Robbed Hit of the Week 8/19/13 - Cameo's "She's Strange"...

Cameo - "She's Strange"
from the album She's Strange (1984)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #47

This week's "robbed hit" is by the funk group Cameo, who started out in New York as one of the many bands with a gazillion members playing the "dirty funk", but it actually was a disco song that put them on the map. "Find My Way", from their 1977 debut album Cardiac Arrest, also found itself featured in the disco movie Thank God It's Friday and reached #3 on the Disco chart in Billboard magazine.  But a more R&B-inspired groove on "Rigor Mortis" scored the band their first top-40 soul hit from the same album. The fourth single from that debut set, "Funk Funk", made it up to #20 on the R&B chart as well.

The group continued to grow success through the late 70s/early eighties, starting with 1979's "I Just Want To Be", the first of their six top-10 R&B hits between then and 1983. But within this time the original nine members were pared down to just three, and the group moved to Atlanta, signing with label Atlanta Artists. Their second album on the label, She's Strange, gave the trio their first big pop success with the title track...

"She's Strange" became Cameo's first #1 R&B hit in April of 1984. It was their first single to make Billboard magazine's Hot 100, but petered out at #47 the following month. It was quite a lyrically sound piece for that genre of booty-shaking music, and their perserverity paid off, as only two years later they would grab their first top-10 pop hit with "Word Up"....

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...here's Cameo (with a lot of backup) on Soul Train....

and actually live on The Tube in 1986...


Up next week -rock royalty goes full-drag.