Songoftheday 3/28/16 - When I'm feelin' blue all I have to do is take a look at you, then I'm not so blue...

"A Groovy Kind Of Love" - Phil Collins
from the album Buster (Original Soundtrack) (1988)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 13

Today's song of the day comes from Phil Collins, whose dual careers as both a solo artist and the lead singer/drummer of the progressive rock/pop band Genesis had made him one of the hottest commodities of the 80s. He closed out 1985 with a #1 duet from the movie White Nights, "Separate Lives", then the following year returned to Genesis for the Invisible Touch album, which spun off five top-10 hits including the chart-topping title track. After that, he returned as a solo artist not only for music, but also back to the movies, where he had his first starring role in the film Buster in 1988. A somewhat comedic turn on the horrific events of the Great Train Robbery of 1963 in England, it created a little controversy in the UK for its handling of such a fresh subject, but nonetheless, the affable Collins' music didn't suffer. He contributed three tracks to the movie, and two of them hit the charts. The first was a cover of a song that went to #2 on both the British and American charts for the Mindbenders in 1965, "A Groovy Kind Of Love". Written by Carole Bayer Sager with Toni Wine, it was based on a classical piece by Muzio Clementi. Their version was sort of a blend of old-school Beatles sway with the then-hot baroque-pop of the time...

Phil took the song down a more delicate path, making it a wistful ballad...

Phil's version of "A Groovy Kind Of Love" did much better than the Buster movie, spending two weeks at the top of the American pop chart in October of 1988. The song also had three weeks atop Billboard's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart. Internationally, the song was #1 for a week on his native Britain's singles chart, while it also made the #1 spot in Canada, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, #2 in Australia and Norway, and #3 in Germany.

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In 1977, former glam rock musician Les Gray had a top-40 hit in the UK with a lounge-y cover of "A Groovy Kind Of Love"...