Songoftheday 1/7/16 - Tonight it's been a year we met each other here, here I am all alone as thoughts of you go on...

"Make It Real" - The Jets
from the album Magic (1987)
Billboard Hot 100 peak; #4 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 13

Today's song of the day is by the family pop/soul band the Jets, whose sophomore non-holiday release Magic had already spun off a pair of top-10 pop hits with "Cross My Broken Heart" and "Rocket 2 U" along with the top-20 single "I Do You". The fourth single from the album was the ballad "Make It Real", written by producers Rick Kelly and Don Powell along with Linda Malleh. Like their earlier "You Got It All" and the slow songs of Miami Sound Machine, it filled the gaps in 'dance/freestyle' radio for a change in pace from the booty-shaking...

"Make It Real" became the biggest hit off of the Magic album, reaching the top-5 on the pop chart in America in June of 1988. The single went all the way to #1 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart, while crossing over to #24 on their R&B list. Internationally, the single made it to #6 in Canada.

It would be the group's most recent top-40 pop hit. Their next single, the more upbeat "Sendin' All My Love", stalled down at #88 on the Hot 100, but the remix from Justin Strauss became their sole single to top Billboard's Dance Club Play chart. In 1989, the Wolfgramms put out their fourth album Believe, but two singles missed the top 40, though the first, "You Better Dance", reached #28 on the dance chart, while the other, "The Same Love" (an attempt to recreate the "Make It Real" success), climbed to #15 on their Adult Contemporary radio list. A year later, a new track from a greatest hits set, "Special Kinda Love", clipped the R&B chart at #83, their final time on the charts. Since then, they've been touring in different familial configurations, performing mostly at religious-oriented venues.

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The other version of the music video seems like it was taped for a public access channel...

...and finally, here's the Jets live in concert in 2010 in their hometown Minneapolis...

Up tomorrow: Mariah sings backup for a comically-named freestyle singer. Truth.