Robbed Hit of the Week 5/11/15 - Herb Alpert's "Keep Your Eye On Me"...

"Keep Your Eye On Me" - Herb Alpert
from the album Keep Your Eye On Me (1987)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #46

This week's "robbed hit" comes from trumpeter and record label boss Herb Alpert, who we last saw nicking the top-40 back in 1982 with the instrumental "Route 101". However with the changing pop radio landscape eschewing easy-listening and soft jazz music, his next three albums went relatively unnoticed by mainstream airwaves. He finally "caught up" in the later 80's, and in a big way. Hiring on writing/production team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis (aka "Flyte Tyme"), who helmed Janet Jackson's insanely popular Control album on his label, for four of the tracks on his 1987 album Keep Your Eye On Me, paid off for him in spades. The mostly-instrumental title track was released as the first single, with only background singers (including Lisa Keith) singing the title, and the extra-funky Time-like jam brought radio to notice...

While "Keep Your Eye On Me" climbed all the way to #3 on both Billboard's R&B and Dance Club Play chart, the song stopped short of the pop top-40 at #46 in April of 1987. The single also made it to #19 in Britain, Herb's fourth-highest-charting single there. The song might have made it higher, but another cut from the album, "Diamonds" featuring Janet Jackson, got so much airplay they had to rush-release it.

(Click below to see the rest of the post)


...and here's one of the mixes that help bring the song to the top-3 on the dance chart...