Songoftheday 5/12/12 - all I wanna do when I wake up in the morning is see your eyes....

Toto - "Rosanna"

from the album Toto IV (1982)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #2 (five weeks)

weeks in the top 40: 18

Today's Song of the Day is by Los Angeles-based soft-rock band Toto. The group was formed in the mid 70s by various LA prime studio musicians, as well as singer Bobby Kimball. Their debut single, "Hold The Line", was a top-5 US pop single in 1978, which gave them a good head start. But it took until their fourth album's first single, "Rosanna", four years later, to give them their second.

The video featured dancer and eventually top-10 recording artist in her own right (with Animotion) Cynthia Rhodes (a.k.a. Mrs. Richard Marx). Here you can see a little of what got her her role in Dirty Dancing...

"Rosanna", named for (but not about) actress and  keyboardist Steve Porcaro's girfriend Rosanna Arquette, went on to win the band a Grammy for Record of the Year at the 1983 awards show. However it couldn't keep the couple together, as Porcaro and Arquette broke up shortly after the release of the record. The band would go on to have three more top-40 hits from Toto IV, including their biggest, "Africa".

The song was sampled in the Art Of Noise song "Beat Box (Diversion One)", and the song was parodied by the Christian "Weird Al" Yankovic-style  group Apologetix...

Meanwhile, while Toto has changed singers a multitude of times, they retain a huge following in Japan and the Far East.

Meet you all the way, indeed.

Up tomorrow: Runaway gives us Red and Shamrocks.