Forever #1 - Tito Jackson (Jackson 5)

[rockgolf]

The list of Gordon Lightfoot songs on the Hot 100 is short. It misses early classics like Go-Go Girl, Cotton Jenny, For Lovin' Me, Early Morning Rain, River of Darkness, Black Day In July, You Are What I Am, Song For A Winter's Evening, I'm Not Sayin', Bitter Green, Talking In Your Sleep, & The Way I Am.

Gord's Gold wasn't just a greatest hits title. It was a statement.

All-time Rank	Artist - Song	Total Points	H P	Weeks	Peak Yr.
828	Gordon Lightfoot | Sundown	649,760	1	18	1974
1143	Gordon Lightfoot | The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald	588,048	2	21	1976
3118	Gordon Lightfoot | If You Could Read My Mind	334,272	5	15	1971
4437	Gordon Lightfoot | Carefree Highway	208,720	10	14	1974
8900	Gordon Lightfoot | Rainy Day People	72,360	26	11	1975
10812	Gordon Lightfoot | The Circle Is Small (I Can See It In Your Eyes)	52,288	33	12	1978
15112	Gordon Lightfoot | Beautiful	26,784	58	11	1972
15415	Gordon Lightfoot | Baby Step Back	25,472	50	8	1982
18505	Gordon Lightfoot | Talking In Your Sleep	14,752	64	7	1971
21211	Gordon Lightfoot | Race Among The Ruins	8,992	65	4	1977
27488	Gordon Lightfoot | Summer Side Of Life	2,016	98	2	1971

The legend lives on.

[Gary]

Forever No. 1: Gordon Lightfoot’s ‘Sundown’
The singer-songwriter's lone Hot 100-topper was a fascinating mix of genres and moods that took advantage of a unique moment in chart history.


By Andrew Unterberger

05/3/2023


Forever No. 1 is a Billboard series that pays special tribute to the recently deceased artists who achieved the highest honor our charts have to offer — a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single — by taking an extended look back at the chart-topping songs that made them part of this exclusive club. Here, we honor the late Gordon Lightfoot with a look back at his sole No. 1, the simultaneously violent and breezy “Sundown.”

As far as signature songs go, “Sundown” might not be the first that came to mind for singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot upon news of his death earlier this week (May 1) at age 84. “If You Could Read My Mind,” the weepy post-divorce lament that marked his U.S. breakout hit in 1971, probably endures as his most beloved (and almost certainly his most frequently-covered) hit, and six-minute story song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” remains his most distinctive smash. But while “Mind” made it to No. 5 on the Hot 100 and “Wreck” got all the way to No. 2, his only song to top the listing was “Sundown,” a jaunty but foreboding love song that hit at the exact right moment in chart history.


Lightfoot was a Canadian born in Orillia, Ontario in 1938, who had moved to Los Angeles in the late ’50s and enjoyed something of a nomadic career for the next decade. Though he went to L.A. to study jazz, he made money doing commercial jingles and singing on demonstration records. He would move back to Canada in the early ’60s and get involved in the Toronto folk scene, scoring some local hits as a singer-songwriter and capturing the attention of many of his more-celebrated peers — with his compositions being recorded by the starry likes of Elvis Presley, Peter, Paul and Mary and even Lightfoot’s songwriting hero Bob Dylan. (Lightfoot would later return the favor with a version of Dylan’s “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues,” which became a No. 3 hit on Canada’s RPM singles chart for Lightfoot in 1965.)

In the early ’70s, Lightfoot moved from United Artists to Warner Bros./Reprise, which precipitated his long-awaited U.S. breakthrough with “Read My Mind,” also a No. 1 in his home country. He scored a trio of minor Hot 100 hits in the following years, and charted a number of modestly successful albums on the Billboard 200, but would not notch another major success until 1974 with his Sundown set — and of course, its title track, a vindictive toe-tapper widely believed to be inspired by a major figure in Lightfoot’s life at the time, the backup singer and rock scene fixture Cathy Smith.


Lightfoot was having an affair with Smith as his first marriage, to Brita Ingegerd Olaisson, was disintegrating. The relationship with Smith was, by all accounts, tumultuous — with Lightfoot admitting that it often made him “crazy with jealousy” — and even turned violent, with Lightfoot reportedly breaking Smith’s cheekbone in one particularly bad spat. In the 2019 documentary If You Could Read My Mind, Lightfoot recalls of his relationship with Smith, “I would have liked to marry her, but I was just newly divorced, and I told myself I would never get married again. And I knew that it was not a good idea to carry on [with Smith] — it was one of those relationships [where] you get a feeling of danger.”

In interviews, Lightfoot would not confirm Smith was his specific muse for “Sundown” — instead opting to more generally refer to the inspiration being “a girlfriend” he had at the time. But the song, a paranoid warning to a lover that they “better take care, if I find you’ve been creeping ’round my back stairs,” is largely assumed to draw from their toxic romance. The Read My Mind documentary plays “Sundown” underneath its discussion of Lightfoot’s relationship with Smith, with Brian Good (of Lightfoot’s one-time opening act The Good Brothers) saying, “He wrote [‘Sundown’] referring to more than one person that might have been involved with [Smith] — and some of them were Gordon’s friends.”

Such material might seem unusually dark for a mid-’70s pop smash. But the trick of “Sundown” is wrapping its narrator’s fevered thoughts of “a hard-lovin’ woman, got me feelin’ mean” in a brisk, almost carefree acoustic groove and a sweetly harmonized and immediately catchy chorus that makes the anger and violence at its core distinctly palatable — as well as an ambiguous title that makes the song feel more mysterious than aggressive. (In Read My Mind, country-rock cult hero Steve Earle points out that the song also leaves out the details that might make it truly unseemly, comparing it to a “spaghetti western… where you can kind of make up your own movie.”) That mix of despairing lyrics and undeniable upbeat hooks was hardly unfamiliar to 1974 top 40 audiences, either; earlier that year, Terry Jacks had gone to No. 1 on the Hot 100 with “Seasons in the Sun,” originally a maudlin French ballad about a dying man’s farewell to his loved ones, which Jacks worked into a bouncy pop singalong fit for AM radio.

“Sundown” also worked due to its embrace of another trend on the U.S. charts at the time: the commercial rise of country music, which, thanks to crossover artists like Charlie Rich and John Denver, was starting to become a regular presence around the top of the Hot 100. “Sundown” is not an explicitly country song — more of a country-influenced folk-rock ditty, along the lines of Stealers Wheel’s 1973 smash “Stuck in the Middle With You,” whose intro build-up it also subtly nicks — though its post-chorus guitars have distinctly southern accents, and Lightfoot would play up its vocal twanginess in live performances. Regardless, the single would reach No. 13 on Billboard‘s Hot Country Songs chart, also making it easily the biggest country hit of Lightfoot’s career.

And “Sundown” and “Seasons” had something else in common as 1974 Hot 100 No. 1s: Both were by Canadian artists. In fact, five separate Canadian acts would top the chart in ’74: Lightfoot, Jacks, singer-songwriter Andy Kim (“Rock Me Gently”), veteran pop idol Paul Anka (“(You’re) Having My Baby,” along with Odia Coates) and AOR rockers Bachman Turner-Overdrive (“You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet”). It was a near-unprecedented degree of takeover from our friends to the north — barely even approached again on the Hot 100 until 41 years later — that also took advantage of a fairly wide-open time in American popular music in general; a total of 35 different songs reached No. 1 on the chart for the first time in ’74, a record-setting mark at the time.

“Sundown” first hit pole position on the chart dated June 29, replacing Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods’ story song “Billy, Don’t Be a Hero,” before giving its spot up a week later to the Hues Corporation’s disco-leaning “Rock the Boat.” Its parent album of the same name had also topped the Billboard 200 the week before, and was still reigning when the single rose to No. 1, making that June Lightfoot’s clear commercial apex in the U.S. He would never top either chart again, though follow-up single “Carefree Highway” snuck into the Hot 100’s top 10, and the aforementioned “Edmund Fitzgerald” would reach the runner-up spot in November 1976, held from the top by Rod Stewart’s eight-week No. 1 “Tonight’s the Night (Gonna Be Alright).” Lightfoot’s final Hot 100 appearance came with 1982’s No. 50-peaking “Baby Step Back,” though he would continue to record through the early ’00s and toured through the ’10s and ’20s, and even released the unaccompanied and appropriately titled comeback album Solo in 2020, his first LP in 16 years.


Smith would remain a major figure in the rock world throughout the ’70s, and after splitting with Lightfoot for good in 1975, she also spent time with Levon Helm of The Band and as a backup singer for country singer-songwriter Hoyt Axton. She also got involved with drugs, reportedly dealing to Keith Richards and Ron Wood of The Rolling Stones — and in 1982, became infamous for giving legendary comedian John Belushi the drug cocktail injection that led to his fatal overdose, for which she was charged with involuntary manslaughter, ultimately serving 15 months in prison. When Smith died at age 73 in August 2020, Lightfoot’s comments to The Globe and Mail reflected a much gentler outlook on the oft-destructive relationship that likely brought out the venom in his biggest chart hit.

“Cathy was a great lady,” he said. “Men were drawn to her, and she used to make me jealous. But I don’t have a bad thing to say about her.”

[Gary]

[rockgolf]

Every Tina Turner charted song:

Rank	All- time	Artist	Song	Total Points	H P	Peak Yr.
1	313	Tina Turner	What's Love Got To Do With It	804544	1	1984
2	1393	Tina Turner	We Don't Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)	540240	2	1985
3	1518	Tina Turner	Typical Male	520880	2	1986
4	2786	Tina Turner	Better Be Good To Me	369032	5	1984
5	3125	Ike & Tina Turner	Proud Mary	333344	4	1971
6	3169	Tina Turner	Private Dancer	329560	7	1985
7	4675	Tina Turner	I Don't Wanna Fight (From "What's Love Got To Do With It")	190720	9	1993
8	5267	Bryan Adams/Tina Turner	It's Only Love	159320	15	1986
9	5396	Tina Turner	One Of The Living	153400	15	1985
10	5634	Tina Turner	What You Get Is What You See	143160	13	1987
11	5839	Tina Turner	The Best	135920	15	1989
12	6412	Ike & Tina Turner	Nutbush City Limits	119280	22	1973
13	7531	Ike & Tina Turner	It's Gonna Work Out Fine	94690	14	1961
14	7932	Ike & Tina Turner & The Ikettes	I Want To Take You Higher	87712	34	1970
15	7989	Tina Turner	Let's Stay Together	85952	26	1984
16	8265	Tina Turner	Two People	81320	30	1987
17	8601	Ike & Tina Turner	A Fool In Love	76364	27	1960
18	10063	Tina Turner	Show Some Respect	58920	37	1985
19	10476	Ike & Tina Turner	Poor Fool	55216	38	1962
20	11095	Tina Turner	Steamy Windows	50040	39	1989
21	16094	Ike & Tina Turner	Tra La La La La	22644	50	1962
22	16334	Ike & Tina Turner & The Ikettes	Come Together	21728	57	1970
23	16882	Ike & Tina Turner	Bold Soul Sister	19620	59	1970
24	17513	Ike & Tina Turner	Sexy Ida (Part 1)	17640	65	1974
25	18376	Ike & Tina Turner	Ooh Poo Pah Doo	15104	60	1971
26	19392	Ike & Tina Turner	I've Been Loving You Too Long	12682	68	1969
27	20517	Tina Turner	Break Every Rule	10240	74	1987
28	22599	Tina Turner	Missing You	6800	84	1996
29	23300	Ike & Tina Turner	Baby-Get It On	5920	88	1975
30	23554	Ike & Tina Turner	Up In Heah	5600	83	1972
31	23631	Ike & Tina Turner	I Idolize You	5508	82	1960
32	24036	Ike & Tina Turner ft. Tina	River Deep-Mountain High	4998	88	1966
33	25623	Ike & Tina Turner	I Can't Believe What You Say (For Seeing What You Do)	3400	95	1964
34	26230	Ike & Tina Turner	You Should'a Treated Me Right	2788	89	1962
35	26631	Ike & Tina Turner	The Hunter	2516	93	1969
36	27275	Ike & Tina Turner	I'm Gonna Do All I Can (To Do Right By My Man)	2142	98	1969
37	28425	Tina Turner	Why Must We Wait Until Tonight	1260	97	1993

[Gary]

Rock n’ Roll Trailblazer Tina Turner Dies at 83
"Today we say goodbye to a dear friend who leaves us all her greatest work: her music," read a statement on her Instagram account.


By Gail Mitchell

05/24/2023


Tina Turner, whose gritty vocals and fierce, sizzling performances powered two iconic music careers —as one-half of husband-and-wife duo Ike & Tina Turner and later internationally revered solo star — has died, her rep confirmed to Billboard on Wednesday (May 24). The eight-time Grammy Award winner was 83.



A statement announcing her death was also posted to her Instagram account. “It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Tina Turner. With her music and her boundless passion for life, she enchanted millions of fans around the world and inspired the stars of tomorrow,” read the caption. “Today we say goodbye to a dear friend who leaves us all her greatest work: her music. All our heartfelt compassion goes out to her family. Tina, we will miss you dearly.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/Csouw_FN68M

Warner Music also issued a statement immediately following the news of her death. “All of us at Warner Music are deeply saddened by the passing of the one and only Tina Turner. A global icon and trailblazer, instantly recognizable by her incredible voice and inimitable style, she was one of the greatest stars of all time,” Max Lousada, CEO, recorded music of Warner Music Group, said in a statement. “Even after the countless awards, the 180 million album sales, the record-breaking tours, and unforgettable acting roles, Tina will be remembered most through the sheer joy of her music. So powerful is her extraordinary, universal appeal that there is no doubt she will continue to influence generations to come. She stands as the epitome of artistic self-empowerment.”

By the time her last compilation album, Love Songs, was released in 2014, Turner had retired from music. But not before triumphing over a hard-fought journey that spanned more than 50 years, culminating in a legacy that’s influenced a diverse range of singers from Janis Joplin to Beyoncé and beyond. Her transformation from soul singer to survivor to pop superstar yielded three Grammy Hall of Fame entries: “River Deep — Mountain High,” “Proud Mary” and “What’s Love Got to Do With It.” A Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Kennedy Center honoree, Turner also played memorable roles as the Acid Queen in the rock musical Tommy and as Aunty Entity in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome with Mel Gibson.


She became a best-selling author with 1986’s I, Tina. Written with Kurt Loder, the autobiography detailed Turner’s childhood, early success with musician husband Ike, his domestic abuse and her adoption of Buddhism. Its highlight is Turner’s 1984 resurrection as a star in her own right with the album Private Dancer and its runaway Hot 100 No. 1 ,“What’s Love Got to Do With It.” Capping one of music’s most dramatic comebacks, the song rewarded Turner with three of her eight Grammys including record and song of the year. Eight years later, the track doubled as the title of the Turner biopic starring Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne.

Turner’s journey began in Nutbush, Tenn. Born Anna Mae Bullock on Nov. 26, 1939, the youngest of the family’s two daughters, she picked cotton on the farm where her father was caretaker and sang in the local Baptist church. Relocating to St. Louis as a teenager to live with her divorced mother, Bullock met future husband Ike when the guitarist and his band the Kings of Rhythm were playing the city’s Club Manhattan. Taking advantage of an impromptu moment to sing one night with the band, Bullock sparked her metamorphosis into Tina Turner.


With backing vocalists the Ikettes in tow, the Ike & Tina Turner Revue began drawing raves for its dynamic stage performances — as well as the first of several top 10 R&B chart hits beginning in 1960 with “A Fool in Love.” An appearance in the 1966 rock film The Big T.N.T. Show captured the attention of the film’s musical director Phil Spector. The famed “Wall of Sound” producer tapped Tina to sing the lead that same year for what has since gained status as a sonic classic, “River Deep, Mountain High.” By this time, the revue had been headlining shows in Las Vegas that brought out such music celebrities as David Bowie (whom she called “a passionate supporter of my career” in a tweet upon his death), Cher, James Brown and Elvis Presley.

Following a succession of signings with various labels plus high-profile gigs opening for the Rolling Stones, the Turners covered Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Proud Mary.” Tina’s sultry vocals start the song off slowly. Then the track’s pace revs up (“we never do nothing nice and into an energetic funk-rock romp. Not only did the song net the pair its biggest pop hit in 1971 (No. 4), it also won a Grammy for best R&B vocal performance by a group. The pair’s last major hit together was the Tina-penned “Nutbush City Limits” in 1973. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991, Ike & Turner notched 20 hits from 1960 through 1975.

A fight en route to a show in Dallas the following year prompted Turner to leave Ike and file for divorce — setting the stage for Turner’s second act as a solo artist. Maintaining the rigorous touring schedule she began with Ike, Turner performed in a series of cabaret shows around the country in the late ‘70s before signing with veteran manager Roger Davies in 1980.

Aligning her gritty vocals with a harder rock style, Turner notched the first step in her comeback with a cover of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.” Reaching No. 3 R&B and No. 26 on the Billboard Hot 100, the song gave the new Capitol Records signee her first solo U.S. hit.. Soon thereafter, the label released the singer’s career-defining album, Private Dancer. The 1984 set spun off the subsequent Grammy-winning singles “What’s Love Got to Do With It” and “Better Be Good to Me” plus the title track before peaking at No. 3 on the Billboard 200.

In the Billboard Book of Number One Hits, Turner recounted that she hated British songwriter Terry Britten’s demo of “What’s Love Got to Do With It” when she first heard it. “He said for me that he needed to make it a bit rougher, a bit more sharp around the edges,” she recalled. “All of a sudden, just siting there with him in the studio, the song became mine.”

With her famous mini-skirted legs sashaying energetically across the stage, black high heels flashing and wild mane of hair whipping back and forth, Turner crisscrossed the world in a series of top-grossing tours. Her last road trip, the 90-show Tina!: 50th Anniversary Tour, was the No. 9 top-grossing tour in 2009, according to Billboard Boxscore.


Between recording and touring, Turner pursued acting. Cast as the Acid Queen in the Who’s rock musical Tommy, Turner waited 10 years before her next acting role as Aunty Entity with co-star Mel Gibson in 1985’s Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. That was followed by a cameo in the 1993 film Last Action Hero. She sang the U2-penned “GoldenEye” for the same-tilted 1995 James Bond Film.

Turner charted a total of 17 solo hit singles on the Billboard Hot 100, including “We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome),” “One of the Living,” “Typical Male” and “I Don’t Wanna Fight.” Among her other top-selling solo albums: Break Every Rule and Foreign Affair as well as the compilation album All the Best. Her last studio album was 1999’s Twenty Four Seven.

Oprah Winfrey, Beyoncé, Melissa Etheridge and Al Green saluted her in 2005 at the Kennedy Center Honors. Beyoncé reprised her then-performance of “Proud Mary” once more in 2008 — this time singing and dancing with the indefatigable Turner at the Grammy Awards. And proving that age is nothing but a number, Turner graced the cover of the German issue of Vogue in 2013. At 73, she was the oldest person to do so.

Turner married longtime beau Erwin Bach in July 2013, the same year she became a Swiss citizen. She had two sons, Raymond Craig from an earlier relationship, and Ronald, her only child with Ike.

[Gary]

Forever No. 1: Tina Turner’s ‘What’s Love Got to Do With It’
The rock, pop and R&B legend's mid-career reinvention led to her first No. 1, and one of the greatest comebacks of the 20th century.


By Andrew Unterberger

05/26/2023
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Forever No. 1 is a Billboard series that pays special tribute to the recently deceased artists who achieved the highest honor our charts have to offer — a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single — by taking an extended look back at the chart-topping songs that made them part of this exclusive club. Here, we honor the late Tina Turner with a look back at her lone No. 1: her career-rebooting smash and eventual signature song, “What’s Love Got to Do With It.”


Pop historians remember 1984 as one of the greatest years in U.S. top 40 history — a time when, powered by the new commercial and artistic possibilities afforded by MTV, a new class of solo superstars ascended to a previously near-unimaginable plane of success. Multi-platinum-certified albums. Sold-out stadium tours. Unavoidable music videos. Madonna. Prince. Michael. Bruce. And another mononymously recognized icon who no absolutely no one could have predicted being back in that pop inner circle just a few years earlier: Tina.

Tina Turner‘s name was a strange fit on the marquee for a year of pop music that was so much about the future. For one, she was already middle-aged by that point — at 44, practically a full generation older than the 25-year-old Madonna and MJ — and for another, she’d been out of the limelight for the better part of a decade, having broken free of abusive on-stage and romantic partner Ike Turner, but failing to that point to achieve much in the way of solo chart success. In 1984, she staged one of the era’s greatest comebacks, armed with a new contract with Capitol Records, a new set of rock and pop collaborators, and most importantly, one of the most perfect pop songs of the late 20th century: “What’s Love Got to Do With It.”

“Love” wasn’t the first single from Turner’s 1984 album Private Dancer; that was actually her cover of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.” Her rendition of the 1972 Billboard Hot 100-topper served as a sort of soft launch for New Tina, putting the focus back on her inimitable pipes (and in the video, her singular style) while also showing off an updated synth-soul sound, courtesy of producers Greg Marsh and Martyn Ware — the latter one of the co-founders of then-cutting-edge synth-pop outfit Heaven 17. It was a modest success, peaking at No. 26 on the Hot 100 and becoming her first top 40 hit since 1973 — but it was just the table-setter for what would come next.


“What’s Love Got to Do With It,” produced by U.K. hitmaker Terry Britten and co-written by Britten and Scottish folk-rock alum Graham Lyle, is simply the kind of song any veteran pop performer would kill for. It’s mature without being staid, it’s catchy without being cheesy, and it’s got an obvious soulfulness and wisdom to it without sounding explicitly retro or old-fashioned. It was a quintessentially grown-up single, one befitting of Turner’s age and stature, but even while arriving amidst the biggest pop explosion since peak disco (or maybe peak Fab Four), it still sounded very much of its time — a song that could be playlisted in between Footloose soundtrack singles and new wave hits by Duran Duran and Frankie Goes to Hollywood on top 40 radio and not feel out of place.

It helped that the groove of “Love” was amorphous enough to allow the song to fit just about anywhere. The song’s subject matter and melody — and Turner’s pedigree — probably made it most easily slotted into R&B, and the song did hit No. 2 on Billboard‘s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs (then Black Singles) chart. But Turner herself was more interested in rock music, and the production’s soupy, cinematic mix of choppy guitars, throbbing bass and bubbling synths on the intro and verses is more reminiscent of Foreigner’s big ballads of the time than anything else. And while the big pop hooks are the most attention-grabbing parts of the chorus, the most inspired bit of it might be how the rhythm shifts from the tense melodrama of the verse to a much looser, almost reggae-like shuffle for the refrain. It’s an incredibly versatile song, and much more of a shape-shifter than it seems at first.

But none of it works without Turner behind the microphone. Unlike the chops on display with her “Together” cover, she’s noticeably restrained on “Love,” showing more of her power in what she holds back than what she lets go. She croons like someone who’s a little embarrassed to be singing what she’s singing — like she’s not sure she should be admitting any of this to us — which makes sense, given that the song is all about attempting to disavow love as a “second-hand emotion,” and putting a strictly-physical framework around a relationship that’s clearly revealing itself to be much more.

It’s not that Turner doesn’t bring the goods with her vocal, as you can still hear her unleash with her peerless might on the first “OHHHH, WHAT’S LOVE…” following the mid-song key change. But even then, she quickly pulls back for the rest of the “got to do with it” phrase, as if she’d let her emotions get the better of her for just a quick second before remembering herself. It’s a performance of spellbinding control, texture and feeling, the kind that a less-skilled, less-seasoned belter simply couldn’t be trusted to pull off.

Helped by a popular music video that featured a high-heeled, leather pencil-skirted Turner encountering various strangers on the streets of New York, “Love” took the Hot 100 by storm in May of 1984, bounding up the chart and hitting the top 10 that July. It finally hit No. 1 on the chart dated Sept. 1, replacing Ray Parker, Jr.’s “Ghostbusters” and lasting for three weeks before being deposed by John Waite’s “Missing You.” A couple weeks later, she would perform the song at the first-ever MTV Video Music Awards — though the video itself would not be eligible until the next year, when it beat out Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, Sade and Sheila E. for best female video. The song also dominated at the 1985 Grammys, taking home statues for record of the year, song of the year, and best pop vocal performance – female.


Turner would never reach the Hot 100 apex again, but she would remain a fixture in its top tier for years to come. Private Dancer spawned two more top 10 hits in the rocking “Better Be Good to Me” (No. 5, Nov. 1984) and the theatrical title track (No. 7, March 1985), and before the next year was out, she added a third in the No. 2-peaking “We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome),” from the soundtrack to Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. Her 1986 follow-up Break Every Rule wasn’t quite the blockbuster Private Dancer was, but it spawned another No. 2 hit with lead single “Typical Male.” And though 1989’s “The Best” would reach only No. 15 on the Hot 100, it was one of her biggest global successes, and would endure as one of Turner’s signature numbers.

“I Don’t Wanna Fight,” released in 1993 from the soundtrack to her Angela Bassett-starring film biopic — unsurprisingly titled What’s Love Got to Do With It — would mark her final visit to the top 10, hitting No. 9. From there, she mostly shifted to the legacy phase of her career, racking up career accolades (including a pair of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions, with Ike in 1991 and as a solo artist in 2021) and remaining a major touring draw until she got off the road for good in 2009. “What’s Love Got to Do With It” has continued to endure in popular culture, inspiring the chorus to Fat Joe and Ashanti’s No. 2-peaking 2002 smash “What’s Luv,” and becoming a hit once more with Turner’s original timeless vocal via a globally successful Kygo remix in 2020 — proving that even 60 years after her debut (and a decade into her retirement), Tina Turner was still never far away from her next comeback.

[Gary]

At the time, the song set a record for oldest female to hit #1

(broken by Cher a decade later)

[Juanca]

Tina, as other older female artists, had deserving better luck overseas in the 90s, though. Goldeneye -a song with Bono and the Edge behind- was deservingly a hit in Europe and Oceania. Her duet with Eros Ramazzotti turning his Cose della Vita into a Spanglish rocker version was also a global hit in 1997. And then her catchy dance comeback When the Heartache is Over was another European hit. All of them are pretty good additions to her catalogue of strong singles.

[mag]

May 31, 2023 8:11:55 GMT -5 Juanca said:

Tina, as other older female artists, had deserving better luck overseas in the 90s, though. Goldeneye -a song with Bono and the Edge behind- was deservingly a hit in Europe and Oceania. Her duet with Eros Ramazzotti turning his Cose della Vita into a Spanglish rocker version was also a global hit in 1997. And then her catchy dance comeback When the Heartache is Over was another European hit. All of them are pretty good additions to her catalogue of strong singles.

Her duet with Eros Ramazzotti is one of the all time classics in the Spanish speaking world. Both versions, Italian and Spanish are iconic in Spain/Latin America

[hughster1]

May 26, 2023 11:54:24 GMT -5 Gary said:

At the time, the song set a record for oldest female to hit #1

(broken by Cher a decade later).

In between, 47-year-old Grace Slick hit number one as co-lead singer of Starship on "Nothin's Gonna Stop Us Now" in 1987.

[Gary]

Tony Bennett, Legendary Interpreter of Great American Songbook, Dies at 96
The 20-time Grammy winner's career spanned more than seven decades.


By Phil Gallo

07/21/2023


Tony Bennett, a singer’s singer whose steadfast allegiance to the Great American Songbook would connect him with multiple generations of diverse talent – Pearl Bailey, Count Basie, Amy Winehouse and Lady Gaga — died on Friday morning (July 21) at his home in New York according to a statement from his management company. He was 96-years-old.


The singer was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease in 2016 and in 2021 he announced that he was retiring from touring and performing after one last show in August of that year with good friend and avowed superfan Gaga at Radio City Music Hall entitled “One Last Time.”

Bennett had a continuous recording career from 1950 to 2014 that would see him release more than 60 albums, 44 of which would chart on the Billboard 200, win 16 Grammy Awards, and include a signature song in “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” Over the last 25 years, Bennett thrived as the primary connection between modern pop and the music of the first half of the 20th century that came from Tin Pan Alley, Broadway shows and movies. Sticking to his style as he recorded with Gaga, Elvis Costello, k.d. lang and Winehouse, Bennett became a paragon of multi-generational cool starting in the early 1990s as he toured the world and, in 2011 at the age of 85, had his first No. 1 album with Duets II.

A student of the bel canto style of singing, Bennett developed his own voice by going to the jazz clubs on New York’s 52nd Street and listening to musicians such as saxophonist Charlie Parker and pianist Art Tatum. (A performance Tatum once gave of “Danny Boy” affected Bennett to the point that he named his first song Danny). He was following the advice of his voice teacher, Miriam Spier, who advised him that the only way to stand out is to emulate instrumentalists rather than other singers.

“I prefer the way the jazz artists work, and this is one of the things I have learned over the years from guys like (cornetist) Bobby Hackett,” Bennett told Billboard in 1968. “The way you feel it is the way it comes out, and it’s never the same way twice. That’s the way I like to sing — as if I just picked up the lead sheet for the first time.”

Bennett would stick to his guns about songs and his interpretations, even when it meant leaving Columbia Records after 23 years and forming his own label, Improv Records. Similarly, his output in the 1980s slowed as he resisted following trends, the payoff coming in the ‘90s when he paid tribute to the work of Fred Astaire, Frank Sinatra and Billie Holiday and exposed a 21st century generation to the music he cut his teeth on.

“How does a singer get good performances out of himself,” Bennett wrote in a 1968 issue of Billboard. “Through dedication to his own talent. Through his wish to communicate with the listener in the audience. Through the songs he personally believes in.”

Born Antonio Dominick Benedetto in Long Island City, N.Y., on Aug. 3, 1926, Bennett started singing when he was 5, learning Irish songs from locals in his Astoria neighborhood and earn pennies and nickels for his performances.

Bennett’s father was ill most of the singer’s life, dying when Bennett was 10. His mother became a seamstress and, to contribute to the household of three children, Bennett, whose inspirations were Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong and Jimmy Durante, started singing in a tavern for $15 a week. At 16, he working as an usher at Ditmars Theater, worked as a singing waiter in a couple of local clubs and sang on weekends at a club in Paterson, N.J.

His goal, however, was to become a commercial artist after finishing studies at the High School of Industrial Arts in Manhattan. (He would be an avid visual artist his entire life, using his given name for his oil paintings). Bennett joined the Army and was stationed in Germany where he sang with Army bands.

After his discharge from the service, Bennett studied drama, diction and music theory at the American Theatre Wing. He started a singing in nightclubs in 1946, using the name Joe Barri.

He was opening for Pearl Bailey in 1949 at the Greenwich Village Inn when Bob Hope heard him and offered him an opening slot on his show at the Paramount Theatre. No fan of the name Joe Bari, Hope decided the singer’s birth name was too long for a marquee and suggested the Americanized “Tony Bennett.” Around that time he appeared on Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts TV show, coming in second place to Rosemary Clooney.

“I went to the Paramount Theater with Louis Prima,” Bennett told Billboard in 2006 when he received the Billboard Century Award. We had to do seven shows a day — start at 10 a.m. and go until 10 p.m. Sinatra did the same. It was tough.”

While on the road with Hope, a demo recording he had done of “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” led to Columbia Records bringing him in for a session. Bennett recorded four songs, “Boulevard” among them, on April 17, 1950; 10 days later “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” was released and would go to No. 1 for 10 weeks.

Bennett landed 12 top 20 singles between 1951 and 1954: “Because of You,” “Cold, Cold Heart” and “Rags to Riches” went to No. 1; “Stranger in Paradise” peaked at No. 2.

An early sign that he would work without attention to genre was “Cold, Cold Heart,” the first pop recording of a Hank Williams song. Jerry Wexler, while working at Billboard prior to joining Atlantic Records, played Williams’ version for Columbia A&R executive Mitch Miller, who brought the song to Bennett.

The recording exposed Williams to a pop audience for the first time, starting atrend that would become Bennett’s forte: In his first 18 years of making records, Billboard credited Bennett with introducing nearly 60 songs, helping establish writers such as Cy Coleman and Charles deForest. And he did so on his own terms, singing pop on singles and turning to jazz for his albums, recording with Art Blakey, Zoot Sims, Count Basie, Bill Evans, Frank Wess and other leading jazz artists.

His 1957 album The Beat of My Heart was jazz interpretations of standards given heavily percussive arrangements andfeaturing the drummer backed by Blakey, Jo Jones and Chico Hamilton. He wasalso the first male pop singer to work with Basie, releasing In Person with Count Basie and His Orchestra in 1959.

“The Count’s attitude became my philosophy — economy of keep it simple, keep it swingin’,” Bennett once said.

Bennett landed four top 20 hits on the Hot 100 in 1956, “In the Middle of an Island” charting highest, No. 9 in 1957. Miller, in a 1968 interview with Billboard, said a hit for Columbia at the time was anything that sold at least 150,000copies. Initial pressings of all of Bennett’s record were 200,000, to which Miller said “we’ve never overestimated.”

Still, entering the 1960s, he was in a top 20 dry spell, which may have owed to him avoiding the urging of Columbia brass to try more pop-oriented material.

“In the American Theatre Wing they insisted on no compromise,” Bennett told Billboard in 1968. “Mitch Miller actually understood where I was coming from though he was frustrated with me. I try to just never compromise. Not to be stubborn, but I don’t like to insult the audience.”

In 1961, during a stay in Hot Springs, Ark., Bennett’s pianist since 1956, Ralph Sharon, brought to Bennett a song written by his friends George Cory and Douglass Cross. Sharon suggested he sing it during his December 1961 run at the Venetian Room at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco.

“He played it for me and I liked it right away,” Bennett told Billboard. “It had been around and nothing had happened. I sang it at the Fairmont Hotel, but didn’t record it until six months later.”

“I Left My Heart in San Francisco” peaked at No. 19 in 1961, but the album I Left My Heart in San Francisco would enjoy 149 weeks on the Billboard 200, peaking at No. 5.

“Before I recorded ‘San Francisco,’ the trend of the music business was moving away from me,” Bennett told Billboard in 1968. “I was advised to try all sorts of tricks and gimmicks. I held out and finally found ‘San Francisco.’”

Bennett’s two follow-up singles in 1963 charted higher than “San Francisco”: “I Wanna Be Around” hit No. 14 and “The Good Life” peaked at No. 18. His album output perked up, too, with Columbia issuing two new studio albums in ’63 and three in ’64. I Wanna Be Around also reached No. 5 and would be his highest charting album for the next 46 years.

No denying “San Francisco” had changed his life as an entertainer, but it was a comment Sinatra made to Life magazine in 1965 that Bennett said made the difference in how he was viewed professionally.

“For my money,” Sinatra told Life, “Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business, the best exponent of a song. He excites me when I watch him. He’s the singer who gets across what the composer has in mind, and probably a little more.”

Powers at Columbia Records, though, wanted more hits from Bennett and wanted him to add more contemporary material to his repertoire. Other than his ballad rendition of Stevie Wonder’s “For Once in My Life” in 1967, his final Hot 100 hit (No. 91), his albums and singles stopped selling.

“Anyone who sings popular songs and tells you that he doesn’t want a hit song is lying,” Bennett wrote in the liner notes to a 1991 Columbia Legacy box set. “Early in my career, I decided to sing only the best, not realizing that I would run into many men in the business world who would try to get me to sing novelty songs with gimmicks, insisting that the public had the mentality of a 14-year-old.”

Columbia re-signed Bennett in 1968 and then-president Clive Davis continued to have Bennett record pop hits — Beatles songs, “The Look of Love,” “My Cherie Amour” — with no commercial success. At the same time, Bennett was going through a divorce with his first wife, Patricia, and, in 1971, marrying his second wife, Sandra Grant.

Bennett left Columbia — and the U.S. — going to London to host the TV show Tony Bennett From Talk of the Town. Then-manager Derek Boulton secured Bennett a deal with Curb-Polygram, which put him on Verve Records; he made a couple of albums before being dropped.

Despite Columbia offering to re-sign him, Bennett and Bill Hassett, a hotel and real estate magnate from Buffalo, N.Y., joined forces to create Improv Records in 1972, starting with a record by Ruby Braff. Two of Bennett’s two most significant jazz albums came out in that era, The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album on Fantasy in 1975 and Together Again on Improv in 1977. While nether charted, Bennett considered the bare bones nature of his collaborations with the pianist Evans vital. “If you can get to a pure simple thing, it always lasts forever,” he said in the liner notes of Concord Music Group’s Complete Improv Recordings set.

The label released about 10 jazz albums and, due to distribution issues, shut down.

Bennett, who performance schedule was largely limited to Las Vegas in the late ‘70s, found himself with money problems, a failing marriage and succumbing to ‘70s drug culture until he overdosed on cocaine in 1979.

“The manager of Lenny Bruce told me he sinned against his talent with his drug habit,” Bennett told Piers Morgan on CNN in 2011 about his decision to stop doing drugs. “That sentence changed my life. I’ve been given this gift. I know how to sing and perform. I’m sinning against this gift and I thought, ‘I am not going to do that any more,’ and I just stopped. I had to, because I thought I was going to lose everything. It wassaid at the right moment, at the right time.”

Bennett reached out to his oldest song Danny who took over as manager, moving his father back to New York, reuniting him with Ralph Sharon, the pianist who left in 1965, and booking him in small theaters and colleges. Bennett returned to Columbia Records, releasing The Art of Excellence in 1986. The first of his 18 albums for the label since returning, it peaked at No. 160, his first Billboard 200 entry in 14 years. He followed it by continuing to return to his roots, recording an album of Irving Berlin songs with jazz musicians such as Dexter Gordon, Dizzy Gillespie and George Benson.

To promote those albums, Bennett started appearing on The Late Show With David Letterman, the late-night talk show that would become crucial in establishing a new audience for him in the 1990s.

In 1989, still discouraged by slumping record sales, Bennett told new management at Columbia Records he was ready to hang it up. New Columbia president Donnie Ienner asked Bennett to come up with a concept that the label could sell. Within days, Bennett came up with Perfectly Frank, a tribute to Sinatra that would hit No. 102 and go on to win the Grammy for Traditional Pop Album.

It led to a second concept album, Steppin’ Out, a tribute to Astaire, and the floodgates opened.

The investments Danny Bennett started making with The Art of Excellence began paying dividends in 1990 when Tony Bennett became the first celebrity written into an episode of The Simpsons. He would then make a Nike commercial, have his music synched in GoodFellas, The Fabulous Baker Boys, JFK and A Bronx Tale and deliver a show-stopping performance of “When Do The Bells Ring For Me” at the 1991 Grammy Awards. To remind audiences of Bennett’s past triumphs, Columbia Legacy issued a four-CD box set, Forty Years: The Artistry of Tony Bennett, that has sold 88,000 copies. (The set was updated in 2004 as Fifty Years).

Perhaps the biggest moment of Bennett’s revival came at the MTV VMAs in September 1993 when Bennett, dressed in a black T-shirt, top hat, sunglasses and a tie, accompanied the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Anthony Kiedis and Flea – in tuxedos — to present the Video of the Year. Kiedis and Flea joked with Bennett at the podium save for him perfectly singing a snippet of “Give it Away.”

The response was such that Bennett’s video for “Steppin’ Out With My Baby” was then promptly placed in the MTV Buzz Bin, a demarcation of cool in 1993.

MTV continued its association with Bennett, booking him for an Unplugged special in 1994; it would win the Grammy for Album of the Year at the 1995 ceremony. While the strategy was to pair Bennett with lang and Costello, the repertoire was classic Bennett: “Fly me to the Mon,” “They Can’t Take That Away From Me,” “All Of You,” “Old Devil Moon” and other standards.

“I always tried to do good songs,” Bennett told Billboard in 2006. “When the whole rock ‘n’ roll change came in with Elvis Presley, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, I kept doing good songs. I just kept working. My ambition was never to go to No. 1, over the top bigger than anybody. If I’m sold out (in concert), and people want to come back 11 months later and see me again, I’m successful.”

In 2006, to celebrate his 80th birthday, his Duets: An American Classic featuring performances with Paul McCartney, Elton John, Barbra Streisand, Bono and others became his best-selling album in the Soundscan era, moving 1.95 million copies and peaking at No. 3.

Duets inspired the Rob Marshall-directed television special Tony Bennett: An American Classic, which aired on NBC in November 2006 and would go on to win seven Emmy Awards including Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Special and Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program.

When Duets II debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 charts in 2011, Bennett became the only artist at the age of 85 to have a chart-topping album. A documentary tied to Bennett’s 85th birthday, The Zen Of Bennett, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2012 .

Bennett received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001, Kennedy Center Honors in 2005 and a year later was named an NEA Jazz Master and received, a Citizen of the World award from the United Nations. The U.N. also commissioned him for two paintings, one for its 50th anniversary. Three of his paintings are part of the Smithsonian Museums’ permanent collections including his portrait of his Duke Ellington that became part of the National Portrait Gallery’s collection in 2009.

Bennett wrote four books: his autobiography The Good Life with Will Friedwald; Life is a Gift, What My Heart Has Seen and Tony Bennett in the Studio: A Life in Art & Music with Robert Sullivan.

Bennett, who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the historic Selma, Ala., march in 1965, raised millions of dollars for the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation and donated his paintings annually for use as American Cancer Society’s annual holiday greeting card.

In 1999, Bennett and his wife Susan Benedetto founded Exploring the Arts to strengthen the role of the arts in public high school education and established the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Astoria in 2001.

Though Bennett was rarely seen in the years since his diagnosis, in January the singer congratulated his Love For Sale and Cheek to Cheek collaborator Gaga for her fourth Oscar nomination when the singer was given a nod for best original song for “Hold My Hand” from Top Gun: Maverick. “Congratulations to the amazingly talented @ladygaga on her 4th Oscar nomination!” Bennett tweeted. “Today, Lady Gaga makes history as the first artist to receive three nominations in the Best Original Song category at the #Oscars. So proud of you!”

Besides his wife Susan and son Danny, Bennett is survived by another son, Dae, and daughters Antonia and Joanna, as well as nine grandchildren.

[Gary]

Tony Bennett was on the first Hot 100 with 'Young And Warm and Wonderful' and during the Hot 100 era his highest charting single was 'I Wanna Be Around' (#14 in 1963)

However during the Pre-Hot 100 era - 3 #1's

from 1951
Because Of You (8 weeks)
Cold, Cold Heary (6 weeks)

From 1953
Rags to Riches (6 weeks)

[jdanton2]

Jul 21, 2023 8:27:18 GMT -5 Gary said:

Tony Bennett was on the first Hot 100 with 'Young And Warm and Wonderful' and during the Hot 100 era his highest charting single was 'I Wanna Be Around' (#14 in 1963)

However during the Pre-Hot 100 era - 3 #1's

from 1951
Because Of You (8 weeks)
Cold, Cold Heary (6 weeks)

From 1953
Rags to Riches (6 weeks)

Tony was the last of the artists that reached #1 in the pre rock era . he had a long career.

[garrettlen]

Was he the last of the old time crooners or are there any others still around? Does Bobby Vinton count?

[Gary]

www.thewrap.com/sinead-oconnor-irish-singer-dies-at-56-obit/

[Gary]

[neel]

Jul 26, 2023 13:41:59 GMT -5 Gary said:

My god, so many singers are just straight up dropping like files. It’s unreal.

[KeepDeanWeird]

Wow. Sinead's passing truly an absolute tragedy - far too young. Unbelievably gifted, but suffered through a tremendous amount of challenging times. Hope she's finally at peace.

[Gary]

Forever No. 1: Sinead O’Connor’s ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’
O'Connor's lone No. 1 made for a singular pop culture moment -- but one the singer-songwriter had no interest in repeating.


By Andrew Unterberger

07/27/2023


Forever No. 1 is a Billboard series that pays special tribute to the recently deceased artists who achieved the highest honor our charts have to offer — a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single — by taking an extended look back at the chart-topping songs that made them part of this exclusive club. Here, we honor the late Sinead O’Connor with a look back at her lone No. 1: “Nothing Compares 2 U,” a timeless pop peak at the center of one of the most unusual before-and-after careers in popular music history.


Plenty of artists — plenty of great artists, even — have only one major Billboard Hot 100 hit over the course of their careers. But few, if any, one-hit-wonder stories have ever gone quite like Sinead O’Connor and “Nothing Compares 2 U.” After becoming a critic’s darling and college radio fixture at the end of the ’80s, she pole-vaulted into the top 40 with “Compares,” a Prince-penned cover that was both unanimously acclaimed and overwhelmingly popular, showcasing the enormity of O’Connor’s talent while not being particularly representative of her sound or artistry. And then, just as quickly and spectacularly as she entered the mainstream, she exited it, with a series of creative, personal and political decisions that all but ensured she would never score a hit anywhere near that size again.

While “Compares” bears an unfortunately outsized proportion of the public’s memory of the extraordinary O’Connor today, it also remains one of the most brilliant musical moments of the early ’90s — a song that stands alone, both within her catalog and within all popular music, as without obvious peer or precedent. The number of “greatest” lists it can claim a rightful place on is significant: greatest ’90s songs, greatest covers, greatest breakup songs, greatest music videos. And yet, the fact that O’Connor (who died on Wednesday at age 56) never matched it again — never even tried to — is ultimately more blessing than curse, allowing a singular artist who was never meant for compromise to continue to operate her career (and life) outside of the trappings of the unlikely pop stardom that “Compares” brought her in 1990.


“Nothing Compares 2 U” was written and first demoed by Prince in 1984 — busy year for the man — and inspired, according to his longtime engineer Susan Rogers, by the departure of his housekeeper Sandy Scipioni. (The fact that the seemingly despairing love song was actually inspired by a non-romantic relationship was “probably why he felt comfortable giving the song away,” Rogers theorized.) Give the song away he did, as the first version appeared as an album cut on the 1985 self-titled debut of The Family, a Prince-formed outfit spawned from the splintering of his prior collaborators The Time. The song was suggested to O’Connor as a cover possibility by Fachtna O’Ceallaigh, her friend and manager who she had also been dating. (O’Connor’s relationship with Prince himself was contentious, and in her 2021 memoirs Remberings, she accused him of behaving violently during their one meeting; the Nelson estate would later block usage of her version of the song in the 2022 Nothing Compares documentary about O’Connor.)

O’Ceallaigh and O’Connor’s romantic relationship was disintegrating around the recording of “Compares,” which many involved credit as the reason her vocal take on the song comes off as so raw and visceral. (“She came into the studio, did it in one take, double-tracked it straight away and it was perfect because she was totally into the song,” engineer Chris Birkett told Sound on Sound. “It mirrored her situation.”) The combination of O’Connor’s alternately mighty and fragile delivery and Prince’s typically vivid and right-brained songwriting made the song indelible from its sighing opening lines — “It’s been seven hours and fifteen days/ Since you took your love away” — and pierces through with the unpredictable bends O’Connor’s vocal takes it through on each verse (“I can eat my dinner in a fancy REST-AU-RAAAAANT,” “I went to the doctor, and guess what he told me, GUESS what he told me”).

It helped O’Connor’s version that The Family’s left clear room for improvement. The arrangement of the original was both too sparse and too busy, lacking in drums and guitars, but still smothered by claustrophobic-sounding keyboards and over-pronounced “oh-oh-oh-oh” backing vocals. And that version’s chorus arrives like an anti-climax: just the title sung twice, without much adornment. With help from Soul II Soul maestro Nelle Hooper, O’Connor’s version instead gets a sturdy but unobtrusive drum shuffle to anchor it, turns down the “ah-ah-ah-ah” backing vocals to a gentle exhale, and smooths the blanketing synths into a soft pillow for her to cry on. And O’Connor’s vocal adds punctuation to a hook that badly needs it: she spikes the final syllable of her second “no-THING!” insistence, and chokes out a rushed “…to you….” like she can feel the knife twist in her heart as she says it.

It also helped, at least in a commercial sense, that the start of the ’90s was essentially ballad-central times for pop music on top 40 radio. The year started off with back-to-back ballads at No. 1 — Phil Collins’ “Another Day in Paradise” and Michael Bolton’s “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You” — and racked up double-digits’ worth by year’s end: Taylor Dayne’s “Love Will Lead You Back,” Mariah Carey’s “Vision of Love” (and “Love Takes Time”), Roxette’s “It Must Have Been Love,” the list goes on and on. “Compares” in particular built from the success of two No. 1 ballads from the end of the ’80s: George Michael’s “One More Try,” whose opening synth washes are a near-dead ringer for “Compares,” and Martika’s “Toy Soldiers,” another moody slow song with booming drums and a volatile vocal — sung by another ’90s Prince collaborator, no less. (Top 40 was also becoming increasingly hospitable to crossover hits by artists from the alt world, as demonstrated by major pop crossovers scored in the prior few years by U2, R.E.M., The B-52’s and The Cure.)

But what really put O’Connor’s “Compares” over the top, both artistically and commercially, was the accompanying video, directed by John Maybury as a sort of impressionistic painting come to life. In it, shots of a hazy Parc de Saint-Cloud are cut with uncomfortably close close-ups of a lip-syncing O’Connor, looking almost like a disembodied head in her black turtleneck, filmed against a dark backdrop. The entire thing feels like a painful, distant memory — and O’Connor makes the hurt particularly palpable in the third verse, when her eyes begin to well up, with tears streaming down her face by the start of the final chorus. (She’s since explained that the tears were genuine — inspired not by any breakup-related memories, but thoughts of her then-recently passed mother, brought about by the “all the flowers that you planted, Mama, in the backyard/ all died when you went away” lyric — and watching, they certainly felt it.)

The combination of top 40 readiness and instant MTV iconicity made “Nothing Compares 2 U” a quickly undeniable sensation. The song debuted on the Hot 100 at No. 63 in March of 1990, and five weeks later, it replaced Tommy Page’s “I’ll Be Your Everything” (another ballad, natch) atop the Hot 100 dated April 21 — a jaw-droppingly rapid ascent for the time period, especially for an artist with no prior history on the chart. It stayed on top for four weeks, tied with “Vision of Love” and Stevie B’s “Because I Love You (The Postman Song)” for the longest-running No. 1 of the year, before being replaced by Madonna’s “Vogue” (a rare club-friendly No. 1 for the year). “Compares” would make history at that year’s MTV Video Music Awards, becoming the first video from a female artist to win video of the year, and was also nominated for record of the year at the 1991 Grammys, losing to “Another Day in Paradise.”

In the meantime, the song’s parent album — I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, O’Connor’s second LP — also topped the Billboard 200 albums chart, staying there for six weeks. But while the album was a stunning collection of protest songs, personal statements, relationship dissections and, well, “Compares,” there wasn’t a particularly obvious choice for a follow-up single. That was well-evidenced by the song her Chrysalis label ultimately went with: “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” an up-tempo number about O’Connor’s frustrations over being told what to do by family, friends and interested business partners after becoming a young mother and young industry sensation at nearly the same time. It had a fun groove and clever lyrics, but it also had difficult subject matter, no proper chorus, and a title that didn’t show up until the very last line of the song. Unsurprisingly, it stalled at No. 60 on the Hot 100.


More surprising was that she would never visit the chart again in her lifetime. Her discomfort at being part of the mainstream was quickly clear; in August of 1990, she refused to play a concert at New Jersey’s Garden State Arts Center if the venue followed its tradition of playing the National Anthem before shows; local backlash was immediate and Jersey icon Frank Sinatra threatened to “kick her in the ass.” The next year, she would refuse the Grammy she won for Haven’t Got — the first-ever Grammy for best alternative music album — while decrying the “false and destructive materialistic values” within the industry that she felt the ceremonies helped promote. Most famously, in 1992, she ripped up a picture of Pope John Paul II live on Saturday Night Live, stating “fight the real enemy” — a message she later clarified to be in protest of his purposeful ignorance regarding sexual abuse in the church. While such protests would likely receive support as well as backlash now, in the early ’90s O’Connor ended up getting it from both sides, targeted by the right as a heretic and agitator and mocked by the left as a kook.

O’Connor’s musical output was hardly any more likely to steady her stardom: In 1992, weeks before the SNL protest, she released Am I Not Your Girl?, a covers album of jazz and vocal pop and country standards, released at the height of grunge, R&B and house music. Compounded by her off-court controversies, the album underperformed, peaking at No. 27 on the Billboard 200 and spawning only minor alternative radio hit singles. She continued recording throughout the ’90s — returning to the top five on her Ireland home country’s singles chart with her 1994 Gavin Friday collab for the In the Name of the Father soundtrack, “You Made Me the Thief of Your Heart” — and remained productive in the ’00s, releasing four studio albums. But her time in the mainstream was over.

This was a loss that O’Connor cried no tears for, however. “I feel that having a No. 1 record derailed my career,” she wrote in her 2021 memoir, Rememberings, “and my tearing the photo put me back on the right track.” As she continued to record and perform up until the early 2020s, she believed that those who thought her career had gone off the rails in the early ’90s were focusing on the wrong track altogether: “They’re talking about the career they had in mind for me,” she told The Guardian that same year. “I f–ked up the house in Antigua that the record company dudes wanted to buy. I f–ked up their career, not mine.”

And though her relationship with the song that did “derail” her career has seen its bumps — she stopped performing it for a few years in the 2010s, explaining that she’d lost any emotional connection to it — and the hurt between her and the Purple One never healed, she always held tight onto her signature hit: “As far as I’m concerned,” she told the New York Times in 2021, “it’s my song.” It always will be.

[Gary]

The ‘Paul’ of 1960s Pop Duo ‘Paul & Paula,’ Ray Hildebrand, Dies at 82
Story by Chris Willman •
17h


Ray Hildebrand, who topped the pop charts in the 1960s as half of the duo Paul & Paula, died Friday in Kansas City at age 82. No cause of death has been given.

Paul & Paula reached No. 1 in 1963 with the breakout smash “Hey Paula,” written by Hildebrand himself and performed in collaboration with duet partner Jill Jackson under their mutual nom de plume. The song was released in 1962 and reached the peak of two Billboard charts — the Hot 100 and the Hot R&B Singles chart — in February of the following year.

Their run of success was a short one, as all four of the songs Paul & Paula pushed into the Hot 100 landed there during the calendar year 1963. The follow-up to “Hey Paula,” “Young Lovers,” was their only other top 10 hit, reaching No. 6. They released three albums, in total, all over a compact eight-month period in 1963.

The duo, were partners only in music, not romance; Jackson was the niece of the man who ran the boarding house where Hildebrand lived as a college student. They went their separate ways in 1965, but sporadically released further singles as late as 1970, and occasionally re-teamed at oldies shows or special events into the 21st century.

Hildebrand went on to have a different kind of career in the seminal days of contemporary Christian music, recording an album titled “He’s Everything to Me” in 1967 and songs including “Say I Do” and “Anybody Here Wanna Live Forever?” In the ’80s, he formed a CCM duo called Land & Hildebrand with Paul Land, doing faith-based comedy as well as music.


Born in Joshua, Texas in 1940, Hildebrand was attending Howard Payne College when he met Jackson. They initially dubbed themselves Ray & Jill, sensibly enough. But the name change became inevitable after they recorded Hildebrand’s composition “Hey Paula” and it began to take off. He had been inspired to write it by a friend whose fiancee’s name was Paula.

“Hey Paula” spent the entire month of February 1963 at No. 1 on the Hot 100. They soon joined Dick Clark’s Caravan of Stars tour.

Aside from their smash hit, the duo’s catalog has not been extensively mined. None of the three albums they recorded for Philips — “Paul & Paula Sing for Young Lovers,” “We”ll Go Together” and the very good Christmas album “Holiday for Teens” — has ever officially been issued on CD in the U.S.

In 2012, the two singers reunited to hold hands and sing their hit at their former college, now called Howard Payne University (see video, below).

Hildebrand went on Ray Stevens’ cable show in 2021 to sing “Hey Paula,” joined by three female vocalists. The singer did not shy away from talking about the hit that established him; his website advertises a memoir titled “The Hey Paula Story.”

Hildebrand continued to express his Christian faith throughout his life. On his website, he wrote of his shift into gospel music, saying, “I was tired of chasing around the world after something that I wasn’t even sure that I wanted. I had recorded a hit album, but the royalties were slipping off. I couldn’t see devoting my life to dirty jokes and nightclubs. What for? That’s when I started reading the Bible again. I had been raised in a Christian family, but I had never really asked the real questions about life or my faith. That’s when I realized the Good Lord was trying to teach me something.”

Hildebrand was preceded in death by his wife, Judy Hendricks, whom he wed in 1964, and is survived by a daughter, Heidi Sterling, and son, Mike Hildebrand.

[Gary]

Forever No. 1: The Association’s “Cherish”
The choral pop classic -- the group's lone Hot 100 topper written by the late Terry Kirkman -- has a dark undercurrent. Think twice before you play it at your wedding.


By Paul Grein

09/25/2023

Forever No. 1 is a Billboard series that pays special tribute to the recently deceased artists who achieved the highest honor our charts have to offer — a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single — by taking an extended look back at the chart-topping songs that made them part of this exclusive club. Here, we honor the late Terry Kirkman by looking at the No. 1 hit he penned for ‘60s pop group The Association: the sweetly melodramatic ballad “Cherish.”

The Association’s “Cherish” was one of the prettiest pop songs of the 1960s, a choral pop classic that has long been a wedding reception staple. It made you swoon from the opening notes. But the song isn’t as simple as it first appears. Listen closely and you’ll learn that it’s a tale of an unrequited romantic obsession in which the protagonist finally blurts out “you are driving me out of my mind.”

“Cherish” is, in some ways, the 1960s equivalent of The Police’s “Every Breath You Take,” where some people hear a song of undying devotion and others hear a song about an unhealthy, stalker-like obsession. Songs can be more complex than they seem on the surface.

The Association was formed in Los Angeles in 1965, evolving out of a 13-piece folk/rock group, The Men, that was briefly the house band at the famed Troubadour club. The Association quickly veered toward polished, mainstream pop – its music is often called “sunshine pop.”

“Cherish” was written by the group’s Terry Kirkman, who died on Saturday (Sept. 23) at age 83. Kirkman also sang lead on the smash, which was the group’s follow-up to its breakthrough hit, “Along Comes Mary,” which reached the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 in July 1966. Russ Giguere sang harmony vocals on “Cherish.” Session musicians were called in to play on the instrumental track. They included Mike Deasy on guitar, Jerry Scheff on bass and Jim Troxel on drums. Curt Boettcher produced the single, which was released on Valiant Records.


The song demonstrated Kirkland’s love of intricate wordplay. Consider the opening lines of the first two verses: “Cherish is the word that I use to describe” and “Perish is the word that more than applies.”

Both the first and second verses have lines that are repeated three times with slight variations. In the first verse: “You don’t know how many times I’ve wished that I had told you/ You don’t know how many times I’ve wished that I could hold you/ You don’t know how many times I’ve wished that I could mold you…” In the second: “That I am not gonna be the one to share your dreams/That I am not gonna be the one to share your schemes/That I am not gonna be the one to share what seems…”

“Cherish” has two bridge sections, the second leading to a modulation in which the key rises a step. The lyrics in the bridge sections are melodramatic, as the protagonist comes to realize that his love is unlikely to be ever be returned. Many pop songs in this era had a similar life-or-death quality. Among them: The Righteous Brothers’ “(You’re My) Soul and Inspiration,” Vikki Carr’s “It Must Be Him” and Little Anthony & the Imperials’ “Goin’ Out of My Head” and “Hurt So Bad.”

The song ends with the phrase “cherish is the word,” over a sustained vibrato electric guitar chord. The album version ran 3:27, but the single was trimmed for time because program directors of the era were skittish about playing a song that went much past the three-minute mark. (One of the repetitions of “And I do cherish you” near the end was removed.) The label copy on the single listed its running time as 3:00, but that was just an attempt to fool the PDs: The single actually ran 3:12.

Writing about the song in his Number Ones column in Stereogum in 2018, Tom Breihan knocked the song, hard, calling it “the moment that [The Association] dissolved into absolute fluff.

“There are things about “Cherish” that should be good — things that look nice on paper,” Breihan observed. “The Association were singing in lush, Beach Boys-esque harmonies, and they were doing it over intricately layered guitars and banjos and horns. But ‘Cherish’ is a bloodless affair, a sickly-sweet melody backing up a somewhat creepy lyric about fixating too hard on a girl. The narrator of ‘Cherish’ … [is] talking about her from afar, and he knows that he’ll never get a shot from her. So there’s some bitterness in the way he talks about her: ‘I want you / Just like a thousand other guys / Who’d say they loved you / [With] all the rest of their lies.’ Easy there, bud.”

Breihan makes some good points. The protagonist is fixating too hard on this girl. And his feelings are complicated, with some bitterness seeping in. But people have been known to fixate and obsess and have unhealthy, unrequited feelings for the wrong people at the wrong time. While the song may on the surface appear to be a simple love song, it turns out it’s more than that. It’s about a surprisingly messy, complicated, f—ked up situation. That just might be to its credit.

“Cherish” was the second-highest new entry the Billboard Hot 100 in the week dated Aug. 27, 1966. It opened at No. 66, one rung behind The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby.” It sprinted to No. 1 in its fifth week on the Hot 100 (in the issue dated Sept. 24), dislodging The Supremes’ “You Can’t Hurry Love.” It held the top spot for three weeks, before it was dislodged by another all-time Motown classic, Four Tops’ “Reach Out I’ll Be There.” (Four Tops covered “Cherish” on their hit 1967 album Four Tops Reach Out.)

“Cherish” appeared on two albums by The Association that made the top five on the Billboard 200 – And Then…Along Comes The Association (No. 5 in November 1966) and Greatest Hits (No. 4 in February 1969).

In early 1967, the track received three Grammy nominations – best performance by a vocal group, best contemporary (R&R) recording and best contemporary (R&R) group performance – vocal or instrumental. (R&R stood for rock and roll, which “Cherish” most decidedly wasn’t, though it had a contemporary pop sound, which was close enough for the Recording Academy at that time.) It didn’t win any of the awards, which went to (respectively), the Anita Kerr Singers’ “A Man and a Woman,” New Vaudeville Band’s “Winchester Cathedral” and The Mamas & the Papas’ “Monday, Monday.” The latter two titles were also No. 1 hits on the Hot 100.


The Association returned to the No. 1 spot in July 1967 with the breezy “Windy” (which was written by Ruthann Friedman, who was just 22 when her one and only hit was released). “Windy” truly was “sunshine pop.” The group just missed landing a third No. 1 in October 1967 when “Never My Love” peaked at No. 2 for two weeks. (Now, that one would be perfect for wedding receptions.)

Kirkland went on to write three more Hot 100 hits for The Association – “Everything That Touches You” (which became the group’s fifth and final top 10 hit in 1968), “Requiem for the Masses” and “Six Man Band.” Kirkland departed the group in 1972 and returned when the band reunited in 1979, before leaving again in 1984.


David Cassidy covered “Cherish” in 1971 as his first solo single apart from The Partridge Family. His version, produced by Wes Farrell, reached No. 9 on the Hot 100. Other artists to have covered the song include Dizzy Gillespie, The Lettermen, Nina Simone, Ed Ames, Petula Clark, Carla Thomas and Kenny Rogers & The First Edition.

The song has been revived in recent decades on the soundtrack to Fried Green Tomatoes (where it was performed in new jack swing style by Jodeci); Glee (where it was paired with a Madonna song with the same title); Barry Manilow’s The Greatest Songs of the Sixties (where it was performed in a medley with “Windy”); Rita Wilson’s AM/FM, a collection of some of her favorite songs, mostly from the 1960s and ’70s; and Pat Metheny’s What’s It All About, the 2011 Grammy winner for best new age album.

The Association’s smash has been featured on the TV shows The Wonder Years, The Nanny, The Simpsons, Crossing Jordan and Six Feet Under and in the films The Sweetest Thing and He’s Just Not That Into You. It also titled the 2002 dark comedy Cherish, starring Robin Tunney as a young pop obsessive with a stalker.

The potency of “Cherish” as a title had already been confirmed in the 1980s, when two different songs with the that title reached No. 2 on the Hot 100 – one by Kool & the Gang and the other by Madonna. Madonna even gave a little nod to The Association’s prior hit with the line, “Cherish is the word I use to remind me of your love.”

“Cherish” may not be the best song to play at a wedding reception – though many have tried – but it remains a pretty and impactful record, with gorgeous harmonies and a cleverly constructed lyric about a situation that, alas, just about everyone goes through at some point in their life.

[Gary]

Kool & the Gang Drummer George Brown Dies at 74
The band co-founder helped write such classics as "Celebration," "Ladies Night" and "Jungle Boogie."


By The Hollywood Reporter
11/17/2023

George Brown, the drummer who gave Kool & the Gang its propulsive, infection beats, died Thursday (Nov. 17) after a battle with cancer, a Universal Music Enterprises spokesperson announced. He was 74.

Brown — whose nickname was “Funky” — was one of seven school friends from Jersey City, New Jersey, who came together in 1964 as an instrumental-only jazz and soul group calling itself the Jazziacs. Other members included Robert “Kool” Bell on bass, brother Ronald Bell on keyboards and Charles Smith on guitar.

The band went through several name changes, including the New Dimensions, the Soul Town Band and Kool & the Flames before settling on Kool & the Gang, the name that would become famous worldwide, in 1969. They signed to De-Lite records and released their first LP, the all-instrumental Kool and the Gang, in 1970. By 1973, they incorporated emerging disco trends in its sound, cracking the U.S. Top 10 with “Jungle Boogie” in 1973 and “Hollywood Swinging” in 1974.

After a period of decline, they roared back in 1979 with top-10 hits “Ladies Night” and “Too Hot” and the following year reached No. 1 — their only song to top the chart — with “Celebration.” Other hits include “Get Down on It,” “Fresh,” “Cherish” and “Joanna.”

The band has won two Grammys and seven American Music Awards and registered 31 gold and platinum albums to date. Brown’s signature drumming on the early Kool & the Gang recordings has been heavily sampled by such artists as the Beastie Boys, Jay-Z, Madonna, Janet Jackson, Cypress Hill, P. Diddy and The Killers.

When asked to describe his music, Brown — who released a memoir this year titled Too Hot: Kool & the Gang and Me — always replied, “It’s the sound of happiness.”

Brown is survived by his wife, Hanh, and children Dorian, Jorge, Gregory, Jordan, Clarence and Aaron. Donations can be made in his honor to the Lung Cancer Foundation of America.

This article was written by Seth Abramovitch and originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.

[Gary]

Denny Laine, founding mul McCartney's Wings, dead at 79




NEW YORK (AP) — Denny Laine, a British singer, songwriter and guitarist who performed in an early, pop-oriented version of the Moody Blues and was later Paul McCartney's longtime sideman in the ex-Beatle's solo band Wings, has died at age 79.

Laine, inducted five years ago into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Moody Blues, died Tuesday in Naples, Florida. The cause was interstitial lung disease, according to an announcement on Laine's Instagram page by his wife, Elizabeth Hines.

His death comes almost exactly 50 years after the release of McCartney's acclaimed “Band On the Run” album, on which Laine played guitar and provided backing vocals. On Tuesday, McCartney posted a tribute to Laine on Instagram, calling him a “great talent with a fine sense of humor.”
“We had drifted apart but in recent years managed to reestablish our friendship and share memories of our times together,” McCartney wrote.

Laine was born Brian Frederick Arthur Hines, and changed his professional name in his early teens, in part in homage to the singer Frankie Laine.

In 1964, around the time he turned 20, he joined Ray Thomas and Mike Pinder in forming the Moody Blues and sang lead on the group's breakthrough hit, “Go Now.” But the Moody Blues struggled to match their initial success, and by 1967 Laine had left, replaced by Justin Hayward. The Moody Blues then turned to the ambitious, classically influenced sounds of “Nights in White Satin" and other songs.

Laine worked as a solo artist and with such group's as Electric String Band and Ginger Baker's Air Force before he was brought into Wings by McCartney, whom he had known during his time with the Moody Blues.

Founded in 1971, the year after the Beatles broke up, Wings went through various personnel changes over the following decade, with Laine, McCartney and McCartney's wife, Linda. the only ones remaining throughout. The band's No. 1 singles, most of them written by McCartney, included “My Love,” “Listen to What the Man Said” and the title track to “Band On the Run.” Laine helped write the million-selling “Mull of Kintyre.”

McCartney disbanded Wings soon after Laine left in the early 1980s, but Laine contributed to McCartney's “Tug of War” and “Pipes of Peace” albums and added backing vocals to "All Those Years Ago," George Harrison's tribute to the late John Lennon.

Laine continued to tour and record in recent years, his albums including “The Blue Musician.”

[Gary]

David Soul death: Singer and Starsky & Hutch actor dies, aged 80
Maanya Sachdeva
Fri, January 5, 2024 at 8:46 AM CST·1 min read


David Soul, the musician who appeared in TV series Starsky & Hutch, has died, aged 80.

Soul’s wife Helen Snell confirmed the news in a statement on Friday 5 January, writing that he had died following a “valiant battle for life” while surrounded by his loving family.

The statement read: “David Soul – beloved husband, father, grandfather and brother – died yesterday (4 January) after a valiant battle for life in the loving company of family.

“He shared many extraordinary gifts in the world as actor, singer, storyteller, creative artist and dear friend.

“His smile, laughter and passion for life will be remembered by the many whose lives he has touched.”

The US-born TV star was best known for his role in the crime show, playing Detective Kenneth “Hutch” Hutchinson from 1975 to 1979.

Soul, who starred opposite Paul Michael Glaser as Detective Dave Starsky in the 1970s US TV series, was also known for his roles in Here Come The Brides, Magnum Force, and The Yellow Rose.

He and Glaser reprised their roles in the 2004 remake Starsky & Hutch, starring Ben Stiller as Starsky and Owen Wilson as Hutch.

He also enjoyed success as a singer, earning hits with songs including “Don’t Give Up on Us“ and “Silver Lady“, which went to No 1 in the UK charts.

[Gary]

[Gary]

April 16, 1977 - Top 10

This Week Last Week Two Weeks Ago Weeks Title, Artist peak
1 2 3 12 Don't Give Up On Us, David Soul 1
2 3 4 18 Don't Leave Me This Way, Thelma Houston 2
3 5 6 10 Southern Nights, Glen Campbell 3
4 7 8 8 Hotel California, Eagles 4
5 6 7 15 The Things We Do For Love, 10cc 5
6 1 2 19 Dancing Queen, Abba 1
7 8 9 12 I've Got Love On My Mind, Natalie Cole 7
8 9 5 19 Love Theme From "A Star Is Born" (Evergreen), Barbra Streisand 1
9 10 12 12 So In To You, Atlanta Rhythm Section 9
10 4 1 13 Rich Girl, Daryl Hall & John Oates 1

[Gary]

Mary Weiss, Lead Singer of Sixties Girl Group the Shangri-Las, Dead at 75
www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/mary-weiss-lead-singer-of-the-shangri-las-dead-at-75/ar-BB1gYAiq

Her death was confirmed to Rolling Stone on Friday by Miriam Linna of Norton Records label, which released the singer's only solo album Dangerous Game, in 2007. "Mary was an icon, a hero, a heroine, to both young men and women of my generation and of all generations," Linna said.

The Instagram account for Ronnie Spector, who co-founded girl group the Ronettes and died in January 2022, shared a tribute following news of Weiss' death. "We are deeply saddened to hear the news of Mary Weiss' passing," read the caption alongside a black-and-white photo of Weiss. "She and Ronnie were kindred spirits; two fearless bad girls of the 60s. Join us as we spin the Shangri-Las in her honor."
In a separate post, pop singer Sky Ferreira wrote, "Mary Weiss forever inspiration."


Growing up in Queens, Weiss and her sister Elizabeth "Betty" Weiss joined twins Marguerite "Marge" Ganser and Mary Ann Ganser. Together, the quartet performed at local talent shows and were introduced to producer George "Shadow" Morton in 1964. After calling in some favors, the group recorded their first demo, "Remember (Walking in the Sand)."

The Shangri-Las encapsulated the height of the early-Sixties trend for teen tragedies, with the girls documenting their melodramas with songs such as "Give Him a Great Big Kiss" and 1964's "Leader of the Pack" - a track that went on to become a Number One hit that year. In 2021, Rolling Stone included the track in its list of 500 Greatest Songs of All Time at number 316.

When speaking to Rolling Stone in a 2007 interview after four decades out of the public eye, Weiss looked back on stories from her past, including the time James Brown booked her for a Texas show. "When I walked out onstage, I thought he was going to have a coronary," she said. "He didn't realize I was white."

She also recalled how the girl group disbanded in 1968 amid legal issues. "When we started, it was all about music," Weiss said. "By the time it ended, it was all about litigation." Due to legal complications, Weiss was unable to record for 10 years. "My morn signed some really bad contracts," she added.

Although the artist moved to San Francisco after the group split, she eventually returned to New York, landing a role at an architecture firm working on commercial interiors.

Her comeback arrived in 2007 following a chance run-in with Billy Miller, head of the Brooklyn indie label Norton, that led to her final solo album. "Initially I didn't know how I'd feel about recording again," Weiss told Rolling Stone. "But when I walked back into the studio, I felt like I was home."

[Gary]

Forever No. 1: David Soul’s ‘Don’t Give Up on Us’
The soft-rock ballad helped cement Soul's mid-'70s cross-platform stardom, but didn't necessarily fit in with his loftier musical inspirations.


By Andrew Unterberger

01/23/2024
Colin Davey/Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Forever No. 1 is a Billboard series that pays special tribute to the recently deceased artists who achieved the highest honor our charts have to offer — a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single — by taking an extended look back at the chart-topping songs that made them part of this exclusive club. Here, we honor the late David Soul by looking at the TV star’s lone major U.S. hit as a recording artist: The ’70s soft-rock ballad “Don’t Give Up on Us.”

“My name is David Soul and I want to be known for my music.”

The mid-to-late ’70s were a peak period for television’s impact on the Billboard charts. With primetime TV modernizing and diversifying under the influence of innovators like Norman Lear and Aaron Spelling, the biggest shows were crossing over into all parts of popular culture, with theme songs for such hit shows as Happy Days, Welcome Back Kotter and S.W.A.T. all becoming Billboard Hot 100 smashes. What’s more, the stars of the shows themselves were starting to launch pop careers: John Travolta, then best known as Kotter high-school lunk Vinnie Barbarino, had a top 10 single in 1976 with the soft ballad “Let Her In”; a few years later, actor David Naughton reached the top 5 with the discofied title theme to his starring vehicle Makin’ It.

David Soul, star of hit ’70s undercover-cop show Starsky & Hutch — he was Hutch — also benefited from the TV-pop boom of the times. But unlike the aforementioned actor-artists, Soul’s recording career wasn’t just some dalliance or cash-in on a popularity that had simply grown too big for a single medium: He had actually started out as a musician. Soul went the folkie route in the Midwest in the mid-’60s before trying to make it in New York by performing masked and billing himself as “The Covered Man,” finding some success as a guest on variety shows like The Merv Griffin Show, where he would regularly deliver that line up top about wanting to be recognized for his music. Once he revealed himself to be a handsome, blond young man, the novelty of his anonymous routine wore off — but he started attracting the attention of producers in film and TV, who cast him in small guest roles on Flipper, Star Trek, The Streets of San Francisco and more big shows of the late ’60s and ’70s.

His big break came with Starsky & Hutch in 1975, as the action drama won viewers over with its cool cars, hip style (at least by mid-’70s TV standards) and likeable characters. With the show a success and Soul a primetime heartthrob, he saw the opportunity to relaunch his music career — signing to Private Stock records, with promises that he’d be taken seriously as a musician. In 1976, he released his self-titled debut album, and in early 1977, its breakout ballad “Don’t Give Up on Us” started climbing the Hot 100, becoming Soul’s first hit single.

[Gary]

Melanie, ‘Brand New Key’ Folk Singer Who Played Woodstock, Dead at 76
Daniel Kreps
Wed, January 24, 2024 at 4:51 PM CST·3 min read
34

Melanie, the chart-topping folk singer of “Brand New Key” and “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)” who performed at the Woodstock festival in 1969, died on Tuesday. She was 76.

Billy James, the singer’s rep, confirmed her death to Rolling Stone, but did not provide a cause of death. “We are heartbroken, but want to thank each and every one of you for the affection you have for our Mother, and to tell you that she loved all of you so much!,” the children of the singer born Melania Safka wrote in a statement.

More from Rolling Stone

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Marlena Shaw, Oft-Sampled 'California Soul' Singer, Dead at 81

Joyce Randolph, Last Surviving Cast Member of 'The Honeymooners,' Dead at 99

“She was one of the most talented, strong and passionate women of the era and every word she wrote, every note she sang reflected that,” the statement continued. “Our world is much dimmer, the colors of a dreary, rainy Tennessee pale with her absence today, but we know that she is still here, smiling down on all of us, on all of you, from the stars.”

Born on Feb. 3, 1947 in Astoria, New York, Melanie studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and was influenced by both the folk scene of the day and the music of Edith Piaf, Kurt & Weill, Blossom Dearie, and her own mother Polly, a jazz singer.

Less than a year after the Queens-born artist released her 1968 debut album Born to Be with Buddah Records, Melanie found herself onstage in front of hundreds of thousands of people at Woodstock.

“I had never performed in front of so many people in my life. I was just thrown into it, and I had my first out-of-body experience. I was terrified, I had to leave. I started walking across that bridge to the stage, and I just left my body, going to a side, higher view. I watched myself walk onto the stage, sit down and sing a couple of lines. And when I felt it was safe, I came back,” Melanie told Rolling Stone in 1989 of the experience.

“It started to rain right before I went on,” she added. “Ravi Shankar had just finished up his performance, and the announcer said that if you lit candles, it would help to keep the rain away. By the time I finished my set, the whole hillside was a mass of little flickering lights. I guess that’s one of the reasons I came back to my body.”


The Woodstock performance would soon inspire Melanie’s Top 10 single “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain),” recorded with the Edwin Hawkins Singers. The hit song was followed by the release of “Peace Will Come,” “What Have They Done to My Song Ma,” “The Nickel Song,” and a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Ruby Tuesday.”

Melanie would go on to found Neighborhood Records, the first female-owned independent label in rock history, according to her reps. “Brand New Key,” her first track for Neighborhood, topped charts across the world including the U.S., Canada, and Australia.


Melanie remained an independent artist throughout much of her career, releasing Ballroom Streets (1978), Arabesque (1982), Am I Real Or What (1985), Precious Cargo (1991), Old Bitch Warrior (1995), and Ever Since You Never Heard Of Me (2010).

In early January, per her label, Melanie recorded a cover of Morrissey’s “Ouija Board Ouija Board” for an upcoming tribute album. (Morrissey previously covered Melanie’s “Some Say (I Got Devil)” from her 1971 album Gather Me.) She had also recorded a rendition of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt” for a planned compilation of covers Second Hand Smoke, which would have marked her 32nd studio album.

Covers of Radiohead’s “Creep,” the Moody Blues’ “Nights In White Satin,” Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy The Silence,” and David Bowie’s “Everyone Says Hi” were also among the songs scheduled to feature on the record.

[Gary]

Forever No. 1: The Shangri-Las’ ‘Leader of the Pack’
The mid-'60s girl-group No. 1 was an absolute miracle of girl-group theater-pop.


By Andrew Unterberger

01/25/2024

Forever No. 1 is a Billboard series that pays special tribute to the recently deceased artists who achieved the highest honor our charts have to offer — a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single — by taking an extended look back at the chart-topping songs that made them part of this exclusive club. Here, we honor the late Shangri-Las frontwoman Mary Weiss by looking at their lone No. 1 as a group: the spellbinding tragi-pop classic “Leader of the Park.”

By the time “Leader of the Pack” hit No. 1 in late 1964, the first golden age of girl-group pop was already nearing its end. Groups like The Shirelles, The Angels and The Orlons had seen the hits dry up, while super-producer Phil Spector — who had set much of the sonic and structural template for the era with outfits like The Crystals and The Ronettes — was enjoying his final hits with the latter trio before turning his attention to The Righteous Brothers and Ike & Tina Turner. The Supremes would dominate throughout the ’60s, and their Motown labelmates Martha & The Vandellas and The Marvelettes were able to successfully evolve their sound to the changing era, but they were increasingly the exceptions to the rule. The Beatles were in the midst of modernizing the music world, scoring six Hot 100-toppers in ’64 alone, and the Brill Building pop production model that powered most of the girl group era suddenly didn’t seem quite so fresh.

What was fresh, though, was The Shangri-Las. Making their name with a street-tougher image and more emotionally complex songs than the glammed-out girl groups of the early decade, the quartet fit in just fine with the British-invaded pop world of the mid-’60s — touring with rock hitmakers The Animals and Vanilla Fudge and even performing with proto-punks The Sonics as their backing band. Betty Weiss sang lead on the group’s earliest songs, but she was soon eclipsed as frontwoman by younger sister Mary, whose more expressive and adaptable voice was better suited for the increasingly dramatic songs and rich productions given to the group by George “Shadow” Morton — who brought the Shangri-Las to Red Bird Records as teenagers and ultimately wrote and produced the majority of their hits. (Weiss died earlier this month at age 75.)

“Remember (Walkin’ in the Sand)” was first up for the group in the summer of ’64. Its mix of pounding piano chords, tempo switches, histrionically belted and tensely sung-spoken vocals, despairing lyrics and evocative sound effects proved a perfect introduction to the teenage mini-operas that would ultimately became their signature. It also made for one of the most striking pop singles of its era, as “Remember” peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100, establishing the group as stars. But it would turn out to just be the warm-up for the group’s biggest hit, and the one they remain most known for 60 years later: The tearjerking story song “Leader of the Pack,” a doomed wrong-side-of-the-tracks romance that ends with its titular rogue speeding off to his tragic death.


Tragedy was nothing new in the pop music of the time: So-called “death discs” had made for one of the most bankable top 40 themes of the turn of the ’60s, with smashes like Ray Peterson’s “Tell Laura I Love Her” and J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers’ “Last Kiss” hinging on such fatalities. The overwhelming majority of these hits were male-sung, however, and a girl group had yet to find major success with one. But with several such groups singing songs in praise of the misunderstood Bad Boy — The Crystals’ Hot 100-topping 1962 gem “He’s a Rebel” being the most obvious and popular example — it made perfect commercial sense to mix such a star-crossed lover ballad with a teen tragedy song, delivered from the girl-group perspective.

But “Leader of the Pack” really revved up the melodrama — somewhat literally, in the case of its recurring motorcycle-engine sound effects — from its opening seconds, with one of the most show-stopping intros in pop history. A single, thundering piano chord is repeatedly struck, as backing vocals hum elegiacally in the background, and intra-Las spoken dialogue introduce the song’s central narrative, first through side gossip (“Is she really going out with him?”) and then through direct questioning (“Betty, is that Jimmy’s ring you’re wearing?”). It establishes everything about the song’s tone and content before the first verse, and also makes it clear that despite its obvious influences, “Leader” doesn’t follow in the path of any pop song before it.

And yes, despite “Betty” being the name of the “Leader” narrator, it was in fact Mary singing lead on the single, and delivering one of the unforgettable vocal performances of ’60s pop. Just 15 years old at the time of recording, there was a rawness and unguardedness to her wailing vocal (“He stood there and asked me wuhhhhh-eyyyyeeee“) that even brilliant young pop peers like Ronnie Spector and Diana Ross were a little too polished for. That was by design, according to legendary songwriter Jeff Barry (who composed the song along with Morton and usual songwriting partner Ellie Greenwich), telling Fred Bronson for The Billboard Book of Number One Hits that he sat close to her while recording “Leader” to give her stability and allow her to “feel free to let it out emotionally.” He notes that her emotional connection to the song is audible on the final product: “She was crying, you can hear it on the record.”

It’s almost unfair to evaluate Weiss’ performance on “Leader” strictly in musical terms, since it was every bit as much a theatrical performance. The single was structured less like a pop song than a radio play — with the backing Las prodding the narrative along with further questioning (“What’cha mean when you say that he came from the wrong side of town?“) and bombastic sound effects providing the necessary punctuation to the story when needed. But it all pivoted on Weiss as its leading lady, torn between her parents and her Jimmy, selling the combined devastation of both young heartbreak and young loss. “I was asking her to be an actress, not just a singer,” Morton later said.

Of course, Weiss was helped in her star vehicle by having pro’s pros as screenwriters and director. Barry and Greenwich were among the most accomplished songwriters of their era (“Be My Baby,” “Doo Wah Diddy Diddy,” “Chapel of Love”), and they establish the teen-soap story and feelings of “Leader” with maximum lyrical efficiency: “They told me that he was bad/ But I knew that he was sad.” Meanwhile, the song’s melodic instincts are sharp enough that the song never feels too stagey for the top 40: Note how after Weiss spends the verse waxing nostalgic with long, over-drawn phrases and her Las classmates answer her with clipped, staccato responses, they all come together at the end of the refrain to punch in the title phrase with maximum sing-song clarity and impact.

And Morton’s production is what brings the whole song together. It clearly follows from Spector’s Wall of Sound pocket symphonies, but with the added stakes of “Leader,” the song’s sonics are heightened to near-operatic levels: drum thumps approximate loudly echoing heartbeats on the chorus, reverb-soaked, minor-key piano gives the feeling of an impending thunderstorm on the bridge, and the group is elevated to an angelic choir on the heavenly outro, singing the fallen Leader home. And of course, there’s that incessant motorcycle engine: one of the all-time on-record sound effects, as crucial to the song’s pop appeal as any of the more obviously melodic hooks, and also serving as a much-needed act break following each emotionally exhausting verse and refrain. Throw in an unsettlingly vivid crash scene on the bridge — complete with skidding sounds, chilling “LOOK OUT! LOOK OUT!” cries from the backing La’s, and (of course) a climactic key change — and “Leader” was very likely the most action-packed pop single ever released to that point.


Appropriately, “Leader of the Pack” was received like a late-season blockbuster. It debuted at No. 86 on the Hot 100 dated Oct. 10, 1964, and was No. 1 just seven weeks later, ending the four-week reign of the ascendant Supremes and their second Hot 100-topper “Baby Love.” It spent just one week on top, before being replaced by a very different sort of story song, Lorne Greene’s “Ringo.” The Shangri-Las would never return to the chart’s top spot again, but dizzying follow-up “Give Him a Great Big Kiss” reached No. 18, and 1965’s “I Can Never Go Home Anymore” returned them to the top 10, peaking at No. 6. Even several Shangri-Las singles that failed to reach the top 40, like 1965’s heart-rending “Out in the Streets” (No. 53) and 1966’s absolutely harrowing “Past, Present and Future” (No. 59) made huge impressions not just on fans of the time but future generations of pop listeners, playing a large part in the cult fandom the group inspires to this day.

Indeed, though the Shangri-Las would only be major hitmakers for a couple years, their influence would be widespread for many decades to come. Several key figures from the first generation of punk rockers in the ’70s would cite the Las as formative influences, with The Damned even borrowing the “Is she really going out with him?” intro from “Leader” — which would also title famed angry young rocker Joe Jackson’s breakthrough hit just a couple years later — on their debut single “New Rose.” Later noise-pop merchants like Sonic Youth and The Jesus and Mary Chain similarly found inspiration in the group’s edgy melodrama, and retro-minded 21st century pop stars like Amy Winehouse and Lana Del Rey venerated their fashion, attitude and still-shattering songs. And while the girl group would be less impactful on the top 40 of the late ’60s than it was in the decade’s first half, there would be additional golden ages to come, with the Shangri-Las enduring as one of the gold standards of the form. Despite being perhaps the defining “death disc” of them all, “Leader of the Pack” has proven thoroughly eternal.