Songoftheday 6/4/14 - There was heat in the air cops everywhere you looked...

Laura Branigan - "Spanish Eddie"
from the album Hold Me (1985)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #40 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 2

Today's Song of the Day is by the big-voiced singer from New York, Laura Branigan, who pulled a hat trick with her third album Self Control by having a third top-10 single with the title track and a top-20 follow-up with "The Lucky Ones". The next year Laura released her fourth album, Hold Me, and the first single from the project, "Spanish Eddie", resembled the Euro-pop songs she did well with on her other albums, even though it was written by Nashville songwriter Chuck Cochran and David Palmer, who had previously collaborated with Carole King. Her longtime producer Jack White (not the White Stripes guy) was behind the controls for this nugget as well...

"Spanish Eddie" became Laura's sixth top-40 hit in September of 1985, but only by a hair, spending a couple weeks in the bottom position of the list. The single did better on Billboard's Adult Contemporary radio chart (#29) and dance club play list (#26). Internationally, while the record was a top-40 hit in Germany, Canada, and Australia, and even making the top-10 in Austria, it relatively fizzed in England (#87) and France (#73), both of which she's had a couple top-tenners before. But I still have a special fondness for both this song and the album, which also included a then-minor Michael Bolton song called "I Found Someone" which Laura took to #90 as the follow-up to "Spanish Eddie", then to be a big hit for both Cher and its writer.

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...and here's Laura on tour behind the album in 1986...

Up tomorrow: You gotta be blind not to see the philandering. Oooooh, that's right....