Robbed hit of the week 11/19/12: The Weather Girls' "It's Raining Men"...

The Weather Girls - "It's Raining Men"
from the album Success (1983)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #46

This week's "robbed hit" was a song that may have missed the pop top-40, but will far outlive almost anything else from that year. Martha Wash and Izora Armstead started out as Two Tons o'Fun, backing up legendary disco performer Sylvester in the late 70's. In 1980, the duo released their self-titled debut album under that name, and from it came three #2 dance hits, "Earth Can Be Just Like Heaven", "I Got The Feeling", and "Just Us". The latter became their first R&B radio hit, making it to #29 on that chart.

In 1982, songwriters Paul Jabara (Donna Summer's "Last Dance") and Paul Shaffer (now David Letterman's sidekick) recruited the women and wrote a song which transformed them into "the Weather Girls". "It's Raining Men" took the Village People's campiness and multiplied it by a thousand, with the buffer of it being sung by a couple a big black women instead of men, but clearly designed for a gay male audience...

The song naturally was an instant hit in the clubs, reaching #1 for two weeks, as well as making the top-40 on the R&B chart. However even though the song would go on to sell over 6 million copies, it missed the top-40 on the pop chart. As a consolation, after taking a year to cross over to British shores, "It's Raining Men" peaked at #3 on the UK singles chart.

The duo would continue to have a couple more club hits before Martha departed for a solo career, but their short stint will live on in both women's and gay men's minds and dancing feet.

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In 1997, Martha teamed up with drag queen of queens RuPaul for a version that made the dance chart top-30 called "It's Raining Men...The Sequel"

Four years later, former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell covered the song for the first single from her sophomore solo album Scream If You Wanna Go Faster and featured in the movie Bridget Jones' Diary, and ended up being the biggest hit version of the song on the charts worldwide, going to #1 in at least ten countries including Britain...

Finally, here's the "girls" performing the song on TV back in 1984...

That's it for tonight....I'll return tomorrow with another Song of the Day, candletime, and my French and German chart recaps....have a great night!