Songoftheday 7/5/14 - She said the girls decide if it’s gonna be dead or alive ‘bout choosing to arrive or not to show...

Ray Parker Jr. - "Girls Are More Fun"
from the album Sex and the Single Man (1985)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #34 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 4

Today's Song of the Day is by R&B/pop singer/songwriter/guitarist Ray Parker Jr., who capped off another fruitful part of his career with his second hits collection in three years, Chartbusters, which sent "Jamie" into the top-20 on the pop chart. The next year, in 1985, Parker released his third solo album, Sex and the Single Man. And even though he's been getting by cribbing ideas from the likes of the Police ("I Just Can't Stop Loving You") and Huey Lewis ("Ghostbusters"), he barely changes the name of Cyndi Lauper's biggest hit for his next single "Girls Are More Fun". It's a funky but lyrically milquetoast slumber party jam, though at the end the idea of counseling "those of you who've gone the other way" is in retrospect a little disjointed...

"Girls Are More Fun" became Ray's seventh solo top-40 pop hit in November of 1985, while stopping at #21 on the R&B chart in Billboard magazine. Internationally, the song made it to #32 in Canada and #46 in the UK, and would be his last lead-artist single to make the top-40. In 1987 his next studio set After Dark, scored a top-5 R&B hit with "I Don't Think That Man Can Sleep Alone". He would start the next decade as a guest on Glenn Medeiros' "All I Missing Is You", which would be his last time on the pop chart. He tried to adapt to the new jack swing sound on his last top-40 soul hit "She Needs To Get Some", but his subliminal misogyny was too much for the times.

Up tomorrow: Soul "girl band" hit big with a sad song.