Songoftheday 9/7/14 - Is this the age of the thunder and rage, can you feel the ground move round your feet?

Simple Minds - "Sanctify Yourself"
from the album Once Upon A Time (1985)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #14 (three weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 9

Today's Song of the Day comes from the Scottish new wave band Simple Minds, who after chugging along for the first half of the 80s broke through in American with "Don't You" from the Brat Pack movie The Breakfast Club. Their next album after that success, Once Upon A Time, had already respectably capitalized on their new audience with the big-sounding "Alive And Kicking", which went top-3 in America. The follow-up single, "Sanctify Yourself", was another mainstream rock anthem written by lead singer Jim Kerr and the band and produced by Jimmy Iovine and Bob Clearmountain, ensuring another song that boomed from the speakers, and again backing vocalist Robin Clark give much-needed soul to the record. Comparisons now to U2's spiritual affirmation-style rock can be made, but at this time it was this group that was having bigger success with it...

"Sanctify Yourself" became the band's third top-20 pop hit in the U.S. in March of 1986. The single also climbed up to #3 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock radio chart (their third top-tenner) and #24 on the mag's Dance Club Play list. Internationally, the record went to #10 in their native Britain, as well as top-5 in Ireland and the Netherlands.

Although you don't hear much of this on the radio anymore, the whole Once Upon A Time album is really solid, with Clearmountain's production giving them a platform to tighten their sound without getting too "Don't You" cheesy.

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Here's the band performing live (I think in the early 90s)...

and again live in Holland with an orchestra in 2008..

Up tomorrow: Canadian "red rockers" believe it may be the evening.