Songoftheday 9/28/15 - So wild standing there with her hands in her hair, I can't help remember just where she touched me...

"Valerie" - Steve Winwood
from the album Chronicles (1987) (originally from Talking Back To The Night, 1982)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #70 (two weeks, 1982) and #9 (one week, 1987)
Weeks in the Top-40: 12

Today's SOTD comes from soul/rock singer/musician Steve Winwood, who suddenly found himself a pop superstar after his 1986 "comeback" album Back In The Highlife, which scored him four top-20 pop hits in America with "The Finer Things", "Freedom Overspill", the title track, and the #1 "Higher Love". With this heightened exposure, but without any new material as yet since he just signed with Virgin Records, Winwood released a greatest hits set, Chronicles. With ten songs from his previous three albums, four from his relatively overlooked record Talking Back To The Night were remixed and "punched up" sonically for this compilation (while the actual biggest hit from the set, "Still In The Game", was left off). The second single, "Valerie", served as the lead track to promote Chronicles. Originally climbing to #70 in 1982, and with it now sounding like a track from Back In The High Life, radio took to it like a duck in water...

Here's the 1982 version...

...and the remix from 1987...

The new version of "Valerie" remixed by Tom Lord-Alge reached the top-10 on the American pop chart in December of 1987. The record also spent three weeks at #2 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary radio chart, while matching the peak of #13 that it did back in 1982 on their Mainstream Rock list. Internationally, the song climbed to #17 in Canada (where it actually was the only place it made the top-40 back in 1982 at #34), and #19 in the UK (in 1982 it stalled at #51).

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Here's Steve performing the song live in Japan...

In 2004, Swedish-born DJ/producer Eric Prydz created a filter-sample dance track based on the song named "Call On Me", with re-recorded vocals from Winwood. The single was a huge success internationally, reaching #1 in Germany and Austria for six weeks, the UK and Norway, for five weeks, in Ireland for four, three in France, and two in his native Sweden. In American, the single went to #29 on the Billboard Dance Club Play chart. And the video, featuring a sweaty, scantily clad aerobics class, was one of the first true "viral music videos" of the internet age...

Up tomorrow: