) and using a news interview featuring Antoine and Kelly Dodson after a not-so-great experience that Kelly had, “Bed Intruder Song” was a true internet phenomenon.

The song, as most of the Gregory Brothers videos do, features a whole lot of autotuning, which was necessary given that the Dodsons were obviously not singing in their interview. The song, as of this writing, has gotten over 126 million views on YouTube, so obviously it was a rather popular little ditty.

(Image of Antoine Dodson courtesy WAFF-TV.  Image ©2010 Raycom Media/WAFF License Subsidiary, LLC.)

Riding the wave of popularity the YouTube video had at the time, the Gregory Brothers remixed the song into an “iTunes Version”, which, solely on the strength of its sales on iTunes, entered the Billboard Hot 100 at #89 for the week ending August 28, 2010. Unfortunately, that was its only week on the chart.

Amazingly enough, this song really didn’t get much radio airplay in its heyday, and it certainly doesn’t get any now. As to whether I think that is something to be remedied…well…check the post date.

 

The Super Bowl Shuffle by The Chicago Bears Shufflin’ Crew

In late 1985, the Chicago Bears were dominating the NFL, cruising to a 15-1 record.  It was widely expected that they would continue to win easily all the way through the Super Bowl.

What was not widely expected is that they would release a hit song along the way.  But along came “The Super Bowl Shuffle”.

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Time by the Alan Parsons Project

In the late 70s and early 80s, the Alan Parsons Project had several hits, a few of which still receive the occasional spin.  (And then there’s “Sirius”, which will be forever associated with NBA team introductions in my mind, and possibly for many others as well.)  They were known for a few concept albums that had a little bit of a storyline.

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In America by The Charlie Daniels Band

Most people who have heard of Charlie Daniels probably remember him mostly for The Charlie Daniels Band’s platinum-certified #3 smash “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”, which still gets a fair amount of airplay even today, and rightly so.  Some may also remember his #9 song from a few years before, “Uneasy Rider”, or they might even remember this ad from 2010:

Most people, though, probably don’t remember that The Charlie Daniels Band very nearly returned to the Top 10 just a year after “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” had its run and helped the album on which it appeared, Million Mile Reflections, go platinum as well.  The band’s follow-up album was entitled Full Moon and was released in the summer of 1980.

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(Full Moon peaked at #11 on Billboard’s Hot LPs and Tape chart. Album ℗1980 Epic/Nashville Records. Photo courtesy Amazon.com.)

A few weeks before Full Moon dropped, the debut single, “In America”, was released.  The song was about restoring patriotism in the United States after a rather lousy decade (with an economy to match) and while the Iran hostage crisis was still ongoing.  It spoke of Americans becoming united, and after all this, “God bless America again”.  The hope, optimism, and patriotism of the song resonated with many people.

Chart Performance

“In America” debuted in Billboard’s Hot 100 at #82 in its May 31, 1980 issue (chart) and peaked at #11 the week ending August 2 (chart | magazine); it remained at that position for two weeks and then went into a freefall, falling out of the Top 40 within three weeks of peaking (by which time the second single from Full Moon, “The Legend of Wooley Swamp” had already begun its chart run) and out of the Hot 100 completely just two weeks later.  “In America” spent a respectable 15 weeks on the Hot 100, and it did well enough to land at #96 in the year-end chart for 1980.

According to Wikipedia (at least as of this writing), “In America” experienced a short revival in 2001 after the events of September 11; however, since that time I know of no station that has played the song except WCBS-FM, in a 2008 Sunday night broadcast of their Top 20 from August 3, 1980.

 

 

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Love Sneakin’ Up On You by Bonnie Raitt

Bonnie Raitt is one of those rockers who was around for years before ever having a top 40 hit.  She started recording in the early 1970s and even got a shoutout from Dr. Johnny Fever on “WKRP in Cincinnati” when he played her late 70s remake of “Runaway”, which got up to #57.  But it wasn’t until the early 90s that she ever hit the top 40 charts.  She hit first with “Have a Heart”, but she is probably best known for “Something to Talk About”, which hit #5 on Billboard’s Hot 100 in 1991.  “Something to Talk About” still gets some airplay on radio these days, and deservedly so, usually on adult contemporary stations.

But who remembers the first single from her follow-up album in 1994? Maybe some of my readers, whom I assume are quite enlightened, will remember “Love Sneakin’ Up On You”, the first single from Longing in Their Hearts, but I think radio hardly remembers it at all.

(Longing in Their Hearts, as might be expected, peaked at #1 on the Billboard 200. Album ℗1994 Capitol Records. Photo courtesy Amazon.com.)

“Love Sneakin’ Up On You” debuted on Billboard’s Hot 100 the week ending March 12, 1994 (chart) at #90, and I personally heard the song for the first time that same week on a Spring Break quasi-roadtrip.  It slowly made its way up the charts, peaking at #19 almost two months later, as seen in the issue for the week ending May 7 (chart | magazine).  The song had fairly good staying power, staying on the Hot 100 for 20 weeks and ending up at #94 for the year.  It did even better on the Canadian charts, where it was a #1 song.

After its run, there was one more single to be released from Longing in Their Hearts.  Unfortunately, “You” was not nearly as successful, peaking at #92.  After that, Ms. Raitt hit the Hot 100 a couple more times before basically moving solely to the adult contemporary chart, which she last hit in 2006.

“Love Sneakin’ Up On You”, though, has seemingly disappeared.  (In researching this song, I discovered that YouTube does not even presently have the album version of this song on its site.)  It would be nice to see it reappear on the airwaves sometime.

 

 

You Don’t Want Me Anymore by Steel Breeze

1982 was a year of flux for top 40 music.  A lot of different types of music hit the charts that year, and many acts came and left that year.  One act that appeared for the first time was Steel Breeze, a pop-rock band out of California.  Like Magazine 60, Steel Breeze incorporated synthesizers into its sound, but while Magazine 60 had an obvious Eurodisco sound, Steel Breeze was much more an album-oriented rock group.

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The Way I Want to Touch You by Captain & Tennille

As a child of the 70s, and specifically, a child whose mother listened to a radio station whose format was called “middle of the road” back then (but would have been called adult contemporary now), I heard quite a bit of music from Captain & Tennille.  At the time, though, I had never heard of one of their early hits, “The Way I Want To Touch You”.

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Remembering George Duke

During the long, unplanned hiatus this blog took, George Duke passed away.  As I understand it, George Duke was primarily a jazz musician, though he occasionally branched over to pop music and R&B.  Most online bios of him will point to his work with Jean-Luc Ponty and Frank Zappa as helping to establish his name in the industry, so that gives you an idea of the diversity of his musical styles.

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