Songoftheday 3/26/16 - Out of the blue out of the night, you came along and you changed my life...

"True Love" - Glenn Frey
from the album Soul Searchin' (1988)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #13 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 9

Today's song of the day comes from the recently-passed singer/songwriter/guitarist from the legendary rock group Eagles, Glenn Frey, who in the mid-80s had a trifecta of hit songs from the movies and TV with the #2 "The Heat Is On" from Beverly Hills Cop, and "Smuggler's Blues" and "You Belong To The City" from the massive hit TV show Miami Vice. In 1988 Glenn released his third solo album Soul Searchin', and the first single from the project was the laid-back soft-blues/rock of "True Love". Written by Frey with longtime collaborator Jack Tempchin, the song felt like another soundtrack contribution in its earnest, well, "niceness"...

"True Love" became Glenn's seventh and final top-40 pop hit in the US in October of 1988. The song climbed all the way to #2 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart, and made it to #15 on their Mainstream Rock list. Internationally, the single peaked at #2 in Canada, while in Australia the track missed the top-40 at #49, and in the UK it stalled at #84.

Frey would released the title track as a follow-up, which went to #5 on the Adult Contemporary chart, but didn't make a peep anywhere else. It actually was the "B-side" of the second single from Soul Searchin' was the embarrassing self-help commercial for Bally's gym, "Livin' Right", which made Huey Lewis' "Hip To Be Square" seem like the Sex Pistols, and ended up at a meager #90 on the pop chart (and #22 Adult Contemporary).

In 1991, Glenn would contribute a song to yet another soundtrack, this time the girl-power classic Thelma & Louise, and while "Part Of Me, Part Of You" missed the pop top-40 at #55, it was a big success on rock and easy-listening radio, making the top ten. The single also appeared on his fourth album Strange Weather, and the second single from it, "I've Got Mine", was his final solo Hot 100 appearance at #91, though it reached the top-20 on the American adult contemporary and Canadian pop charts. Three years later, he would reunite with (most) of the Eagles for a massive comeback tour, and made it back into the top-40 on the pop chart with "Get Over It" in 1994. They would release a full-length original album in 2007, and his own solo covers set in 2012. Earlier this year, Glenn passed away from complications from surgery. He was 67, and his contributions to pop and rock music from his work with the Eagles and his solo stuff changed the direction of pop, rock, and country music in the decades he lived.

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And here's Glenn performing "True Love" live in Ireland...

Up tomorrow: An iconic electropop duo are romantically bound.