Songoftheday 12/20/13 - You can tell from expressions that he makes public that he suffers from a badly broken heart...

Sheila E. - "The Belle Of St. Mark"
from the album The Glamorous Life (1984)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #34 (four weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 5

Today's Song of the Day is from singer and percussionist Sheila E., who under Prince's wing scored a top-10 pop hit with "The Glamorous Life" in 1984. The follow-up to that single was the party-time "Belle Of St. Mark", written by the artist about a man (she uses the male pronoun throughout) though using the feminine "Belle" to describe him, suggesting either a transsexual or an effeminate man. Produced by Prince, the song sounds completely in place with the Purple One's contemporaneous work (especially the gender-bending roles like "If I Was Your Girlfriend")....

"The Belle Of St. Mark" became Sheila's second top-40 pop hit in December of 1984, while stopping at #68 on the American R&B chart. Internationally the single did even better, reaching the top-20 in Australia, Ireland and the UK, while going to the top-10 in New Zealand and the Netherlands.

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..and here's Sheila live with the song in 1986..

Up tomorrow: the "Cruisers" get softened.