Songoftheday 6/28/16 - One look and I saw what I wanted to see, you know that you wrapped my heart around your finger so easily...

"Cryin'" - Vixen
from the album Vixen (1988)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #22 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 6

Today's song of the day comes from the all-female metal band Vixen, who had broke through with American pop radio with a little help from Richard Marx with "Edge Of A Broken Heart".  Their follow-up single was "Cryin'", a mid-tempo synth-rock exercise written by Gregg Tripp and Jeff Paris. Mind you, the keyboards were played by studio hands (including Derek Nakamoto), but the result didn't stray far from the Bon Jovi template...

"Cryin'" became Vixen's second and final top-40 pop hit in March of 1989. It reached the same rank on Billboard's Mainstream Rock radio chart. Internationally, the single was their first to make the top-40 in the UK at #27.

A third single from the debut album, "Love Made Me", stiffed in America but continued their upward trajectory in Britain at #36. The following year, the group released their sophomore effort, Rev It Up. The lead track "How Much Love" became their biggest American rock radio hit at #11, but just missed the pop top 40 (it also hit the British top-40). A follow-up song, "Love Is A Killer", was a minor hit on the Hot 100 at #71, and a third, "Not A Minute Too Soon", returned them one final time to the UK top-40. The band would split in 1991 and reunited in various forms over the next twenty years, while original member Jan Kuehnemund passed away from cancer in 2013.

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...and here's the band performing live to promote the single in 1989...

Up tomorrow: Dapper British headhunters go a little nuts.