Songoftheday 12/13/14 - Goddess on the mountain top burning like a silver flame...

Bananarama - "Venus"
from the album True Confessions (1986)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 12

Today's Song of the Day is brought to us by the British female vocal group Bananarama, who got their big break on American pop radio in 1984 with their top-10 hit "Cruel Summer". However, two more singles pulled from the project were only minor hits in the U.S.. Two years later, the trio went back to the studio to record their third album, True Confessions, and while Tony Swain and Steve Jolley again helmed most of the album, newbie producing/writing team of Stock Aitken and Waterman were hired for a couple of the tracks. With a post-disco style taken from the gay clubs and boiled down and sugared up for a mass audience, the sound was a good fit for their energetic though admittedly thin voices. One of the track SAW produced was a cover of a song that had been to #1 twice before in the U.S.

"Venus" was first released by the Dutch rock group Shocking Blue, whose guitarist Robbie van Leeuwen wrote the song, back in 1969. It became a big hit around the world as the new decade dawned, and topped the Hot 100 in February of 1970...

Stock Aitken and Waterman's production of "Venus" took the song into a whole new direction, where instead of Mariska Veres' smoky vocals (I honestly thought it was a man singing when I was a kid) they had Sara, Keren, and Siobhan's squealing over a frenetic dance beat that hilariously emphasized that "Venus was his name", while the video brought in the beefcake and dressed the girls up with a clip choreographed by future Dancing With The Stars judge Bruno Tonioli...

"Venus" became Bananarama's first and only American #1 hit in September of 1986, while also going to #1 on the dance club play chart in Billboard magazine. Internationally, the record topped the chart in Canada, Australia, Japan, and more, while it mimicked the Shocking Blue record by peaking at #8 in the UK.

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Other acts have had success around the world with "Venus". Another Dutch act, Stars On 45, incorporated "Venus" as the first in the medley that they took to #1 in 1981...

Also, South African duo the Stockley Sisters had a big hit in their homeland with the song..

Up tomorrow: A new wave band takes to the sky for a #1 hit.