Songoftheday 9/20/17 - Enter the jam the party is packed and I rap, girls wall to wall there's my man hangin' out at the back...

"Here We Go (Let's Rock & Roll)" - C + C Music Factory
from the album Gonna Make You Sweat (1990)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #3 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 14

Today's song of the day comes from the C+C Music Factory, which was put together by dance music remixing geniuses Rob Clivillés and David Cole in the late 1980's as an outlet for their own music. Their first single as an act, "Gonna Make You Sweat", became a huge success, spending two weeks at #1 on the American pop chart, and an incredible five weeks on top of the dance club play list. However, it came with a kind of asterisk, as it was revealed that former Weather Girl Martha Wash provided the vocals for the track (under the pretense that they'd be demos) and with model/singer Zelma Davis lipsynching for her life in the video. Eventually that would be settled in court, but in the meantime, the rest of the album was recorded with Davis singing, including the second single "Here We Go (Let's Rock & Roll)". Written by Clivillés with rapper Freedom Williams, who is really center stage on this record, there was much ado about Zelma's involvement, to the point that the main remix was subtitled "Zelma Sings". Either way, she had a good voice (of course, not Martha good, but good), and the finished product straddled the line between the gay dance club party atmosphere and rock attitude that made "Gonna Make You Sweat" such a groundbreaking record. And the redo on Chic's "Freak Out" as "Freedom" still kills me...

"Here We Go" became the Factory's second top ten pop hit in the U.S. in May of 1991. The single also climbed to #7 on Billboard's R&B chart. The remixes on the CD/12" vinyl single helped the track top the Dance Club Play list in the magazine for three weeks. Internationally, "Here We Go" went to the top ten in Spain (#4) and New Zealand (#9), and reached the top-20 in Canada (#11), Switzerland (#11), Germany (#14), Finland (#16), Ireland (#18), the Netherlands (#19), Australia (#20), and the UK (#20).

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Here's the extended remix that topped the dance chart for three weeks..

Freedom and Zelma appeared on Soul Train to promote the single...

And finally the Factory live at the MTV Music Awards in 1991, performing "Here We Go" along with "Gonna Make You Sweat"...

Up tomorrow: Glam metal band take a blustery trip.