Songoftheday 7/28/12 - We've been here too long tryin' to get along, pretending that you're oh so shy...

Joan Jett & The Blackhearts - "Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah)"

from the album Bad Reputation (1980)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #20 (three weeks)

Weeks in the top-40: 7

Today's Song of the Day is by Joan Jett, who by the summer of 1982 was coming off two big hits in "I Love Rock N Roll" and "Crimson & Clover". But instead of following them up with another cut from the I Love Rock N Roll album, her next single was pulled from her debuts solo album after leaving the Runaways, now renamed Bad Reputation.

It's a cover of a 1973 song by British glam rocker Gary Glitter called "Do You Wanna Touch Me". That song reached #2 in Glitter's home country, though wasn't a hit here in the States.

Joan Jett took the song and made it rougher and sexier, and ended up with her third single to make the US top-20.

Her version also made the top-40 on rock radio, and even made the top-10 pop singles chart in Canada.

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Of course in 1982 there was no controversy over the royalties of the song - Glitter was arrested in 1997 for child pornography, and in the mid-2000s in Southeast Asia for underage sex. Therefore not much of his work has been covered. However a year before Jett, American Ian Lloyd, former lead singer of the Stories ("Brother Louie"), recorded the song...

Novelty medley act Jive Bunny and The Mixmasters incorporated the song in their "Do You Wanna Rock", a medley of Glitter songs in 1989...

and most recently and notoriously, the TV show Glee featured a remake of the song sung by guest star Gwyneth Paltrow, which was really shitty considering Glitter's history by that point...

Up tomorrow: another Eagle scores a top-40 hit.