Songoftheday 4/27/15 - Oh baby my heart is full of love and desire for you, so come on down and do what you've got to do...

"Don't Leave Me This Way" - The Communards
from the album The Communards (1986)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #40 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 1

Today's Song of the Day comes from the Communards, which came together after British singer Jimmy Somerville left the seminal gay synthpop trio Bronski Beat, who broke so many barriers in pop music around the world, and even nearly missed the American top-40 with their classic "Smalltown Boy". Somerville broke off for a solo career in 1985, and partnered up with multi-instrumentalist Richard Coles and named their act after the obscure French socialist movement from the 1800s. The pair released their self-titled debut album in 1986. Their first single, "So Cold The Night", was appropriately Russian-sounding and went to #29 on the British singles chart and #16 in France. A second, "Disenchanted", harkened more to the Bronski sound, and also made the British top-30. But it was the third that earned Jimmy his biggest success in his home country and nabbed him a top-40 pop hit in America.

"Don't Leave Me This Way" was first released by the soul group Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, who took the song to #3 on the American dance chart in 1975 and #5 on the British pop list two years later...

Also in 1977, Motown artist Thelma Houston put out the track as a single, and it became the most recognized version of the song, topping the pop, soul, and dance charts in the U.S....

The Communards recruited British jazz-pop singer Sarah Jane Morris to record "Don't Leave Me This Way" as a call-and-response HI-NRG anthem that brought the classic into the 80s age...

The Communards' version of "Don't Leave Me This Way" climbed into the American pop top-40 for a week in March of 1987, after making it all the way to #1 on Billboard's Dance Club Play chart the previous November. Internationally, the record went to #1 for a month in the act's native Britain, two months in the Netherlands, #1 in Australia, Belgium, and Ireland, and top-ten in France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. Later that same year, the group released their lauded sophomore set Red, and with another remake, this time of "Never Can Say Goodbye", which hit #4 in the UK and #51 in the States. Three more single from the set made the British top-40, with the LGBT anthem "There's More To Love (Than Boy Meets Girl)" reaching #20 as their swan song. Somerville and Coles then split, with the former embarking on a proper solo career and Coles ending up in the Church of England and a presenter on BBC. Jimmy would reach the top ten in the UK two more times in 1990, with two more remakes, "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" (#5) and "To Love Somebody" (#8). In 1995, Jimmy topped the American dance chart with "Heartbeat", and also went to #15 in the UK with "Hurt So Good". This year, he released the disco throwback masterpiece Homage, which is definitely worth picking up.

They don't make "gay" music like this anymore.

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Here's the 12" "Gotham City" version that topped the American dance chart at the end of 1986...

...and finally the group killing it (really) live on TV promoting the single...

Up tomorrow: British prog/blues rocker turned AC hero has expensive tastes.