Songoftheday 6/12/12 - I heat up I, can't cool down, got me spinnin' round and round...

Steve Miller Band - "Abracadabra"

from the album Abracadabra (1982)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (two weeks)

Weeks in the top-40: 19

Today's song of the day is by Steve Miller, the virtuoso blues-rock guitarist from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Miller formed the self-named band in the late 60s in San Francisco, and their first trippy albums were cult favorites of rock music in the early 70s (the band at one point counted Boz Scaggs as one of its members).  But the band was more of an acquired taste, and had it's first of only two minor hits on its fifth album with "Going To The Country".

But it was in 1973 that Miller's sound broke through with a mainstream audience, with "The Joker", their eighth album. The title track soared into the top-40 for the first time for the band, and went all the way to be their initial #1 hit. After that, the band was a staple on album-rock radio, as well as mainstream pop, scoring three more top-10 hits in the 70s, including another #1 pop single with "Rock'N Me".

However, as the 80s dawned, Miller faltered a little, as his Circle Of Love album was by comparison a dud, with neither the album nor first single making the top-20. But it only took a year for him to rebound with the biggest-selling hit of his career in the 80s, "Abracadabra". The title song of his album, the song returned him to the 3-4 minute pop blueprint that made him in the 70s, along with a synthesizer-washed sheen not seen before on his records.

The song was a huge multi-format success, not only reaching the #1 pop spot on two non-consecutive weeks, but making the top-5 on the rock chart, top-20 on the dance chart, and top-30 on both the adult contemporary (soft-rock) and the R&B chart. It also climbed to the runner-up position in Britain, and #1 in Australia.

But as much as a crossover success that song was, it proved to be Miller's last big hurrah on mainstream radio, being his last top-40 hit (well, so far).

The song was given the retro karaoke treatment by Sugar Ray in 1998...

It was also given a harder electro-reggae treatment by the Belgian group Das Pop in the early 2000s.

Up tomorrow: the Wilson sisters do some claimin'.