Forever #1 - Tito Jackson (Jackson 5)

[Gary]

Forever No. 1: Olivia Newton-John’s ‘I Honestly Love You’
The first of her five Billboard Hot 100 No. 1s, "I Honestly Love You" showed Olivia Newton-John's early ability to elevate top 40 material.


By Annie Zaleski

08/9/2022

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 Olivia Newton-John, who died this week at age 73, by beginning with the first of her five Hot 100-topping gems: the more-complex-than-it-seems soft-rock standard “I Honestly Love You.”



Olivia Newton-John’s remarkable career endurance can be explained in part by how easily she shapeshifted between genres. Her hits weren’t easily pigeonholed, and she fearlessly evolved with the times and musical trends. Within the span of a decade, Newton-John dabbled in Broadway (1977’s “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina”), 1950s throwbacks (1978’s Grease soundtrack), frothy disco and pop fantasias (1980’s Xanadu), and keyboard-slicked new wave (1981’s “Physical,” 1983’s “Twist of Fate”). Incredibly, she found success in all of these modes.

Newton-John’s first Billboard Hot 100 No. 1, 1974’s “I Honestly Love You,” fittingly arrived as her star was simultaneously ascending in the country, soft rock and top 40 pop worlds. Appearing on her 1974 North America-released LP If You Love Me, Let Me Know, the song was indicative of Newton-John’s skill as an interpreter and ability to elevate manicured pop.

The success of “Honesty” didn’t come out of nowhere, as Newton-John had been working on building a career for years by this point. In 1966, after winning first place on an Australian TV talent show, she traveled to England and recorded the Jackie DeShannon-written “Till You Say You’ll Be Mine” for Decca Records. That song didn’t chart, although she then toured as a duo with her friend Pat Carroll and later became part of a fictional band called Toomorrow, to little fanfare.

Newton-John’s fortunes soon turned around, however, and she started seriously laying the groundwork for a U.S. pop chart-topper upon the release of her 1971 debut solo LP, If Not For You — mainly by locking down No. 1s at multiple other formats. In August 1971, she spent three weeks atop the Top 40 Easy Listening (now Adult Contemporary) chart with a cover of Bob Dylan’s “If Not For You.” Newton-John’s version hews much closer to George Harrison’s take from All Things Must Pass, with jaunty slide guitar high in the mix next to her optimistic warble. “If Not For You” was also her first song to make an appearance on the Hot 100, peaking at No. 25. Next, Newton-John landed a No. 1 album on the Hot Country LPs (now Top Country Albums) chart for two weeks in March 1974 with her second U.S. full-length, 1973’s Let Me Be There. The LP’s gospel-tinged, pedal steel-heavy title track was another big hit, reaching the top 10 on the Easy Listening and Hot Country Singles (now Hot Country Songs) charts in late 1973, and then topping out at No. 6 on the Hot 100 in early February 1974.


The crossover appeal of “Let Me Be There” was characteristic of the top 40 during this time. “Anything on Top 10; Bewildering Hit Mix,” screamed a Billboard headline on February 9, 1974, noting the top 10 that week comprised two “basically MOR records” by Barry White and Barbra Streisand as well as “four soul crossovers, two country crossovers and a patriotic spoken-word novelty.” After pointing out the “widely scattered direction of influences on mass listening habits,” the article observes that the songs in the top 10 shared one important common trait: “their strong traditional pop construction values, whether the record’s starting point is soul, country, MOR or rock.”

In other words, by early 1974, the pristine production and impeccable songcraft Newton-John had long favored was coming into fashion, at least commercially. This musical shift converged with Newton-John’s burgeoning career momentum, which started to accelerate during the first half of 1974. She won best country vocal performance at the Grammy Awards in March, and was England’s representative in the annual Eurovision Song Contest in April, tying for fourth. Prior to releasing “I Honestly Love You,” Newton-John earned what was then her biggest Hot 100 hit to date with another sparkling country-pop crossover gem, “If You Love Me (Let Me Know),” which peaked at No. 5.



“I Honestly Love You” was perhaps destined for pop success due to its sterling pedigree. The lush song was co-written by Jeff Barry — who also co-wrote girl group classics like “Then He Kissed Me,” “Be My Baby” and “Leader of the Pack” — and Peter Allen; the latter would go on to co-write Christopher Cross’ Hot 100-topping “Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do).” Alan Hawkshaw handled the song’s tasteful arrangement, which emphasized morose strings and downtrodden piano to convey melancholy.

However, “I Honestly Love You” is more clever than it appears to be on the surface. At first, the song seems to be about someone gathering up the courage to confess their love to someone else. Unfortunately, this causes awkwardness, because the confession is unwelcome: “I honestly love you/ You don’t have to answer/ I see it in your eyes.” In a twist, however, “I Honestly Love You” reinforces the theme of unrequited love and adds in some potential relationship drama; in fact, Newton-John reveals that both she and her crush object are with other people, meaning that they can never be together in this lifetime.

In the hands of a different ’70s soft rock artist, “I Honestly Love You” could be syrupy and cloying. However, Newton-John exudes warmth and nuance thanks to an empathetic and clear-eyed vocal delivery. At the song’s start, her voice is heavy-hearted, although she adds dynamic flourishes for effect – a whispering “I love you,” and strong, confident crescendos when she explains why she feels compelled to reveal her feelings (“And you shouldn’t blow the chance/ When you’ve got the chance to say/ I love you”). By the song’s end, however, her voice breaks with emotion and resignation.


“I Honestly Love You” reached No. 1 on October 5, 1974, in just its eighth week on the Hot 100, replacing Andy Kim’s “Rock Me Gently” and spending two weeks at the chart’s peak. Mainstream pop music was still skewing eclectic the week that “I Honestly Love You” reached this peak. Just below Newton-John’s song was Billy Preston’s jaunty strut “Nothing From Nothing” (No. 2) and Dionne Warwick and the Spinners’ soul classic “Then Came You” (No. 3). Later in the top 10 was Stevie Wonder’s funky “You Haven’t Done Nothin'” (No. 5), Lynyrd Skynyrd’s country-rock “Sweet Home Alabama” (No. 9) and Cheech & Chong’s novelty hit “Earache My Eye” (No. 10).

As it turns out, Newton-John’s performance and the tune’s airtight songcraft were a dynamic duo. If You Love Me, Let Me Know topped the Billboard 200 albums chart, her first LP to do so. “I Honestly Love You” also won record of the year and best pop vocal performance, female at the 17th Annual Grammy Awards in March 1975, but lost song of the year to Streisand’s “The Way We Were.” Newton-John consoled herself in a spectacular way: She earned another No. 1, as “Have You Never Been Mellow” topped the Hot 100 that same month.

But “I Honestly Love You” wouldn’t disappear from the charts for long. The song was reissued in November 1977 (backed by “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina”) and peaked at No. 48 on the Hot 100. Newton-John also re-recorded the song for her 1998 studio album Back with a Heart, with Babyface on backing vocals. this new version of “I Honestly Love You” put Newton-John back on the Billboard charts that had first embraced her a quarter-century before. The song reached No. 18 on the Adult Contemporary chart and No. 16 on the Country Music Sales chart and entered the Hot 100 for the third time, this time reaching No. 67, creating a beautiful full-circle moment for a song that could still transcend genre.

[Gary]

Lamont Dozier’s No. 1 Hot 100 Hits, From ‘Where Did Our Love Go’ to ‘Two Hearts’
The legend tallied 14 leaders as a writer and 13 as a producer.


By Gary Trust

08/9/2022

Lamont Dozier became a legendary force on the Billboard Hot 100, helping drive the domination of the Motown sound in the 1960s, scoring 14 No. 1 hits as a writer and 13 as a producer in his career.

As previously reported, Dozier, part of the acclaimed Holland-Dozier-Holland writing and production team, with brothers Brian and Eddie Holland, passed away at age 81, as confirmed Tuesday (Aug. 9).


Over the Hot 100’s 64-year history, Dozier has tallied the eighth-most No. 1s among producers and the 10th-most leaders among writers.

08/09/2022
Here’s a recap of all of Dozier’s Hot 100 No. 1s, which span nearly 25 years from 1964 through 1989. He co-wrote and co-produced all the titles below, except for Kim Wilde’s remake of “You Keep Me Hangin’ On,” which he didn’t produce. (Thanks to The Supremes’ and Wilde’s versions, the anthem is one of just nine compositions to top the Hot 100 by different artists.)

Lamont Dozier’s No. 1 Hot 100 Hits:

“Where Did Our Love Go,” The Supremes, beginning Aug. 22, 1964 (two weeks at No. 1)
“Baby Love,” The Supremes, Oct. 31, 1964 (four)
“Come See About Me,” The Supremes, Dec. 19, 1964 (two)
“Stop! In the Name of Love,” The Supremes, March 27, 1965 (two)
“Back in My Arms Again,” The Supremes , June 12, 1965 (one)
“I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch),” Four Tops, June 19, 1965 (two)
“I Hear a Symphony,” The Supremes, Nov. 20, 1965 (two)


“You Can’t Hurry Love,” The Supremes, Sept. 10, 1966 (two)
“Reach Out I’ll Be There,” Four Tops, Oct. 15, 1966 (two)
“You Keep Me Hangin’ On,” The Supremes, Nov. 19, 1966 (two)
“Love Is Here and Now You’re Gone,” The Supremes, March 11, 1967 (one)
“The Happening,” The Supremes, May 13, 1967 (one)
“You Keep Me Hangin’ On,” Kim Wilde, June 6, 1987 (one)
“Two Hearts,” Phil Collins, Jan. 21, 1989 (two)
“The songs had to be fast because they were for teenagers – otherwise it would have been more like something for your parents,” Dozier mused to The Guardian in 2001 of his and the Hollands’ trademark feel-good sound. “The emotion was still there, it was just under cover of the optimism that you got from the uptempo beat.”

Dozier also notched two top 40 Hot 100 hits as a recording artist, both in 1974: “Trying to Hold on to My Woman” (No. 15, that March) and “Fish Ain’t Bitin’ ” (No. 26, July).

Holland-Dozier-Holland were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1988 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame two years later. HDH received a trustees award from the Recording Academy in 1998. Dozier won the 1988 Grammy Award for best song written specifically for a motion picture or television for “Two Hearts” from Buster, which he co-wrote with Phil Collins. It was his only competitive Grammy Award.

Dozier continued to impact the Hot 100 from the ’90s on. In 1991, Debbie Gibson hit No. 26 with “Anything Is Possible,” the title-track first single from her third album which the pair co-wrote and co-produced. “I still cannot believe I got to make music with this true legend who we lost today,” Gibson posted in tribute on Twitter. “Send me those golden ideas from heaven Lamont, my new song angel!”

In 2010, the Glee Cast’s cover of “Stop! In the Name of Love” (in a medley with an update of En Vogue’s “Free Your Mind”) returned the classic to the Hot 100’s top 40, spending a week at No. 38.

In 2018, Holland-Dozier-Holland added another top 10 Hot 100 writing credit, via Lil Wayne’s No. 7-peaking “Uproar,” which interpolates the evergreen “You Keep Me Hangin’ On.”

[Gary]

Forever No. 1: John Travolta & Olivia Newton-John’s ‘You’re the One That I Want’
Newton-John's third Hot 100 No. 1 -- shared with her 'Grease' co-lead Travolta -- represented a shift in sound and image for the '70s superstar.


By Paul Grein

08/10/2022

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 Olivia Newton-John, who died this week at age 73, with a deep dive into the only one of her five No. 1s shared with a co-lead: “You’re the One That I Want,” her Grease duet with co-star John Travolta, which marked a major career pivot for the soft-rock superstar.



“You’re the One That I Want” was a game-changing single for Olivia Newton-John, just as it was a song of transformation for Sandy Olsson, the character she played in Grease.

Understanding the fine points of the plot of Grease is certainly not essential to enjoying this track, but for the few readers who have somehow managed not to see the film, here’s the set-up: Danny Zuko, played by John Travolta, has recently lettered in cross-country in an effort to win back his estranged girlfriend Sandy. Unbeknownst to him, Sandy has transformed into a hot biker chick to win back Danny. “You’re the One That I Want” is the moment when the prim-and-proper Sandy becomes va-va-va-voom sexy, with black spandex pants that seemed painted on and a cigarette dangling from her lips that she later stamps out with her red, open-toed stiletto mules.

The single also marked a bold style change for Newton-John, whose early country and pop hits were much tamer. It paved the way for a second run of hits – more rhythmic, more contemporary – including “A Little More Love,” “Deeper Than the Night,” “Make a Move on Me” and of course “Physical.” Before Grease, Newton-John was seen as an adult contemporary-leaning pop star, in the same lane with Helen Reddy and the Carpenters. After Grease, her peers were the top female artists of the late ’70s and early ’80s — Linda Ronstadt, Donna Summer, Barbra Streisand and Pat Benatar.

RSO Records saw in Grease the makings of another blockbuster soundtrack like Saturday Night Fever, which it had also released. (Travolta, of course, starred in both films.) RSO seemed to know it had a winner in “You’re the One That I Want.” “The ‘1’ You’ve Been Waiting For,” headlined a full-page ad that ran in the March 25 issue of Billboard.



Billboard made “You’re the One That I Want” the top singles pick in the following week’s issue – ahead of another notable release, Wings’ “With a Little Luck” (which also would make it to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.) That same week (April l), “You’re the One That I Want” was the top new entry on the Hot 100 at No. 54. It rose to No. 1 for the week ending June 10, its 11th week on the chart, dislodging another male/female duet, Johnny Mathis and Deniece Williams’ “Too Much, Too Little, Too Late.”

The exhilarating – you might even say “electrifying” – duet was light years from Newton-John’s first two No. 1 hits, the glossy ballad “I Honestly Love You” and the wistful, easy-tempo ballad “Have You Never Been Mellow.” The throbbing, gaudy hit is a little like eating junk food at a carnival – like the one in the “You’re the One That I Want” film sequence – not nutritious, but what fun!

Newton-John sings “You’re the One That I Want” with unexpected stamina and power. The song was the hottest male/female duet from 1978 in more ways than one. It was the biggest, but also the most dynamic and charged. Its only real rival among male/female duets in terms of dynamics was “Whenever I Call You ‘Friend’” by Kenny Loggins featuring Stevie Nicks.


Critics often pointed to the “whispery” quality of Newton-John’s voice on her first hit, a cover of Bob Dylan’s “If Not for You,” and assumed that was because she didn’t have firepower to offer. “You’re the One That I Want” proved that she did. Her taut vocal on the track de-emphasized the pretty quality of her voice and showcased its dynamics. One of the most compelling aspects of “You’re the One That I Want” is the clipped way that Newton-John and Travolta deliver the title phrase.

The Billboard charts reflected the change in Newton-John’s approach. “You’re the One That I Want” stalled at No. 23 on what was then Billboard’s Easy Listening (now Adult Contemporary) chart. Newton-John had been one of the hottest artists on that chart up to that point – she had 11 consecutive top 10 easy listening hits from 1973’s country-infused “Let Me Be There” through 1977’s elegant ballad “Sam.” If easy listening radio stations in 1978 weren’t sure what to make of “You’re the One That I Want,” that might just be the best indication of the success of her transformation.

“You’re the One That I Want” also represented an advance for Travolta, whose mopey ballad “Let Her In” made the top 10 on the Hot 100 in July 1976, but provided little evidence that he would soon star in one of the most popular film musicals of all time. But here his line reading of “I got chills/ They’re multiplyin’” gives the song an erotic charge that goes beyond the line as written. He doesn’t just have chills, he has … Well, you get the idea. (The “You’re the One That I Want” film sequence is marvelously staged. It was one of the highpoints of the film, which was directed by Randal Kleiser and choreographed by Patricia Birch.)

Of the six singles released from the Grease soundtrack, only one – “Greased Lightnin’” – was in the original production of the Warren Casey-Jim Jacobs musical, which played in Chicago for eight months in 1971. “Summer Nights” was written for the show’s transfer to Broadway in 1972. “Grease,” “You’re the One That I Want,” “Hopelessly Devoted to You” and “Sandy” were written for the film.



“You’re the One That I Want” replaced “All Choked Up,” which was positioned in the same spot in the Broadway show. “All Choked Up” was similar in theme – and even includes Sandy’s unforgettable spoken line “Tell me about it, stud” – it’s but different in style (and not as good). They were smart to sub it out.

John Farrar, Newton-John’s go-to songwriter, wrote and produced “You’re the One That I Want.” He also wrote and produced two of her other No. 1 hits, “Have You Never Been Mellow” and “Magic.” So “You’re the One That I Want” was a display of versatility not only for Newton-John, but also for Farrar.

“You’re the One That I Want” headed the Hot 100 for just one week before it was toppled by Andy Gibb’s “Shadow Dancing,” which remained on top for seven weeks. “You’re the One That I Want” ranked No. 13 on Billboard’s list of the year’s top singles, which was published in its Dec. 23, 1978 issue.



Grease was the top-grossing film in the U.S. and Canada for 1978, easily outdistancing runners-up National Lampoon’s Animal House and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The Grease soundtrack finished No. 2 on Billboard’s list of the year’s top albums, topped only by the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.

Though it was a hit with the public, Grease found less success with critics and Academies. The film received just one Oscar nomination – best original song, for the stand-out ballad “Hopelessly Devoted to You,” which elicited one of Newton-John’s finest vocals. (“Last Dance,” sung by Donna Summer in Thank God It’s Friday, won the award.)

Grease also netted two Grammy nods – album of the year (it lost to Fever) and best female pop vocal performance (again for “Hopelessly Devoted”). “You’re The One That I Want” was eligible for best pop vocal performance by a duo, group or chorus, but didn’t rate a nod. (It probably wouldn’t have won anyway: Bee Gees had that one in the bag for Fever). The one place the musical found favor was at the fan-voted American Music Awards: Grease won favorite pop/rock album, beating both Fever and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, the 1977 blockbuster which remained popular in 1978.

“You’re the One That I Want” was a big hit in many foreign markets as well. The song topped The Official U.K. Singles Chart for nine consecutive weeks from June 17 to Aug. 12, 1978, the longest run at No. 1 by any single in that calendar year. In Australia, the single spent nine nonconsecutive weeks at the top, which made it the best-charting single of the year. (These were Newton-John’s home countries: She was born in England and raised in Australia.)



Numerous acts have revived the song over the years. In 1982, Alvin and the Chipmunks recorded the song for their album The Chipmunks Go Hollywood. In 1993, “You’re the One That I Want” was issued as the lead single from Grease – Original London Cast Recording. The new version by Craig McLachlan and Debbie Gibson peaked at No. 13 on the Official U.K. Singles Chart. In 2018, Foo Fighters performed a rather loose and ragged (but fun) version of the song at a few tour stops, in Lexington, Ky. and Tampa, Fla. and at the Welcome to Rockville festival when they brought Travolta on stage.

Just last year, Doja Cat performed the song in a commercial for Pepsi to promote their “Soda Shop” line. The spot premiered on last year’s MTV Video Music Awards, which Doja hosted.

“I just remember seeing that Sandy as a kid and that just basically defining my existence, so in that moment, I was like, ‘I need to be here [doing the commercial],’” Doja told Billboard, explaining her love of the “bad” Sandy look. “I love that movie so much.”

[Gary]

Forever No. 1: Olivia Newton-John’s ‘Magic’
Despite hailing from a cinematic flop, this beguiling single became her fourth No. 1 on the Hot 100.


By Joe Lynch


08/11/2022

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 Olivia Newton-John, who died this week at age 73, with Joe Lynch, Billboard’s executive digital director, east coast, celebrating the fact that flops can beget bops, as was the case with 1980’s Xanadu and its hit single “Magic,” her fourth No. 1.

At the outset of Xanadu, the Olivia Newton-John-starring musical that followed Grease by two years, we see the one-time Sandy Olsson in a role that’s neither shy schoolgirl nor leathery vixen. Instead, she’s a roller-skating Grecian Muse from Mount Olympus who breezes into the life of a struggling artist — played by Michael Beck, hot off 1979’s The Warriors. After smooching him in the street and rolling away, they have their first real interaction inside a derelict theater, where the still-skating Muse teases and flirts with the confounded artist, as the strains of “Magic” echo throughout the empty space.

Like the entire Xanadu experience, “Magic” aims for a mixture of the strange and the sweet; unlike the film, which tanked at the box office in 1980 and helped inspire the creation of the Golden Raspberry Awards, the soundtrack’s lead single connected with audiences, becoming her fourth No. 1 on the Hot 100 when it unseated Billy Joel’s “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me” (on the chart dated Aug. 2), and staying there for four consecutive weeks.

Much like Xanadu, “Magic” – written and produced by John Farrar, who worked with her on previous No.1s “I Honestly Love You,” “Have You Never Been Mellow” and “You’re the One That I Want” with John Travolta — doesn’t seem quite right at the start. The guitar tone is unusual, with the first chord strummed down and the second one up, making it feel, for a moment, as if the second chord was an accident on the part of the guitarist. It’s a mildly clanging, Pretenders-lite guitar riff that hints at discordant, but never quite goes there; sure enough, by the time the riff has rolled around for the fourth time, you’re beguiled by a tune that’s a touch off but unexpectedly angelic.

Perhaps that’s what Xanadu director Robert Greenwald, who would go on to helm documentaries targeting everything from Wal-Mart to the Iraq War to Rupert Murdoch, was hoping for when he paired Newton-John with Golden Era Hollywood icon Gene Kelly for a musical fantasy film with a soundtrack by Farrar and Electric Light Orchestra mastermind Jeff Lynne: Something that reads odd on paper but achieves a strange magic in practice. The thing is, unlike “Magic” (which wrapped 1980 as the third biggest song on Billboard‘s Year-End Hot 100), the film hits unusual notes without finding its groove — and most tragically, it fails to fail too spectacularly, meaning it’s not quite a so-bad-it’s-good cult classic, either.

One thing that does, work, however, in this stately pleasure dome is the music. ONJ presides over the hit soundtrack (No. 4 on the Billboard 200 albums chart), which features an exhilarating mix of big band and hard rock on “Dancin'”; a delirious title track that answers the question, “What if Olivia Newton-John fronted ELO instead of Jeff Lynne?”; and a lovely ballad in the classic ONJ/Farrar vein with “Suspended in Time.”

But the centerpiece is “Magic,” which preceded the film’s release by three months and glided to the top spot of the Hot 100 by the time it hit theaters. “Come take my hand, you should know me/ I’ve always been in your mind” sings Newton-John at the top of the song. It’s a beautiful vocal, yes, but also a brilliant performance as an actor; her tones – cooing and ethereal on the verses, warm and throaty on the chorus – are perfectly suited to the role of Kira, who turns out to be Terpsichore, the Greek Muse of dance and chorus.

Unlike the Christian religion that followed, the Greeks liked their immortal gods to be fallible and fleshy, terrifying and tantalizing at the same time. And the Muses — lithe, gorgeous women who inspired poets and bards while remaining forever elusive and a bit dangerous (nine presumptuous girls were turned into screeching birds for daring to liken themselves to the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne) — were such a compelling part of Greek mythology that, wouldn’t you know it, “muse” is still the word we use to describe those who inspire artists to this day.



While the movie certainly hasn’t gone down as essential viewing, even for Newton-John fans, the fact that she played a classical Muse on the big screen seems even more fitting now that the world is mourning her loss at the age of 73. Following the news of her death, everyone from Mariah Carey to Belinda Carlisle of the Go-Go’s to Keith Urban shared how much she inspired and meant to them, not only as a singer/actor but as a human being who went above and beyond to make the world a better place.

While Xanadu gave Newton-John the chance to work with one of the singing/dancing Hollywood greats who inspired her, she certainly went on to solidify her status as a pop icon in her own right. And part of that journey was “Magic,” her fourth No. 1 hit and an enchanting ode to love and artistic creation that set her up for what would later become her biggest hit, the monster smash “Physical.” But as a Forever No. 1, “Magic” remains just that.

[Gary]

Forever No. 1: Olivia Newton-John’s ‘Physical’
The final of Olivia Newton-John's five No. 1s was her biggest and also her finest, setting the stage for a decade of megapop to come.


By Andrew Unterberger

08/12/2022

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 Olivia Newton-John, who died this week at age 73, with a look back at her fifth and final No. 1: “Physical,” the most iconic solo hit of her storied career, and one of the defining smashes of the 1980s.


There’s a decent argument to be made that “Physical” was the No. 1 single that kicked off the ’80s in earnest. Not to say that the decade hadn’t already produced its share of epochal Hot 100-toppers by the time of the song’s late 1981 release, but many were still produced in a post-disco ’70s hangover, or represented the kind of safe, classic balladry that top 40 tends to default to when it’s not sure what else is going on at the moment. “Physical,” on the other hand, set the tone for the mainstream pop of the decade to come: glistening synths, whip-smart guitars, grooves faintly reminiscent of (but not overpowered by) funk and disco, sultry sax, and catchy, clever lyrical hooks that teeter on the edge of tasteless without ever falling onto the wrong side.

And the song was only half the story. “Physical” debuted on September 28, 1981, less than two months after the seismic launch of MTV, and oh boy did it have an accompanying visual ready for the occasion. So did the rest of its parent LP of the same name, actually: Physical was released as a whole video album, a pioneering practice in ’81, which earned Newton-John a primetime Let’s Get Physical TV special (and, eventually, the second-ever video of the year Grammy.) But the title track’s clip was the crown jewel. Set in a gym that looks more like the final level of an early arcade game — the kind of sharply geometrically defined, impossibly shiny-surfaced room that only seems to exist in ’80s music videos — Newton-John leads a group workout with a bunch of oiled-down muscle men, who inexplicably turn into overweight klutzes (and then back again) over the course of the video. It’s campy, it’s sexy, and it’s totally incomprehensible from a narrative standpoint. In other words, it was perfect — particularly from the vantage of early MTV, where the golden rule was quickly established: Ensure that nobody can ever hear your song without also picturing the video again.

Of course, none of this is what anyone was expecting from Olivia Newton-John in 1981. She had spent the ’70s as the wholesome good girl at the heart of AM radio, soft and gentle and certainly inoffensive. Her Sandy character’s famous “tell me about it, stud” pivot to cigarettes and black leather at the end of 1978’s cartoonishly successful Grease — a visual transformation continued on the cover to her Totally Hot album later that year — had presented her in a more adult light. But that was still throwback family entertainment at heart, closing with her and John Travolta’s Danny literally driving off into the sky together. The “Physical” video, on the other hand, ends with Newton-John’s scantily clad iron-pumpers mostly coupling off together and leaving the gym hand in hand, perhaps headed to a different kind of workout. This was uncharted territory for Australia’s sweetheart.



But a reinvention was perhaps necessary for the ’70s superstar at the onset of a new decade. Totally Hot tread water commercially, reaching the top 10 of the Billboard 200 albums chart but spawning just a single Hot 100 top 10 hit in the No. 3-peaking “A Little More Love,” and her 1980 duet with fellow solid-gold ’70s hitmaker Andy Gibb “I Can’t Help It” had missed the top 10 entirely, stalling at No. 12. Newton-John found greater success — including her fourth Hot 100 No. 1 — with the soundtrack to Xanadu, the film musical fantasia that marked her first feature role since Grease, but the movie itself was such a commercial and critical failure that it was essentially a wash for her momentum-wise. She was in need of a new sound and a new image to mark a new phase of her career.

She found inspiration for both in a relatively unlikely source: the fitness craze that was sweeping the globe, particularly America, in the early ’80s. It was the era of Richard Simmons, Jane Fonda and Jazzercise, and both the look and language of the moment proved an inspired fit for Newton-John’s comeback. She donned spandex, a headband and a more economical, Princess Diana-reminiscent haircut in the video, while the motivational speak of aerobics classes informed — and offered plausible deniability for — the song’s otherwise sexually forward chorus hook, “Let’s get physical, phy-si-cal… let me hear your body talk.” Other lyrics in the verse were less ambiguous, but the song’s workout framing provided just enough double to the entendre for most programming directors to look the other way on what one PD referred to in Billboard as “an uncomfortableness” that the song produced in their listenership.

It helped the song’s case that it was an undeniable winner. The “Physical” groove, anchored by storied studio drummer Carlos Vega’s muscular shuffle and flecked with longtime ONJ producer John Farrar’s guitar pops, is as slick and taut as one of its video’s hairless bare chests. And just as she does with her workout buddies in the clip, Newton-John slithers around the beat with sly but unmistakable intent, not so much seductive as lascivious as she remarks with increasing impatience, “I took you to an intimate res-tau-rant, then to a suggestive movie/ There’s nothing left to talk about, unless it’s… ho-ri-zon-tal-ly.” There’s a hint of stalker-movie suspense to the verse, an obvious tension lurking beneath the surface of those guitars and Olivia’s repeat “You know what I mean” insistences. “Physical” was first penned by Steve Kipner and Terry Shaddick for Rod Stewart, and it’s not surprising that it was originally envisioned from a male perspective — women rarely got to play the hunter and not the prey in turn-of-the-’80s pop. But that’s part of the thrill of Newton-John’s rendition: the scandalous notion that even while she was sighing about being hopelessly devoted to you, this might actually have been what was going on in her head all along.


Of course, the verses are just the wind-up for That Chorus: a five-star KO that you’d still remember 40 years later even if you only ever heard it once. “Let’s get physical,” a rising Newton-John commands, before repeating the last word in descending cadence — “PHY-suh-cal” — as if she’s worried you might need the message really spelled out for you. And then, just in case, once more: “I wanna get PHY-SI-CALLLLL!!!” As the guitars and saxes get growlier, she transitions similar phrasing to her next message: “Let me hear your body talk/ Your body talk.” It works not only as an expansion of the “physical” idea in the chorus’ first half, but as a callback to Newton-John’s frustration throughout the verse at the insufferable degree of more conventional mouth-talking transpiring; now she wants to hear what your other parts have to say. Smart, tough, playful and immediately unforgettable, it’s everything a great pop chorus should be.

The whole “Physical” package quickly proved to be an unstoppable phenomenon. It debuted at No. 66 on the Hot 100 dated Oct. 3, 1981; by Nov. 18 it was No.1, replacing “Private Eyes” by Daryl Hall and John Oates, another duo of recently re-fashioned ’70s survivors. It ruled for the rest of 1981, and well into 1982 — 10 weeks in all, tying the record (previously set by Debby Boone’s “You Light Up My Life” from 1977-78) for the longest run at No. 1 in Hot 100 history — before being dethroned by, coincidentally enough, Hall & Oates again with “I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do).” It sent its parent album of the same name to RIAA-certified double-Platinum status, and established Newton-John — alongside perhaps only Debbie Harry of Blondie, whose “Rapture” back-to-back slinking she briefly borrows in the “Physical” clip — as a pre-eminent pop star of MTV’s earliest days.


It was a status that didn’t last particularly long, however. Both Newton-John and Harry were about to be supplanted by a new class of do-everything MTV super-duper-stars, led by a couple rising powerhouses in Michael Jackson and Prince, and one brand new ’80s icon in Madonna. The latter in particular took the medicine ball from “Physical” and ran with it, creating a cultural empire out of her brand of self-aware, sexually unapologetic, nuclear-strength pop music. (She even included a “Physical” song of her own on her 1983 debut album.) Newton-John scored two more Hot 100 top 5 hits in 1982, with Physical follow-up “Make a Move on Me” and her new Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 recording “Heart Attack,” and one more in ’83 with “Twist of Fate,” from the soundtrack to rom-com Two of a Kind, which served as the film reunion of her and Grease co-star Travolta. But over a decade into her career, she didn’t quite have the firepower to keep up in the rapidly advancing top 40 landscape, and by the end of the ’80s she had largely become.a legacy act.

It was quite a legacy, though: five No. 1 hits, with the biggest saved for last — one that currently ranks just outside the top 10 on Billboard‘s Greatest of All Time Hot 100 chart. As Newton-John pivoted to more of a career in humanitarian causes and advocacy in the ’90s and beyond, particularly following a breast cancer diagnosis in 1992, her music continued to reach new generations, through Grease revivals and Glee covers and even some Xanadu cult reappraising. And “Physical” continues to impact pop music to this day, via singles by the two biggest female top 40 stars of the early 2020s: Dua Lipa’s “Physical,” which resurrects the chorus chant and cardio vibes of Newton-John’s classic, and Doja Cat’s “Kiss Me More” collab with SZA, which borrows enough of the hook’s melodic phrasing in its own clipped refrain to earn Kipner and Shaddick a writing credit on it. Workout trends and fad diets come and go, but decades from now, you’ll still be hearing “Physical” pumping from your gym’s speakers.

[Gary]

[Gary]

Coolio Dead at 59: Report
Coolio died on Wednesday (Sept. 28) in Los Angeles, California.


By Rania Aniftos

09/28/2022

Coolio died on Wednesday (Sept. 28) in Los Angeles, California. He was 59 years old.

According to TMZ, who first reported the news, the rapper, born Artis Leon Ivey Jr. was found dead on the bathroom floor at his friend’s house, and paramedics initially suspect that he suffered cardiac arrest. However, an official cause of death has yet to be determined. Billboard has reached out to his reps for more information.

Coolio placed six hits on the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart, including the No. 1 smash “Gangsta’s Paradise,” featuring L.V, from the film Dangerous Minds. The single spent three weeks atop the list in 1995 and finished as the year-end No. 1 song on the Hot 100. It also ruled the Hot Rap Songs list for 11 consecutive weeks. The track would go on to win the Billboard Music Award for single of the year, and a Grammy Award for best rap solo performance. In 2021, “Gangsta’s Paradise” ranked among the 100 Greatest of All Time Hot 100 Songs.



All five of Coolio’s other Hot 100 hits all reached the top 40, including his breakthrough single, “Fantastic Voyage,” which peaked at No. 3 in 1994. He also scored a top 10 hit with “1, 2, 3, 4 (Sumpin’ New)” in 1996, which climbed to No. 5.

On the Billboard 200 albums chart, he notched a trio of entries, including two top 10s: It Takes a Thief (No. 8 in 1994) and Gangsta’s Paradise (No. 9, 1996).

Coolio also had a television career, and often made guest appearances in shows including Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Black Jesus, All That, The Nanny and Futurama. He also took part in a number of competition shows such as Fear Factor and Rachael vs Guy: Celebrity Cook-Off.

Following the news of his death, a number of stars took to social media to mourn the loss of the hip-hop great. “Peaceful Journey Brother,” Questlove wrote, while Hot Ones host Sean Evans shared, “First CD I ever bought in my life and the most legendary Wing 10 Last Dab these eyes have ever seen.”

[Verisimilitude]

On the Billboard 200 albums chart, Coolio notched a trio of entries, including two top 10s: It Takes a Thief (No. 8 in 1994) and Gangsta’s Paradise (No. 9, 1996).

Coolio additionally collected six top 10s during his lifetime on the Hot Rap Songs chart, with “Gangsta’s Paradise” having reigned for 11 weeks.

The song has drawn 1.7 billion in radio airplay audience and 763.1 million official streams and sold 1.9 million downloads in the U.S. (through Sept. 22), according to Luminate.

www.billboard.com/music/chart-beat/coolio-billboard-chart-history-gangstas-paradise-1235147052/

Eligible for 9x Platinum or Diamond with the physicals, downloads, and streams put together.

[Gary]

Forever No. 1: Coolio’s ‘Gangsta’s Paradise’
The West Coast rapper's enduring Hot 100-topper was one of the darkest and richest crossover hits of the G-funk era.


By Brad Shoup


10/4/2022


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 Artis Leon Ivey Jr., better known as the rapper Coolio, with an extended look at his lone Hot 100-topper: the gothic soundtrack smash “Gangsta’s Paradise.”

Precious little in Coolio’s career had suggested he would even entertain something so bleak as “Gangsta’s Paradise”.

“Do I have to use a gat to show you where I’m at?” he rapped on 1991’s Ain’t a Damn Thing Changed, as a part-time member of the conscious crew WC and the Maad Circle, “Or pose with a forty ounce and fake like a killer?” His 1994 solo debut It Takes a Thief was a West Coast party record that displayed a humorist’s touch: he rendered county welfare recipients and childhood ding-dong-dashers with the same twinkle. The big single was the No. 3 Billboard Hot 100 hit “Fantastic Voyage,” a G-funk banger that pulls to the curb and merrily ferries its audience out of gang territory.

In a contemporary profile in The Source, the Compton-raised Coolio (who had done some time as a juvenile, and kicked a cocaine habit before his rap career) talked about his motivation: “[W]hether this album goes platinum, gold or sells a few hundred thousand – I don’t care about me. I just want everything to be right for my kids. I’ve got to break the cycle for them.” “Gangsta’s Paradise” was the counterfactual: what if he couldn’t break the cycle? What would that feel like? What would that sound like?

What it sounded like was perhaps the doomiest No. 1 in Hot 100 history. In title and structure, the song borrowed heavily from “Pastime Paradise,” Stevie Wonder’s 1976 unsettled chamber-pop rebuke of backwards thinking. Producer Doug Rasheed converted Wonder’s deliberate synthstring motif into slashes worthy of Bernard Herrmann and made the bass an ominous background figure. A squelchy clap on the 2 and 4 was the instrumental link to G-funk, but the overall vibe was positively gothic: Coolio’s midnight tour of decrepit buildings and broken brains. Unlike, say, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony — whose 1996 No. 1 smash “Tha Crossroads” offset their Old Testament existentialism with the promise of heaven – Coolio Crip walks through the valley of the shadow of death, unaccompanied.

But the trudge was a tour de force, as Coolio switches between high-handed taunts and head-clutching regret with a monologist’s deftness. He uncorks lines with Jules Winnfield’s Old Testament indignance (“But I ain’t never crossed a man that didn’t deserve it”) but also knows when to pull the punch. Specifically, the line “Too much television watchin’s got me chasin’ dreams”: he lands on a delicate blend of regret and wistfulness, sipping the poison like it’s the cure. His cadences and defiant introspection owed more than a little to Tupac Shakur, just taken to operatic heights.


If the result tipped toward melodrama, well, fine: “Gangsta’s Paradise” was written for the screen. Rasheed — who had a studio setup at the home he shared with Coolio’s manager — had been working on a “Pastime Paradise” loop with Larry “L.V.” Sanders, a singer and producer with the up-and-coming G-funk outfit South Central Cartel. Sanders had fleshed out the vocal arrangements (he mapped out every voice, bass to falsetto, in that mournful, soaring choral part) and was trying to get a rapper on the track. Coolio happened to hear the work in progress and immediately staked his claim, even writing a verse on the spot. With the demo done, Coolio’s manager began shopping it to film productions.

It was the percentage play: the ‘90s was a golden age for pop songs featured in movies, whether written for the film or added as promotion for an upcoming album. As a bonus, the soundtrack format — for movies aimed at Black audiences like Menace II Society, Above the Rim, and Juice — allowed nascent hip-hop fans to check out fresh names without having to rely on rap-resistant programmers in radio and television. Before he even had a solo album out, Coolio himself had three songs featured in the 1993 Janet Jackson/Shakur drama Poetic Justice.

But Team Coolio’s best bet — Martin Lawrence and Will Smith’s action-comedy Bad Boys — fizzled when the musicians weren’t offered enough money. The winning film was another Don Simpson/Jerry Bruckheimer production: Dangerous Minds, a Bay Area classroom drama starring Michelle Pfeiffer. It wasn’t exactly the illest of movies (one scene has Pfeiffer teaching poetry to her Black and Latino students using Bob Dylan lyrics) but it had Disney money and the possibility of reaching a wide audience, which aligned with Coolio’s goals. In the context of the film, “Gangsta’s Paradise” offered a glimpse at the future bearing down on those students: “I’m 23 now, but will I live to see 24?/ The way things is going, I don’t know,” he shrugged. (Coolio, for the record, was by then in his thirties.) Ever the entertainer, he worried he was going “too dark.”

It turns out he should’ve worried about going too blue. When Doug Rasheed reached out to Stevie Wonder for permission to use “Pastime Paradise,” the maestro rebuffed him. “I had a few vulgarities in the song and he wasn’t with that,” Coolio recalled. But Rasheed and Coolio were persistent, and Wonder finally signed off once the rapper agreed to overhaul the lyrics. (He also cedes the lion’s share of the publishing to Wonder.) Even with the foul language excised and his established rep as a pop-rapper, Coolio wasn’t sure white audiences would respond to “Gangsta’s Paradise”.

His concerns were unfounded: the song entered the August 19, 1995 Hot 100 at No. 28: the week’s top debut. (That same week, the Dangerous Minds was the Greatest Gainer on the Top 200 Albums chart, jumping 108 places) By September 9th, “Gangsta’s Paradise” was No. 1, unseating Michael Jackson’s tremulous slow jam “You Are Not Alone.” Top 40 radio, at the time slower to put hip-hop singles into rotation, jumped on it. “Gangsta’s Paradise” had become the rap equivalent of a four-quadrant tentpole film, a hustler’s lament that kept expanding its audience.

Arguably, Wonder’s demands contributed to the single’s reach. “Gangsta’s Paradise” was gangsta rap as message music, something kids didn’t have to listen to furtively. Coolio’s mean-mugging briefly became hip-hop’s acceptable face – making him, three years after The Chronic, the first L.A. rapper to top the Hot 100. Director Antoine Fuqua successfully recruited Pfeiffer to appear in the music video. Coolio figured he’d be getting the standard ‘hood video treatment, but instead, he got to glower in a darkened room at an A-lister, giving him and his song further credibility. “Gangsta’s Paradise” would win two MTV Video Music Awards the next year, for Rap Video and Video From a Film; if the Wonder lift hadn’t made the song ineligible, it would’ve been a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination, with an outside chance of beating Eminem to hip-hop’s first Best Original Song award.




“Gangsta’s Paradise” stayed in the penthouse for three weeks before getting evicted by Mariah Carey’s ecstatic (and tonal opposite) “Fantasy.” Though seven other singles had longer reigns in 1995, Coolio’s had remarkable staying power: it was either No. 1 or 2 for 12 weeks. Its run of play earned it the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s Year-End Hot 100 for 1995, the first rap single to top a Year-End Hot 100, and the only one until 50 Cent’s “In Da Club” did the same in 2003. And the global response was just as rapturous: On the Official U.K. Singles Chart, “Gangsta’s Paradise” debuted at No. 1, a first for a rapper. The single wound up topping charts in over a dozen countries.

And it allowed Coolio to perform in dozens more, decades later. “Gangsta’s Paradise” functioned as a life annuity, guaranteeing its maker residual income and bookings long after most of his contemporaries changed careers. For subsequent generations, ”Gangsta’s Paradise” wasn’t just Coolio’s signature song, it may as well have been his only one. It has over a billion plays on YouTube and Spotify; on the latter it has fifty times the streams of “Fantastic Voyage,” his next-most popular track. His time at the vanguard of mainstream rap lasted just a brief while: 1995’s Gangsta’s Paradise album spawned one more Hot 100 top five hit in “1, 2, 3, 4 (Sumpin’ New)” — which, ironically, found him back in party-MC mode — and his U.S. hitmaking days ended with 1997’s treacly gospel ballad “C U When U Get There,” which peaked outside the top 10 and marked his final entry on the chart.

“I can’t live a normal life,” Coolio fretted on “Gangsta’s Paradise,” and it proved true as he transitioned to a long second career in acting and reality television. To the end, he was a celebrated link to West Coast rap’s breakthrough age and a touring shot of instant nostalgia. And though he didn’t get to be an elder statesman for as long as we might have hoped, he had long since shattered the cycle that had consumed his thoughts before he used it to top the charts.

[Gary]

Migos’ Biggest Billboard Hot 100 Hits
The Atlanta rap group, who shaped an entire chapter and sound of hip-hop, collected multiple top 10s and collaborated with the likes of Drake, Katy Perry, Post Malone and more.


By Trevor Anderson

11/1/2022

Offset, Takeoff and Quavo of Migos attend the Heavenly Bodies: Fashion & The Catholic Imagination Costume Institute Gala at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 7, 2018 in New York City.
Kevin Mazur/MG18/GI for The Met Museum/Vogue
The late Takeoff, who died on Tuesday (Nov. 1), at age 28, shaped an entire chapter and sound of hip-hop as one-third of the rap group Migos. The rapper, born Kirshnik Ball, formed the trio near Atlanta with Offset, his cousin, and Quavo, his uncle, and began recording in the early 2010s. Migos made its first Billboard chart appearance in July 2013, as “Versace” debuted on a handful of sales and airplay charts. From there, the trio established itself as one of hip-hop’s most popular acts, with multiple top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200 — Culture in 2017 and its follow-up, Culture II — the next year.

Though Migos was on an “indefinite hiatus,” per Rolling Stone in an October interview, Takeoff and Quavo teamed up for a 2022 album, Only Built for Infinity Links, released Oct. 7. The set became yet another top 10 success on the Billboard 200, peaking at No. 7, and debuted at No. 1 on the Top Rap Albums list.

As fans and his fellow musicians mourn the rapper, let’s recap Takeoff’s impact through a countdown of his biggest hits on the Billboard Hot 100, both as a solo act and member of Migos.

Song Rank, Title, Artist (if other than only Migos), Peak Position, Peak Date

20. “Notice Me,” featuring Post Malone, No. 52, Feb. 10, 2011

19. “Bon Appetit,” Katy Perry featuring Migos, No. 59, June 3, 2017

18. “Handsome and Wealthy,” No. 79, Nov. 8, 2014

17. “Key to the Streets,” YFN Lucci featuring Migos & Trouble, No. 70, Nov. 5, 2016

16. “Having Our Way,” featuring Drake, No. 15, June 26, 2021

15. “Need It,” featuring YoungBoy Never Broke Again, No. 62, June 6, 2020

14. “Hotel Lobby (Unc & Phew),” Quavo & Takeoff, No. 59, June 4, 2022

13. “Fight Night,” No. 69, Sept. 6, 2014

12. “Narcos,” No. 36, Feb. 10, 2018

11. “Drip,” Cardi B featuring Migos, No. 21, April 21, 2018

10. “Straightenin,” No. 23, June 26, 2021

9. “Slippery,” featuring Gucci Mane, No. 29, July 22, 2017


8. “Slide,” Calvin Harris featuring Frank Ocean & Migos, No. 25, June 3, 2017

7. “Pure Water,” with Mustard, No. 23, May 4, 2019

6. “T-Shirt,” No. 19, Feb. 18, 2017

5. “Walk It Talk It,” featuring Drake, No. 10, Aug. 14, 2018

4. “I Get the Bag,” Gucci Mane featuring Migos, No. 11, Nov. 4, 2017

3. “Stir Fry,” No. 8, Feb. 17, 2018

2. “Motorsport,” with Nicki Minaj & Cardi B, No. 6, Dec. 30, 201

“Bad and Boujee,” featuring Lil Uzi Vert, No. 1 (three weeks), Jan. 21, 2017

Migos’ Top 20 Billboard Hot 100 hits chart is based on actual performance on the weekly Billboard Hot 100 through Nov. 5, 2022. Songs are ranked based on an inverse point system, with weeks at No. 1 earning the greatest value and weeks at No. 100 earning the least. Due to changes in chart methodology over the years, certain eras are weighted to account for different chart turnover rates over various periods.

[Gary]

Irene Cara, ‘Fame’ & ‘Flashdance’ Singer-Actor, Dies at 63
'She was a beautifully gifted soul whose legacy will live forever through her music and films,' her publicist said.


By The Associated Press

11/26/2022

Bettmann/Contributor

Oscar, Golden Globe and two-time Grammy winning singer-actress Irene Cara, who starred and sang the title cut from the 1980 hit movie Fame and then belted out the era-defining hit “Flashdance … What a Feeling” from 1983′s Flashdance, has died. She was 63.

Her publicist, Judith A. Moose, announced the news on social media, writing that a cause of death was “currently unknown.” Moose also confirmed the death to an Associated Press reporter on Saturday (Nov. 26). Cara died at her home in Florida. The exact day of her death was not disclosed.

“Irene’s family has requested privacy as they process their grief,” Moose wrote. “She was a beautifully gifted soul whose legacy will live forever through her music and films.”

During her career, Cara had three Top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, including “Breakdance,” “Out Here On My Own,” “Fame” and “Flashdance … What A Feeling,” which spent six weeks at No. 1. She was behind some of the most joyful, high-energy pop anthems of the early ’80s.

She first came to prominence among the young actors playing performing arts high schoolers in Alan Parker’s Fame, with co-stars Debbie Allen, Paul McCrane and Anne Mear. Cara played Coco Hernandez, a striving dancer who endures all manner of deprivations, including a creepy nude photo shoot.

“How bright our spirits go shooting out into space, depends on how much we contributed to the earthly brilliance of this world. And I mean to be a major contributor!” she says in the movie.

Cara sang on the soaring title song with the chorus — “Remember my name/I’m gonna live forever/I’m gonna learn how to fly/I feel it coming together/People will see me and cry” — which would go on to be nominated for an Academy Award for best original song. She also sang on “Out Here on My Own,” “Hot Lunch Jam” and “I Sing the Body Electric.”

Three years later, she and the songwriting team of Flashdance — music by Giorgio Moroder, lyrics by Keith Forsey and Cara — was accepting the Oscar for best original song for “Flashdance … What a Feeling.”

The movie starred Jennifer Beals as a steel-town girl who dances in a bar at night and hopes to attend a prestigious dance conservatory. It included the hit song “Maniac,” featuring Beals’ character leaping, spinning, stomping her feet and the slow-burning theme song.

“There aren’t enough words to express my love and my gratitude,” Cara told the Oscar crowd in her thanks. “And last but not least, a very special gentlemen who I guess started it all for me many years ago. To Alan Parker, wherever you may be tonight, I thank him.”

The New York-born Cara began her career on Broadway, with small parts in short-lived shows, although a musical called The Me Nobody Knows ran over 300 performances. She toured in the musical Jesus Christ Superstar as Mary Magdalene in the mid-1990s and a tour of the musical Flashdance toured 2012-14 with her songs.

She also created the all-female band Irene Cara Presents Hot Caramel and put out a double CD with the single “How Can I Make You Luv Me.” Her movie credits include Sparkle and D.C. Cab.

[Gary]

[Gary]

Irene Cara...hits (1980-1984)

ult peak Title, Artist

4 Fame, Irene Cara

19 Out Here On My Own, Irene Cara

42 Anyone Can See, Irene Cara

1 Flashdance...What A Feeling, Irene Cara

13 Why Me?, Irene Cara

37 The Dream, Irene Cara

8 Breakdance, Irene Cara

78 You Were Made For Me, Irene Cara

[Gary]

Forever No. 1: Irene Cara’s ‘Flashdance…What a Feeling’
The song was just right for both the movie and the moment.


By Paul Grein

11/29/2022


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 remember the late Irene Cara with an extended look at her lone Hot 100-topper: the era-straddling soundtrack classic “Flashdance…What a Feeling.”

11/29/2022
Flashdance didn’t invent movie/music synergy, but it perfected the formula for the MTV generation. MTV, after all, wasn’t even two years old when Flashdance premiered in the spring of 1983.

Footloose, Beverly Hills Cop, Top Gun, Dirty Dancing and other mega-successful music-driven movies of the 1980s all owe a debt to Flashdance, an unexpectedly huge movie with no established stars and a fairly thin – but as it turned out, very relatable – plot. The film told the story of Alex Owens, a young woman who works as a welder and dreams of becoming a ballerina, but first must overcome her fear of auditioning before a panel of judges.

Irene Cara’s propulsive “Flashdance…What a Feeling” was released in March 1983 to build anticipation for the film, which was released on April 15. The song was just right for both the movie and the moment – a time when Black pop music was reaching new commercial heights thanks to Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, Prince and many more star artists.



The film debuted at No. 2 at the box-office in its opening week, and spent the next three weeks at No. 1. Cara’s single reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in late May, the soundtrack album topped the Billboard 200 for two weeks starting June 25 – and a second song from the soundtrack, Michael Sembello’s “Maniac,” topped the Hot 100 for two weeks in September. That is what you call a movie/music grand-slam.

Cara, who died on Friday (Nov. 25) at age 63, had enjoyed a comparable success three years earlier, when she introduced the rousing title song from Fame. That smash reached No. 4 on the Hot 100 in September 1980. But she didn’t co-write that song – Michael Gore and Dean Pitchford did, winning the Oscar for best original song for their efforts. As a co-writer of “Flashdance…What a Feeling,” Cara shared in her second film smash’s Oscar glory.

Disco don Giorgio Moroder composed the melody for “Flashdance…What a Feeling” and produced Cara’s single. The instrumental backdrop has echoes of Moroder’s electronic film score work. But it’s warmer and more triumphant-sounding than Midnight Express, for which Moroder won an Oscar in 1979, or say, Donna Summer’s 1977 smash “I Feel Love,” which Moroder co-produced with his long-time creative partner, Pete Bellotte.

Cara co-wrote the lyric with Keith Forsey, Moroder’s frequent session drummer and a future star writer/producer in his own right, with No. 1 Hot 100 hits for Simple Minds and Billy Idol in the back half of the ’80s to his credit. Cara’s warm vocal conveys yearning and humanity, which offsets the occasional chilliness of the synthesized backdrop.

Jerry Bruckheimer, who co-produced Flashdance with his late partner Don Simpson, contacted Moroder in 1982 to see if he would be interested in composing the music for Flashdance. The two had previously teamed on 1980’s American Gigolo, which spawned Blondie’s “Call Me,” also a No. 1 hit on the Hot 100.

Cara had been somewhat reluctant to work with Moroder because she didn’t want to trigger comparisons to Moroder’s star client, Summer. “Giorgio approached me right after ‘Fame,’” she told me in an interview for Billboard that ran in the March 10, 1984 issue. “The only reason I didn’t go with him at the time was all the comparisons. But with ‘Flashdance […What a Feeling],'” we were thrown together by Paramount.”

Cara and Forsey were shown the last scene of the film, in which Alex auditions at the Pittsburgh Conservatory of Dance and Repertory, so they could get a sense of what the lyrics should be. They both felt that the dancer’s ambition to succeed would work as a metaphor for anyone hoping to achieve any dream.

“Flashdance…What a Feeling” wasn’t the first or last motivational anthem to reach No. 1, but it’s one of the best. The lyric “Take your passion and make it happen” is excellent career and life advice. Also, the line “in a world made of steel, made of stone” is an apt nod to the day job of Jennifer Beals’ welder character.

Moroder felt that the oft-repeated lyric “what a feeling” was right for the story but tried to persuade Cara and Forsey to incorporate the title of the film into the lyrics. The word “flashdance” never appears in the song – it’s a tough word to rhyme – but the words “flash” and “dance” do appear separately. It was only after the song was completed with the intended title “What a Feeling” that the word “Flashdance…” was tacked onto the title, for its promotional value.

The song wound up being used over the climactic scene Forsey and Cara had previewed, as well as during the opening credits. “Flashdance…What a Feeling” is what we hear as a young woman rides her bike through the streets of Pittsburgh just after sunrise, and as she starts her shift at the steel mill.

Cara had a good, well, “feeling” about the song. “I knew when we were recording it that we had something special with the song,” she said in an interview for BBC Radio 2’s Electric Dreams: The Giorgio Moroder Story. “Some things you just feel, you know? You can’t really dissect it or analyze it. It’s a spiritual thing that you sense, and I did sense that I had something special with this song.”

Bruckheimer also immediately sensed the song’s potential. On the Special Collector’s Edition DVD release of Flashdance (2010), Bruckheimer said, “When you first heard it, you said, ‘It’s a hit.’ It’s one of those things you just heard, and you just couldn’t get it out of your head. And it just got us all so excited. We kept playing it over and over and never got tired of it. To this day, I’m not tired of that song.”

As Cara had fretted all along, “Flashdance” drew comparisons to Summer’s hits of the era – and not just because of Moroder’s involvement. The song’s balladic opening, which segued into a rousing dance section, echoed a formula Summer and Moroder had perfected on hits like “Last Dance.” That Thank God It’s Friday highlight had won the Oscar five years earlier.


But while “Flashdance…What a Feeling” is very much in Summer’s wheelhouse, Cara sang it with an approachability and conviction that made it her own. She takes the listener on a journey from timidity and fear (“First, when there’s nothing/ But a slow-glowing dream”) to joy and abandon (“Pictures come alive/ You can dance right through your life”).

Even snarky critics were (mostly) won over by the single. Writing for Rolling Stone in 1984, Don Shewey called it “1983’s cheapest thrill… a patently ludicrous ode to instant gratification that Cara’s youthfully urgent, desperately soulful vocal rendered transcendent.”

“Flashdance…What a Feeling” was the second-highest new entry on the Billboard Hot 100 for the week ending April 2, 1983. Only Duran Duran’s “Rio,” first released in 1982, got off to a faster start that week. “Flashdance” reached No. 1 in its ninth week, dethroning David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance,” and stayed on top for six consecutive weeks – until it was in turn booted by The Police’s “Every Breath You Take.” “Flashdance…What a Feeling” was the longest-running No. 1 hit of 1983 by a female artist. It also was the only 1983 single to log 14 weeks in the top 10.

At the end of the year — and this is almost too perfect — Cara’s single and the film achieved identical rankings on key year-end charts. On Billboard’s year-end Hot 100 singles chart for 1983, “Flashdance…What a Feeling” ranked No. 3 behind “Every Breath You Take” and Jackson’s “Billie Jean.” On boxofficemojo.com’s accounting of the top-grossing films of 1983, Flashdance ranked No. 3 behind Return of the Jedi and a 1982 holdover, Tootsie.

When the 26th Annual Grammy nominations were announced, Cara received four nods – record of the year and best pop vocal performance, female, both for “Flashdance…What a Feeling” and album of the year and best album of original score written for a motion picture or a television special, both for Flashdance.

At the Grammy telecast on Feb. 28, 1984 – the highest-rated Grammys in history, in large part because the red-hot Jackson was expected to sweep (and did) – Cara won the female pop vocal award and shared in the award for original score. She also performed “Flashdance” as the final performance of the night.

The female pop vocal category was highlighted on the show, with performances from all five of the nominees – Cara, Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Tyler, Sheena Easton and – you guessed it – Summer. Cara seemed genuinely shocked when Bob Seger and Christine McVie announced her as the winner. “Are you sure?,” she charmingly asked, before saying, “Um, I can’t believe this.”

Five weeks later, on April 9, 1984, Cara performed “Flashdance…What a Feeling” on the Oscars. She was accompanied by 44 boys and girls from the National Dance Institute. The number was sensationally staged, and was interrupted by applause six times.

When Flashdance star Beals and Matthew Broderick announced “Flashdance…What a Feeling” as the winner, Cara became only the second person of color to win an Oscar for best original song – following Isaac Hayes for his 1971 classic “Theme From Shaft” – and the first woman of color to do so.

In her acceptance speech, Cara graciously saluted a legendary lyricist/composer team that was also nominated with two songs from Yentl. “Just to be nominated with the likes of Alan and Marilyn Bergman and Michel Legrand is an honor enough.”


In the wake of “Flashdance,” Cara landed just one more top 10 hit on the Hot 100. “Breakdance,” which Cara and Moroder co-wrote to capitalize on the breakdancing phenomenon, reached No. 8 in June 1984.

It’s hard to know why Cara didn’t sustain as a successful recording artist. Her two tentpole smashes were so ubiquitous they may have simply been too hard to follow. Summer dominated the dance/pop space in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s to the degree that it was hard for anyone else to step out of her shadow. Also, 1983-84 saw the emergence of a new MTV class of visuals-forward pop artists, including Madonna, Jackson, Prince, Cyndi Lauper and Culture Club. That may have left Cara, whose two big hits had visuals defined more by their movies than her own star power, trailing a little behind.

In the interview she did with me the week after winning two Grammys, she cited sexism in the music industry as a source of frustration, even then, at the pinnacle of her career.

“It’s very hard being female in this business,” she said. “They don’t want to know that you can play an instrument, which I do, or that you can write. They want you to look pretty and sing, and I’m not about just being a chick singer.

“That’s why I have tremendous respect for Donna [Summer] and Barbra [Streisand],” she continued, “and the women who are out there trying to have some control over their own careers.”

Cara saw the frequent comparisons to Summer – who was also 63 when she died in 2012 – as rooted in sexism. “A lot of people like to rival other female artists,” she said. “I listen to the radio and I hear one song after another by all the male artists and I can’t tell one voice from the next, but no one says anything about that.”

Whatever career frustrations and roadblocks Cara encountered, her talent and charisma at her peak — as seen in her recordings and those award show performances — are forever there for all to hear and see. She took her passion and made it happen.

[Gary]

Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie Dies at 79
The late singer's family shared the news via a statement, which noted that she passed away at a hospital "following a short illness."


By Rania Aniftos

11/30/2022


Christine McVie, beloved Fleetwood Mac musician and prolific lyricist, died on Wednesday (Nov. 30). She was 79 years old.

The late singer’s family shared the news via a statement posted to Facebook, which noted that she passed away at a hospital “following a short illness.”

“She was in the company of her family,” the statement continued. “We kindly ask that you respect the family’s privacy at this extremely painful time, and we would like everyone to keep Christine in their hearts and remember the life of an incredible human being, and revered musician who was loved universally.”


Following the sad news, McVie’s bandmates shared a joint statement to the official Fleetwood Mac Twitter page. “There are no words to describe our sadness at the passing of Christine McVie,” the message read. “She was truly one-of-a-kind, special and talented beyond measure. She was the best musician anyone could have in their band and the best friend anyone could have in their life. We were so lucky to have a life with her.”

11/30/2022
The statement concluded, “Individually and together, we cherished Christine deeply and are thankful for the amazing memories we have. She will be so very missed.”

McVie had an illustrious, respected career both as a soloist and as a member of Fleetwood Mac, which she joined in 1970. During her time in Fleetwood, the band had 25 Hot 100 hits, including nine top 10s and one No. 1 smash: “Dreams” in 1977.

The group also enjoyed 29 albums that charted on the Billboard 200, including seven top 10s and four No. 1s, including 1977’s Rumours, 1976’s Fleetwood Mac, 1982’s Mirage and 1997’s The Dance.

As a solo artist, McVie was best known for her hits, 1984’s “Love Will Show Us How” and “Got a Hold on Me,” the latter of which peaked at No. 10 on the Hot 100.

[Gary]

Dreams #1 - June 1977

[Gary]

Fred White, Drummer of Earth, Wind & Fire, Dies at 67
"He joins our brothers Maurice, Monte and Ronald in heaven," his brother and bandmate Verdine White wrote.


By Mitchell Peters

01/2/2023

Earth, Wind & Fire drummer Fred White performing onstage.
Rob Verhorst/Redferns

Fred White, the former drummer of Earth, Wind & Fire, has died. He was 67.

The percussionist’s brother and bandmate Verdine White shared the sad news through social media on Sunday (Jan. 1). Neither the date nor the cause of White’s death had been disclosed at press time.


“Our family is saddened today with the loss of an amazing and talented family member. Our beloved brother Frederick Eugene ‘Freddie’ White,” Verdine White wrote on Instagram alongside photos of his brother.

“He joins our brothers Maurice, Monte, and Ronald in heaven and is now drumming with the angels!” he added. “He was the wonderful bro that was always entertaining and delightfully mischievous! And we could always count on him to make a seemingly bad situation more light-hearted.”

Fred White was born on Jan. 13, 1955 in Chicago. He began drumming at the age of 9 and later performed with Linda Ronstadt and Donny Hathaway before joining Earth, Wind & Fire in 1974. He was the fourth of the White brothers to perform in the Grammy-winning R&B band.

White sat behind the kit for some of Earth, Wind & Fire’s most successful songs, including “Shining Star,” which peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in May 1975. He also scored top 10 hits with “Let’s Groove,” “September,” “Sing a Song,” “After the Love Has Gone,” “Boogie Wonderland” and others.

White left Earth, Wind & Fire in the mid-1980s, but he returned for the band’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2000.

During his career, White also lent his drumming talents to recordings for Bonnie Raitt, Little Feat, Deniece Williams, the Emotions, Ramsey Lewis, Jennifer Holliday, and Diana Ross. Most recently, he collaborated with Ross on her 2021 album, Thank You.

Verdine White’s tribute post drew a slew of responses from fellow musicians, including Questlove, Lenny Kravitz and Nile Rodgers.

“Sending my love and deepest condolences to you and the family,” Kravitz commented. “I was blessed to have been in his presence and blessed to have been influenced by him. A true king. Rest in power.

See Verdine White’s tribute to his brother Fred on Instagram here.

[Gary]

David Crosby, The Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash Founder, Dies at 81
Crosby has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, for his work in The Byrds and in Crosby, Stills & Nash.

By Katie Atkinson, Melinda Newman
01/19/2023

Two-time Rock & Roll Hall of Famer David Crosby, has died, sources confirm to Billboard. He was 81. Cause of death is unknown.

Crosby was a seminal figure in the folk-rock scene for more than six decades as a member of The Byrds, Crosby, Stills & Nash and then Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. He also had a prolific solo career, especially in recent years, releasing new music at an almost frenetic pace.

Crosby, a Los Angeles native and son of Academy Award-winning cinematographer Floyd Crosby, joined the Byrds in 1964 and in 1965, the band, known for its jangling guitars and layered harmonies, took two songs to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100: the Bob Dylan-penned “Mr. Tambourine Man” and Pete Seeger’s “Turn!Turn!Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season).”


Due to feuding with his bandmates Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman,” Crosby left the Byrds in 1967. In 1968, after meeting Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, the trio formed Crosby, Stills & Nash, appearing at Woodstock in August, 1969, for only their second gig.

Their self-titled debut album spawned two top 40 Hot 100 hits — “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” (No. 21) and “Marrakesh Express” (No. 28) — and the trio won the Grammy for best new artist in 1969. (He is one of only two individuals in Grammy history to have received two Grammy nominations for best new artist. He was nominated for that award as part of The Byrds (1965) before his CSN win.)

In 1969, Neil Young joined the trio, bringing them to greater heights with their 1970 album, Deja Vu, which reached No. 1 on the Billboard 100. Crosby contributed such songs as “Guinevere,” “Almost Cut My Hair,” “Long Time Gone” and “Wooden Ships” to the group, but was best known for his tight harmonies and rhyme guitar playing.

Similar to his tenure with the Byrds, Crosby’s time with CSN and CSN&Y was marked by bitter infighting with Young leaving the band in 1970. Unable to control the bickering in the studio, CSN didn’t release another album until 1977, with a self-titled set that included the hit, “Just A Song Before I Go.”

In 2019, Cameron Crowe produced a documentary about the cantankerous rock icon called Remember My Name. In an interview about the warts-and-all doc, Crosby explained to Billboard why it made sense that his Byrds bandmate Roger McGuinn called him “insufferable.”

“I can be contentious. Opinionated. I’m comfortable with that,” Crosby conceded. “When you’re in a relationship like that in a band, it’s like a marriage… you start out, you love each other, you love each other’s music. You’re thrilled that you’re doing this, and every time you play music, you feel brotherhood with the other guys. In CSNY with Neil [Young] and Graham [Nash] and Stephen [Stills], we were a competitive band. Not cooperative/competitive. We were also very shitty to each other over and over and over again, unkind and disloyal.”

Crosby earned 10 Grammy nominations in his lifetime — including a best music film nod for Remember My Name — but the CSN best new artist prize was his lone win.

David Crosby was MusiCares’ inaugural person of the year recipient in 1991.

[Gary]

[rockgolf]

Burt Bacharach, one of the most prolific and best pop songwriters of all-time died Feb. 9, 2023 at age 94. He was a mainstay of 60's radio, often paired with lyricist Hal David, frequently with Dionne Warwick being their muse. seven songs in the all-time top 1000 is a huge accomplishment.

Here's my list of every song I could find written or co-written by Burt in his magnificent career:

Bacha- rank	All-time Rank	Artist | Song	Total Points	H P	Peak Yr.
1	91	Dionne & Friends | That's What Friends Are For	994,080	1	1986
2	121	B.J. Thomas | Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head	953,072	1	1969
3	269	Christopher Cross | Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)	825,152	1	1981
4	278	Carpenters | (They Long To Be) Close To You	820,320	1	1970
5	300	Patti LaBelle & Michael McDonald | On My Own	811,320	1	1986
6	496	Herb Alpert | This Guy's In Love With You	726,104	1	1968
7	809	The 5th Dimension | One Less Bell To Answer	652,352	2	1970
8	1407	Twista ft. Kanye West & Jamie Foxx | Slow Jamz (samples Luther Vandross' cover of A House Is Not A Home)	536,880	1	2004
9	2574	Neil Diamond | Heartlight	390,496	5	1982
10	2621	Dionne Warwick | I Say A Little Prayer	385,050	4	1967
11	2749	Bobby Vinton | Blue On Blue	371,756	3	1963
12	2790	Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66 | The Look Of Love	368,424	4	1968
13	2795	Tom Jones | What's New Pussycat?	367,778	3	1965
14	2920	Gene Pitney | Only Love Can Break A Heart	353,974	2	1962
15	2998	Smith | Baby It's You	345,100	5	1969
16	3056	Dusty Springfield | Wishin' And Hopin'	339,626	6	1964
17	3096	Gene McDaniels | Tower Of Strength	335,784	5	1961
18	3158	Dionne Warwick | Walk On By	330,038	6	1964
19	3203	Gene Pitney | (The Man Who Shot) Liberty Valance	325,720	4	1962
20	3231	The Notorious B.I.G. | Big Poppa/Warning (Warning samples Isaac Hayes' cover of Walk On By)	322,560	6	1995
21	3327	Jackie DeShannon | What The World Needs Now Is Love	312,528	7	1965
22	3733	Dionne Warwick | This Girl's In Love With You	270,742	7	1969
23	3768	Dionne Warwick | I'll Never Fall In Love Again	266,530	6	1970
24	3990	The Shirelles | Baby It's You	246,840	8	1962
25	3996	Naked Eyes | Always Something There To Remind Me	246,240	8	1983
26	4135	Dionne Warwick | Anyone Who Had A Heart	233,172	8	1964
27	4349	Dionne Warwick | Do You Know The Way To San José	214,812	10	1968
28	4593	Dionne Warwick | Message To Michael	196,860	8	1966
29	4600	Ashanti | Rain On Me (samples Isaac Hayes' cover of The Look of Love)	196,180	7	2003
30	4750	Tom Clay | What The World Needs Now Is Love/Abraham, Martin and John	185,312	8	1971
31	4944	Dionne Warwick & Jeffrey Osborne | Love Power	173,280	12	1987
32	4991	Aretha Franklin | I Say A Little Prayer	170,952	10	1968
33	5076	Roberta Flack | Making Love	166,304	13	1982
34	5381	Sybil | Don't Make Me Over	153,480	20	1989
35	5710	Ronnie Milsap | Any Day Now	140,320	14	1982
36	5843	Jack Jones | Wives And Lovers	135,218	14	1964
37	5898	Dionne Warwick | Alfie	133,654	15	1967
38	6322	The Drifters | Please Stay	121,278	14	1961
39	7719	Dionne Warwick | Don't Make Me Over	91,290	21	1963
40	7828	Gene Pitney | Twenty Four Hours From Tulsa	89,148	17	1963
41	7891	Dionne Warwick | Promises, Promises	88,128	19	1968
42	8231	Gene Pitney | True Love Never Runs Smooth	81,600	21	1963
43	8449	The Stylistics | You'll Never Get To Heaven (If You Break My Heart)	78,360	23	1973
44	8479	Chuck Jackson | Any Day Now (My Wild Beautiful Bird)	77,962	23	1962
45	8486	The Walker Bros. | Make It Easy On Yourself	77,826	16	1965
46	8623	Dusty Springfield | The Look Of Love	75,888	22	1967
47	9265	Carole Bayer Sager | Stronger Than Before	67,360	30	1981
48	9480	Jerry Butler | Make It Easy On Yourself	64,770	20	1962
49	9532	Dionne Warwick | Reach Out For Me	64,226	20	1964
50	9615	B.J. Thomas | Everybody's Out Of Town	63,424	26	1970
51	9828	The 5th Dimension | Living Together, Growing Together	61,040	32	1973
52	9912	Isaac Hayes | Walk On By	60,112	30	1969
53	10352	Diana King | I Say A Little Prayer	56,100	38	1997
54	10542	Dionne Warwick | I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself	54,536	26	1966
55	10621	Dionne Warwick | Trains And Boats And Planes	53,856	22	1966
56	10947	Dionne Warwick | Who Is Gonna Love Me?	51,136	33	1968
57	11268	El DeBarge | Love Always	48,440	43	1986
58	11273	R.B. Greaves | Always Something There To Remind Me	48,384	27	1970
59	11382	Dionne Warwick | Are You There (With Another Girl)	47,464	39	1966
60	11569	Dionne Warwick | You'll Never Get To Heaven (If You Break My Heart)	46,104	34	1964
61	11845	Dionne Warwick | The Windows Of The World	44,268	32	1967
62	11873	The Five Blobs | The Blob	44,064	33	1958
63	12520	Dionne Warwick | Make It Easy On Yourself	39,840	37	1970
64	12616	Dionne Warwick | The Green Grass Starts To Grow	39,296	43	1971
65	12641	Andy Williams | Don't You Believe It	39,168	39	1962
66	12651	Dionne Warwick | The April Fools	39,134	37	1969
67	12742	Jane Morgan | With Open Arms	38,624	39	1959
68	12893	Cher | Alfie	37,706	32	1966
69	13077	Dionne Warwick | Let Me Go To Him	36,544	32	1970
70	13143	Bobby Vee | Be True To Yourself	36,176	34	1963
71	13517	Engelbert Humperdinck | I'm A Better Man	34,170	38	1969
72	14024	Timi Yuro | The Love Of A Boy	31,552	44	1963
73	14254	Dionne Warwick | Paper Mache	30,432	43	1970
74	14493	Dionne Warwick | Odds And Ends	29,410	43	1969
75	14842	Richard Chamberlain | Blue Guitar	27,846	42	1963
76	15102	Billy J. Kramer With The Dakotas | Trains And Boats And Planes	26,724	47	1965
77	15359	Lou Johnson | (There's) Always Something There To Remind Me	25,602	49	1964
78	15820	Dionne Warwick | Another Night	23,596	49	1967
79	15852	Sandie Shaw | (There's) Always Something There To Remind Me	23,460	52	1964
80	16451	Chuck Jackson | I Wake Up Crying	21,148	59	1961
81	17149	Quarterflash | Night Shift	18,624	60	1982
82	17397	Dionne Warwick | Here I Am	17,850	65	1965
83	17469	Shawn Phillips | Lost Horizon	17,640	63	1973
84	17774	Dionne Warwick | Looking With My Eyes	16,626	64	1965
85	18110	Neil Diamond | Front Page Story	15,680	65	1983
86	18345	B.J. Thomas | Long Ago Tomorrow	15,072	61	1971
87	18386	Neil Diamond | Turn Around	14,976	62	1984
88	19371	Dionne Warwick | Who Gets The Guy	12,640	57	1971
89	19425	Sybil | Walk On By	12,520	74	1990
90	19508	Jennifer Warnes | Don't Make Me Over	12,352	67	1980
91	19600	Eivets Rednow | Alfie (Stevie Wonder, spelled backwards, as a harmonica soloist)	12,138	66	1968
92	19676	Dionne Warwick | (There's) Always Something There To Remind Me	11,968	65	1968
93	19692	Lou Johnson | Reach Out For Me	11,934	74	1963
94	20262	Brook Benton | A House Is Not A Home	10,676	75	1964
95	20352	Gary Puckett | I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself	10,464	61	1970
96	20380	Dionne Warwick | A House Is Not A Home	10,404	71	1964
97	20984	Dionne Warwick | Let Me Be Lonely	9,316	71	1968
98	21254	Bobby Goldsboro | Me Japanese Boy I Love You	8,840	74	1964
99	21759	Meek Mill ft. Rick Ross & JAY-Z | What's Free (samples Richard Evans' cover of Close To You)	7,952	20	2018
100	22025	Christopher Cross | A Chance For Heaven	7,488	76	1984
101	22185	Glen Campbell/Anne Murray | I Say A Little Prayer/By The Time I Get To Phoenix	7,264	81	1971
102	22191	Tevin Campbell | Don't Say Goodbye Girl	7,260	71	1995
103	22386	Dionne Warwick | This Empty Place	7,004	84	1963
104	22612	Isaac Hayes | The Look Of Love	6,720	79	1971
105	22880	Together? (Soundtrack) ft. Jackie DeShannon | I Don't Need You Anymore	6,336	86	1980
106	23046	Tom Jones | Promise Her Anything	6,120	74	1966
107	23401	Percy Sledge | Any Day Now	5,712	86	1969
108	23452	Dionne Warwick | Make The Music Play	5,644	81	1963
109	24067	Brenda & The Tabulations | Don't Make Me Over	4,896	77	1970
110	24216	Jackie DeShannon | Come And Get Me	4,726	83	1966
111	24821	The Beatles | Baby It's You	4,060	67	1995
112	25196	Perry Como | You're Following Me	3,706	92	1961
113	25365	AWB | Walk On By	3,552	92	1979
114	25398	Burt Bacharach | Saturday Sunshine	3,536	93	1963
115	25551	Cilla Black | Alfie	3,400	95	1966
116	25630	Jerry Butler & Brenda Lee Eager | (They Long To Be) Close To You	3,328	91	1972
117	26242	Glee Cast ft. Kristin Chenoweth | One Less Bell To Answer / A House Is Not A Home	2,700	53	2010
118	26819	Burt Bacharach | I'll Never Fall In Love Again	2,346	93	1969
119	27467	Bobby Vinton | Only Love Can Break A Heart	1,952	99	1977
120	27924	Dionne Warwick And The Hip-Hop Nation United | What The World Needs Now Is Love	1,480	87	1998
121	28036	Glee Cast | A House Is Not A Home	1,400	70	2010
122	28285	Gloria Gaynor | Walk On By	1,280	98	1975
123	28881	Richard Chamberlain | Rome Will Never Leave You	1,054	99	1964
124	29028	Linda Scott | Who's Been Sleeping In My Bed?	1,020	100	1964
125	29037	Gloria Lynne | You Don't Have To Be A Tower Of Strength	1,020	100	1961
126	29566	Broadway For Orlando | What The World Needs Now Is Love	748	86	2016

[rockgolf]

www.billboard.com/lists/burt-bacharachs-biggest-billboard-hot-100-hits/

So Billboard found at least 3 Hip-Hop tracks that sampled Bacharach compositions that I wasn't aware,...

But they goofed too. They listed the Tom Jones song titled I'll Never Fall In Love Again as a Bacharach composition and while he had a song with that title, it's not the one Tom sang. I've let them know to replace Tom Jones with Tom Clay (at #30).

We'll see what happens. 

[sbb618]

Yeah, I think together the two of you have the complete list of top 10s. The 28 you listed above, plus Big Poppa / Warning by the Notorious B.I.G. (Warning specifically, sampling Isaac Hayes' cover of Walk on By), Slow Jamz by Twista feat. Kanye West & Jamie Foxx (sampling Luther Vandross' cover of A House Is Not a Home), and Rain on Me by Ashanti (Isaac Hayes' cover of The Look of Love), making 31 in total. Billboard leaves off the Aretha cover of I Say a Little Prayer, presumably because it's below a non-top 10, and replaces the Tom Clay remix with an unrelated Tom Jones song in error for the reason you gave above.

In addition to 12 of his own compositions, Bacharach also holds a production credit on one more top 10 single, teaming with his frequent collaborator Dionne Warwick to work on (Theme from) Valley of the Dolls. It peaked at #2 in 1968, eventually landing at #1672 on the all-time rank with 497,012 GOAT points, which would place it at 8th-highest among Bacharach's hits if counted.

[rockgolf]

sbb618 : Thanks, I've added that info to the above list, as well as Meek Mill's What's Free, referenced in the article.

Xander Zellner, author of the Billboard article, acknowledged the error via e-mail to me and has since made the correction.

If you've never heard the Tom Clay song at #30, count your blessings. It's a maudlin mix of him asking a 3-year-old "What does segregation mean? What does discrimination mean?" over an instrumental version of "What The World Needs" interspersed with actual and re-enacted news coverage of the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and MLK. Probably the only top 40 song where someone repeatedly screams "Break his thumb! Break his thumb!" To put the icing on the cake, each assassination is punctuated with up-tempo choruses of Abraham Martin and John. And it was put out by Motown!!! (It's actually on Spotify and on the playlist embedded below.)

Play it for anyone who says pop music is much worse now than it was when they were young.

Bonus:

[Gary]

Forever No. 1: Nino Tempo & April Stevens’ ‘Deep Purple’
The sibling duo's sweet harmonies and off-kilter arrangement made their take on the pop standard a curious jewel of the final pre-British Invasion year of '60s pop.


By Andrew Unterberger

04/24/2023


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 April Stevens (birth name: Caroline LoTempio) with a look back at her and younger brother Nino Tempo’s (Antonino LoTempio) lone No. 1 together or apart: their slightly offbeat and altogether winning rendition of pop standard “Deep Purple.”

If you were trying to guess the lone Grammy taken home by Nino Tempo & April Stevens’ “Deep Purple” at the 1964 awards six decades later, best rock and roll recording would probably not be the first category to come to mind. After all, the song — a No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 hit for the brother-sister duo in November 1963 — was a cover of a 25-year-old pop standard recorded by the likes of Bing Crosby and Guy Lombardo, based around sweet harmonies and jazzy piano and not a ton of guitar. More importantly, the song hit its commercial peak two months before the British Invasion, heralded by The Beatles’ January ’64 arrival on the Hot 100, forever transformed the sound and role of rock music in pop culture.

But while rock and roll might not have been the best-fitting box for Tempo’s and Stevens’ version of “Deep Purple,” it’s not immediately clear 60 years later where the song really does belong. It’s an off-kilter arrangement of a truly curious performance, one that so confounded Ahmet Ertegun — the storied co-founder and president of the duo’s Atlantic parent label, as well as the “Purple” producer — that he resisted releasing it as a single until Tempo and Stevens demanded that they be released from the label if it continued to lay on the shelf. But it’s that gentle inscrutability that makes the 100th No. 1 in Hot 100 history (and the final before President John F. Kennedy’s assassination) one of the most rewarding pop records of its era — an era that would already seem worlds away just six months later.



The sibling duo began their careers as separate solo artists, with Tempo a musical prodigy and successful child actor (and later an in-demand session musician) and Stevens — who died on April 17 at age 93 — a star pop vocalist, scoring most of her solo hits in the pre-Hot 100 era. (Their shared family name was actually LoTempio.) Ertegun signed the pair to Atlantic’s Atco imprint as a duo vocal act, but their first few singles failed to make a major impact. Stevens had the idea to do “Deep Purple,” and Tempo came up with an arrangement for it, but the duo were already scheduled to record the pop standard “Paradise,” and had to tuck their “Purple” version into the very end of their allotted studio time. But the duo and their session backing band (including eventual country and pop icon Glen Campbell on guitar) were on their game: “In 14 minutes, we got two takes,” Tempo told Fred Bronson in The Billboard Book of Number One Hits.

That off-the-cuff, slightly rushed quality gives “Deep Purple” a good deal of its charm. The mix feels a little off — the bass disruptively high in the mix, the vocals a tad unpolished — and Tempo admits that some of the arrangement’s chords were straight-up incorrect in terms of replicating the standard’s melody. If there is anything particularly rock and roll about the recording, it’s in this breezy looseness — there’s a real energy to it, helped by its slightly amped-up pacing. And while calling the production “raw” would probably be a bit of an exaggeration, it feels messy enough for 1963 to at least not sound like something made to pander to young folks’ parents.

But the real joy of the recording is found in the siblings’ dueting, their harmonies entwining both satisfyingly and unpredictably. The way their respective voices glide up and down the octave, never totally settling into a traceable melody but never sounding out of place either within the arrangement or alongside one another, is somewhat stunning. And the real masterstroke comes with their second run-through the refrain, where a foregrounded Stevens intones the lyrics in deeply felt spoken-word as a backgrounded Tempo casually sings along — a striking and sticky creative choice, inspired by Stevens recording her “narration” simply to help Tempo remember the song’s words, and a friend noting that it sounded cool. Not easy to make a standard that had been around so long that Babe Ruth considered it a personal favorite sound fresh, but Stevens and Tempo managed it.

However, Eretgun didn’t see the commercial potential in the duo’s quirky rendition. He called it the most embarrassing thing that the duo had recorded, and released “Paradise” as their next single instead. But that single flopped, and Tempo asked out of the duo’s Atco contract so he and Stevens could sign with a friend of his who did believe in the song: legendary producer Phil Spector, of Philles Records. Ertegun agreed to meet them halfway — “I’ll release one more record, and if it flops, you’ve got your contract back,” Tempo quotes the Atlantic titan as saying in Number One Hits — but released “Deep Purple” with a B-side of the duo’s “I’ve Been Carrying a Torch for You So Long That I Burned a Great Big Hole in My Heart,” a zippy country-rock hybrid which he believed would become their actual breakout hit.



The public proved him wrong: “Deep Purple” debuted at No. 94 on the Hot 100 on the chart dated Sept. 14, 1963, and quickly bound its way into the top 40. On the Nov. 16 chart, it replaced Jimmy Gilmer & The Fireballs’ “Sugar Shack” at the apex — staying there for a single week before being replaced by another duo, Dale and Grace, with the much more conventionally arranged and produced maybe-breakup ballad “I’m Leaving It All Up to You.” (Coincidentally, Donny & Marie Osmond would score top 20 hits on the Hot 100 in the 1970s with remakes of both of these songs, with their version of “I’m Leaving It All Up to You” hitting No. 4 in 1974 and their version of “Deep Purple” hitting No. 14 in 1976.) Tempo and Stevens would have more hits the following year with renditions of standards like “Whispering” (No. 11) and “Stardust” (No. 32), and eventually did go the Spector route with 1966’s All Strung Out — albeit not with Spector himself — and scored a final top 40 hit with the album’s Wall of Sound-aping title track (No. 26). But the British Invasion quickly made relics of the duo, as it also did Dale and Grace, Jimmy Gilmer, and countless other acts on top of the pop world in 1963.

While the rock and roll world might’ve ultimately left Nino Tempo and April Stevens far behind, the most enduring legacy of “Deep Purple” 60 years later is, ironically, a quintessentially rock one. The band Deep Purple, who took their name from guitarist Ritchie Blackmore’s grandmother’s love of the song, would become one of the biggest hard rock acts of the ’70s, earning induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016. But the highest that band ever got on the Hot 100 was the No. 4 peak of both “Hush” (1968) and “Smoke on the Water” (1973) — still three spots lower than Tempo’s and Stevens’ forever delightful pop oddity.

[Gary]

Chart Rewind: Harry Belafonte Was No. 1 on the Billboard 200 When It Launched in 1956
On March 24, 1956, the Billboard 200, the country's premier albums chart, arrived as a weekly Billboard fixture.


BY KEITH CAULFIELD


OOn March 24, 1956, the legendary Harry Belafonte crowned Billboard‘s first weekly albums chart — then billed Best Selling Pop Albums in Billboard magazine’s pages — with his smash set Belafonte. The entertainer, producer and activist died on Tuesday (April 25) at 96 of congestive heart failure.

Decades later, the ranking now known as the Billboard 200 remains the chart of record for America’s most-popular albums each week, fueled by consumption tracked by Luminate.


As for Belafonte, aka the King of Calypso, 1956 was a busy year. He was already a Tony Award winner for his work in the 1953 musical revue John Murray Anderson’s Almanac and, after topping the albums chart with Belafonte, he notched a second No. 1 in September 1956 with Calypso.

Kept afloat in large part by its hit single “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song),” Calypso spent a staggering 31 weeks at No. 1. It’s tied with the soundtrack to South Pacific and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours for the third-longest run on top in the chart’s history. The soundtrack to West Side Story is the all-time champ, with 54 weeks at the summit, and Michael Jackson’s career-defining Thriller is second with 37.

The Grammy and Emmy Award-winning Belafonte would continue to chart albums through 1970 and remain a cultural force, thanks, in part, to his social activism and philanthropy. Later generations would become familiar with Belafonte in striking ways: He helped organize (and sang on) the 1985 charity single “We Are the World,” a four-week Billboard Hot 100 No. 1, while “Day-O” was memorably mimed by the cast in the 1988 film Beetlejuice. In 2011, “Day-O” became a hit yet again, sampled in Lil Wayne’s top 10 Hot 100 hit “6 Foot 7 Foot.”

Belafonte told BET in 2011 that he appreciated the continued success of the iconic “Day-O”: “I’m just glad to see that the younger generations have picked it up and are carrying the song forward in their own way, just like I picked it up in my time.”

[iHype.]

Big loss, RIP.

Also puts into perspective just how relatively brand new & young the idea of a “music industry” and “music charts” are.

He had the first ever #1 album on Billboard 200 & the first ever album to sell 1 million copies. He was still alive until today. People from the absolute beginning of modern music are still alive as of today.

[Gary]

Most wks #1 - Billboard 200

1. West Side Story - 54
2. Thriller - Michael Jackson - 37
3. Calypso - Harry Belafonte - 31
Rumours - Fleetwood Mac
South Pacific

[jdanton2]

Harry Belafonte was at his peak on the album charts in `1956 and 1957 the years that Elvis Presley was at his peak on the singles chart. while Elvis also had success on the album chart Harry spent more weeks at #1 on the album chart.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Billboard_number-one_albums_of_1956

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Billboard_number-one_albums_of_1957

[Gary]

Gordon Lightfoot, Canadian Singer/Songwriter, Dies at 84
Lightfoot's six-decade career began in the early 1960s on the Toronto folk circuit and went worldwide in the 1970s thanks to a string of influential hits.


By Katie Atkinson


05/1/2023

Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Image

Gordon Lightfoot, the Canadian singer/songwriter behind the folk hits “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” “Sundown” and “If You Could Read My Mind,” died at age 84 on Monday (May 1), his family has announced.

“Gordon Lightfoot passed away this evening in a Toronto hospital at 7:30 p.m.,” a statement on Lightfoot’s Facebook page announced, promising “more to come.”

Earlier this month, Lightfoot had canceled his upcoming U.S. and Canada tour dates due to health issues. “Gordon Lightfoot announces the cancellation of his U.S. and Canadian concert schedule for 2023,” a statement read at the time. “The singer is currently experiencing some health related issues and is unable to confirm rescheduled dates at this time.”

Lightfoot’s six-decade career began in the early 1960s on the Toronto folk circuit and went worldwide in the 1970s thanks to a string of influential hits. He scored four top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 in the ’70s, starting with “If You Could Read My Mind,” which peaked at No. 5 in 1971. Next up were “Sundown” — his lone No. 1 — and “Carefree Highway” (No. 10), both from 1974’s Sundown — also his only No. 1 album on the Billboard 200.

Finally, there was the most epic song of his catalog, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” which was released in 1976 and peaked at No. 2 on the Hot 100. The song told the story of the fatal sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald a year earlier in Lake Superior, which killed all 29 men aboard the Great Lakes freighter. “They might have split up or they might have capsized/ They may have broke deep and took water/ And all that remains is the faces and the names/ Of the wives and the sons and the daughters,” the poetic lyrics read.

Lightfoot was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2012. He won 13 Juno Awards in his native Canada, capped by his induction into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1986. He won four Juno Awards for male vocalist of the year (1971-73 and 1975) and two for composer of the year (1973 and 1977). Lightfoot was nominated for four Grammys (but never won) — best folk performance for Did She Mention My Name (1968), best pop vocal performance, male for “If You Could Read My Mind” (1971) and song of the year and best pop vocal performance, male for “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” (1976).

Lightfoot is survived by his wife, actress Kim Hasse, whom he married in 2011. He had six children from his past relationships, including two previous marriages.

[Gary]