Songoftheday 2/9/13 - Walking blind across this silver room, looking through a smoke menagerie...

Diana Ross - "Pieces Of Ice"
from the album Ross (1983)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #31 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 3

Today's Song of the Day is by the Supreme Miss Diana Ross, who had started out the 80's by leaving Motown, and releasing a couple of moderately successful albums. In 1982, her Silk Electric set made the top-5 on the R&B albums chart, and scored two top-40 hits with the Michael Jackson-penned "Muscles" and retro follow-up "So Close". After her momentous (and financially catastrophic) pair of concerts in Central Park in New York, Diana released her thirteenth solo album, and third for RCA. With Steely Dan producer Gary Katz at the helm for most of the record, the second album she named Ross had a colder, more rock-tinged inflection, and the first single, "Pieces Of Ice", was a prime example of that switch to mimic the new wave that was saturating the radio. It was written by Canadian Marc Jordan and Czech composer John Capek, so it's as far from soul as you can get, though Ross injects her sultry coo that made "Muscles" so popular...

LOVE. HER. OUTFIT. Only she could rock the red sequined onesie. And yes, that's the dancer that was one of the "gang heads" on Michael Jackson's "Beat It" video.

"Pieces Of Ice" was a relative failure, though it managed to make the top-40, while reaching the top-20 on both the R&B and dance charts. It didn't help that MTV wouldn't play the video, when they barely played R&B songs as it were, even though this was clearly in their wheelhouse. And it remains my favorite song of hers from the 80s, and I thankfully have a rare copy of the CD, which surprisingly is only available on import, even though its by a star of her stature and made the top-40 on the albums chart.

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...and here's Diana previewing (well, lipsynching)  the song at the Central Park concert in 1983..

Up tomorrow: Bay Area arena-rockers go tumbling.