Songoftheday 5/13/16 - Think of your fellow man, lend him a helping hand...

"Put A Little Love In Your Heart" - Annie Lennox & Al Green
from the album Scrooged (Original Soundtrack) (1989)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #9 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 10

Today's song of the day is from the Bill Murray holiday film Scrooged, which was a retelling of the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol. This time casting Murray as a television news mogul, the movie brings the ghosts to bust his character this time out. Besides the orchestral score from Oingo Boingo's Danny Elfman, a nine-track soundtrack was released, containing tracks from U2, Dan Hartman, and Bill's co-star Buster Poindexter. The first single from the set was a cover of a 60's pop nugget, "Put A Little Love In Your Heart". Co-written by its original performer, Jackie DeShannon, the cautionary ode landed at #4 on Billboard's US Hot 100 in August of 1969...

For Scrooged, the song was redone as a duet between soul legend Al Green and the Eurythmics' Annie Lennox. Although credited as a "solo" for Annie, it truly was a Eurythmics track as David Stewart produced the single; perhaps coming off a song that just missed the top-40 in "I Need A Man", it was better to give Annie the props. Al, who had originally charted top-5 on the R&B list in 1967 with "Back Up Train", finally reached the pop top-40 in 1971 with "Tired Of Being Alone" at #11. His follow-up, "Let's Stay Together", went all the way to #1 on both the pop and R&B chart, the first of Al's six soul chart-toppers. However, after disco overshadowed his smooth soul, he hadn't seen the top-40 since 1976's "Keep Me Cryin" (#37). A combination of the movie's holiday spirit (even though the song itself isn't explicitly seasonal) and Annie's clout brought Al back to pop radio for the first time in over a decade...

"Put A Little Love In Your Heart" reached the top ten on the American pop chart in January of 1989. It would be so far the last time for either Al or Annie (even with the Eurythmics). The song also climbed to #2 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart. The extended version from the 12" single went to #29 on their Dance Club Play list as well. Internationally, the single made the top ten in Austria (#4) and Australia (#6), and top-20 in Germany (#20), Switzerland (#11), and the Netherlands (#13). In Annie's native UK, the song stopped at #28.

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Besides DeShannon's original, two other notable versions of the song were released in 1969. First, British band The Dave Clark Five took the song to #31 in the UK...

Also, country singer Susan Raye made it to #30 on the American country chart with her take on the song...

Lastly, Dolly Parton included "Put A Little Love In Your Heart" in her 1993 album Slow Dancing With The Moon...

Up tomorrow: British heavy metalheads see the end of the world.