Robbed Hit of the Week 6/2/14 - Cheap Trick's "Tonight It's You"...

Cheap Trick - "Tonight It's You"
from the album Standing On The Edge (1985)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #44
Songwriters: Jon Brandt, Rick Nielsen, Mark Radice, Robin Zander

This week's "robbed hit" is by the power-pop rock band Cheap Trick, who came out of Illinois with a line that was half convential hair-band rock n roll (lead singer Robin Zander and bassist Tom Petersson) and half crazy nerd-like (bowtie and beanie-wearing guitarist Rick Nielsen and Nick Offerman doppelganger drummer Brad Carlson, or "Bun E Carlos"). They released their self-titled debut album in 1977, but while the group was starting to be successful overseas, the record went nowhere in the States. Their sophomore effort, In Color, didn't do much better, though it's much tighter songs and momentum sent them to the album chart for the first time in the U.S. A year later, their third record Heaven Tonight produced their first minor hit in America, "Surrender", which also made the top-40 in Australia. But as they were under the radar in most of the world, in Japan they were huge. Mega-huge. Which made a tour of the country a given, and arriving there to pandemonium, the band made the right decision to record their concerts at the Budokan theater, which were meant to be released in that country. However, word got back to America about the live shows, and after a slew of imported copies were sold, their record company released their Live At Budokan album domestically, and it became one of the biggest-selling live albums of all time, scoring the band not only their first top-40 pop hit, but top-10 with their live version of "I Want You To Want Me". With their clout now redeemed by the support of the live album, Cheap Trick released their next studio album Dream Police in 1979, and placed a couple more singles into the pop top 40.

The 80's started out with the band back in relative obscurity on the radio, though they were still selling albums pretty reliably. Petersson left the band, to be replaced eventually by Jon Brandt. They almost made the top-40 once in 1982 with "If You Want My Love". A couple albums later, they tried again with another rock love song, "Tonight It's You", written by Zander, Nielsen, and Brandt along with songsmith Mark Radice, who would go on to work with none other than the Muppets. It was produced by Jack Douglas, who also assisted with John Lennon's Double Fantasy album , which Nielsen and Carlos had done unreleased studio work for.

While "Tonight It's You" missed the Top-40 by a couple notches in October of 1985, it did climb to #8 on the Mainstream Rock radio chart in Billboard, and pointed them in the mainstream pop/rock direction that would score them a #1 hit with the similarly structured "The Flame" in 1989.