Songoftheday 1/21/13 - Some of them want to use you, some of them want to be used by you...

Eurythmics - "Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)"
from the album Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) (1983)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 17

Today's Song of the Day is the big breakthrough single from the British new-wave duo Eurythmics, who originally were part of a pop-rock group called the Tourists, who went to #4 in Britain in 1979 with their cover of Dusty Springfield's "I Only Want To Be With You". After both leaving the band as well as their personal romantic relationship, Annie Lennox and David Stewart adopted the moniker Eurythmics and recorded their first album, In The Garden, which they released in 1981, but besides a minor chart hit in England with "Never Gonna Cry Again", which peaked at #63, but it still was part of the sparse early 80s post-punk that was giving way to the new batch of New Romantics like Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet.

Holing themselves in a DIY home studio and exploring more lush electronic instrumentation, the duo re-emerged with their second effort, Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This). After their first single "Love Is A Stranger" did slightly better than their last at #54, they released the title track as the second, complete with it martial synth arpeggio hook and a video featuring Annie's newly short orange-red hair, dressed in a suit asserting herself all over the damn place as David with his strewn-out mop and glasses played the Teller to her Penn...

"Sweet Dreams" zoomed to #2 in the UK in 1983, then crossed over to America and landed at #1 (after a month in the runner-up spot). The single also went to #2 on the Dance Club chart, as well as the top-20 on the rock radio list and top-40 on the adult-contemporary (soft-rock) radio format, and remains by far the duo's most remembered classic.

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The same year, French singer Sylvie Vartan put out a translated version of the song as "Deprime" ("Depression")...

Goth rocker Marilyn Manson had the most successful cover of the song in 1995 as his first taste of exposure to America, and landed in the top-40 on both the alternative and mainstream rock radio charts, to the horror of thousands of concerned parents...

At the same time, American expatriate Swing took the song in a completely different direction with dance guru Dr. Alban, and hitting the top-20 in Sweden in the process...

New York rapper Nas took his interpolation of the song as "Street Dreams" to #22 on the US pop chart in 1996...

...while freestyle artist Rockell cribbed the synth riff for her #61 US hit "I Fell In Love"...

The Eurythmics themselves re-released the song remixed by Giorgio Moroder and went to #48 in the UK in 1991...

They did it again in 2006 with DJ Steve Angello (1/3 of the Swedish House Mafia) and went to #19 in France..

...and they actually "sampled" themselves at the end of their  "comeback" single "17 Again" in 2000...

Finally in 2011 actress Emily Browning did an actually nice brooding version of the song in the whackadoo movie Sucker Punch...

Up tomorrow: Party over, oops, out of time.