Songoftheday 4/13/15 - Looking in your eyes I see a paradise, this world that I found is too good to be true...

"Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" - Starship
from the album No Protection (1987)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 15

Today's Song of the Day is by the band Starship, who had evolved (or de-volved, depending on who you speak to) from the iconic Bay Area trippy rock band Jefferson Airplane to the sterile hitmaking machine led by high-pitched operatic singer Mickey Thomas. With back-to-back #1 hits with "We Built This City" in 1985 and "Sara" the following year, they proved just as vital as the newcomers to the chart (sacrificing artistic integrity in the process). For the next move, the band contributed a song to the movie Mannequin, starring "Brat-Pack" actor Andrew McCarthy as an artist subbing as a department store window dresser whose titular prop (played by pre-Sex In The City Kim Cattrall) came to life only under his eyes (like the sex-doll version of James Stewart's Harvey). The song, "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now", was written by song doctor Diane Warren with British singer/songwriter Albert Hammond ("It Never Rains In Southern California"). Though it's sheen and sugar was over the top, it fit the movie perfectly and was ten times more enjoyable than "We Built This City" was, although only Thomas, co-lead singer Grace Slick (the sole hold-out from the Airplane) and guitarist Craig Chaquico appears on the record....

"Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" went all the way to the top of the American pop chart in April of 1987, at the time making Slick the recordholder for the oldest woman to make it to #1. The track also topped the adult contemporary chart, and even made it to #16 on the Mainstream Rock radio list in Billboard (essentially coasting on their name clout). Internationally, the record topped the chart in the UK (the band's only #1 hit in any of its forms), Canada, and Ireland, and made the top ten almost everywhere else.

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Gloria Estefan filled in for Grace when the band performed the Oscar-nominated song at the Academy Awards...

Songwriter Hammond recorded his own version of his song with Welsh songstress Bonnie Tyler...

In 2007, former British teen idol (and future Celebrity Big Brother UK housemate) Kavana sang "Nothing's Gonna..." as a contestant on Grease Is The Word in the UK...

Finally, here's Starship (well, Thomas) performing at the Rewind festival in 2012...

and as a bonus for the Rupaul's Drag Race fans, here's Detox lipsyncing the song hilariously...

Up tomorrow: a trio of women from Miami want you to tag along.