Songoftheday 9/10/12 - Tonight's the night we're gonna make it happen, tonight we'll put all other things aside...

The Pointer Sisters - "I'm So Excited"
from the albums So Excited! (1982) and Break Out (1984)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #30 (two weeks) (1982); #9 (one week) (1984)
Weeks in the top-40: 6 (1982); 12 (1984)

Today's Song of the Day is the first I've featured here to be a hit twice in the American top 40. It's by the Pointer Sisters, who started out as a quartet, with siblings June, Ruth, Anita, and Bonnie releasing their self-titled debut album in 1973. That LP gave them their first top-40 hit with the bubbly "Yes We Can Can", and heralded a period where their act was sort of retro Cotton Club-style. Two years later, they topped the R&B charts for their first and solitary time with "How Long (Betcha Got A Chick On The Side)". The women's versatility was also proven by songs like "Fairytale", which reached the pop, adult-contemporary, and the country charts in 1974.

Bonnie left the group for a solo career in the mid-70s, and the trio, now moved to Planet Records, transformed from their retro image to a more modern pop/dance act, and were rewarded for it when their cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Fire" took them to #2 on the Billboard pop chart in 1979, and brought them worldwide exposure (it was their first top 40 hit in the UK, and went to #1 in Belgium, the Netherlands, and New Zealand). The followup to that single, "Happiness" put the Sisters on the Dance Club Play/Disco chart for the first time.

The 80's started pretty well for the Pointers, with two more top-3 pop singles with "He's So Shy" in 1980 and "Slow Hand" in 1981, and its followup, "Should I Do It", reached the top-20. A year later, the trio released their So Excited! album, which had scored them another top-20 pop hit, "American Music". The second single released from that album, the jubilant "I'm So Excited", was written by the sisters with saxophonist Trevor Lawrence, and produced by their Planet Records go-to guy, Richard Perry..

The song made it into the pop and dance top-30 at Thanksgiving-time in the US in 1982, but missed the top-40 on R&B radio, as their sound was becoming much more mainstream. It was big Down Under, giving them their third top-10 hit in Australia. But the album also didn't do as well as their previous two 80s sets.

A year later, the Pointer Sisters released their Break Out album, which also tagged on a slightly remixed version of "I'm So Excited". After the huge success of their "Automatic" and "Jump (For My Love)" singles, the song was re-released as a single for radio and record stores, and this time it made the US top-10 (as well as in Ireland), and was a hit around the world (in England, it made it to #11). The song spent a total of 40 weeks on the pop chart between those two runs, and remains one of their most popular songs.

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In 1998, Nina Badric from the Yugoslav nation of Croatia had a big hit in Southern Europe with her slowed-down R&B version of the song...



New Yorkers Le Tigre did a fluffy cover of the song in 2004...

Belgian belter Lara Fabian got her Celine-ish groove on with the tune in 2007...

...and for something completely different, German heavy metal band Poison Sun did a version in 2010. (I admit I sorta kinda don't mind this...)

Up tomorrow: cannibalism goes to the top of the charts.