Songoftheday 8/11/12 - Cause I want you only to be, to be my very own...

Barry Manilow - "Oh Julie"

from the EP Oh Julie! (1982)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #38

Weeks in the top-40: 2

Today's Song of the Day is by singer/songwriter/producer/pianoman Barry Manilow, who started out playing the keys for Bette Midler at the infamous Continental Baths in New York at the beginning of the seventies. After her signing, Barry produced Bette's first two albums, which eventually parlayed into his own record deal, with his debut self-titled album being released in 1973. With his sophomore set, Barry Manilow II, he claimed a #1 pop hit with "Mandy" a year later, as well as his first top-10 album.

In 1975, Barry scored a second #1 hit with what some people regard as his signature song, "I Write The Songs", even though the song wasn't written by Manilow, but rather by Beach Boy Bruce Johnston. Two years later, he got his third (and so far final) #1 pop hit in the US with "Looks Like We Made It" from his fourth studio album, This One's For You.

But it took until his live album, Barry Manilow Live in 1977, that Manilow got a #1 album in America. That set, recorded in a 12-show stint on Broadway, also earned him a special Tony Award, and contained his hits and funny asides like "A Very Strange Medley", where he threaded famous jingles he's written for television commercials together.

By the time of his eight album, If I Should Love Again, Barry was a fixture on adult-contemporary radio, having amassed a dozen #1 hits there. He also had a concert televised in my area on the PRISM cable network (at that time, kiddies, there were only HBO, Cinemax, and PRISM. With the boxes with the tabs you press.). In 1982, he still was hitting the pop chart, though more modestly, with two top forty hits before the summer, including his remake of the Four Seasons' classic "Let's Hang On". To follow this up, Manilow released an EP of four songs, and the title track, "Oh Julie", was a cover of a song written and performed originally that same year by Welsh retro-pop singer Shakin' Stevens. Stevens was huge in Britain, with 15 top-10 hits during the 80s, and "Oh Julie" was the only one of his four UK charttoppers that he wrote....

While Shakin' Stevens didn't make the US chart with the more Cajun-tinged version of the song (he only made the US pop chart once, later on), Barry's name got radio to notice and gave him another top-40 hit in return.

I don't know whether it's because it's because it's a fun song, or because it's such an obscure hit of his (you have to get the vinyl EP to get the song, it has yet to appear on at least an American CD), this song fascinates me to this day, and gets to the core of my chart geek-dom. Maybe one day a rarities box set will come out with this on it. Until then, I've got the EP. (I mean really, it even scored another top-40 hit, "Some Kind Of Friend".)

Up Tomorrow: A Metal Wind.