Songoftheday 1/4/15 - If we are one big happy family no one would have to beg to eat ...

"Oh People" - Patti LaBelle
from the album The Winner In You (1986)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #29 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 3

Today's Song of the Day comes from the big-voiced singer Patti LaBelle, who had scored a #1 pop hit duet with Michael McDonald with "On My Own" in 1986. Her follow-up single, "Oh People", written by Andy Goldmark and Bruce Roberts, had a "What's Going On" vibe and a "let's come together" message possibly inspired by the charity records that came before it in the previous year...

"Oh People" reached the American pop top-40 in September of 1986, while doing even better on R&B radio, landing at #7 on that chart in Billboard magazine. The single was also a top-40 hit in England and the Netherlands. It would be her final time (so far) in the pop top-40, though she would continue to have success on both R&B radio and in the dance clubs.

In 1989, her single "If You Asked Me To"  brought her back to the R&B top-10, and would eventually be covered successfully by Celine Dion. Five years later, she topped the dance chart with "The Right Kinda Lover", one of her three #1 club hits of the 90s. Her most recent R&B top-40 hit (and minor pop hit) came in 2004 with "Gotta Go Solo" with Ronald Isley. Her last chart sighting came in 2007 with the #64 R&B hit "Anything" with Mary Mary and Kanye West from her The Gospel According To Patti Labelle religious release.

The thing is, this is probably the song most forgotten of her hits but her most graceful and true ones.

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And here's Patti with a wig that looks like a meteor landed on her head at the Statue of Liberty Centennial Concert in New Jersey in 1986...

A prog-rock-turned-pop band is taking out the trash.