Songoftheday 11/9/18 - 'Cause without we cheat and we learn from each and every heart affair, it's without we cheat and we hurt till somebody's in despair...
from the album Love Is Not Sex (1993)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #17 (three weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 12
Today's song of the day comes from the Captain Hollywood Project, which was put together by New Jersey-born Tony Dawson-Harrison. Tony, a dancer and choreographer, had minor success in Germany, where he had served in the military, before joining the Dutch dance act Twenty 4 Seven, where he was featured on their first album Street Moves. The lead single from that, "I Can't Stand It", topped Billboard magazine's Eurochart, which tallied all the various European charts, while reaching #2 in Italy, Austria, and Switzerland, #3 in Germany, and #7 in the UK. After that success, Tony, who was already going by the moniker "Captain Hollywood", struck out on his own, forming the Captain Hollywood Project in the early 1990s. In 1992, with singer Nina Gerhard, the Project released their first single, "More and More". Written by Tony with Juergman Katzmann, Oliver Reinicke, and Giora Schein, it became one of the biggest early techno-pop hits of the decade. The music video it seems aimed to lay down this heavy image of hard time life in the city, but no one paid attention to anything but the groove, and by the following year, American pop station gave notice...
"More and More" became the Project's first and biggest pop success in the U.S. becoming their sole top-40 hit in June of 1993. The remixes of the track helped it rise to #3 on Billboard's Dance Club Play chart. Internationally, where the song was released a year prior, the single spent three weeks at #1 in Germany, and reached the top ten in Belgium (#2), Denmark (#2), Austria (#3), Norway (#3), Sweden (#3), Switzerland (#3), Italy (#5), Israel (#5), France (#7), the Netherlands (#7), and Greece (#8). It also got to #15 in both Ireland and Canada, #23 in the UK, and just missed the top-40 in Australia (#43).
The second release from Love Is Not Sex, the similar-sounding "Only With You" missed the pop chart, "Bubbling under" Billboard's Hot 100 at #118, while climbing to #10 on the American dance chart. It was much bigger internationally, reaching the top ten in places like Germany (#4) and France (#7). That was followed by "All I Want", which went a little higher on the American dance chart at #7, while getting to #2 in Portugal. The fourth release from the set, "Impossible", stiffed in the States, while getting to #4 in Sweden and #12 in Germany. Lastly, album cut "Rhythm Of Life", released to club, got to #29 on the Dance Club Play list, the same rank it hit on the British singles chart.
In 1994, the group released a second album, Animals Or Human. Lead single "Flying High", missed the charts in the U.S., but hit the top ten in the Netherlands (#6), Sweden (#7), and Austria (#10). A couple years later, Tony would put out the third and so far most recent album, The Afterparty, with first single "Over & Over" reaching the top-40 in Austria (#35) and almost doing that in Germany (#45). He then retired to be more behind the scenes, crucial in the development of boy-band O-Town in the 2000s. Since then, he hired on wife Shirin Amour as a permanent member, and hit #61 in Germany in 2001 with one-off single "Danger Sign". Two years later, dance act Murphy Brown joined with the Project for the smash-up single "Axel F 2003", which was a decent hit in German at #18. Most recently the act Harrison and Shirin have continued to tour under the CHP name...
(Click below to see the rest of the post)
Here's the house music style "Karizma Remix" that helped the song reach the top three on the dance chart...
and the group appearing on TV to promote the single...
and finally, in concert in 2017 in Kaunas...
Up tomorrow: A fallen legend temporarily joined a legendary band to mourn another fallen legend.
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