Songoftheday 7/11/15 - Never knew what my heart would be facing, guess I must have been blind saying goodbye to you baby...

"Flames Of Paradise" - Jennifer Rush with Elton John
from the album Heart Over Mind (1987)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #36 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 3

Today's SOTD comes from the American pop singer Jennifer Rush, whose career really took off in Europe, as her international hit "The Power Of Love" went to the top of the charts all over the continent, though it didn't get the notice it deserved in the States until remade by the likes of Air Supply, Laura Branigan, and most noticeably Celine Dion. However, the momentum from that hit allowed her next album, Heart Over Mind, to grab the likes of Elton John as a guest artist. While the first international single "I Come Undone" only did top-10 business in Switzerland, the second single, "Flames Of Paradise" (with Elton), had the right mix for American radio. Written by the team of Bruce Roberts and Andy Goldmark (who also teamed up for Jeffrey Osborne's "You Should Be Mine (The Woo Woo Song)", the track was produced like Elton's mid-80s successes, with him even taking first verse...

While the powerful pairing of voices merely scraped the American top-40 for a few weeks in July of 1987, it most importantly continued Elton's streak of having an American top-40 pop hit every year since 1970. The record also went to #32 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary (or "easy-listening") radio chart. While the single hit the top-10 in both Germany and Switzerland, the track sputtered out at #59 in Elton's own UK.

"Flames" would be Jennifer's last pop hit in the States, though the title track from the Heart Over Mind album was a minor club hit here at #42. Two years later, Jennifer teamed up with another vocal legend, opera singer Placido Domingo, to cover "Til I Loved You" (which Barbra Streisand and Don Johnson would release in the US) and reach #24 on the British chart. She continues to record, with success confined mostly to Germany and the surrounding area where her first hits came.

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Here's the pair miming it up for German TV...

And a clip from the children's show Kids Incorporated featuring a young Stacy Ferguson, AKA "Fergie" from the Black Eyed Peas...

Up tomorrow: a Canadian rocker's got a burning organ.