Robbed Hit of the week 3/25/13 - S.O.S. Band's "Just Be Good To Me"..

The S.O.S. Band - "Just Be Good To Me"
from the album On The Rise (1983)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #55

This week's robbed hit is by the Atlanta disco/soul outfit the S.O.S. Band, who crashed the party in a big way right at the end of the genre high with the classic "Take Your Time (Do It Right)", which reached #3 on the pop chart and sold over two million copies. However, amidst changing producers over a course of a couple more albums, they hadn't returned to pop radio since that point. Shaking things up and recruiting producers Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis from The Time, the band released their fourth album On The Rise in 1983. The first single, "Just Be Good To Me", gave them an epic though lower-tempo jam that did pretty well...

"Just Be Good To Me" was a huge R&B for the group, reaching #2, and stopped at #3 on the dance chart, but stalled at #55 over on the pop chart in 1983. Overseas, it was their biggest hit in England (even bigger than "Take Your Time"), reaching #13, and was a top-10 pop hit in New Zealand.

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Since then, the song has been a fertile mine for many artists to either cover or sample. Most notably, Norman Cook (aka "Fatboy Slim")'s act Beats International redid the track as "Dub Be Good To Me" and topped the American dance chart, went to #76 on the pop chart, and even appeared on the US R&B chart with this #1 UK hit in 1990...

In 1996, singer Deborah Cox also went to the top-10 on the US dance chart with a cover of the song...

Ten years later, Italian duo Karmah mashed the song up with The Police's "Every Breath You Take" and had a top-10 hit in Germany, Austria, and Poland with it...

Rapper Silkk the Shocker sampled the record for his top-40 R&B hit "Just Be Straight With Me" with a young Destiny's Child in tow back in 1998...

British singer Shayne Ward took on the song in 2007 and incorporated the BI's dub feel...

Dido and her brother's act Faithless also did the same a year later....

Most recently, British rapper Professor Green had a top-5 pop hit in the UK with his interpolation as "Just Be Good To Green" featuring the fabulous Lily Allen...

Professor Green Ft. Lily Allen - Just Be Good... by wonderful-life1989

And finally, here's the SOS the the song live...