Songoftheday 4/21/15 - Yes we've stolen this moment we forgot to face one simple fact, we both belong to someone else as we slept the night away...

"As We Lay" - Shirley Murdock
from the album Shirley Murdock! (1986)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #23 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 7

Today's Song of the Day comes from Shirley Murdock, a singer from Ohio who came from a gospel background, getting her mainstream break recording with the funk group Zapp with Roger Troutman, which helped her land a solo deal. Her first single, "No More", revolved around the Zapp fluid bass-line, and made the top-30 on the R&B and the dance club play charts in Billboard. After a second single, "Truth Or Dare", that was a minor hit in England but went nowhere in the states, it looked like she may have been a soul one-off. What stopped that is slowing the tempo with a emotional and real ballad about the consequences of cheating co-written by Larry Troutman and Billy Beck called "As We Lay". With the Zapp modulation providing a softer background, the track first caught on on soul stations, to eventually cross over to pop airplay by the beginning of the new year...

"As We Lay" reached the top-30 on the American pop chart in March of 1987, after climbing all the way to #5 on the R&B chart in Billboard. The song also crossed over to the adult contemporary list at #21. It remains one of the best "cheating" songs ever recorded.

The record would be Shirley's final pop appearance, though she scored two more top-5 R&B hits with the follow-up "Go On Without You" and "Husband" from her following album. As the 90s brought a plethora of new jack swing and rap, Shirley's third album spun out her latest top-10 soul single with "In Your Eyes" and a minor dance hit in "Let There Be Love!". Since then Murdock has gone back to her gospel roots and had a couple of top-10 albums there.

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Troutman himself originally recorded "As We Lay" with the vocal trio The Human Body in 1984...

The song has been sampled by the likes of rapper Cam'ron, whose "Wrong Ones" appeared on his top-10 debut album in 1998...

In 2000, another big-voiced soul singer, Kelly Price, covered "As We Lay", and climbed to #12 on the R&B chart and #64 pop, and even got Shirley to make a cameo in the video...