Songoftheday 5/29/17 - These are the days of the open hand they will not be the last, look around now these are the days of the beggars and the choosers...
from the album Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1 (1990)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 10
Today's song of the day comes from George Michael, who went from being one-half of the "boy-band"-style duo Wham! to an international pop superstar with one of the biggest albums of the decade, the Grammy-winning Faith. The record had spun off six top-5 pop hits in the U.S. with "I Want Your Sex", "Kissing A Fool", and four #1's in "Monkey", "Father Figure", "One More Try", and the title track. After a grueling tour behind the album, and a full three years after the release of Faith, Michael's second solo album Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1. came out. With George denying any promotion of his own to the album, the lead single "Praying For Time" arrived with only a lyric video without him in it (one of the first "lyric videos" ever, TBH). The beautiful reflection on the state of the world in crisis did find a home on radio by just name-power alone, sending it quickly up the pop chart around the world...
"Praying For Time" became George's ninth #1 with or without Wham! in October of 1990. The song also climbed to #4 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart. Internationally, the song topped the chart in Canada, while reaching the top ten in Norway (#2), Ireland (#3), Italy (#3), Switzerland (#6), New Zealand (#8), Sweden (#9), the Netherlands (#10), and in Michael's own UK (#6). The record also made the top 20 in France, Germany, and Australia.
(Click below to see the rest of the post)
Here's George performing "Praying For Time" during his MTV Unplugged appearance in 1996...
In 2008, Carrie Underwood covered the song for her return on American Idol's "AI Gives Back" episode, and the version, released for charity, climbed to #27 on the American pop chart...
Back to George on his Symphonica tour in 2011 in Paris...
Finally, from a documentary on the artist in 1990, Michael explaining some of the lyrics of the song before some studio footage...
For Rolando.
Up tomorrow: British dance-soul lass has captured the perfect moment, determinedly.
Comments