Songoftheday 8/14/13 - Your eyes tell me how you want me, I can feel it in your heart beat I know you like what you see....

The Pointer Sisters - "Jump (For My Love)"
from the album Break Out (1983)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #3 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 15

Today's Song of the Day is by the family R&B vocal group the Pointer Sisters, whose 1983 album Break Out did begin to "break out" in 1984. After the first single (the criminally overlooked "I Need You") failed to make the pop top-40, The robotic followup "Automatic", featuring the lower register tones of sister Ruth, shot up to #5 in the spring. The girls then released what would be the biggest hit from the album "Jump (For My Love)". Written by the team of Steve Mitchell, Marti Sharron, and Gary Skardina, and led by sister June on vocals, the song was simply "Jump" when originally released on the album in 1983 (that was the first copy I had). After Van Halen's "Jump" topped the singles charts, the track was retitled with (For My Love) added, and with Richard Perry's percolating dance-pop production, they could do no wrong, especially with the video featuring track and field footage timed just for that year's Olympics in Los Angeles....

"Jump (For My Love)" went to the #3 position in July of 1984 for a couple weeks, as it did on the R&B chart as well. The record also topped off at #8 on the Dance Club chart in Billboard, while stalling right under the top tier at #11 on the adult contemporary format. It was their third and final top-10 single in the UK, and also was a moderate hit in Germany, making it to #20. They also nabbed the Grammy for best pop vocal group performance for "Jump" the following year.

The record solidified the Sisters' status as A-list pop stars in the 80s, and they still had a couple more big hits from the album up their sleeve (one of which was the re-release of their 1982 hit "I'm So Excited", which was tacked onto the album in a later pressing in 1984), making all three sisters have leads on top-10 hits from the set.

(Click below to see the rest of the post)


Nineteen years later, the British female vocal group Girls Aloud covered "Jump" for the Hugh Grant movie Love, Actually. Being fresh, fun, and vocally respectable, if not totally necessary, the single became their fourth top-10 hit in the UK in 2003, while also reaching the same level in Belgium, Holland, Ireland, and Sweden...

...and here's the Sisters live in Vegas in 1988...

 Up tomorrow: a Jam-mer gets schizophrenic.