Songoftheday 12/15/12 - There's a silence here between us I've never heard before & I can't find the love In her eyes anymore...

Ronnie Milsap - "Stranger In My House"
from the album Keyed Up (1983)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #23 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 8

Today's Song of the Day is by country singer Ronnie Milsap, who was one of the biggest crossover hitmakers of the early 80s. Ronnie, completely blind since he was young, got his start in Atlanta, where he began releasing music in the rockabilly style like Elvis and Jerry Lee until he switched to more country fare by the beginning of the 70s. In 1970, he got his first minor pop chart hit with "Loving You Is A Natural Thing", and then proceeded to score an even dozen #1 country singles in the 70s. One of them, "It Was Almost Like A Song", crossed over to pop radio, making the top-20 and the top-10 on the adult-contemporary (soft-rock) chart.

As the 80s got underway and the "countrypolitan" style of country music was in full swing, Milsap had his biggest success, going all the way to #5 with the Grammy-winning "(There's) No Gettin' Over Me" in 1981. The following year, he put out his second-biggest pop hit, a cover of Chuck Jackson's classic "Any Day Now".

For his 15th studio album, Keyed Up, Ronnie recorded a song written by pro-football player turned country singer Mike Reid called "Stranger In My House". Produced by Milsap and Tom Collins, the song strayed even farther away from traditional than his "countrypolitan" work, eschewing the steel guitars and fiddles for keyboards and a guitar solo..

While the song found success on pop radio, becoming his sixth and final top-40 single and top-10 on the adult-contemporary format, "Stranger In My House" broke Ronnie's ten-song streak of #1 hits in the early 80s, most likely from resistance of stations of playing such a radical-at-the-time hit. Of course, later on this style would be the norm for country music in the late 80s, so this song is a sort of harbinger of times to come. And it did peak at #5 so not so bad, and the album reached the top-40, his second to do so. (The roles were reversed in Canada, where he topped the country chart yet missed the top-40 on the pop chart.)


(Click below to see the rest of the post)


...and here's Ronnie performing the song in 1983...

...and recently still going strong in 2011..

Up tomorrow: Dr. Noah Drake has a romantic kerfluffle.