Songoftheday 4/16/14 - In 1965 Vietnam seemed like just another foreign war but it wasn't, it was different in many ways as so were those that did the fighting...

Paul Hardcastle - "19"
from the album Hardcastle (1985)
Billboard Hot 100 peak:  #15 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 8

Today's Song of the Day is from British jazz-dance musician Paul Hardcastle, who released his first album in England in 1984, and just missed the top-40 there with the electronic bleeps of  the medley of "You're The One For Me/Daybreak/AM" (the first being a remake of the D-Train club classic). The following year, his composition "Rainforest" met the same peak, #41, while becoming a top-5 soul/#2 dance/minor pop hit in America. That record incorporated drum machine patterns widely in use in freestyle Latin pop music at that time, and he would do it again for his next single release, "19". But instead of an instrumental of a rehashed club vocal, Paul used samples of a war documentary along with voice clips of TV narrator Peter Thomas (Nova). Somehow the combo of breakdance beats and news-style footage caught on around the world like hotcakes, with a hook based on the theory that the average age of the American fighters in the Vietnam War were 19...

"19" became a huge success around the world, staying at #1 for five weeks in England, and then crossing over to America where it made the pop top 20 in July of 1985. The single also topped the American dance club play chart, as well as peaking at #8 on Billboard magazine's R&B chart. Internationally, the record topped the charts in most of Europe, like Germany, Italy, Sweden, Ireland, and Norway, and went to #15 in France. It would be Hardcastle's only time in the US pop top-40.

In 1986, Paul would climb the dance and R&B charts in the US once more with "Don't Waste My Time", which also made the top-10 on the British singles chart. He would have a few more hits in the UK, including a song patterned like "19" called "Forty Years" in 1988 (#53). Most recently, his work has drifted back to a more pure jazz medium, and has topped the Jazz Songs chart in Billboard a few times, the most recently with "No Stress" in 2013...

Looking back, "19" stands out amongst the power players and one-hit-wonders of the 80s with its totally different sound and fearless use of a tricky subject for a pop song to become something "real" teenagers could relate to in history.

The biggest product of Hardcastle's success isn't as direct. Paul's manager, Simon Fuller, used his profit from the single to fund and name his new music/media company 19 Entertainment, which would eventually be the home to the likes of American Idol.

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The same year that "19" came out, a "parody" track called "N-N-N-Nineteen Not Out" came out  mocking the country's cricket team, and with Paul secretly contributing to the record, the single went to #13 on the UK chart...

 Here's Paul in 2004 live with the track at Albert Hall in London...

..and finally, here's the club remix of the track that topped the dance charts for two weeks in 1985...

Up tomorrow: One of my all-time faves cross over to America for the first time...