Songoftheday 10/28/14 - You can look at the menu but you just can't eat, you can feel the cushions but you can't have a seat...

Howard Jones - "No One Is To Blame"
from the album Action Replay (1986)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #4 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 14

Today's Song of the Day comes from the British new wave singer/songwriter Howard Jones, whose second album Dream Into Action spun off two top-40 hits in 1985 including "Life In One Day" and the top-5 single "Things Can Only Get Better". The following year Jones released a companion EP with remixes of older songs just in the United States. Included in that set is a cut from Dream Into Action, "No One Is To Blame". With a remix from Phil Collins and Hugh Padham that has Phil singing backup, the single became his biggest hit in America...

"No One Is To Blame" became Howard's second and so-far most recent top-10 pop hit in the U.S. in July of 1985. The single had its biggest success on "easy-listening" radio, landing him his first #1 American chart hit on the Adult Contemporary list. It also crossed over to the Mainstream Rock radio chart in Billboard at #20. Internationally, while the record went top-10 in Australia, it stopped at #16.

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To compare, here's is the original version of the song before Phil got his hands on it...

Here's Howard live (with added Knopfler)...

Lastly, here's Jones when he appeared on the British version of Hit Me Baby One More Time in 2005...

A Caribbean king goes maudlin.