Robbed Hit of the Week 9/9/13 - Yarbrough & Peoples' "Don't Waste Your Time"...

Yarbrough & Peoples - "Don't Waste Your Time"
from the album Be A Winner (1984)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #48

This week's "robbed hit" is by the vocoder-enhanced soul duo Yarbrough & Peoples, who knew each other since their youth, and were helped out by fellow Southern soulsters the Gap Band, who helped them get signed to Total Experience Records, where they released their debut album in 1980. The first single from the set, "Don't Stop The Music", ended up topping the R&B chart, reaching the top-20 on the American pop chart, and even went to #7 in England. Their sophomore set scored another top-10 R&B hit with "Heartbeats", but that missed the pop chart entirely (it was a bit more funktified).

In 1984, the duo put out Be A Winner, and the first single, "Don't Waste My Time", put them back on pop radio. The video also included a cameo by a then-unknown rapper named Ice-T...


While "Don't Waste Your Time" became the pair's second #1 R&B hit, it konked out at #48 on the pop chart, most likely because mid-tempo funk like this done by the likes of the S.O.S. Band and Atlantic Starr was big in the soul arena, but so out of step with what pop was juggling at the time (adult contemporary and new wave).

After this, the duo placed one more hit ("Guilty") at #2 on the soul chart, while its follow-up "I Wouldn't Lie" became their last Hot 100 hit in 1986. After one more minor hit on the R&B chart, "Wrapped Around Your Finger" (not to be confused with the Police hit), the duo quit Total Experience, but not each other, marrying each other and concentrating on production work. However, in 2009, the two appeared in the stage musical Blind Lemon Blues. In my opinion their work was just as worthy as their of the massive multi-member groups they were peers of (i.e. the various "Starrs")...

Up next week: A British singer goes to Prep school for the ordinary man.