Songoftheday 8/1/15 - For three years straight we toured the nation, when we got through we needed a vacation...

"Wipeout" - Fat Boys and the Beach Boys 
from the album Crushin' (1987)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #12 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 11

Today's SOTD was an unlikely pairing between an up and coming New York City rap trio and a veteran surf-rock band covering an instrumental hit from the 60s. The Fat Boys, hailing from Brooklyn, released their self-titled debut album in 1984, which sold enough to make the top-100 albums chart for that year in Billboard, and scored them a top-20 R&B hit with "Jailhouse Rap". After a couple more albums that spun off some moderate R&B hits, the mainstream pop audience and its riches afforded to, ahem "paler" groups like the Beastie Boys, were alluding them. After getting exposure on movies like Krush Groove and Disorderlies, the trio released their Crushin' album in 1987, with one "ringer" track in a cover of "Wipeout", one of the few instrumental rock hits that is rather universally known. The original, from the Surfaris, climbed to #2 on the pop chart in 1963, and then returned to the chart in 1966, peaking at #16 (it nearly made it again in 1970, reaching the "bubbling under" list in Billboard)...

The Boys used the instrumental to put their own rap rhymes in (rather than Run DMC's rapping of the Aerosmith lyrics in "Walk This Way"), and enlisted the Beach Boys (who were in a nostalgia-heavy revival at the time) to sing the title brainlessly throughout the record...

"Wipeout" struck gold for the Boys, landing them their first top-40 pop hit in September of 1987, while reaching the top-10 (at #10) on Billboard's R&B chart. The album made the top 10 and sold over a million copies.

Up tomorrow: A newly-minted superstar nearly made the climax.