Songoftheday 7/7/12 - Well the rock still rolls, the beat goes on after all this time...

Pointer Sisters - "American Music"

from the album So Excited! (1982)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #16 (three weeks)

Weeks in the top-40: 8

Today's Song of the Day is by the R&B/pop family act the Pointer Sisters. Anita, Ruth, and June Pointer had already had a top-40 hit in 1982, "Should I Do It", by the time they released their ninth studio set, So Excited!. The first single, "American Music" followed in the same vein as that last hit, and with Anita on lead it climbed into the pop top-20.

Because of its mainstream tempered tone, the song did best on adult-contemporary radio, making the top-10 (#9) on that chart, while only making the top-40 (#23) on R&B radio. The album as well missed the US top-40 albums list (and ridiculously hard to find on CD). But their next single, the album's title track, would point them in a more dance and R&B vein, and end up being a top-40 hit twice.

Fun fact: the So Excited! album had the Sister redoing Prince's "I Feel For You" a couple years before Chaka Khan's iconic version.

Up tomorrow: Prog-rock trio misses their periodicals...