By the early 1990s, like a lot of folks, I found my musical tastes not fully aligning with Billboard’s Hot 100 or American Top 40.
In the 1970s and 1980s, that statement would have been redundant:
After all, AT40 used the Hot 100 as its source for the weekly radio countdown.
But this was no longer the case by the early 1990s.
Radio formats fragmented, and alternative rock, rap, country, and hair metal crossed infrequently to the mainstream chart. In November 1991, AT40 ditched the Hot 100 for what was then Billboard’s Top 40 Radio Monitor chart.
It never went back.
Meantime, I turned from Shadoe Stevens and Casey Kasem to different inspirations for my personal weekly charts, which I had compiled since 1981.
In the early ’90s, this would mean songs I heard on radio stations in South Bend, Indiana:
- Pop U-93
- AC Sunny 101.5
- As well as 90-miles-away in Chicago: Urban WGCI.
Sometimes, it meant songs I saw – on AC music video channel VH1.
Although:
The channel was starting to follow the lead of sister channel MTV and move toward non-musical programming.
I’d supplement those songs with singles I bought on cassette for a couple of bucks or less at Musicland. If it was a dance track I heard on Open House Party and liked, I might splurge the $7.99 or so for a 12-inch vinyl single. Enough strong singles, and I’d go for the album on vinyl or, more likely, cassette.
This set features a few such songs.
Four are remakes:
The English dance act Rage’s cover of Bryan Adams’ “Run to You…”
Ohio-born singer Penny Ford’s take on Aretha Franklin’s “Daydreaming…”
The Cover Girls’ cover of an R&B hit from Rose Royce, “Wishing on a Star…”
And the English act K.W.S. making a dance pop hit out of, ironically, the one K.C. and the Sunshine Band song that wasn’t originally a dance track, “Please Don’t Go.”
Another song, the SOUL System’s “It’s Gonna Be a Lovely Day” from The Bodyguard soundtrack, builds a new song from the refrain of Bill Withers’ R&B and pop classic from 1978.
Two other soundtrack songs in this set:
New Edition member Ralph Tresvant’s “Money Can’t Buy You Love” from Mo’ Money…
… and “As the Days Go By,” a track from Australian singer Daryl Braithwaite that had been released four years earlier but caught my attention via the 1992 film Peter’s Friends.
From the dance charts come Rozalla’s “Everybody’s Free (to Feel Good)…”
George Lamond’s “Where Does That Leave Love?”
And Sunscreem’s “Love You More.”
Ford, Rozalla and the Cover Girls are just a few of the women who figure prominently in this set.
The duo Shakespears Sister – ex-Bananarama singer Siobhan Fahey and Marcella Detroit, the former Marcy Levy – are represented by “Stay,” their Top 10 hit.
Boy Krazy, formed in New York but sounding like a British import (perhaps because of their hit being a Stock Aitken Waterman production), went Top 20 with “That’s What Love Can Do.”
British singer Tasmin Archer scored her sole pop hit in the U.S. with “Sleeping Satellite.”
And American R&B artist Sybil – known on pop radio for her update of Dionne Warwick’s “Don’t Make Me Over” – caught my attention with an original that she co-wrote, “You’re the Love of My Life.”
Lastly, a few “Who Sings It?” tracks come from major names:
The Cure’s “Friday I’m in Love…”
…The David Crosby/Phil Collins duet “Hero…”
And even Billy Ray Cyrus’ solo moment in the pop spotlight, “Achy Breaky Heart.”
This go-around, the only song not available on Spotify is one that has not aged well:
“I Wanna Make Love to You” by the R&B/pop act Rythm Syndicate. (That misspelling always irritated me. Now, the song does, too.) Here it is on YouTube in the interests of full disclosure.
Here’s the Spotify link for the rest of this set:
Which ones do you like? Hate?
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Kudos to you for staying so attached to current music as late as you did. I don’t know a lot of these, but I do really love that David Crosby/Phil Collins song “Hero”. Lyrically twee, but the song is really beautiful. One of the few CD singles that I purchased, mainly because Mrs. Crawford liked it, too.
Thanks, Link. Personal charting kept me at least loosely connected to music through 2018. After that, I needed to step away.
That’s two in a row where I only knew 3 songs. I had the Tasmin Archer CD but I remember little of it, other than “Sleeping Satellite”, which is a decent song. The Cure song is decent but not one of my favorites from them. I remember thinking at the time that Robert Smith must have fallen in loft and gone soft, although Love Song is great. Achy Breaky Heart is well, I think we know.
RB, I figured a higher ratio for you this week because there were more dance/hip-hop songs and fewer ACs. Oh, well — not good to assume! 🙂
I need to listen to them. Some I may recognize, not by title, but by hearing them.
Nope, that didn’t help at all. Still stuck on 3.
I know a good proportion of these. Some big hitters on the UK charts. KWS, Shakespears Sister and Tamsin Archer all chart toppers. With The Cure, Billy Ray Cyrus, Rage and Rozalla not far off.
Rage and KWS were proponents of the early 90s trend for dance versions of classic hits. Generally these were a formulaic pale imitation of the original.
In Rage’s case they outperformed Bryan Adams peaking at #3 whereas Bryan only got to #11.
KWS borrowed from the great and good of 70s soul and disco following this up with Rock Your Baby, Hold Back The Night, Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love, Ain’t Nobody and The More I Get The More I Want. They even got Teddy Pendergrass to appear on that last one.
Whereas Rage achieved one hit wonder status. They tried to repeat the trick with a dire reworking of House Of The Rising Sun but only got to #41. Which is far higher than it deserved.
At the same time that KWS went Top 20 in the U.S. with their uptempo version of “Please Don’t Go,” KC himself formed what he called “Another Class” of the Sunshine Band to release a rival dance version. I actually liked that one more than KWS’ version but it went nowhere on the pop charts. @Ozmoe might have some insight on that…
Here’s a link to that version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZlh-COfXxw
KC was actually trying to get another recording contract in the 1990s and come back with a new album a la Tina Turner, but the record companies turned hm down for either not sounding like he did with his 1970s hits or not sounding enough like 1990s music. I’m sure other artists faced the same dilemma when trying to come back as well.
Lots of great artists were spun off from New Edition — Ralph Tresvant’s solo career probably the least famous in the shadow of Bobby Brown, Bell Biv Devoe, even Johnny Gill.
#115? I bought Great Expectations. Somebody in A&R was sleeping on the job. “Sleeping Satellite” is memorable. Well, I remember it. Comparing Tasmin Archer to Sarah McLachlan is lazy, but that’s what made me buy the album.I don’t think “Into the Fire” charted. Archer scored big first, so who’s imitating who? Four years was a long time for people to wait between albums. Now it’s the norm. By the time Bloom came out, Archer was cult. I bought Bloom, too.