Songoftheday 9/20/13 - It's nothin' I can put my finger on, but it's there I swear it's not somethin' I'm imaginin'...

Sergio Mendes - "Alibis"
from the album Confetti (1984)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #29 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 7

Today's Song of the Day is by the Brazilian musician and producer Sergio Mendes, who scored his first top-10 pop single in fifteen years with the ballad "Never Gonna Let You Go" in 1983.  The following year Sergio released his Confetti album, which was headed by the theme to the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, "Olympia". While that record stalled out at #83 on the Hot 100, it's follow-up became another radio and sales hit for Mendes.

"Alibis" was co-written by Tony Macauley, who had a hand in writing the Foundations' classic 60s hits "Baby Now That I Found You" and "Build Me Up Buttercup", also with Princeton native Tom Snow, who just had his "Let's Hear It For The Boy" from Footloose reach #1. Together they penned "Alibis", which was sung by the totally bearalicious Joe Pizzulo, and produced by Sergio with Robbie Buchanan...

"Alibis" became Sergio's most recent top-40 pop hit in the US in August of 1984. It was even bigger on adult contemporary radio, reaching #5 and spending almost eight months on the chart. He would go on to have a few more hits on this format, the latest being 1987's "What Do We Mean To Each Other", reaching #19.

More recently, Mendes has gone back to his world-music roots, and a re-recording of his classic "Mas Que Nada" with the Black Eyed Peas ended up going to #6 on the British pop charts and top-20 on Billboard's dance club play list in 2006.

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...and here's Sergio (and Joe again) live in Japan in 1984...

Up tomorrow: a Brother affirms romance.