Songoftheday 8/1/13 - You're motoring what's your price for flight, in finding Mr. Right?

Night Ranger - "Sister Christian"
from the album Midnight Madness (1983)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #5 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 12

Today's Song of the Day is by the mainstream hard-rock group Night Ranger, who after coming together in the San Francisco area in the early 80s, released their debut album which spawned a moderate top-40 hit with "Don't Tell Me You Love Me" in 1983. The following year, the band put out their sophomore effort, Midnight Madness. Hoping for a repeat success, they issued "(You Can Still) Rock In America", but it was a bit too sanitary for rock audiences and too loud for pop radio attuned to new wave sounds, and it stalled in the bottom half of the chart.

For their second release, they put out the "power ballad" from the album, written by drummer and singer Kelly Keagy for his own sister. "Sister Christian" actually is named Christy, but the rest of the band read it wrong, hence the new name (and lack of religious intent though intact with religious overtones in the name). Between that and one of the best-filmed videos of the time, it gave them their big pop break on MTV...

"Sister Christian" brought the band to the top-10 for the first time in June of 1984, with what would turn out to be their biggest hit of their group. It went to #2 on the rock radio format as well, their second top-5 and also their biggest hit there. And they did even better in Canada, topping the chart there at the end of July.

(Click below to see the rest of the post)


Here's the band on tour in Japan with the song...

..and again in 2001....

The song was performed at the beginning of both the Broadway and film version of Rock Of Ages in 2006/2012...

Up tomorrow: Diamond Dave and the boys are pretty patient.