Month: September 2017

This Night Won’t Last Forever by Michael Johnson

Michael Johnson, despite a terribly common name, made that name fairly well known on the pop charts for a short period in the late 1970s.  Even the casual listener of popular music* at the time knew his biggest hit, even if he or she didn’t know the artist too well.  (Your author admits here to misreading the name, upon seeing it on a K-Tel compilation album – on vinyl – in the 90s, as “Michael Jackson”.  Apologies to everyone for that.)

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In My Dreams by The Party

In my last post, I wrote about a song, “In My Dreams”, that appeared, briefly, on the Hot 100 during early 1986 for a hair metal band named Dokken.  Some of my readers definitely still remember, and appreciate, that song (even if American radio doesn’t).  But were you Dokken aficionados aware that another group took a somewhat similar version of that same song not only into the Hot 100 but all the way into the Top 40? Show of hands:  who remembers The Party?

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In My Dreams by Dokken

It’s not uncommon at all to see a song hit the charts in multiple versions. Heck, some artists built their reputations through remakes. (For example, a good percentage of Linda Ronstadt’s released singles were covers.) It’s less common, however, to see a song hit the charts twice in versions from bands much further apart in genre than the two bands which hit the charts with a song, originally released in 1985, called “In My Dreams”.

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