Songoftheday 6/5/14 - We have undercover passion on the run, chasing love up against the sun....

Stevie Wonder - "Part Time Lover"
from the album In Square Circle (1985)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 14

Today's Song of the Day is by the R&B and pop icon Stevie Wonder, who was pretty much resting on his laurels by the mid-eighties, though scoring one of the biggest singles of his career with the Oscar-winning song from The Woman In Red, "I Just Called To Say I Love You", as well as a top-20 follow-up with the superior "Lovelight In Flight". The following year, in 1985, Wonder released his twentieth studio album In Square Circle, and for the first single he recorded the boppy cheating song of "Part Time Lover". Written and produced by the artist, it was a twee synth exercise with a plot resembling a half-hour sitcom, but the American public just ate it up...

"Part-Time Lover" became a huge success in the U.S., concurrently topping the pop, R&B, adult contemporary, and dance singles charts in November of 1985. Internationally, the record went to #1 in Spain, Italy, Canada, Ireland, and Belgium, while reaching #3 in the United Kingdom.

But as big as the single was, and as much as I loved the rest of the album, I so loathed this, thinking it was so beneath his talents. But hey, I guess a paycheck is a paycheck.

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

Here's Stevie in concert behind the album in 1985...

..and again at an awards show (I think the American Music Awards)...He was nominated for a Grammy for the song, but instead got best R&B vocal performance for the album as a whole in 1986...