Songoftheday 3/8/15 - If you'd stay I'd subtract twenty years from my life....

"At This Moment" - Billy Vera & The Beaters
from the album By Request: The Best Of Billy Vera & The Beaters (1987)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 15

Today's Song of the Day comes from Billy Vera, the son of game-show announcer Rob McCord. Getting first success as a songwriter, Billy nabbed his own pop success in 1967 with the top-20 R&B hit "Storybook Children", a duet with gospel/soul singer Judy Clay. A year later, they pair scored a top-40 pop hit with "Country Girl-City Man", a welcome rarity for a mixed-race duet at that era in American history. Returning to writing, it would be over a decade before Vera returned to the top-40, with new band The Beaters and a live single "I Can Take Care Of Myself" in 1981. That single's follow-up, the bar-band ballad "At This Moment", snuck in to the chart that same year at #79.

Fast forward four years, when a producer for the hit comedy show Family Ties shows up at a Vera concert, and upon hearing the song, tracked the 1981 single down to include in the show as a "love theme" for star Michael J. Fox and future wife/present co-star Tracy Pollan. And like "Friends And Lovers" did the year before, fans went nuts for the song, causing then start-up oldies label Rhino Records to buy the rights to the record to re-release in 1986. Radio got on board, and suddenly Vera found himself on top of the pop chart...

"At This Moment" went to #1 on Billboard's Hot 100 in January of 1987 for two weeks, while also spending a week atop the adult contemporary radio chart. The record was so universal that it crossed over to both the R&B (#70) and country (#42) charts as well, one of those very few to do so. Since then, he made the top-10 on the adult contemporary chart in 1988 with "Between Like And Love", but he's been more known lately as a rock historian and local California club band presence.

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In 1990, country singer Neal McCoy covered "At This Moment" for his debut album, but missed the country radio chart...